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THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY MORGAN STANLEY

May 29, 2008

Mathew Goggin

DUBLIN, OHIO

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Like to thank Mathew Goggin for joining us here in the media center here at the Memorial Tournament. Nice start to the week. 7-under. 65. And then nice finish there with four birdies on your last six holes. Just talk about your day and anything you did well or a turning point.
MATHEW GOGGIN: The first 10 holes I played pure. I really hit the ball great. And it's actually the last six holes where I didn't play so well. So it was one of those bizarre days where I didn't drop any shots coming in with the poorly played holes and sort of got away with holed a bunker shot on 4. 5, didn't hit a very good tee shot, laid it up, pitched it close. 7, middle of the fairway, hit a terrible second shot. Short-sided myself in the worst possible position and hit a great chip.
Then the two what was it, 3 and 9, the two fairways I missed and I was able to get up-and-down for par both times. So sort of strange through the first 10 holes. I could have easily been anything and, well, 3-under was pretty good, but I was playing really well.

Q. The computer has you down for nine putts coming home. Is that correct?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Is that possible? I don't know. Maybe.
(Laughter.)

Q. You holed out from off the green twice?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Yeah, I guess 4 and 9 I did, yeah. So I guess there was nine putts there.
2, I 2-putted it from like 50 feet. I was just off the fringe. 3, I went -- yeah, probably. That's good.

Q. Putts on 4 and 9 or chips?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Putts. Well, 4 was a bunker shot. Sorry. I short-sided myself and had a really difficult bunker shot but holed it, so it turned out to be not that difficult.
Then on 9 I was dead over the back. I was looking at the shot, really didn't want to hit it, and I said there was only one place I could hit this in the water or I was real really just trying to fluff it down and then have another go from a little bit better lie a couple yards in front of me, but it managed to sort of get out through the rough and just go off the green about 10, 12 feet and I holed it, so yeah, that was good.

Q. Is this your first competitive round on this course?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Yes. Last time -- my first experience of playing Muirfield, I was staying with some friends and it was my birthday. And we got so drunk we were going to go play the course the next day and I was all fired up. I was playing the Nike Tour and I didn't get to play at Muirfield.
But we had a big night and I think it was like eight holes, I had such a bad hangover we decided to pull the pin and get out of the sun. So that was a little different, a little different experience playing in the tournament.

Q. When was this?
MATHEW GOGGIN: This was in '99. It was actually -- we were staying with Gary Nicklaus, actually. He was a bad influence.
(Laughter.)

Q. His dad probably doesn't know about this yet, right?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Yeah.
(Laughter.)
He will now. I better play well the next three days now once he sees that.

Q. Do you normally putt this well on fast greens?
MATHEW GOGGIN: I guess I've had a lot of experience. With playing in Australia, we play on really fast greens. But to say normally to have nine putts in nine holes would probably be inaccurate.

Q. Did these measure up to the speeds of the Aussie greens?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Yeah, we it's not unusual for an Australian Open or an Australian Masters to putt on greens this quick.

Q. How often are you in first round leads?
MATHEW GOGGIN: How often? Oh, often. I don't know. Couple of times this year. I've learned that it means absolutely nothing. And it's just -- it gets you in a good position obviously to be around when it really counts.

Q. Brett Quigley said earlier that he was in the morning wave and he said if you're playing well and your ball's going where you want it to go you could score really well today, and later in the afternoon were the greens still true?
MATHEW GOGGIN: True, they were getting a little bit -- they start to look a little blue, the ball sort of rolling and not as pure, but we have had a lot of traffic and I'm the third to last group or something. So the time you get around here at 6, 7 o'clock at night, the greens, I mean, for the speed they were running at it's very difficult if you're above the hole to be aggressive and once they start losing speed they start wobbling around on spike marks and stuff like that.
But first thing, I mean, they are a pure surface, they're very true. And if you get on a run you can really make some putts. But you just are not going to make them from above the hole.

Q. So the key to your nine putts coming in other than the hole out?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Miss the green. Yeah. That's it.

Q. Knocking it too close all these years.
MATHEW GOGGIN: Yeah, exactly. That was the key.

Q. You talked about a lot of good starts this year, do you feel like you're on the verge of breaking through and finishing one off or can't you say that until you do?
MATHEW GOGGIN: Well, no, I think so. I like to think so. You can -- all you can do is put yourself in position and if you keep doing it, you're doing something right. So you just got to, I don't know, just play through it. I've had some times where maybe I get nervous, I had some times where I haven't played particularly well, and I had some times where I played well and had one disaster hole. And at that end of a tournament a double is big when it's the difference between 2nd or 3rd and 7th or 8th.
So I've done that once and played great a couple of times. But the nice thing I've been playing really consistently. I hit the ball well all year really. And had a lot of good round. Starting to putt more consistently. So there's no reason why I couldn't do it for another three days.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you.
MATHEW GOGGIN: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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