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MERCEDES-BENZ CHAMPIONSHIPJanuary 4, 2008Justin LeonardKAPALUA, HAWAII Q. Solid playing out there today, 5-under par, 68. JUSTIN LEONARD: Yeah, played pretty good. Got off to a nice start compared to yesterday. I was 3-over through seven. Today I was 3-under through seven. Hit the ball well, putted well, and would like to have made a couple putts coming in the last four holes. I had a couple nice chances. But I'm pleased with the day. Q. Better scoring overall today for everybody. Any reason for that? JUSTIN LEONARD: Well, we didn't have quite as much wind to deal with, and we didn't have the rain to deal with, at least not as much. But I think that the wind seemed to die down just a little bit today, and also it's early in the year and I think guys are starting to feel more comfortable. Q. You and I talked during the week about riding that wave with your finishes last year with winning in San Antonio at Valero Texas Open. How much does it help you out there after getting off to a slow start yesterday and then putting in a good round today? JUSTIN LEONARD: It helps a lot. To go from thinking, okay, this is going to be a week to see where my game is to actually being back in contention. You know, the way I played the last 27 holes has been really good, and it's nice to get a little momentum going that direction, and I'll see if I can keep it going this weekend. Q. It went well out there today. JUSTIN LEONARD: I played solid. I got off to a good start, 6-under through 14 or whatever with a couple par 5s, if you can be disappointed with 5-under, I would be, but still, it's a nice day and I got myself back in the golf tournament. Q. You've played this course a lot of times. Have you ever seen it play this long? JUSTIN LEONARD: Well, I've seen it play longer than this only with the opposite wind. But with the trade winds, no, I've never seen it play this long. That tee shot on 18 rolled about six yards, and that tells you how soft it is out there. The golf course is in beautiful shape, the greens are perfect, and because the greens are soft you're seeing some pretty good scores. Q. Since you started getting back with Randy, the momentum that you carried into the fall, do you really feel like -- is it completely back to where you want it? JUSTIN LEONARD: Well, it's pretty close. Towards the end of the year, the last four or five weeks, I played consistently well, which is what I want to get back to doing. It took us a little while to get the momentum going. But that was really kind of more my mindset and confidence more than anything else. Technically the last six months has been pretty good. But I had to kind of build that confidence and see for myself that I was playing well and go out and feel like I could. It's been fun, though, you know, and I played one tournament in the off-season. Other than that, I was off three weeks before that, didn't touch it, and three weeks after that, didn't touch it, until we got over here. The nice thing is the things that we're working on I understand very well and they're pretty well engrained. So it makes coming out of some time off easier. Q. The final question dealing with Randy. What is it like getting back with a coach who's known you since you were young? What does that bring out? JUSTIN LEONARD: I think I'd lost a lot of the feel that I played with growing up, hitting a lot of different shots, moving the ball around quite a bit, and sometimes it's not always a good thing. But for me I need to be able to do that. I come over here and that's all I do. I hit very few full shots, and I'm trying to hit the ball hard but keeping the ball down and working it with the wind and into the wind and back into the wind, so getting back to that kind of mentality of moving the ball around. We made a couple of tweaks with my grip to be able to do that easier, and I'm finally seeing some of the benefits of all of that. End of FastScripts |
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