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THE HONDA CLASSICFebruary 29, 2008Dudley HartPALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA DOUG MILNE: Dudley Hart, welcome back. Great round two here today at the Honda Classic. Obviously the highlight was the front nine, six consecutive birdies. Just talk to us about that. You said out there you wish you could describe how it happened. Just a couple general comments on the round, especially the front nine. DUDLEY HART: Yeah, I just got on a little streak starting on No. 3 that you get in every now and then, and it doesn't happen enough, unfortunately. But No. 3 is a par 5 and I hit it up by the green, actually had a tough -- barely stayed out of the bunker and was standing in the bunker and had about a 40-yard pitch shot, wasn't real easy. I actually hit a pretty good shot up there about three feet and made that for birdie. Next hole, I hit it about two, three feet again and had a nice little tap-in there. So the short ones obviously helped quite a bit. The par 3, the next hole, I hit a 4-iron that went about maybe 12, 15 feet past the hole and I made that. The next hole, I hit it about three feet again with a 4-iron, pretty difficult hole, and made that for birdie. And the next hole, par 3, I hit a 6-iron about 15 feet left, made that. 8, I hit a drive in the fairway and I had to hit 4-iron into the wind, maybe about 20 feet and made that. So I didn't really make any bombs, but I hit a lot of good putts, and pretty much every putt I hit went right in the middle. I've been rolling it pretty good for two days, and I got on a stretch there where I hit a bunch of fairways, and that's a must on this golf course. You've really got to get it in the fairway, because it's pretty long, especially for me, and if you want to have any chance of getting the ball anywhere near the pin, the rough is pretty thick, and probably not as bad as it was last year -- definitely not as bad as it was last year, but still don't want to be hitting 4-irons out of there. DOUG MILNE: I want to ask you about your caddie, your good luck charm. Give us a little insight to who he is. DUDLEY HART: My caddie is a good buddy from home, my neighbor, too. His name is Dave Young. We live next door to each other. Our kids are friends. We kind of have that revolving door between our houses. We built houses the same time with the same builder. He moved in a month before we did and we built a walkway between our houses so the kids can run back and forth and we have nothing to snow-blow in the winter so they can get back and forth. Just a real good friend. I didn't know him real well before I moved back to Buffalo. I knew of him a little bit, but we play a lot of golf together, and our families are real close. I asked him to come out to Pebble because my partner at Pebble, Jerry Jacobs, lives in Buffalo and Dave knows Jerry and knew Jerry, the pro at Craigieburn who was going to caddie for Jerry. I said, "Come on out, it will be fun." My caddie that I've had for about 12 years, he's still trying to figure out whether he wants to come back out and caddie or stay at home. So he may be retired; I didn't have anybody. It worked out pretty well at Pebble, and I thought my caddie was going to start in Florida but he decided not to, so I asked Dave if he wanted to come and see if we continue what we did in Pebble. There might be something to me having to pay more attention to the yardage book than with someone not as familiar with it, as he sticks his head in. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun. He's a good friend, and helps keep me loose. We go have dinner every night and have a good time. Q. Just talk about that stretch of six in a row, what's going through your mind? Do you know that you made five in a row or six in a row or do you get lost in it? DUDLEY HART: You realize it. You just try not to think too much and go one shot at a time, the old boring adage. That's basically what you are doing. I felt sometimes it kind of breeds a little confidence and breeds momentum, and I just had some momentum and I hit some good shots and hit some good putts. You know, you don't birdie six in a row very often. You know, everybody out here has gone through stretches where they have done that. It's just hard to describe, really. Just things are clicking right and the putts are falling, and good things were happening. Q. When is the last time you hit six in a row, do you know? DUDLEY HART: I don't know. I'm the wrong guy. I can't tell you what I shot the last round at Pebble, let alone six in a row to be honest with you. Probably not very often. The best streak that I can remember ever having was the year I won the Sarazen World Open which was just a co-sponsored event, but I was 10-under through 11. I don't know, six in a row, my memory is so bad. I couldn't give you an honest answer on that. Q. You alluded quite a bit to this yesterday, but just because of the medical and knowing that you had to hit a certain number, just how much did the pressure come off putting up what you did at Pebble and making a good chunk of it there? Is it much easier to breathe out here now knowing that's not really hanging too much over your head anymore? DUDLEY HART: You know, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but sometimes you all think -- at least for me, I don't take this game, after what I went through and everything, it's not like it was ever hard for me to breathe to be honest with you. It's important what I do. I want to play well. Anybody who does anything, whatever, athletics, any job, you want to do your job well. But you know, I came out this year and I just said, you know, I'm going to try to work hard, play well and if I make the money and do it, then great, but if I don't, I'm not going to -- it's not going to kill me. I have three kids, a healthy wife at home and a lot of good things going on there. And to be honest, I know this sounds crazy, but I want to play well, but it wasn't like I was losing sleep over it to be honest with you. And I also thought that if I got back to playing that the way I know I can play and hitting the ball a little bit better that, really shouldn't be an issue. And people ask me how much you have to make and I'm like, you know, I know about, it's probably 150,000 or 160,000. But that's not my goal to be honest with you. I'm trying to do that and way over. I'm hoping that won't be an issue, you know what I mean. You try to -- it's like I would say guys are like, well, hope you make the cut this week and you don't go into a tournament thinking you're going to try to make the cut, because if you do, usually you're right around that cut line and you have to do something pretty decent on the way in. You're trying to play as well as you can and shoot as low as you can every day, and finish as high as you can. And that's the only way I can put it really. It wasn't life or death to me whether I made my money or not. I want to do it. But I've played out here 18 years. Golf has been great to me, I've had a great career, and it's been a great life. But I said, you know, whatever happens from there, when you have kids, at least for me, it changed things a lot. And what happened with my wife, it's not the end-all, be-all for me anymore. Don't get me wrong, I work hard and I practice a lot and I still want to do well, but it's just not -- it wouldn't be the end of the world. Q. That was a great save on 15 and you had a funny look on your face after you made the putt. What were you thinking? DUDLEY HART: I was thinking everybody was making a big deal. I thought that was a pretty easy up-and-down. (Laughter). No, I was thinking, "Thank you, Lord." I just hit a couple really bad tee shots, three real bad tee shots trying to hit little low cuts both times, and it pull-hooks three times and cost me on 17, but I got away with them on 15 and 16. You know, I was thinking there, I was just thinking, just goes to show you, if you can just hang in there and not get too frustrated, which isn't always my strong suit that sometimes you give yourself a better chance to save some really bad things from happening. Q. Are you a good scrambler, or have you become a better scrambler? DUDLEY HART: I think we all have our moments. I would say my short game overall is pretty decent. I would say above average but I would not necessarily, you know, I think I'm a good iron player. You know, my driving has been suspect over the last couple years. But I think my stats, I usually hit a pretty good number of greens, especially for not hitting as many fairways as a usually do. Q. When a guy shoots 29 on front and posts a 66, what's your frame of mind when you do in that order, and would you have handled things differently ten years ago if you had that late double? DUDLEY HART: I don't know. Five, ten years ago, maybe. You would like to finish better, but this golf course is really hard. I mean, there's half a dozen holes that some crazy things can happen to you, especially when the wind is blowing and you hit a bad shot, and things can snowball. I'm happy with the position I'm in. I didn't play well here last year. I didn't have a lot of great memories, but I'm obviously doing some things a little bit better this year than I did last year on the golf course. So you know, it's the kind of golf course that you just have to try to survive the tough holes, the bad shots, and take advantage of certain holes when you can. I mean, we were talking about it today, I was talking with John, and this has got to be probably the top five -- one of the top five hardest courses we play on a year-to-year basis, taking the majors out of it. But it's very fair. It's just a good, long, hard golf course, you know, with some pretty severe approach shots. If you're not right on it, especially when the wind is blowing, your mistakes get magnified. Q. You had the tough hole on 17 and then your second shot on 18, can you tell me one where that ball ended up and -- DUDLEY HART: Well, I hit a bad shot on 18, but I was thinking bouncing it off the bleachers. I had like 355 to the front, and I was so far back that you could not really get a good idea. Where I was on the left side of the fairway, too, I had to hit it about 220 to carry this fairway bunker that was kind of on-line with the palm trees where I was going over. The last thing I said, anywhere in that left rough where the pin was would be fine, anywhere over the left and I hooked it and bounced off the bleachers. It actually wasn't a hard third shot. Actually I opened right up to the pin and I didn't have to carry over anything, and I just pushed the third shot a little bit. It was just another kind of not-so-good swing obviously. I got it up-and-down out of the bunker to save par. So going to go to the range when I'm done here and try to get some stuff to go in with tomorrow. Q. Did you need a drop on 18 at all? DUDLEY HART: No. It was actually right in between the -- I don't know, the two little bleachers over there, one big one that wraps around the green and one little one. I was right in between 'em. Q. When did you start maybe to feel your swing getting a little bit loose? You were hitting it so tight on front nine. DUDLEY HART: Mainly it started -- it was mainly two iron shots, really, 15 and 17. They are both into the wind, blowing hard, I'm trying to punch a 4-iron on 15, and I just came over the top of it and pull-drew it. When you're trying to drive it -- I was trying to drive it and hit it low, cut it, and trying to hit it hard, also, because it was 109 yards or something into a pretty hard wind and I just made a bad swing. And it was almost the same kind of shot on 17, and I just pulled it 15 yards. I was trying to cut it off of this little PGA TOUR sign on the back over the green in the bleachers, and I just pulled it. Not my most comfortable shots, maybe I'll try to hit them a little different tomorrow hopefully. Q. Was it a bad lie on 17? DUDLEY HART: Not terrible. It wasn't long grass. It could have been -- a little more fluff would have been nice looking at that shot. And it was a little down, left-to-right wind which wasn't great because the ball is going to run even more, and I just came out of it a little bit and didn't trust it as much as I needed to. It's a risky shot. As much as I had to open up to try to flop it -- 15, even though it was a downhill lie, I had a pretty good lie and I had some room to get underneath it. It was actually a much better lie. Had I had the reverse lies, I probably wouldn't even have tried that shot on 15. I would have bumped it into the bunker and tried to get up-and-down. DOUG MILNE: Great playing, good going and we'll look forward to watching you on the weekend. End of FastScripts |
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