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BUICK OPEN

June 28, 2008

Daniel Chopra

GRAND BLANC, MICHIGAN

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: We'd like to welcome the 54-hole leader of the Buick Open, Daniel Chopra. Three consecutive rounds in the 60s, including a 68 with a birdie on the last hole, nice way to finish up. Maybe some opening comments about the first three days for you.
DANIEL CHOPRA: It's been great. Today I was fairly surprised that the scores did not kind of run away; being two behind and being behind Bo Van Pelt, I was pretty sure that pretty close to 20-under was going to be leading by the end of the day.
Got up to 16 and that kept me with a two-shot lead; I don't know how. I can't explain it. Maybe the rain overnight softened up the fairways and the course wasn't playing as short and the greens were softer and were spinning a lot more; and for the pros, that's the hardest thing to control is your back spin with your wedges so you can get close to the hole. That might have had to do with why the scores were not super low today.

Q. You've played well here in the past, so you've been around on Sunday. With so many guys so close to the lead, does it look like it's going to be a shootout tomorrow where maybe the leaders on the back nine, you don't know what's going to happen?
DANIEL CHOPRA: Exactly. You have to get yourself in position. I think 12 through 16 is going to play a major role in the outcome of the tournament tomorrow. 12, 13, 14 and a 16 are going to be an absolute shootout tomorrow.
If you can get yourself in position playing those holes, just hope for the best, pedal to the metal and try to birdie all of them and hope you come out the other end all intact. So that's what we have to try and do.

Q. Did you think 6 was a pivotal hole? Somebody else made a birdie, and then Van Pelt missed a pretty short putt. Looking back, was that a key hole for you at all?
DANIEL CHOPRA: Not really. It was so early in the round that it didn't really make any difference. I was only even par for the day, and I think the rest of the guys were just 1-under or even or whatever.
So it was early in the round and Dudley -- as a PGA TOUR player, short of the green, easy lie, it's the kind of shot that pros make, and it wasn't overly surprising. It was that, if anything, it was good to see. Shots are meant to be played in the final group and gives you a bit of momentum, as well; helps you.

Q. What is it about this course that suits your game? Tiger has said that if fits your eye?
DANIEL CHOPRA: It fits my eye, as well. It gives you chances out there if you hit good tee shots. And I think for me, being a guy that doesn't hit every single fairway, even though there is trouble out there, there's trees, and I'm pretty good out of the trees. I have good imagination and can hit trundlers and cuts and hooks and find ways to get it on the green. As long as you give me a swing and some kind of a gap, I'm pretty good at finding it, and this golf course allows you to do that.
So I think it relaxes me a little bit off the tee so that I can go ahead and hit it; and if I miss, I can use my skill to recover. And you're not dead for the most part, not dead in the trees; you have some kind of a shot.
It's funny, in the first couple of rounds, the caddies for Jeff Maggert Todd Hamilton, they said, "We are going to come up with a nickname for you." And Hamilton's caddie said, "I think Daniel, you're Rambo."
And I go, "Rambo?"
"Yeah, you're lethal from the trees." It was funny because I made more birdies out of the trees the first day than I did from the fairway; so that was kind of funny.
The next day I hit my bunker shot off my knees on No. 8, my 17th hole for the day and nearly holed that. And they said, "Well, maybe we should start calling you Dwarf." That was funny, too.
I said, "Well, I think I like Rambo better."
So I think I had a little bit of everything this week, and it's something I prided myself on is being able to use my imagination and come up and find the desperate shot when I'm in trouble and just don't give up. And if I can find a way and find a gap, I'll go for it, and most of the time, I'll pull it off. Hit a few trees along the way, but it seems to pay off.

Q. With the shootout tomorrow, how happy are you with the last hole; you have a two-shot cushion?
DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, one or two; I mean, everybody says it's tough to play with a lead, but we try to get a lead, and two shots is better than one, and three is better than two.
So the bigger the lead you've got, the better. And it just gives that you little bit of a cushion to allow yourself that one extra hole where maybe you should have made a birdie on that you expected to make birdie and if you don't, it gives you that extra one hole of patience. That's what I'm going to do out there tomorrow is practicing patience all day long.

Q. Along the same lines, would you have been happy to walk off 18 tied for the lead, and in your wildest dreams you walk off two-shot leader?
DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, yeah, of course, I'm extremely happy to get that two-shot advantage going into tomorrow. But that doesn't mean I can go and play an average, mediocre round tomorrow. I can still go out and probably more than likely have to shoot 66 to have a pretty -- well not guarantee a win, but give myself a good shot at it. And that means that I just have to play well. And if I had not birdied the last, I might have had to shoot a 65 so makes my job just a little easier tomorrow, not a lot.
Still, there are so many guys behind me and so tight and so bunched, I'm surprised there's not been a 62 yet this year. Usually somebody goes out and drops a 62 from someplace. So tomorrow I have to play well.

Q. The leaders not going low, did that have something to do the with conditions?
DANIEL CHOPRA: I don't know. It's tough to playing in the final group. There is pressure and expectations, and you get a little bit excited and it's a little bit more difficult to let it flow like you did the first couple of days. So I think that has a little bit to do with it.
For the most part, Bo and myself, I mean, Bo had a great chance this year, you know. Dudley has been playing great, but all three of us, we haven't really been in the final groups as much as, say, Tiger and Phil and whatever. So the three of us get together in a final group; it takes a while to get into the flow and get comfortable with the situation.
So it's not often that a group like us that has not had that much experience in final groups that often will go out and just get off to a flyer.

Q. After getting off to a good start this year, how do you explain what's happened up to now? I don't think you've finished better than 32nd; is it one thing or many things?
DANIEL CHOPRA: Not really. It's just if you actually look at the PGA TOUR scores, if you finish around 30th, you're not that far out of a Top-10. For the most part, you're never more than three or four strokes and that's a stroke a round. It not that I was that far off; I guess I was just spinning my wheels, hitting the gas a little too hard and not going anywhere.
Treading water is the closest analogy I can give. You try, but maybe you just push it a little too hard.
Yeah, I guess it's just a matter of allowing it to come back to me, sort of a trap I felt into last year, I was doing the same thing and then I allowed myself to relax a little bit and played away from some pins. Funny, I made more birdies aiming away from pins than I did firing at them. That's what you need to do, be more patient.

Q. When you get in this position that you're in right now and looking at later in the year, how much do you think about the Ryder Cup?
DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, the Ryder Cup is a big part of the stories now and with all of the players. I'm one of the players now that has a great opportunity to get in. I was very high up in the rankings beginning of the year and gradually fell out. I always said, even then, that it was going to be a tough one to make because of the top five off the World Ranking points. If you look at The European Team, there are a lot of really, really good players, and I have to compete with them and I have to play better than them.
It's not just a Top-10 list that I need to make. I need to make a Top-5 list, and that's pretty tough to do. And if you look at the amount of points that's been accumulated, I've got 120-something-odd points, which is the equivalent of winning a major and coming in second in a PGA TOUR event; and that still is not even close to being on the team yet.
And I think I'm like 40 points behind, which I don't know if I win this week that, gives me enough World Ranking points. That would give me three wins, a second and a third and still not be on the team in the last year, the last eight months. So that just goes to show how tough of a team that is to make.
Obviously do my job tomorrow and that's something that I'll be close again, if I can do it right, and I'll worry about it then.

Q. How much is that a goal of yours?
DANIEL CHOPRA: I mean, it is a huge goal. It's nothing that I actually set out consciously. I mean, I paid my membership at The European Tour on the chance that if I play well, that team is going to be a possibility. The closer and closer we get to it, the more it becomes a dream of mine which it has been since I was a kid, but something that was a dream that's close to being realized.

Q. Being as we are in Detroit, are you a Red Wings fan?
DANIEL CHOPRA: I am a Red Wings fan, yeah, definitely, always have been.
JOEL SCHUCHMANN: If we could go over your scorecard quickly, birdies and bogeys. Only bogey of the day came on the first hole, the par 5.
DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah, I actually hit a very good tee shot. We decided to hit 3-wood because it's such a tough fairway to hit with a driver especially out-of-bounds on the left, and hit it in the right edge of fairway in the rough and got caught up behind a tree. And I tried to thread it through and caught a big limb and knocked it down and managed to get it on the edge of the green and 3-putted off the green; technically a 2-putt and made six there.
And then 2, I had a good drive and just kicked through the fairway and then Rambo came out and I punched something up, rolled it up on the green about eight feet behind the hole and made it for birdie out of the trees.
6, I made about a 15-footer from behind the hole.
7, I hit my second shot over the back of the green in the back bunker and got that up-and-down for a birdie.
On 10, I hit a little lob-wedge in there to about 12 feet right of the hole and made a good downhill right-to-lefter, and on 18, I hit a little three quarter 9-iron just left of the hole and made a 15-footer there.
JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Daniel Chopra, thank you and good luck tomorrow.

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