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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 20, 2008

Arron Oberholser

TUCSON, ARIZONA

Q. Just a couple questions. It looks like you were up most of the day in the match. Just talk about what you did well today.
ARRON OBERHOLSER: I putted well today in spots. I only had one really bad hole where I just kind of got out of my routine, got out of my -- got away from me a little bit.
Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised, considering this is my first round back in competition since Grayhawk last year. You know, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. No matches at this tournament ever are.
Mike didn't play his best, I don't think, in my opinion. I've seen him where he really gets it going. But I did just enough to where I could hold him off. He had some unfortunate breaks, too, with some putts that didn't fall.

Q. Any turning points?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Yeah, turning points were probably -- golly, all the holes look the same out there. I can't remember which holes are which. 14, getting the ball up-and-down on 14 was a big boost, and then knocking it inside him when he hit a wedge in there about four feet or five feet on 15, and I knocked it to about a foot and he gave it to me and then he lipped out. I mean, that was a big momentum changer.

Q. And then obviously just talk about -- it looks like you're going to play Tiger now. Just talk about that.
ARRON OBERHOLSER: That'll be fun.

Q. I assume you've never played him in match play?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: I have never played him in match play. We never played in the U.S. Amateur against each other, we never played in the Western Amateur against each other, and the last time we played together in the same group had to be -- it was my junior year, his sophomore year of college, the final round of USC's tournament at North Ranch Country Club.

Q. In the Valley?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Yeah, that was the last time we played together. I remember it because he hit some shots where I just sat there with my mouth, my jaw on the floor going, you can't do that under any circumstances. So that was pretty cool.

Q. Have you not played with him on this TOUR?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: You know what, yeah, never, not even a round.

Q. Not even in the winner's category?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Not even in the winner's category for two years. That's how funny that deal is when they jumble them up in the computer. He doesn't play a lot obviously, and I don't have a lot of chances to play with him. And on Saturday or Sunday I've got to be playing well if I'm going to be playing with him, otherwise I've got to get lucky with the computer and land in his group.

Q. The USC thing, I take it you're telling us he won that thing individually?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: He did. I think he had a one-shot lead on me going into the final round, and he didn't play well, I remember, in the final round, but I played worse. He ended up winning by one or two actually, and I ended up finishing third because some other guy who wasn't playing in our group played well that day.

Q. You probably played a lot against him growing up.
ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, because he's in Southern California. He was playing AJGA stuff. I wasn't good enough.

Q. Any interesting times you've played with him, Pac-10s?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, I was at San Jose State.
I almost got hit by him once in college, or he almost hit me on one of those drivable par-4s in a tournament. I was playing with Notah and he was playing behind us.

Q. Northern California had nothing like that, no state am?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, just a few tournaments I played with him his freshman year, my sophomore year at regionals at New Mexico. We were both playing well. He had food poisoning the night before; the whole team did. The whole Stanford team did. And he went out there and shot even par and made it look easy with food poisoning.
I've only played with him, I think, two or three times to be honest with you throughout our careers. We've missed each other by a group here or a group there as professionals on the weekend, and the computers haven't paired us.

Q. J.B. talked about this earlier in the week, how he almost looked forward to it just as an experience, to see how --
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, sure. That's kind of how I look at it. I mean, the guy is so -- he has proven that he's so much better -- when his game is on, he's proven that he's so much better than the rest of us, including the next-best player in the World Rankings.
I think that it's -- for a guy like myself, even though I'm the 33rd-ranked player in the world, the gap between me and him seems so big because he's so much more experienced than I am in just about every facet of the game. We're the same age, but golf-wise he's about 60 (laughter), I mean, mentally. He's seen it all, done it all at a very young age, and that's helped him and helped him progress even further and faster than his peers, me being one of his peers, in age.

Q. You were briefly iffy for this thing with, what was it, shoulder?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Yeah, I have bursitis in my right shoulder.

Q. You were waffling there for a while?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, I marked this tournament -- when I knew I got bursitis, which was the one that I marked as the tournament I was going to come back at, so I figured I could test it out in a practice round, and if I get waxed the first round, it's only one round of golf, and if my shoulder hurts then it's not a big deal.

Q. How is it feeling?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: It's very tired. It's fatigued. The shoulder is extremely fatigued, but no pain.

Q. What are you doing tonight?
ARRON OBERHOLSER: Tonight I'm probably going to throw some stim on it and some ice and go see the boys in the van here, go see them, make sure all my ducks are in a row as far as my spine, because I've had some nerve issues with the shoulder. It actually went numb about three weeks ago completely. I couldn't feel it. So I had some nerve damage to the right shoulder. Some nerve got tweaked back there from what the doctors told me. MRIs don't really show that stuff.

End of FastScripts

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