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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIPMay 10, 2008Paul GoydosPONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA NELSON SILVERIO: Paul Goydos, our leader through three rounds here at THE PLAYERS Championship. Get us started by talking about the conditions today. PAUL GOYDOS: It was a nice, blustery today. Golf course, again, in tremendous shape; hot, only four hours today instead of 5 1/2 yesterday. But the golf course really has not changed much from day one, Thursday. NELSON SILVERIO: Mind-set going into tomorrow? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know. I really don't. Haven't thought about it to be honest with you. Q. NBC sounds very surprised to have you leading the tournament; are you surprised at all that you're leading the tournament? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know if you listened, this is my 16th year and this is my first Saturday lead. (Laughing) There you go. Yeah, I guess I was due. Q. Could you just talk a little bit about how well you're rolling it? I think they have got you for something like holing 311-putts for the week in 51 holes? PAUL GOYDOS: A function of not hitting a lot of greens. I think I only hit nine yesterday and ten today. So that's partly a function of missing the ball in the right place to where you have a reasonable chance to chip it close. And I have made my share of ten or 15-footers. I like putting bermudagreens, generally. These greens are perfect. If you do get it online and read it correctly, you're going to make it. Scott, my caddie, has had a good week. I don't call him in on every putt, but I call him in on every putt and we've pretty much been in a mind meld. Q. What's his last name? PAUL GOYDOS: Sajtinac. NELSON SILVERIO: That was my guess. Q. Could you talk about the second shot at 18, please? PAUL GOYDOS: You know, it's a tough tee shot. I drove it through the fairway down the right side yesterday so I wised up and hit 3-wood and hit it farther to the right. I got lucky; I went through the rough into a patch that had either been trampled down or for whatever reason was a fairway lie, and I had a gap. Sergio hit a much better tee shot than I did, and his ball buried in the rough and he could barely advance it up to the front of the green. We had a perfect yardage; as I say, I didn't really know that at the time, but we had 204 yards to the hole, something like that. And in my experience, that pin, you want to hit it past the hole; short's no good. So we decided to hit 3-iron, which I have a TaylorMade rescue for my 3-iron, getting ready for the Champions Tour. Bernhard kind of turned me onto that one. (Laughter). Again, I couldn't have hit a better shot. I hit it and saw it kind of take off and I saw some trees there and I had to hook it just a little bit, and it was going to the right, and when I last looked at it, it was just left of the hole. I thought, if that gets up, that could be pretty good. And I peek down the tree and see the ball dribbling by the flag, and I thought, oh, man. In a sense, Sergio hit a better shot and really didn't get rewarded, considering what I ended up with. That's kind of the things that happen when you're having success. Q. Two things; one on golf, one on non-golf. Did this all start at the end of 2006? In other words, did your game turn around when you won down in Florida, where all of a sudden you started playing well? And what school did you actually teach at? PAUL GOYDOS: I think I'm a better player than I've ever been. That said, so is everybody else who plays out here (laughter), which is the problem. Q. Better than you have ever been or a better player than they have ever been? PAUL GOYDOS: This is better than I've ever been. I think I've improved every year. When you look at stats and how you do year-to-year, you can have years where you don't make putts, years where things don't go right or whatever. But my approach to the game, the way I know myself, I just think I'm a better player. I know more about how to play golf than I ever have, so I think I'm a better player. Obviously finishing second at Tampa in 2006 was a big deal, and then winning in Hawaii; but really, since then, my best finish -- see, this is almost embarrassing, my best finish since I won in Hawaii was last week, 25th. But it wasn't through lack of effort and it wasn't through lack of feeling. I'm getting better; it just wasn't happening, and sometimes this game is like that. I've always said, I wasn't going to look at my success as where I finished on the Money List or how I did on a particular tournament. To me, success is taking advantage of the opportunity in front of you. I have the opportunity to play on the PGA TOUR, and failure would be not preparing the best you can to do the best you can on a given day; that's failure. Q. Where did you teach school? PAUL GOYDOS: Mainly high school and middle school in the Long Beach Unified School District. Q. What school? PAUL GOYDOS: All kinds. High schools, all of them, Long Beach Poly, Long Beach Jordan, Long Beach Wilson. Q. Does your sense of humor take some of the sting out of the fact that you just cited your best finish in over a year was last week? Does your sense of humor help you? PAUL GOYDOS: Again, I'm not proud of that fact but it's not through lack of effort. It's just the way it's turned out. I think the game has changed a little bit since I got on TOUR. If you look at my record now, it used to be when I was younger, I would play 30 events, I would make 20 cuts and I would have a budge of finishes between 50th and 20th. Now when I play good, I finish second; I have a win; I had a fourth a couple years ago at AT&T and I've played good this week. It seems like my good play is better but my mediocre play is worse. Why that is, I think part of that is age and I think part of that is the depth of the talent out there. That 50th in 1996 is almost a missed cut with the depth we have now. I don't know if that makes sense to you. Q. I know it's not the ultimate goal, but do you take any satisfaction of playing better than or playing with Sergio today and beating him, having a better score than him? PAUL GOYDOS: No. Sergio played pretty well. He just didn't -- nothing happened. I'm sure he was looking at me and just kind of wanting to throw up. (Laughter). I played with Sergio on Saturday and Sunday at Honda, and it was pretty much the same thing there. He is an impressive golfer. On a given day, you know, I beat him today. The futures market, you decide who you want to take. (Laughter). Q. How do you explain this week? Like you said you've only had one really good finish in the last year, but is this just out of the blue or just explain it. PAUL GOYDOS: If I could explain it, I certainly wouldn't be telling you. Again, I think it's a function of staying patient. I think that's the ultimate thing you have to do in this job is you need to stay patient. Again, I felt like I was playing better; it would only show up for minutes instead of days. But at least that has some encouragement. I struggled a little bit on the West Coast defending in Hawaii and whatnot, but I really didn't play too poorly in Florida. Just got nothing out of it. You know, I played reasonably well except for nine holes last week. So I feel like I'm playing better, and, you know, voila. Q. Sergio was commenting that you really played under control today. It seemed like on certain holes, whenever it looked like bogey was going to be your destiny, you would salvage a par out of it. Can you talk about how important that was? PAUL GOYDOS: I think you have to. Again, this golf course, I didn't hit many greens. The golf course is very firm and you can hit good shots and end up in bad places. So I would think that as long as the golf course is going to be this firm, and I'm assuming this is their goal; the guy who manages from probably 5- to 15 feet putting well is probably the guy who is going to be successful on this golf course, because it's just a hard place. You know, I read somewhere yesterday that Sergio hit 15 greens and every fairway yesterday. Q. 16 greens. PAUL GOYDOS: Come on. That's a ridiculous round of golf. That's not going to be the norm. That's a superhuman round of golf in my opinion, especially in the condition yesterday afternoon. This is a golf course that you have to know where you want to miss it and accept it. I made three bogeys today and one of them was rot ton with a 3-putt and I made a couple mediocre swings and that's the price you pay. Q. This may be a sore subject and I apologize if it is, but your lack of endorsements and logos and most of these guys seem to be swinging laps and patches and whatnot out there; is that a product of wanting to play whatever clubs you want and not being tied to a company or are you so low on the radar screen, they are not throwing money that way? PAUL GOYDOS: I'm fat and ugly? Just go all the way, if we're going to go -- (laughter). Part of it is a function that I'm very good at saying no. We've talked and the guys who help me out with that stuff, I'm pretty good at saying no, I like the equipment I'm playing. I think it's part of being 43 and not 23. This week, first place, I don't even know what it is, it's a lot. I would say that if somebody throws a couple hundred grand at you to play their equipment, that's not even a Top-5 on our TOUR these days. To me, the equipment has to be better than what I'm playing. I haven't found that yet. I make my money playing, and if I play well enough, that stuff will take care of itself. Q. Was 16 the zaniest par you had out there today or was there one I missed? PAUL GOYDOS: 16, there's a piece of me, and not a big piece of me, that says I should have laid it up. We only had 215 yards to the front but we had a hook-lie with a hook-wind with not-so-good-stuff on the right. And in hindsight, I would have hit a different club. I would have tried to hit one of my many rescues; the one that I hit farther. I tried to cut it off of a hook-lie with a hook-wind. Again, I think I hit a reasonably solid shot and it just ended up left. I don't think I'm the first guy to miss it left there on Saturday in the second-to-last group. And I really had, I thought, if you would have -- if I put ten balls down where I was pitching it from out of that lie, I'm going to get it up-and-down three or four times. I'm going to miss the green once, obviously. The pitch shot wasn't that hard. I just had to get it over the rough and it was going to trundle up there about ten feet from the hole most likely and I just chunked it. Q. How big is tomorrow for you? PAUL GOYDOS: You know, I don't know. Ask me tomorrow. This is why we play. We don't play for any other reason than trying to test yourself and go out there and do the best you can. This is why I've been playing and practicing for the last, who knows how many years; 30 years, I guess, now. It's a good opportunity, it's a great field, it's a great golf course. I'm hoping the weather holds off. I think Sunday here, it's going to be a great experience irrespective of the outcome. This is why we play. Q. The golf world seems shocked you're in the position you're in. Are you surprised and shocked at the position you're in? PAUL GOYDOS: Pretty much. (Laughter). Again, you have to go by the track record, and this golf course, mine stinks. The one time we had bermuda, missed the cut last year by a bunch, I don't know, somebody probably knows. Again, I'm playing better. Did I think I was going to catapult to this position? No. But I was in the Top-10 going into Saturday last week, so I was getting a little bit better there. Actually switched to cross-handed putting. I was putting cross-handed since July, and switched to conventional for Byron Nelson. And the first two days at Wachovia and switched back at the eighth hole, so I had enough of not hit going putts so I've been putting cross-handed for like a week now. Just it was getting better there, and I was hitting good shots, not just -- it wasn't a good week at Wachovia because I made a bunch of putts. It was a good week because I actually played pretty good all week. Q. Where are your daughters this week? PAUL GOYDOS: They are at school. They are at home. I have a senior and a sophomore, one graduating in a couple of months. Q. Are they watching you on TV? PAUL GOYDOS: Probably not. They are probably at the mall. Q. When you won in Hawaii, it had been 11 years since you won and maybe that long since you were in serious contention -- PAUL GOYDOS: I had a chance to win the tournament before that. Q. Tampa, right. How do you think it might help tomorrow having that experience more recent than the last time? PAUL GOYDOS: I'm hoping, I will definitely try -- I remember playing at Hawaii, and on the 17th hole, the 71st hole, I hit it in the right bunker and I knew I was near the lead. Maybe I knew I was near the lead at that point and I remembered at Bay Hill I hit it in the right bunker on 15 and got up-and-down. Right there, as soon as I stepped up to the shot, this is similar to the shot I hit at Bay Hill on 15 11 years ago. I think the grass, again, it's going to be windy, it's going to be hot, bermudagrass, you know, a different golf course, but again, similar looks, I'm hoping I'm going to use as much of that as I can. Q. You've been playing great golf on a pretty big stage with a big audience and after that round today, you did that spot with Bob Costas and you were pretty much hilarious. You might have become a star no matter what happens tomorrow. Are you prepared for a big increase in your Q level? PAUL GOYDOS: I would think that every one does what we do for a living has got to enjoy that for a little bit. You can say that all you want, that I don't want it, but I think having people recognize you for what you do is not a bad thing in any way, shape or form. Everyone has an ego, and I have one, and again, yeah, if I didn't want that, I don't think I would be doing this. I think part of it is we are entertainers and I think there is something to that, people rooting for you. Golf fans are 95 percent positive, and other sports, I think it's probably 50/50, depending what team you're on. So we have a little bit of an advantage there, too. The fans are pretty much pulling for everyone, although golf is the one sport that I think people pull for the favorite. Q. You talked about Sergio a little bit earlier. Can you give your thoughts on how he played today? PAUL GOYDOS: Good. I think he shot -- I don't know what he shot, maybe 1-over. He's playing good. It's a hard golf course. He didn't get a lot of good breaks. Again, 18, he got a miserable lie and hit a pretty good tee shot. You know, he looked like he hit a pretty good putt and on 17 it didn't go in and kind of wobbled as it got to the hole of the just nothing went his way. He's a Top-10 player, and he's just -- you know, he hits whatever shot is needed at a particular hole at a particular time is the shot he hits, and he's a pretty impressive player. I expect him to be a formidable challenge. Q. Who is the favorite tomorrow? PAUL GOYDOS: Well, I like my position. To be honest with you, I don't know where everybody stands. Q. Who is the fan favorite tomorrow? PAUL GOYDOS: I would think Mickelson. I don't know where Mickelson stands. I'm sure Mickelson is not going, "Well, playing for second." (Laughter) Probably not, you know. Q. Did you ever come across him in southern California? You're older, but not that much older. PAUL GOYDOS: No, I didn't come across Phil then. I've got to be pretty good friends with him out here. I've played with him a few times. He's a nice guy. Hope I'm not offending him. He's been good to me; I don't know what other word to use. Q. With all of the heat and sweat, how is your hat holding up? PAUL GOYDOS: I think it's fading. It was black when I bought it I think. You know the one downside is it a little hot, yesterday was pretty major, but I think that was 5 1/2 hours out in the oven, glad they didn't choose to have this tournament in junior July. Q. Don't you have a brother who is a doctor and one who is a coin collector? PAUL GOYDOS: He's a coin buyer, for lack of a better word. He fills people's needs for lack of a better word. Pretty interesting three, I have a surgical oncologist -- he's working on slowing down melanoma. He's kind of a research doctor also. He explained it to me and lost me in two seconds. I would say that knowledge of their field, the rare coin guy probably has more knowledge than either one of us. You see that -- it's a quarter. He has all of these crazy things he says that make it more valuable than a quarter. I haven't quite figured out what it is, but he's making money doing it. Q. Do either play golf? PAUL GOYDOS: No, they are smarter than that. (Laughter). NELSON SILVERIO: Paul Goydos, thanks for joining us, and good luck tomorrow. End of FastScripts |
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