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MASTERS TOURNAMENTApril 8, 2008Ernie ElsAUGUSTA, GEORGIA JIM BLANCHARD: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for being here. We're delighted to welcome Ernie Els to Augusta. Ernie is the winner of the 2008 Honda Classic on the PGA TOUR. As you know, he has over 60 career worldwide victories, including 16 PGA TOUR titles, and six Top-10 finishes at Augusta, including second place twice. And he won the Open Championship in 2002 in a playoff. He's a two-time U.S. Open Champion, capturing the title in '94 and '97, and he's played in 14 Masters. We welcome you back, Ernie, and if you have any comments to make before the questions. ERNIE ELS: Just happy to be here. Obviously I've played this tournament quite a few times, and the last couple haven't been that good, but you know, I've had my fair share of close finishes here, and I've had some really nice events, so I know the course pretty well. Just a matter of having my game at the right time, so I'm looking forward to the week. Q. If you can recall this, the very first time you ever played here, which is probably for some practice round back in the early '90s at some point, can you just recall what struck you as you walk these grounds for the first time and what did you try to soak in or what do you remember from that day, if anything? ERNIE ELS: Well, I think I was just happy to be here. I was all watching on television and watching my heroes win the tournament. I just wanted to see if what you see on television is for real. The first thing that struck me was the amount of slope that you don't really see on television, you know, the elevation changes. The beauty of it, I think they do a good job of it on television, because in real life, it's as pretty as on television. But really, the movement of the golf ball and the walking distance that you have to cover is a little different than what I thought. Q. Can you just talk about your swing and what prompted you to make some of the changes that you're making right now and whether you had sort of an aha moment or a moment where you decided, you know what, even though I won Honda, it's just not happening for me right now? ERNIE ELS: Well, you know, first of all, let me put it this way; David Leadbetter is a very good friend of mine, he's been a mentor of mine for a very long time. I've been with him since I think 1990, so it's close to 20 years our friendship and working relationship. You know, I just wanted to go get some different -- get a different feel, get different words coming towards me, and just find a bit more about how Butch is teaching. He's obviously had a lot of success with a lot of players, and I love the way he changes people's games. I've seen it before. I've seen it with Stewart Cink and I've seen it with Justin Leonard and a lot of other players. I like the way they swing. So I just wanted to find out more of the way he teaches, and you know, I spoke to David Leadbetter about it on the telephone, and obviously it's tough breaking up with a guy like Lead, but he'll be a friend of mine forever. That's the direction that I wanted to take, is just make a difference in my golf swing. Q. Are there specific things that you and Butch have pinpointed in your swing and said, aha, look what's going on right here? ERNIE ELS: Well, I think it started really with my posture. My posture really got a little out of whack. I've had too much turn going back on the backswing. My hips were really turning too much and my shoulders, everything was kind of collapsing at the top. I'm quite a flexible guy, but swinging that long, I get out of sync with my lower body and upper, so I needed to stabilize that and shorten my backswing a little bit, and really get the club out in front of me. So obviously there's a lot of work left, but the work I've done in the last week since I've been a little better from the cold, you know, I can feel the difference, and some of my shots are really good. So I'm starting to feel the benefit of it. Q. When Butch has worked with other guys, Tiger is one I'm thinking of, he's known how to push a guy's buttons to make him push himself or do things that they want to get done; does he push your buttons, and what's the thing that he does to push you? ERNIE ELS: Well, you know, as I say, I've been with Lead for close to 18 years, but when you're on the range, you talk with other guys and so forth. I've had a good relationship with Butch through the years. You know, if you say he can press your button, he's a very direct guy, so in my little short stint with him so far, at least you know where you stand with him. I like that. But I just like the way, you know, it's going. I think we've got a nice rapport with each other, and I think the way that we see it going forward, I think we agree on, and it's more of an athletic move through the ball, and getting it in a better position at the top of the swing. That's just as far as it goes. I don't know if he's going to press my button to make me, you know, play a different game -- Q. Is he on you in any way emotionally, or just not beat you up but -- ERNIE ELS: He can challenge me. I think I'm a big enough boy, I can take it, you know, as long as he can take it. (Chuckling). Q. Winning at Honda, were you almost doing it with mirrors a little bit there, by muscle memory or whatever, and when you got out of that, did you feel that when you won it still wasn't right? ERNIE ELS: Yeah, I felt it for a while. At the end of last year, I could feel something is not quite right and you try and patch it up. Unfortunately, you know, with me living in England and Lead living in Florida, we can do it over the telephone and over the Internet, but you need to see somebody. So it was going a little bit, and obviously winning at the Honda, I really did it with concentrating and really having a game plan and playing away from trouble most of the time, and really not making big numbers like some of the other players did. So although I won, I still felt I wasn't totally under control of the golf ball, and that's not a great feeling to have. And then physically, you know, when I got sick, it went -- it just went. So I felt, hey, let's start fresh and maybe get a different look at it and go from there. Q. Your reaction when you won at Honda was really striking for someone who has 60-plus wins worldwide; how would you characterize your reaction when you won there, and what did it make you think about this season? ERNIE ELS: No, winning at the Honda was just a relief. You know, looking back, in Dubai, I played a bad back nine to lose, and hitting it in the water on 18; before that was the Dunhill in South Africa where I also hit it in the water making 8 on that par 5 on the last hole. So I had a lot of history before the Honda, and then going through the Bear Trap with all of the water around it, trying to stay dry and really trying to stay out of trouble. And then winning and nobody really catching me, because I only posted 6-under. It was just really a relief. And winning on U.S. soil again was really great, too, because I don't think I've done that since maybe Muirfield at Jack's place. So it was a great feeling, and, you know, obviously a relief, yeah. Q. Given the swing transition, what do you expect this week? ERNIE ELS: Hey, it could go any way -- either way, I should say. When I do those moves and I get it in the right slot, I'm hitting really wonderful golf shots. And to do that around Augusta, knowing with all of the hazards and trouble around this place, that's another story. Emotionally, hopefully I can be right on Thursday and really trust the swing and trust my different moves. You know, it's not stuff that's totally foreign to me. It's not like I'm changing my swing to a Furyk or, you know, Tiger's swing or anything like that. It's still going to look like my normal swing; it's in a little different position. If I can slide a couple of good ones to go, I can take the momentum and move forward from there. Q. I know you touched a lot of people when you talked about Ben earlier this year, what sort of feedback do you get from parents when you traveled around since then? ERNIE ELS: It's been unbelievable. I'm not sure what the number is of e-mails we've been getting, but it's a book. You know, it's thousands of e-mails, and people that come out and just say, hey, you know, I'm so glad that somebody in the public eye is speaking out about this big problem. Because a lot of people keep it very private and don't want to talk about it, but if it doesn't get out, nobody really gets aware of this big problem, because it's a serious problem. And it's going to affect a lot of people down the line, a lot of young parents and obviously young kids. So we need to get moving forward and start working on a cure, if there can be one, and really just get the awareness of this big problem out there. Basically get people to talk about it a little bit more. Because it's been kind of -- underneath the surface, there's another world out there, people affected by autism, and you basically contact each other through the Internet and that's how people react and move forward. Because some kids are affected a lot differently than other kids, you know, so you try and find out where your kid is and what this other parent did at the same time and you kind of compare notes, and that's how you move forward, because nobody real really knows exactly how to cope with it. You just cope with it as a parent. But they are very advanced here in the U.S. and that's why we decided to move over here to Palm Beach and work with Autism Speaks people. Q. How does it make you feel when you get that encouragement from other people when they are so thankful to you? ERNIE ELS: Well, you know, I'm in a position where I'm a bit more in the public eye and I think me speaking out helps other people. It makes them feel better. When you're in the public eye, everybody thinks you're living this perfect life and perfect world, you're living in the perfect world. So it probably just makes them feel better that people like us, you know, also have the same problems, same stuff, happens to everybody. So I think that's the main message I've gotten from people is thankfulness somebody out there is speaking out about this. Q. When is the move going to happen, and how is that going to impact on your European status? ERNIE ELS: My schedule won't change too much. I've taken those middle-of-the-year Chinese tournaments out of my schedule. So I'll still play the PGA at Wentworth and hopefully The Match Play. At the end of the year in October, I'll still go over to the east and play Singapore and in China. So, you know, the schedule is not changing that much. The big move is that my off-season, you know, say end of October till February, when I stayed in England, you know, that's the worst time of the year in England, as you know. So to practice is very difficult. I used to go to the Callaway facility which is is not too far away and go practice in the net, you know, but you want to hit golf balls in the sunshine. And especially when we go to South Africa in December, that's kind of our little holiday time, and that's smack in the middle of the summer in South Africa, so you go back to England from South Africa, and you're really not in a good frame of mind. So we decided to move to Florida and school our kids there. There's a great facility for Ben down there, so it makes sense. Q. With regard to there's been a lot of talk with regard to Tiger about winning a Grand Slam, the calendar Grand Slam, so to speak, just wondering, you've got your handful of majors and you know how difficult it is just to win one, and can you fathom winning four in one year, even with somebody with the elevated talent Tiger has -- earlier in the year he used the words easily within reason; what is your reaction to that and can you fathom winning four in one year? ERNIE ELS: Basically, he's done it before, so when you've done something before, you feel like you can do it again. And at his lofty heights, in his mind, he feels it's doable. He's got a great record here at Augusta. He's been playing great, so his confidence is sky-high, even for him, you know. So when he comes out, he feels that he's under control. He knows his golf swing is going to hold up. He's one of the best putters ever in the game and he has a great short game around the greens. Those are pretty good qualities to have at Augusta and you have to start somewhere if you want to try and complete that feat, so you know, obviously if he wins here, it's on, but you know, it's all about momentum and we've seen Tiger when he builds momentum, he can do some crazy things. You know, I'd like to bet against him, like the whole field here this week, but it's definitely in his reach. You know, he's definitely capable. I don't think we've seen a player like him ever. I think he's really one of a kind, and that's saying a lot. Q. As a follow, I think in some circles he's even money to win this week; is that almost preposterous? ERNIE ELS: It is a bit. In professional sports in this day and age, that's taking it very far. But he's done incredible things. Q. After playing here for so many years, how much does memory, good and bad, come in to reading the greens and putting these greens? ERNIE ELS: You know, I was here a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't play the course. I just went around and I took a local caddie, Dave, is his name, I'm not sure what his surname is. He really showed me after 14 years coming here, you would think I know everything about Augusta, but he showed me exactly where the fall line is going. This is very much like a mountain course, it's going down to the creek down there, Rae's Creek. But there's a certain spot down there with everything really wants to fall towards. So I've made a lot of notes this time around, so at least I've got a much better idea, more than any other years, where some of the putts are really going now. So I feel a bit more confident of reading the putts in the correct fashion. Q. How important for an elite player is a golf instructor? Is value underrated, overrated? ERNIE ELS: Well, I think it's a bit of both. You know, a good friend of mine, Retief, never had a real coach for most of his career, and he started working with Gregor Jamison who is a great teacher from Lake Nona. It's basically, you can't see yourself swing, you know, and you can't put a mirror next to you on the range, either. So you actually need eyes just to look at the positions that you want to get your swing to, and if you get out of whack, there's a guy that can tell you, listen, this is the way I think your position should be like. And that's basically, you know, what a teacher should do. I don't think at my level right now after all these years, my swing is not going to -- I'm not going to change my whole swing. But it's just getting the right positions and just kind of feedback to what you're working on. Q. I heard mention the other day that you might be using a driver where you can switch the heads on the shaft; did you bring a couple of heads to Augusta? ERNIE ELS: Yeah, actually with Callaway, we've been working on an FTI square head driver and I'm actually using the square head but the old shaft, it's actually fixed in the head, but Callaway has come out with this new invention where you can actually take the shaft out and put a new shaft in. If you don't like a certain shot, you can pull it out on the range and put another shaft into the head, and I've tried that driver. But, you know, still working on getting the perfect fit there. Yeah, I mean, I'm using the FTI driver, the square driver, and I'm actually going to use the softer Callaway ball this week, too, the i ball. I can spin it around the greens a lot better and the ball comes out a bit lower, but it spins better. So I think I'll probably use that. Q. For amateur players -- will it be using screwdrivers or changing drivers before every round or what? ERNIE ELS: For one it will save you a lot of cash. You don't have to change the whole head. You can change the shaft a lot of times so you can get more out of your game, basically, out of the same club for a longer period of time. So I think that makes a lot more sense, and you can actually move the head around to your specification, so even high-handicap golfers can really get fitted to what they really want. We are all built differently. I'm 6-4 almost and the next guy is 5-8 but he wants to use the same club as he sees me play on television, so, you know, he can do that, but it will be a lot better if you can get fit to your specifications, and now with this new stuff that Callaway has brought out, you can do it right on the range, so pretty good invention I think. Q. We see the putt that Phil made replayed endlessly; when you see it, what do you do? What do you think? ERNIE ELS: Well, I think Phil said it best. His grandfather passed away that same year, and, you know, I believe in that extra energy, and there was definitely a bit of energy that helped him with that putt going in the hole, because it was breaking the wrong way; it had a bit of speed. You can't take anything away from him. He played an unbelievable back nine. What did he shoot, 30 or 31 or something. It went his -- it was his time, let's put it that way. It was his first major and to win it in that fashion and that style was wonderful. But I still have -- still wake up in a cold sweat every now and again because of that putt. (Laughter). JIM BLANCHARD: Ernie, thank you, you're a great champion and a great human being and we wish you luck this week. End of FastScripts |
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