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SONY OPEN IN HAWAII

January 10, 2008

Jimmy Walker

HONOLULU, HAWAII

STEWART MOORE: We'd like to welcome our current leader Jimmy Walker to the interview room here at the Sony Open in Hawai'i. Great round out there, 65. You capped it off with an eagle at the par-5, 9th. Give us a couple comments on the day.
JIMMY WALKER: I got off to a good start. I birdied 10 and hit a great shot on 11, didn't make the putt.
But then I made two -- made a good birdie on the next. I think I hit 9-iron in out of the rough pretty close, about ten feet, made that.
14, I hit 9-iron in there again and made about a -- I hit it in there pretty close, about six feet.
Next hole I hit wedge, about a ten-footer with a lot of break and made that.
Made a great par save on 17, hit a great iron shot and hit it in the bunker and kind of short-sided and ended up making about a 12-footer for par there.
Then it got kind of stale right in the middle there. I think the front side plays pretty tough. I kept hitting a few greens and didn't get one up-and-down out of a bunker and played pretty steady all the way up until 9, hit it pretty good, then hit 7 in and made the putt.

Q. How far were you?
JIMMY WALKER: I think I had 180.

Q. Can we talk about last time what happened you came here? It wasn't last year, was it?
JIMMY WALKER: I came in '06 -- I played in '05 and '06. '05 I got hurt on Monday and didn't play and pretty much sat the whole year out. I played a few events. I think I played nine tournaments that year. Then I kind of reinjured myself and took the rest of the year off. Then I came back here in '06 and played awful. I think I finished dead last.

Q. What happened in '05?
JIMMY WALKER: I had a bulging disk in my neck.

Q. And you learned about it -- you didn't tee off, did you?
JIMMY WALKER: I did not tee off, no, I went home. I was pretty much bed -- I tried to come back out Wednesday after the Monday and tried to hit some balls, and it put me in the bed literally. I could not function. I had to lay down and really couldn't move. I mean, it was pretty painful.

Q. When you flew out here, did you know you had a bulging disk when you flew out?
JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, we went down to the ER and did an MRI.

Q. Where was this?
JIMMY WALKER: Here.

Q. When you were on the plane out here in '05 you didn't know you had a bulging disk?
JIMMY WALKER: No, I was fine.

Q. Did you do anything?
JIMMY WALKER: No, I was hitting balls on the range and all of a sudden it kind of just put me down.

Q. So at what point did you get the MRI?
JIMMY WALKER: Monday we did because we had to check it out. It was painful.

Q. Wednesday you went to try to hit balls and you almost died basically?
JIMMY WALKER: It felt like it. I couldn't lift my head up off the pillow. It was bad. I couldn't turn my neck. I was locked up.

Q. After that did you have to stay here for a couple days just until you could move and then get on a plane and go home, or what did you do?
JIMMY WALKER: I think we ended up leaving on a Thursday or Friday, I can't remember. They put me on some Percocet, and I did not do well with it. It was pretty brutal. It was a bad week. I can't remember, we left Thursday or Friday and stayed in Park City and saw a doctor up there, then I went home and saw another doctor who told me to just kind of relax.

Q. So that sets the tone for a year of ten starts, maybe ten starts tops?
JIMMY WALKER: Yeah.

Q. Talk about this year, good memories.
JIMMY WALKER: Well, I wasn't sure I was going to get in because of my number off the Nationwide Tour. When I saw I was getting in, I'm like, oh, good, I get to go back to Hawai'i, I've got some good memories (laughter). My wife stayed home, and it hasn't been a great couple trips for us. I was like, I have to go because just from the status; when you get in, you've got to play.
So I've been playing pretty good at home, and I took a lot of time off after the Nationwide Tour Championship and relaxed. We finished up building a house and went up to Park City, where my wife is from, for Christmas and hung out there, so haven't played a ton, but got some good practice in the last week and a half. The weather has been pretty good back home.

Q. Home now is?
JIMMY WALKER: San Antonio.

Q. This must just feel like -- I don't know, in some way poetic justice or some kind of justice?
JIMMY WALKER: It's too early for that.

Q. It's only one round, but it's a round that's almost three years too late?
JIMMY WALKER: It's too early for that. I just want to go out and keep playing well. You'd love for the fairy-tale ending, but there's a lot of golf left. I feel good, and I hit it well, and I'm putting well. Just keep all that going and it'll be good.

Q. Good news is you played well today and you're still walking.
JIMMY WALKER: That's right (laughter), barely.

Q. How would you describe the conditions today? Were there any?
JIMMY WALKER: You know, for us this morning there wasn't much wind at all early. You know, we had it pretty benign. It seems like it's kind of starting to pick up. We played the last five or six holes with a little bit of wind. It was tough to kind of tell -- it was kind of all over the place, direction, and it didn't seem like it was ever blowing out of one direction as far as we could really tell.
But it played tough. If you hit it in the rough, you had to get in there and get after it and try to thrash it out of there pretty hard. Fairways were a premium. I didn't hit a ton, but I got pretty lucky. I got some good lies and I had a couple bad ones that I muscled it out of there. I putted well, and the greens are good. They're rolling really well. It's the best I've seen it condition-wise for three years that I've played.

Q. When we talked in Columbus you were working on things and you felt like you were sort of getting to a point where you liked your game. From then until now, what has changed or gotten better or stronger in your game that has got you not only out here but into this position playing well right out of the chute?
JIMMY WALKER: You know, I attribute a lot of it to just kind of thinking about -- just more the mental side of golf. It's so cliché or whatever, but just really focusing in on just the way you approach the game.
I looked at some key stats last year. I wasn't playing the par-4s very well, and I noticed about halfway through the season, I think I was 40-over par on the par-4s, but everything else, the par-5s and -3s were really good. So I just kind of figured something is wrong, and for the rest of the year I was able to taper that off. I think I played them even par for the rest of the year.
I think that was a big turnaround. I don't know if it was just being aware of something like that, because I look back at the '04 stats and the '03 stats that I had on the Nationwide Tour, I was 40-under par for the year. So that to me was a big -- that's a big difference, 80 shots over the course of a year. What does that do for you?
So just becoming aware of that, I think, kind of helped turn the rest of the year around, just played solid golf. It wasn't spectacular, but I got a win in there. Not a lot of Top 10s last year.

Q. When you're 25 and have just come off Nationwide Tour Player of the Year and you're excited to get going and this stuff happens, was it hard to avoid throwing a pity party for yourself, or did you?
JIMMY WALKER: I didn't. You know, it was what it was and it was terrible and it's not the way you want to start it off. You know, you don't want to sit there and go, "why me, why me." But it was tougher. We had a lot of other stuff going on at the same time. My fiancée's mother, my mother-in-law now, was going through breast cancer, and my best friend's mom had just passed the week before I came down here. It was just brutal. And then all that with me didn't help the morale of everybody.
You feel like you've got a team at home, and when things are going bad you want to do well for them. It was tough. It was a tough blow for everybody. Not the way you want to start. But you've just got to persevere. I think if anybody could do it, it would be a golfer because of all the ups and downs that golf gives you. If you can't handle the ups and the downs, then you're probably not playing at the top levels. Dealing with adversity, I think it's not something that comes easy for us but I think easier than maybe some other sports, I don't know.

Q. You get it all the time during a round of golf, during 18 holes?
JIMMY WALKER: Oh, yeah. There's ups and downs. There's more downs than ups, so you're pretty pessimistic. I don't know how you can be a pessimistic golfer. You have to stay pretty positive.

Q. Did you say that injury lingered in '06?
JIMMY WALKER: No, I've been playing pain-free with my neck, so it's been pretty good.

Q. '06 you just didn't play well?
JIMMY WALKER: No. You know, I wasn't swinging well. I hadn't been playing. It was just bad.

Q. Which happens, too, in this game?
JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, bad year.

Q. When did you feel things getting back to an upswing?
JIMMY WALKER: Well, at the end of -- about three quarters of the way through '06 I started working with a new swing coach. I just needed something different. I needed something to work on. Nothing against my coach at the time, but he just didn't really have anything for me, and obviously it's not working. I just needed to make a change and have a fresh look and started working with a new coach.
I feel really good about my swing. I've always been a good chipper and putter. It was just a matter of driving the ball better and hitting some better iron shots and just overall ball-striking in general is what was keeping me out of that. I think I was swinging pretty timid there for a while after the injury, but I feel very confident now.

Q. Who's your coach now?
JIMMY WALKER: Todd Anderson.

Q. Out at Sea Island?
JIMMY WALKER: Uh-huh.

End of FastScripts

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