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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 21, 2008

Stuart Appleby

TUCSON, ARIZONA

SCOTT CROCKETT: Stuart, many thanks for coming in and joining us, as always. A fantastic victory over Phil. Just give us your thoughts on what was a really good day for you.
STUART APPLEBY: Probably didn't start off so good. I was down early so I got off to a bit of a jump out of the blocks, and I certainly thought that it wasn't something that was going to be conducive to helping me win at the end of the day, based on the way he's playing. But slowly just chipped away and moved in the right direction all day. Very rarely did we have to, I guess, concede holes. A little bit, not much.
But it was really good, quality golf. There was no, I guess, very little poor golf thrown in there. It was a pretty good, solid match all day. It was just a matter of me getting some shots together, I guess sneaking my way ahead late in the day, and then probably a slightly unexpected birdie on 17 that shut it out for him.

Q. It's a danger of 18 holes, isn't it, Stuart. If you get down early on, you can suddenly find yourself with not enough holes left, can't you?
STUART APPLEBY: It's pretty predictable; if a player is down early and a player is applying pressure, you're going to have to do something to snap that lead back into your own hands or at least get it back to square and feel like you're back in it. That was for me today -- just making enough birdies, enough saves, enough good putts, pretty good quality golf. Again, I knew, you just sort of have to see how it goes. You never know what Phil could do. He could give you two holes or he could take four away from you in a heartbeat.

Q. Given your history in this event, which we won't belabor, you're 2-down, are you thinking, oh, God, here we go again?
STUART APPLEBY: No, not really. Obviously at that stage you know there's a reasonable chance -- if you're going to come back it's going to go a long way into the round. You're not going to win by probably the 15th from there, not with a guy like Phil. So I guess immediately I knew there was a lot of day left for me. But I was just taking one shot at a time, and I've been hitting it well and putting well, making birdies. And I said early in the week, you'll have to make six birdies a round. I don't think you'll win matches with six birdies; you have to do more than that, or maybe an eagle.
The course is pretty receptive. The greens aren't firm so the ball aren't getting away even though the pins are tight. There was opportunities there, and it was just a matter of whether Phil was going to match me. First of all, whether I could do it, and then if he was going to match me.

Q. Just share some of your impressions of this golf course and the green complexes.
STUART APPLEBY: Well, they're big greens, big style greens, so to make the pins difficult, they're putting them backs, front sides, off ridges and stuff like that. That's what they did last year. If you keep them away from that, then players will get even more aggressive. It's not a championship golf course by traditional, historical -- Riviera, for example, last week, it's nothing like that. Big fairways, big targets. So they've got to keep the pins tight.

Q. Colin said earlier that it was about not making mistakes in match play, and you talk about making birdies. From what I was counting it looks like you made nine today and zero bogeys. Obviously those are the two combinations for the win?
STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, if you miss greens you've got to get up-and-down because you're more than likely going to lose the hole if you're making a bogey. Very rarely will two bogeys halve a hole. One player is going to execute a par or better. So you don't want to make mistakes. There's no point in having four or five birdies. You're probably not going to win even half your matches doing that. Yeah, It's under par. You've got to shoot low. If it was a stroke-play event you've got to be thinking you've got to shoot 6-under each day to try and win a tournament if it was stroke out here.

Q. I think you had unofficially the best round of the day by a couple of shots. Was it your best round of the year?
STUART APPLEBY: Look, they give you putts and all that sort of stuff. I think there was at least one putt that wasn't a gimme that they give you, so you've still got to make it. But was it a good round? Yeah. Good rounds -- it's hard to measure a good round on a course like this. It's relatively easy and soft. There's not a lot of danger out there. The course is not bouncy enough, the greens are not hard enough. They're pretty quick.
Even what would be harder would be putting pins on the front of these greens because you'd have to hit long and have really quick putts coming down. Last week at Riviera I think every round was more difficult than the way the course is playing here this week.

Q. I know you only have a few hours before you have to go back out again, but will you allow yourself to savor the victory?
STUART APPLEBY: No, I don't need to savor the victory. I just need to keep playing like I'm playing. That's probably as simple as it is. If I keep playing like this, I could keep winning. But if I lose a gear, then I'm a chance to lose the next match. I've played matches that I've won that were not very good quality matches. So far both the matches I've played have been -- they've been pretty tight and good matches, and I think they will only get tighter from now on.

Q. So beating the second seed means no more than if you'd beaten the 52nd seed?
STUART APPLEBY: Well, does it mean any more? No, it just means I'm advancing. Bottom line is it means I'm advancing. I don't get an extra paycheck or a bonus for beating him. Yes, I have to get through one of the best players to move on, so that's been done. You know, I'm progressing further, or as far as I've ever gone in this event, so I guess -- and I'm playing the best I've ever played any of the years, which is not hard to say (laughter). You know, we'll see. I don't know, it's all new territory from now on.

Q. That segues nicely into the next question. For a guy with your accomplishments in stroke play, why has match play proven to be such a clunker for you at Presidents Cup and this particular event? Theories? That doesn't say you played poorly in all of them.
STUART APPLEBY: No, true. I don't know. Probably the last two days I've got into my game more, into what I'm doing and not taking a huge amount of notice on what the other players are doing, enough to make assessments from there. But I'd probably say I've become a bit more internal in my play and that -- and I'm playing well, too, so I guess it helps you focus on the things that you are doing better. This time last year in this event I was driving it horrendous, and very, very frustrated. I remember being very, very frustrated on the range last year after my first round loss here last year. So I probably just got more internal with my process and a bit more relaxed.

Q. Did you know coming into this week that you were the only guy to have played in every World Golf event?
STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, I did.

Q. Do you deserve any sort of bonus for that?
STUART APPLEBY: Yes, I do (laughter). You should be my manager.

Q. Is the key the same this -- is the saying this week the tenth time a charm?
STUART APPLEBY: I don't know. There's a long way to go. I don't know if the 10th time is a charm. Like I said, it's all new territory to me. I have not played a lot of match play. I've been shut out of these events, so this is a different rodeo for me. We'll see. I'll keep playing well, I don't know. Look at Casey yesterday. Who did he play? Robert Karlsson, and tore him apart. I could get that tomorrow, I could have eight birdies and someone could have done and I'm done and they're the champ. Sometimes your form doesn't mean everything. Ultimately, though, come down -- when you see the end of these events it is about form. The guys aren't going to be shooting 2-over par in the finals.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about the strategy of medal play versus match play? It sounds like maybe the strategy you've discovered is to play more within yourself. Is there strategy there?
STUART APPLEBY: It depends. The golf course is not difficult enough where you have to be hugely respectful of where the pins are. You have to play smart, but it's not like a major. And we all know how -- look at an example of Shinnecock a few years ago. That was just total respect for every single shot. But here you've got to be aggressive. You've got to make birdies so you can't be happy to hit it to 20 feet because you know the guy in front of you has got a wedge and he could hit it to -- you've got to be somewhat aggressive and smart, but the bottom line is you've got to make putts. If I've got the club that looks like I can go at the flag, I'll go at the flag. If it looks like it's near the edge and will roll off I'll keep away from it. I'm putting well and I'll take my risk from 20 feet.

Q. Take us through the end of 17 when you laid up. Was that as hard a shot as it looked on TV or could you go straight at the pin?
STUART APPLEBY: I laid up further than I thought. I thought the flag would flatten out the last three or four yards coming in, so I thought if I had my shot, a little lob wedge, I'll be able to stop it pretty good, and I walked up and looked at it and thought, uh-oh, this is all downhill and could be running off. I pulled it a little bit, and I told it to stop and it heard me and so it stopped. I had actually an easy putt out of any spot to leave the ball. And then Phil had a nightmare from where he was. I didn't expect him to hit a putt that far short of the first one, but he wasn't far from knocking it beyond mine. In a way he was potentially he would have been happy to have me putt first if he had got inside me because getting his ball inside eight to ten feet there would have been a good effort.

Q. And it goes without saying you didn't want to give him a reprieve to the final hole? Run us through the final hole.
STUART APPLEBY: No, I'm going to count that he's going to make it, make a birdie, and it's going to be tied up if I miss. I had to count on him making his, and I got a good read on mine. I've been managing to read the greens pretty well all week. When he missed his, I thought, right edge, roll it up, see if it goes. That hole was not probably looking like the hole I was going to win, or could halve it, but then when you squeeze one out right near the end it for my benefit finishes the game nicely.

End of FastScripts

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