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MASTERS TOURNAMENTApril 11, 2008Brandt SnedekerAUGUSTA, GEORGIA CLAUDE NIELSEN: Ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure to welcome back Brandt Snedeker after day two, outstanding effort, 4-under on the second round, 7-under after the second round. Brandt, you want to give us a little highlight recap of the round today? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, let's see, birdied No. 2, which was -- hit 3-wood -- yeah, I think 3-wood just short right of the green into the green-side bunker and hit I little flip shot up there about six or eight feet made a great downhill tickler birdie to get my round going. Then made probably one of the luckiest shots I've ever hit on No. 6. Hit it back right to back left pin and had to chip it off the green and I was on the green and had to chip it, had to carry a slope and ended up making it somehow for birdie. Then hit a great shot on No. 7, the 7-iron from about 160 yards to about six feet below the hole and had a nice uphill right-to-left putt and putt it right in the middle. Made a bogey on 16. Just caught a bad wind gust and about 35 feet short of the hole and a little too aggressive with my first putt, ran it six or eight feet by, missed the first putt coming back, a little disappointing in that situation. But came right back on 17 and made a bomb, about a 40-foot putt probably down the hill, was not expecting to make it, just kind of trying to get good speed on it and it fell in at the last moment. And then 18 was exactly where I tried to put it, right below the hole, putting up the hill here up the hit a straight little 8-iron, about 170 downwind and about 15 feet below the hole and made a great putt, so this is where I am. Q. I heard the roar on 6 when you chipped in but I didn't see it, so kind of describe what the chip was like that you hit on 6. BRANDT SNEDEKER: Well, the pin was back left today on 6 and I hit it exactly where you don't want to hit it, which is back right on top of that knob. And I had no choice, I was either going to have putt it through the rough into the fringe, this fringe here is so sticky, I couldn't putt it. I feel like if I putt it, I would be on the front edge of the green and only chance I had was chipping it and trying to spin it a little bit and ten or 12 feet was going to be a great shot and it came off absolutely perfect, tracking the whole way. And if didn't hit the hole it was going on ten or 12 feet by, at best, if not off the green. It was just kind of one of those shots you're trying to hit and it came off just how I was trying to hit it. Q. When you're looking at that putt on 17, how concerned are you that's going to be a 3-putt just because of the slope? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, I was very concerned after running a relatively easy putt six or eight feet by. Now I have an extremely difficult putt on a green that's getting baked out, downwind, everything you don't want here and was able to cozy it down and hit it half as far as I needed to hit it and ended up being the perfect speed and caught the right edge and went in. Q. On 6, what club did you use and how did you hit that without taking a divot? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I used a lob-wedge and you have to learn how to flip it just right. It's a yip is pretty much what it is. I was more nervous over that shot than I was all day because I knew any missed it up people were going to have a field day with me on that one, so I had to pull it off. Q. Do you suppose you'll hear from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America for that? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I knew there was a couple members worried when I took out the lob-wedge. But figured it would be okay if I didn't take a divot and I didn't, so the green is no worse for the wear. Q. Wanted to know if you can go back and describe how you developed that imagination when you were a kid, what kind of courses did you learn how to play those shots on? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I grew up kind of on municipal golf courses around Nashville, and I guess as a kid, I kind of hit it everywhere and scraped it around. So I always had fun getting up-and-down and making putts when you had to and chipping, doing crazy stuff, you know, kind of just having fun out there on the golf course, and kind of just led into that. The one thing people say, your imagination here; well, you really don't have a choice here. If you're not imaginative, you're not going to be able to hit a lot of shots up-and-down. I've played here enough to where I can realize you can use a lot of these slopes to your advantage and give yourself a lot of six- and eight-foot par putts by using these slopes to your advantage, and that's what I tried to do out here. Q. What was it like playing with Tom and how did that come up? BRANDT SNEDEKER: It was great just getting to know him a little bit better. I've never met him before and picking his brain, just on stuff about being a professional, what pitfalls I need to look out for, you know, just getting to see the way he plays golf up and close. I love the way he swings the golf club. I love the way he's always carried himself and to see how great he still hits the golf ball at age 58 or 59, or however old he is, is pretty phenomenal. If it wasn't for a couple bad holes, he would be playing the weekend ready to go. So it was a great couple days. Q. Same idea, was there a particular Watson tape that you watched as a kid? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Not really. Every time he was on TV, I had Ram clubs drawn up and made sure I had Tom Watson wedges, so pretty much made sure everything I had was Tom Watson. Every time he was on TV, I pretty much tried to follow him. He was one of those guys, he was in his made to mid to late 40s when I was watching him growing up and seeing him win Memorial when he was 48 years old is one of the things I remember most. Just who wouldn't want to swing like him? He hits it phenomenal and tried to model myself after him. Q. Is there anything mechanical that Watson does that you try to do? BRANDT SNEDEKER: He swing it -- his tempo is phenomenal. Mine's not. Mine's really quick, so I've got no chance there. (Laughter). He's one of the -- probably one of the top three or four best-ball strikers ever; and it's just me being a guy who does not strike the ball very well, I've got a lot of work to do. Like you said, he is very imaginative, too, on a golf course. I mean, today on 11, he had probably 220 yards in and hit a little low 4-iron 30 yards short of the green and ran it up there about six feet behind the hole, kind of a British Open shot. It's awesome to still see that, to still those kind of shots that he's got. Q. What do you remember about West Plains Country Club? BRANDT SNEDEKER: That's actually where I started, played my first ever round of golf. My grandmother was the manager there and gave my first set of clubs and I remember playing a little three-hole tournament and finishing dead last, embarrassed and I was probably six years old or five years old. But just kind of where it all started. That's kind of where I got started playing the game. Q. When you went low at Torrey Pines, you talked about breaking your collarbone running to the car on the Nationwide Tour; and now you're Rookie of the Year and in contention at Augusta? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Very much so. I can't tell you that I sit here and expected all this to happen and it's something that you learn over time. I've been playing great golf and I certainly have 100% confidence in myself, but if I had told you at the beginning of the week that thought I was going to be in second place, you probably would have thought I was crazy, and I probably would have thought you were right. Now I'm glad to be here playing great, and I have full confidence I'm going to go into the weekend continuing playing great, and it's going to be a fun couple of days. Q. How did your ball stick on the bank on 15? BRANDT SNEDEKER: It's a great question. I don't know. I don't know. That's one of those things that happens when you're playing good, you get those kind of breaks. I got a bad break on that third shot. I hit a great lob-wedge from about 85 yards, and the wind completely switched like it does here, kind of gusting these trees and went from being helping to hurting; and instead of landing five feet by the pin, it landed five feet short and spun off the green. One of those difficult things where I got a bad break, but then I got a great break to kind of counteract it. Q. You mentioned that you played here a lot; how many rounds do you estimate you have played and how have you played so many times here? BRANDT SNEDEKER: You know, I'd say I've played here 40 or 50 times easily. I've never really played that great. When I'm here, I don't know why, I'm always just so enthralled with the place every time I come. It's so peaceful and more aiming to having fun when I come here than trying to shoot a low number. But all that, I've hit it pretty much everywhere you don't want to hit it, I know exactly where you don't want to hit it so trying to avoid that this week. Did it a couple times today but hopefully no more this weekend. Q. I saw you eyeing the leaderboard over here, what statement do you think guys like you and Trevor have made for maybe the rest of the field that has to catch up and maybe doesn't think the scores would be this high? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think more than anything else they know there's birdies out there. That's probably the one thing they will see about that. Obviously I didn't think that 7-under or 8-under par would be leading after two days after playing this course Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; I just didn't see it in there, and the greens are still relatively soft. They have not really firmed up like they can. The fairways are still very soft, which is kind of helping us right now. It's making the fairways play a little bit wider than they would, and you know, they have done a great job setting up the golf course. They have moved tees around. They have put pins in accessible places and they have made it fun. They have made us not just sit back on every tee box and have every tough pin and they have kind of moved it around and makes it more interesting. Q. I know you said you admired the way he played fast, what were the things growing up -- where did you develop playing fast? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Well, my dad joined a country club probably when I was nine or ten and he was so -- he did not want to mess anybody out there, so our deal was, if we're going to play, we're going to play fast and get out of everybody's way and make sure we're not messing anybody else up out there. That's kind of where I learned it. Got into college and just kind of kept doing it. I find out that especially when I turned pro, I play my best golf when I'm playing pretty quick. And when I try to slow down and take my time and do all that kind of stuff, I really start hitting some bad, quirky shots and I have some bad thoughts going through my head. I figured out the best way to it is kind of speed up and hopefully none of those demons will creep in there. Q. How important was it, you made a lot of par-saving putts, one on 10 comes to mind all over the course; how important was it for you to make those confidence-wise? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Huge. I felt like I was rolling it great but any time you start making 6-, 8-, 10-footers for par to keep your round going, that's all the momentum in the world. I made a great par on 10. On 14 I made a great up-and-down. You know, I'm trying to think a couple on front; 9, I made an unbelievable up-and-down, an unbelievable par from the trees. So just a lot of really good saves to keep the round going. When you make birdies out here, they are so few and far between you don't want to give hem up without a fight, and of course that's what I did on 16 by 3-putting. All in all, it's been a good two days and I've minimized the mistakes. Q. What did you chip with on 9 and 14, two different shots? BRANDT SNEDEKER: 9 was a sand wedge because I was going up the green, 54-degree sand wedge, and 14 was actually a lob-wedge. I tend to find that you don't want to bounce it too many times to this fringe because it just grabs too quick. So one hop is about all you can do. Q. Talking about changes on the course, do you think it's easier to adjust to change when you haven't played in so many majors, as opposed to having played a lot of majors and having to adjust to? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Probably so, I'd have to say so. I never played here before the changes, the initial first changes, the length of the golf course and putting all the new trees in or changing the greens like they have done the last couple years. So I don't really know. Like Tom playing, who has played here 30 times probably. Certain shots he used to hit, he can't feed them off slopes like he used to. Certain putts break different ways than they used to. So course design becomes somewhat of a secondary notion when it comes to that kind of stuff. Q. You told us you play fast, your tempo is fast, you speak quickly, do you do anything slowly? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I probably think slowly. I'm not the fastest thinker in the world. That would probably be the only thing. I can't think of anything that I really do too slowly. (Laughter) I don't drive fast. That's a bad thing. Q. How do you deal with slow days out on TOUR, five-, six-hour rounds, being a guy who is a fast player? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Me and my caddie, Scott Vail, we end up talking about the most off-the-wall stuff, and he'll do anything to distract me. We'll get in talking about movies or any sports; anything you can think of, we're talking about out there, anything besides golf, just kind of distract my mind. And when it comes to our turn, then go hit it and start talking about something else again. Just kind of keep my mind off of what's going on for as long as possible and then when the golf comes, we'll start thinking about it. Q. Do you have a window, like seconds, in terms of how fast you want to hit a shot between when you pull a club out? BRANDT SNEDEKER: No. I have a routine. I do the same way every time, and if something gets in my mind that's bad, I'll start my routine all over again and my routine takes probably between ten and 15 seconds I would guess once I get going. Sometimes it takes me a long time to get to that point. You get on windy days and tough courses like this, it will take me 20 to 30 seconds to get to that point of pulling the trigger, but once I get to that point, I don't deviate off of that. Q. Have you been a creative person off the course at all? BRANDT SNEDEKER: No. Q. Beside your golf? BRANDT SNEDEKER: No. (Laughter) I'm not an artist; I don't sing; I don't do anything like that. I don't know why, on the golf course, I somehow have some imagination and have find shots. I could not think of anything. I am pretty much as plain Jane as you can get off the golf course. Q. Speaking of imagination, on 9, how difficult was the shot from the pine straw? Did you bring those trees in play at all or did you have a pretty big window? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I actually had a pretty good window there; the farther left I took it, the less of a window I had. I got very lucky there. I could have been completely snookered and ended up having a shot to the front right of the green, which is exactly where you want to hit it there. The third shot I hit was phenomenal; it was so hard to get the ball, just enough speed to get over the third ridge and not risk going over the green which was going to be death, and so did a great job with that and made a great putt there to keep my round going. Q. How much did you learn from the Nationwide Tour? BRANDT SNEDEKER: A ton. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about me as a professional golfer more than anything else on how to spend my time, how to manage my time, on how to prepare for a golf tournament and how to travel. You don't realize that the Nationwide Tour, we're pinching pennies, finding cheap hotels, driving when we can, flying Southwest Airlines, anything you can think of to save. You realize traveling out here, it's a huge ordeal, traveling for 30 weeks out of the year, it's knowing how to travel and how to take care of all that stuff is something that takes a huge relief off of you every week if you know how to do it. CLAUDE NIELSEN: We'll take a couple more questions and I'll ask Brandt to review his club selection he used on his approach shots. Q. Do you remember what age you were when you realized that you were not just a good, young golfer but this was your talent? And then what did you do with that? Did you ever consider not following your talent and doing something else? BRANDT SNEDEKER: You know you ask anybody in my family at all, they will tell you, only thing I said I was going to do my whole life was be a professional golfer. I went to Vanderbilt for that safety net of, if I didn't become one, I would have a great education to fall back on. You know, it's one of though things, growing up I always loved golf for some reason. I always played it; never had any inkling of doing something else. I'm one of the few lucky people in this world who get to do what they love to do. So I'm very excited about it. Q. Talking about you're hitting the ball, it's kind of a work-in-progress as far as tee-to-green, do you consider yourself a mechanical player or do you kind of play by feel? BRANDT SNEDEKER: No, I think when I get in trouble, I get too mechanical with my swing thoughts. I think my teacher Todd Anderson and I have been working a whole lot on little stuff trying to make it a whole lot simpler for me when I get out there. Last week, I took two weeks off to get my swing in order; it was in pretty bad shape a couple weeks ago. We worked on setup and ball position pretty much for two weeks so I could get it right and swing the golf club freely, and we got into pretty good position here. I still felt a couple times today the ball got too far forward and I still feel I got it lined up too far left on a couple shots and that caused me to hit some wayward ones but still a work-in-progress getting there. Each week I feel like I'm getting better and better and the swing is getting better and better. Q. Being creative, I guess that goes into improvisation and changing on the fly; what's your philosophy as changes on courses, do you like that? BRANDT SNEDEKER: You know, it depends. I'm an old-style golf course guy. I love old golf courses, just traditional fantastic golf courses. That being said, the way everything changes, this world changes, the game of golf changes, we as professional golfers are changing. So you know, there's a need for that out here. That's why this place is kind of so special. This is one of the few venues we come to that's the same venue, same place, has the same history around it every year, but the course is kind of evolving as the players evolve. That's what's so weird, out here, I'm playing with Tom Watson in a major championship and there's no other championship I can do that; and seeing Sandy Lyle play well yesterday and every year there's a guy, Champions Tour, past champions playing fantastic in this tournament. And it's fun for me to be able to play against those guys and see them on the leaderboard, and I think that's why this place is so special because it has managed to evolve and change, but still kind of keep its history the same. CLAUDE NIELSEN: Thank you, Brandt. Would you please take us through your club selection. BRANDT SNEDEKER: 2 was the green-side bunker, so it was a lob-wedge. 6 was a 6-iron off the tee from about -- I think it was playing 192. 7 was a 7-iron from about 160. 17 was a 7-iron from about 159, I think was the exact flub. 18 was an 8-iron from 170. Q. What did you hit into 16? BRANDT SNEDEKER: 16 was a 9-iron. Should have been an 8-iron. (Laughter). CLAUDE NIELSEN: Well, just an excellent round. Congratulations and good luck. End of FastScripts |
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