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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIPMay 7, 2008Brandt SnedekerPONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA STEWART MOORE: We would like to welcome 2007 Wyndham Championship winner Brandt Snedeker to the interview room here at THE PLAYERS. It's your second year here at THE PLAYERS, and the golf course is apparently playing firm and fast, like any championship venue. Start with some opening comments on the course. BRANDT SNEDEKER: It's fantastic. It's everything that everybody in this field wants to see a course playing, extremely firm and fast. The greens are almost too firm for a Wednesday right now, so I'm kind of hoping they soften up for us tomorrow. Great shape, they've done a fantastic job the past couple years of redefining the golf course a little bit and putting a little more emphasis on short game around the greens. Just a great test. I think everybody is excited about teeing it up tomorrow, and I'm just like everyone else, I want to good go out there and shoot a good one and try to this thing. STEWART MOORE: We all watched the Masters; you played at Harbour Town; you played at Wachovia; what's the state of your game coming into this week? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Actually very good. I'm surprised. I spent two days in Sea Island before coming up here and worked on my swing. My swing feels good. The putter is a little iffy right now, but last time I played a really hard golf course was Augusta. So hopefully I can look back on that and draw on that and see how well I played over four days -- or three days I should say, and we'll work on the fourth this week. Q. Is there a favorite this week? Is there a guy to pinpoint? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I guess you've got to go with Phil. I mean, Phil won here last year. He obviously likes this golf course. You know, he's still playing fairly well. I know he hasn't played as well as he'd like to, but he's pretty close. Adam Scott is obviously playing fantastic right now. There's a bunch; Anthony Kim played great last week. This course is right up his alley, as good as he's hitting it right now and putting it. I guess with Tiger not here, it's wide open, but you've got three or four guys playing -- Stewart Cink is right there, too; he's playing fantastic, as well. So I think those are the guys you've got to look for. Q. Can you envision yourself in that group? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, definitely. Q. Do you feel like you can win this thing? BRANDT SNEDEKER: If I didn't, I'd pack it in and take another week off. Yeah, I feel great about my game right now. I've worked extremely hard over the last four weeks since the Masters trying to fix what I did wrong and worked on my short game and get everything where I want it to be and it's coming along. Golf is so funny; it can happen in a day. I can go from not being where I want to be and next day wake up and something clicks, and all of a sudden it's there. I'm pretty excited about where my game is right now for a Wednesday. Q. A lot of times, players talk about their first Masters, for years, kind of a romantic thing, going back to the first one. Can you talk about your first PLAYERS last year, right out of the box. Did you take the course shall and any memorable experiences from last year? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, I absolutely love the golf course. It's so fun to play because so much can happen. It's a golf course where if you think your way around it and realize you are going to miss greens and there's good spots to miss it and bad spots to miss it; you can get around it pretty good. You have to be playing great to get around it, but you are almost playing better when you are not hitting it exactly the way you want to because you don't go at as many pins and put yourself in as much trouble as you normally would. Last year I played great. I played great on the weekend. I just remember I doubled 18 I think Saturday and Sunday, and that hole has got my number, so we'll figure it out this week. But it was a great year. This year last year is where I secured my card for this year, so it kind of has a special place, and it's kind of nice to play against that type of field and play as well as I did. It gave me some confidence going on later in the year. Q. So were you sitting there thinking, if I par 18 Saturday and Sunday -- BRANDT SNEDEKER: Oh, trust me, that next week was pretty bad; I realize how much money I cost myself. I learned pretty quickly after that about two months later that you can't play golf that way. You can't look back and see what happened. If I had said that, the last few weeks would have been absolute torture thinking what would have happened if I had played decent the last round of the Masters. Q. How did you double 18? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I hit it in the water both times, just terrible. Q. With driver? BRANDT SNEDEKER: 3-wood. Actually one with driver, one with 3-wood. I might go to rescue now and try something different, 3-iron. I might hit 5-iron, 5-iron, wedge. At least hopefully I won't make double that way. Q. 17, do you like it or hate it, and how hard is it going to be this week, because Phil Mickelson said yesterday that the green is already really, really firm. BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, it's going to be brutal. You know, I think it's exciting. I think it's fun. I know guys -- some guys don't like it being the 17th hole of a tournament because it's a tough hole. It's so funny because I remember playing it last year in the practice round saying, this really isn't that bad a hole, I don't know why everybody is so down on it. And then you get there Thursday and you've got 20,000 people and you realize you're playing a tournament and all of a sudden that green shrinks down a whole lot, the wind starts blowing a little bit; it's the scariest 9-iron in golf, period. It's exciting for me and for players because you very rarely have a short par-3 that plays that difficult, and you very rarely have a shot where you can't miss it. There's always -- most times we play a golf course, there's always a place you can miss it. There, you can't. There's just no getting around it. And it's fun. I can't imagine if it gets downwind on that hole, it's going to be playing almost insane, because we won't be able to stop it, even with a wedge in our hand, because the green is so firm. I think guys are going to hope for into the wind or no wind would be nice, because that hole plays tough enough with no wind. Q. The green speeds, have you had a chance to survey them? Would you say this is at Augusta level, almost at Augusta level? How fast are they playing? BRANDT SNEDEKER: You know, you can't really compare green speeds to Augusta, because Augusta has so much slope on them. That's where they get most of their speed. They are very fast this week, I don't know what they're rolling here, probably 11 to 12, they're in perfect shape, but they're not out of control. They're a very holeable pace. You know, if you make a lot of putts on them -- you're not going to see a lot of guys three-putting because these greens really aren't that big to begin with. It's in great shape. You've got nobody to complain to this week if you play bad. It's you and only you. That's what we look for. Q. As a proud graduate of Vanderbilt and a deep thinker (laughter), I wonder if you had any thoughts on why it is that so many guys in their 20s, the most wins any American player in their 20s has is two. Why do you think that is? BRANDT SNEDEKER: I think a lot of it has to do with our system over here. Our system is very different from where they are in Europe. In Europe, if you're a professional-type athlete in any sport, you go into training when you are 16, 17 years old. Over here with college, they say it's the same thing, but it's not the same thing at all. We're still students. We're trying to have a backup plan if golf doesn't go good, and we're not playing golf 24/7. Every day is not about golf when you're in college, which I'm very fortunate to have gone to Vanderbilt, and I love the college atmosphere, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But I think that's why you see more foreigners who are kind of better players earlier in life, younger in life; because they've been playing professional golf -- whether you call it professional golf or not, they've been training like a professional golfer for a few more years than we have. That being said, everybody compares us to Tiger. Tiger has probably won more tournaments in his 20s than I have even started at on the PGA TOUR. Q. 46. BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, so I haven't even played 46 events out here yet. He's had more wins than I have starts, so that shows you how I'm doing. You can't compare us to Tiger. He's the exception to every rule. I don't know who has the most wins in their 20s. I know Ben Curtis for a while, then Jonathan Byrd, and I think they're both in their 30s now. I think you see Americans kind of hit their peak in their 30s, last 20s, early 30s, that's what they start playing their best golf, mid 30s. I don't know why that is over here. I don't know why we end up that way. I know Anthony has had a great chance of moving that trend. Hopefully I do. There's a lot of us now in our 20s who come out here, we're not afraid anymore. We want to win majors, win big tournaments. And each time you see like Anthony playing well or Adam Scott winning at the Byron Nelson, it gives us confidence and motivation knowing these guys are in their 20s, they're doing it. I'm not different than them. I'm working just as hard as they are, and hopefully I can do it, too. It's kind of one of the snowball effects. You kind of need somebody to get it going, everybody jumps on their back and hopefully we all get it going that way. So hopefully that can happen. Q. Can I follow that up? Is the amount of money that's out there at all a factor in terms of you know if you play it safe, you can get a Top 10 and still make $700,000, whatever it is? BRANDT SNEDEKER: No, no. Money, it's -- if guys are out here playing for money, we're in the wrong job. You're out here to play for titles. I know I'm not here to play just to tee it up. I tell people all the time, if I didn't play professional golf I don't know what I'd do, but I don't think I'd play golf at home, because I like playing competitive golf. I like being out here trying to beat the best players in the world. Don't get me wrong, we're extremely lucky and we make a ton of money. But, if you're playing for money, you're not going to win titles. That's the wrong way to go about it. You try to win titles; then the money will come with it. Q. You mentioned the Tiger effect, and how he's the exception rather than the rule. At your age, and you mentioned the others like you at your age, is there a sense that you just have to bide your time, keep working, and essentially as Tiger gets older, your opportunities will come? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Hopefully not. I guess we're lucky right now because Tiger is hurt, but Tiger is not going to be hurt and Tiger's probably go to play great golf until he's 50. He shows no sign of slowing down. I would dare anyone in this room to say he can't win a major when he's 50 years old, because he will do it. No, you have to work hard. You have to realize that Tiger is going to be here until-- I mean, I'm only four years or five years younger than Tiger, so he's going to be here through my whole career. So if I want to win titles, I'm going to have beat him, somehow, figure out some way to do it. It's not a very easy task to take under, and you realize you are going to have to sacrifice a lot, but it makes it that much more worthy when you do it. It's a hard task, but I'm excited about it and I want to do it. Q. You were probably well into your junior golf career when Tiger came along. Did he inspire you at all? Anthony talked about that earlier. He's obviously several years younger than you. But did you take notice when Tiger came along, and did it matter to you? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, it definitely -- I wouldn't say -- I mean, I definitely took notice of him when he came out and realized how -- when he won as much as he did as early as he did, it was pretty impressive. The thing I took notice of more than anything else is kind of the way he went about it. He kind of bucked the traditional trend and worked at doing fitness nonstop, retooling his swing from three different swings I guess he's gone through now, and not being afraid. It's almost pretty awe-inspiring to see someone who is at the top of their game and not afraid to change everything that they do to try to get better. And that's something that you typically don't see in any other sports. I think all of us young players saw that and realized, okay, if we want to do that, compete at that level, you're going to have to really -- I hate to say try to out work him, but you have to try to, because he's got more talent in his little finger than I've got. I've got to try to out-work him, and it's not very much fun, but you've got to. You don't want to look at your career and think if I had put in a couple extra hours here and there and done this and that, then I could be a little bit better. I don't think anyone wants to look back on their career and think that. Q. Being at Sea Island, you understand the sea breeze phenomenon; correct? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Correct. Q. And you know which way the sun sets; correct? BRANDT SNEDEKER: Correct. Q. You know which way 17 and 18 point? BRANDT SNEDEKER: That's correct. I've played a lot of golf there, so I realize it's a very similar style of golf here and there. Jacksonville and Sea Island are pretty similar, so hopefully I can have a little bit of home course knowledge. Q. Your chances of having 17 and 18 be downwind in the afternoon are pretty good. BRANDT SNEDEKER: I know. I'm not looking forward to it, but as long as it's downwind for everybody else, I'm fine. As long as it doesn't gust when I decide to get up there. STEWART MOORE: Brandt, thanks so much. Good luck this week. End of FastScripts |
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