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WGC CA CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 20, 2008Geoff OgilvyMIAMI, FLORIDA Q. Thanks so much for joining us. You have to feel pretty good about that start on this golf course for this event. Talk about today. GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I played well. Obviously I drove the ball very well, which is always the key around here because the rough is -- it's not the end of the world if you're in it, but it's not very nice because it takes all the spin off the ball and you can hit some funny shots out of it. I didn't hit it in the rough too much. I hit my irons pretty good. I gave myself a lot of chances, and I made those chances. Yeah, I played well. I mean, I played really well the last round last week, and I kind of felt decent coming into this. I only played nine holes in practice because it was just such a frustrating wind to play in, in the practice round; I just didn't feel like doing it. So I thought it would be better for my golf swing to be out there in a 40-mile-an-hour wind, to be honest with you. Q. You talked about Sunday at Bay Hill, but you also go back to Tampa. You put together a good tournament, a good three days anyway, and a good finish at Bay Hill. Do you see this steady upward climb since the rust of January? GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, it's definitely been building. Obviously the first couple of tournaments were awful, Torrey Pines and Phoenix. I didn't expect too much, to be honest with you. I didn't expect to be as rusty as I was. But it was a struggle. Then I think I worked quite hard between Phoenix and LA, and I played quite decent in LA really and I got the tough draw. I still should have made the cut, but I got that funky draw. It wasn't as bad as it looked, I guess. The match play, Justin played well. I played okay at the match play, but I wasn't playing well enough to win. I might have beaten close to half the field that day and I came up against one of the guys that was going to beat me. Tampa, I played well, probably didn't play great last week until Sunday, but I played really decent on Sunday, had a good round, which was nice. It was playing quite tricky on the weekend last week, so it was nice to have a good round on a Sunday. I came here feeling better than I did going to Bay Hill, and I went to Bay Hill feeling better than I did when I went to Tampa, so each week I was feeling a little better than I was the week before. Q. How much time were you not playing out of the span when you were kind of doing the Mr. Mom thing and being at home? GEOFF OGILVY: I think I got back from the Australian Open about December the 17th or something. The Sunday of the Australian Open, whenever that was, I think it was about the 16th or 17th of December. I didn't play until a few days before Torrey Pines probably, which is a long time for me. Maybe I had one game, but I didn't see the range too much. That's all right. Q. It's for all the right reasons. GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, you don't have babies every day, so you want to be around for it. We've had both our babies at very convenient times, October and January. It's much better than June or July or April. We've timed it really nicely and I've had the opportunity to take the time off, so I took it. Q. They were born pretty close together, maybe a year or two? GEOFF OGILVY: 15 months, yeah. Q. Greg Norman won here three times. Craig Parry won here not too long ago. The Aussies seem to enjoy coming here. Can you tell us what it is and if that's true? GEOFF OGILVY: I guess the guys who have won here have enjoyed coming here. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I grew up on golf courses completely different to this. Greg grew up on courses like this. Queensland North, where he grew up in Australia, is a lot like this stuff, and he lives in Florida so he's probably pretty comfortable on this grass. We do play a lot of wind in Australia, and this is the windiest, most reliably windy. I haven't seen many still days here. I've played here four or five tournaments. I don't think there's been a still day out there, really. I don't know, maybe when -- I don't think there's an explanation for it. Q. No one from Scottsdale has won here, either, I don't think. GEOFF OGILVY: No one from Scottsdale? Q. With the way Tiger is playing lately, do you feel like you might have to put up 7-under every day to win this thing? GEOFF OGILVY: No, I don't think so. Maybe, who knows. You might have to put up 7-under each day to beat someone else. But he has been playing very well, obviously, and he does like this place. He hasn't had too many bad tournaments here obviously. You're going to have to play pretty well. You know starting the week if you want to win the tournament you're going to have to beat him because you know he's going to be in contention come the last nine holes here on Sunday. It's just one of his happy places, obviously. But I won last year with 9-under, I think, wasn't it? Q. 10. GEOFF OGILVY: 10? So that's three better than that right now. I'm sure it'll be better than that because it was pretty windy last year and he shot over par to do that last year on Sunday because that was a really tough day last year. Who knows, if I can just be one in front after every round, that will be pretty good, whatever score that is. Q. Two questions. One is, I saw you at Torrey Pines and you were limping. Did that hurt you at all? GEOFF OGILVY: It didn't hurt my golf swing at all, it's just a bit annoying. I had a sore foot. I hurt my foot running and I thought, well, I'll go -- usually you just run through it, and I just went for another run and it didn't get any better. I thought, I'll give it one more try, which was probably not very smart. It took quite a long time to feel better. It didn't hurt my golf swing, it just hurt walking to the next shot. It obviously didn't help because I couldn't play much golf, but I didn't really set out to play much golf before Torrey Pines, so it wasn't too bad. By the next tournament, whenever it was, Phoenix, the week after, it was fine. It was a bit of a dumb thing to do, going running on a sore foot and not expecting it to be sore. Q. When you get done with your round do you sneak a peek and see where Tiger is or what he shot today or where he's at? GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, but I'd sneak a peek at lots of people, really. Yeah. I mean, I watch leaderboards on the golf course but not obsessively. I probably just look at them when they're there. I look at pgatour.com when I go home and check on the scores, and you always notice what he has, not specifically because I'm worried about what he shoots, it's just interesting to see what he shoots. Q. Did you see any scores up there today or just title sponsors? GEOFF OGILVY: Is that a joke? Q. Well, leaderboards, the scoring is not -- there's a lot of stuff on the leaderboards other than just the leaders, sometimes everything but the leaders, actually. You kind of have to be standing there at the right time to get the leaders, cycle through all the propaganda. GEOFF OGILVY: I think it's got to cycle each day. I think the closer you get to Sunday, the more golfers it shows. I don't know, you'll have to ask the people that run the scoreboard. Q. This might be a little bit repetitive, but with Tiger on the streak that he is, do you go to the practice tee? Do you go to the 1st tee thinking, I wonder what I have to shoot to beat Tiger today? GEOFF OGILVY: Not really. I wasn't really interested in beating Tiger today. I would like to beat him after four rounds. No, I don't really give it any thought to him. I just want to give thought to how good can I play and can I win this golf tournament. Not to say I didn't sit down or watch the TV last Sunday -- actually I saw the last putt, and -- you walk past, and you think, oh, he's got a 25-footer to win. It's never surprising when he holes it, but it's always amazing. You're never surprised, but it's always impressive. It's always fun to watch, really. I mean, we're all impressed. Hopefully none of us are scared. I mean, I'm not scared, I just want to win golf tournaments, and he's very impressive, but I don't go to bed thinking about it. Q. What's been the assessment of -- your own assessment of how you've played post-Winged Foot? Were you expecting that to kind of vault you into big things? I know you were in the last match at Match Play last year, had two babies since then, so there's been a little going on. What about your golf? GEOFF OGILVY: The golf has been okay without being great. The majors since then I've kind of scratched around okay. I think I played okay that year at Medinah at the end of the year. I was kind of in with half a sniff, but Tiger birdied three of the first four holes, or whatever he did at Medinah, kind of killed that hope. It's been okay without being good. I definitely played better from February through June '06 than I have for any period since probably. But it's definitely getting better. The family thing off the course, I've had periods where I haven't practiced like I used to. I'm just getting used to being a dad and juggling, just managing the time, and sometimes you don't want to go out when you've got kids to play with. It's more fun than hitting balls in a left-to-right wind. Q. Are you still as hard on yourself as you used to be? And if not, is that more a product of winning a major or two kids? GEOFF OGILVY: Well, I had moments after where I was probably harder, because now all of a sudden -- now I've won one, now I have to be harder on myself because I have to play a lot better all the time kind of thing. Not really, but I had moments where my expectations were probably too high. I'm light years ahead of where I was -- yeah, this year I've been really good. After last year I kind of played okay, and I don't know if I finished on the Money List 15th or 20th. I had a decent year, made a lot of money but without anything great. I kind of assessed where my mental state was at, and hopefully I'll try to adjust it accordingly. I think I'm better now than I ever have been, I think. I'm trying not to be hard on myself at all, really. What's the point? That's the theory. Q. After you win a major, how do you keep your expectations in check, or how do you set them? Going in, everybody wants to win a major. Once you do it, how do you look ahead or what are your goals for your career, the blueprint of it all? GEOFF OGILVY: Winning actually fired me up to want to win more, believe it or not. It made me want to do it again because I quite enjoyed it (smiling). And it made me realize that it can be done, too, I guess. Obviously everyone thinks that they can do it, believes that they can do it, but when you actually do it, you know you can do it. That kind of fired me up to -- I want to do it more. Maybe I tried a bit too hard last year. But yeah, definitely, expectations are weird things. You've got to have them, but you've got to not pay too much attention to them when you don't meet them. They're interesting things. Q. Has there been any big difference so far in having two at home instead of one? Anything you've noticed so far? GEOFF OGILVY: There's a fraction less sleep with two kids, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's double the fun. It's really good. The first few weeks, I don't remember the first few weeks. The first few weeks are really pretty full on. He's 10 or 11 weeks old now, so he's starting to react to us and smile for us, and that's when you realize the first six weeks is worth it because it starts getting fun now. Q. Do you have one of each? GEOFF OGILVY: One of each, yeah. Q. Can that make you a better golfer, having kids, whether it's balancing your life -- GEOFF OGILVY: I'm sure it can. Yeah, I think it can. A lot of guys out here -- I've been guilty of this at times, where there's nothing else but golf, and that probably can't be very healthy. Having kids just puts it all in perspective, I think. It hasn't hurt Tiger's game too much (laughter). Q. How hungry are you for another win? GEOFF OGILVY: I'm very -- yeah, very hungry, really, especially in the big tournaments. These ones and the majors, they're nice to have on the mantle piece. Yeah, as hungry as most guys out there probably. Q. What happens when you give that trophy back? Are you able to buy a replica? GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I think all the majors you can purchase a replica, a guy makes a replica for you, which I think pretty much everyone does. Q. Do they pay for it or do you? GEOFF OGILVY: We pay for it. Q. Can you get more than one? GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know, actually. I've only got one. I've heard stories about people getting two, but I don't know. Q. What's the ding for something like that? Is it prohibitively expensive? GEOFF OGILVY: It's quite expensive, more than 10, less than 20. Q. Your first year at Augusta was when? GEOFF OGILVY: '06. This will be my third. Q. Having, I'm sure, grown up and watched it at 5:00 in the morning or whatever time you get up, and you watch The Masters for so many years, when you first got there, was it totally different than what you expected? I'm assuming you watched during kind of the glory years of the '90s really, excitement on the back nine and what have you? GEOFF OGILVY: It was everything I thought it was, and there were some things that -- everyone says, oh, it's hillier than you thought it was going to be. Well, everyone had told me that so many times that I was expecting the hilliest place in history. Holes are in different places. You never thought of the 17th hole running next to the 7th. You just didn't think about it that way. You knew what the 17th hole did but you didn't realize it sat there. Oh, that's where that lake comes in, stuff like that. Q. But in terms of how it played, the way it played as you first started watching it as a kid and then when you finally got there? GEOFF OGILVY: Unfortunately, we play a different golf course than I grew up watching a little bit. But in terms of -- the greens were slopier and faster than I imagined. It doesn't matter how many times you see guys hit putts by 30 feet. It's actually quite amazing when you have a putt that breaks 30 feet. You can't believe some of the -- you only ever see people playing well at Augusta, you never see them hit a putt -- you can hit a putt 10 feet and have it go 50 feet away. You never see that on the coverage. Things like that are quite easy to do. The extremeness of the greens surprised me a little bit because I haven't seen anything like that. Q. Do you wish you could have played during those years when 12-under and 14-under were winning scores, or were you just happy to be there? GEOFF OGILVY: The rough doesn't annoy me as much as the trees. Q. The addition of the trees? GEOFF OGILVY: The new trees, yeah. Yes and no. I mean, it would be nice to have competed in 1985 with a persimmon and a balata and see how you go on that golf course. Augusta is Augusta, it's a special place no matter when you play or when the tournament is. Q. Did you have a share of the lead last year on Sunday? I know you had a couple of holes that ruined the whole thing for you. GEOFF OGILVY: I tripled 2 on Thursday, and then crept all the way back to maybe a couple back on Saturday on 15 and then hit two in the water on 15 and made plenty. Saturday, that horrible day. Then bogeyed 16 and 17. I was right there with 22 holes to play and came in in an ambulance, like most people did on Saturday. I just came in worse than most. God, I don't know where I finished, mid-20th or something at the end. I was sniffing it at one point. Two train wrecks, one on 15. Q. Did you triple 2 from just in front of the green? GEOFF OGILVY: No, I snapped it left -- I hit it left, which is horrible, chipped it out, then hit it just short -- I was just short of the green in three and then hit it in the bunker and then bladed a bunker shot. It was just the way you want to start. LAURA NEAL: Thank you so much for your time. End of FastScripts |
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