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AT&T NATIONALJuly 2, 2008Stuart ApplebyBETHESDA, MARYLAND NELSON SILVERIO: Thanks for joining us here at the AT&T National media center. You had a T-3 last year. Why don't you chat about how your year is going so far. STUART APPLEBY: I thought it was worse last year. This year, felt like a pretty decent year, but I look at where I am and I sit there and go, well, man I feel like I should be higher but I've had wins before. I think I've had my best non-winning year so far. You know, I would like to win obviously and I'm running out of weeks. I like the way I'm playing. I sort of really think there's some good stuff going on in my swing and I've always sort of struggled occasionally to get it going. Been trying to work on strengthening certain areas in my swing, and I think I really felt like I turned the corner there and have some good stuff going on that will take one side of the golf course out and leave me in better shape, and then just a matter of patience. Q. A lot of us are sort of curious what happened last year, you came into this thing in the final round with a couple-shot lead and things went not so hot. What happened? STUART APPLEBY: I just started missing a couple putts and lost my confidence and didn't really putt very good. Got the ball bouncing a bit. I don't remember the greens being as good as they were like this year. This year they seem to look really nice. K.J. played really well and I didn't, so that's how you don't win a tournament. You've got to get it done on Sunday and you've got to play at least to the quality that you did of the previous three days, to maintain a lead or extend on it. So I just didn't put any good and lost my confidence, and putting is confident, and for a lack of it you don't seem to make anything. The hole looks like a thimble. Q. What do you take away from something like the U.S. Open, you have a chance going into the weekend, tough go into the third round; do you get upset with yourself or add it to the experience thing? STUART APPLEBY: You get very upset. You have to, I guess, replay back in your mind what went wrong, what you might have changed; mentally whether there are any changes, whether you were too nervous, not nervous enough. You have to assess and sort of, I guess, multiple-question, tick the boxes. For me, my mechanics broke down which meant I wasn't smooth enough or consistent enough. So I did some work on some things, good, simple basic stuff. And now the question really is, whenever that situation comes again or something like it, is that I can I guess have an antibody to fight that virus off and don't let it climb in, because once it climbs in, unless you have a strategy, and I didn't have a strategy; I just didn't. I didn't feel like I had any problems until I guess I had a problem. Like if you know why you hit a cut and you're not going to hit a cut because this is what I'm doing in my swing, or I hit it left, I know it's this. When you start missing putts and say well, if I miss putts, usually I'm doing this. And I didn't really quite know what I was doing wrong. And I think that was -- if I had been aware of that more, I could have probably recovered the round a bit quicker for sure, and got back on track. Now I think the only good thing out of that was that tournament was that I worked out I needed to do when it turns south. I know what I've got to do to turn it around. So I look forward to that potentially happening again so I know I can test it. Q. Every year around here, even when the old Kemper was here, people talk about the greens and this geography with the poa. Are they better this year? STUART APPLEBY: I thought they looked good. I'm not sure why, but they look good. Q. And to follow that up, was it a particularly bad year last year? Because some guys didn't come back this year. STUART APPLEBY: Someone was saying there was some criticism about the greens. Poa annua and smooth is almost an oxymoron. It's tough. You go to the U.S. Open and they try to get them fast, and poa doesn't dry consistently the same ratio, you actually go backwards by trying to get them faster. I reckon this week they seem to be not too puffy. They are soft, they are knot too puffy but they look smooth. The ball is doing everything that way player would want it to do. Again I think the guy who is most relaxed and confident; you look at someone like Tiger, seems like he could putt on a highway and it would find its way in the hole. That's confidence, but I think there's some mechanics there. I think I've never had enough loft in my putter with this type of greens and the ball tends to skip and jump and you lose your confidence. I had to putt more loft in my putter than before, and I could get away with that on most greens. But poa wants to get the ball get on top and turn into topspin, and what I tend to drive to do is drive it into the poa, and it starts skipping and delofting the putter. For some reason here, they got it right and I would love to see more poa annua greens like this for sure. Q. Speaking of antibodies and cleansing your system of things, do you have any thoughts on drug testing, and have you been asked to cleanse your system or anybody you know of cleanse their system? STUART APPLEBY: Is it today it starts? I thought it was yesterday. None of us really know how it works. We all have been told. We haven't had any dry runs or run-thrus on how it's going to work out or anything. I'll be up front if anyone asks me whether or not I've been sampled or ever what. I'm happy to, whatever. There's nothing to disclose or hide. I'm sure there will be some social -- use the word recreational -- I'm sure there will be some. I don't -- recreational, social, it sounds like: Let's go to the beach and light up a joint, you know? It's like let's have some fun. I don't know what you call it, societal drugs, I'm sure that that will show up, and that will be no difference to alcohol abuse. You'll be in rehab or under some warning. But if it's a banned substance as performance-enhancing drug, you guys will find out once the appeals or anything have been finalized. I'm sure that if there's minuscule amounts of a something that is banned and it's minuscule, the player can say, listen, you know, I had a milkshake, and you know -- but if it's a dose of something and looks like, well this, was a deliberate attempt to take enhancing -- you'll get in trouble and you'll probably be banned. I don't think you'll see anybody off the TOUR or banned; I don't think you will. I think that the accident rate is going to be extremely low, and the societal use will probably be the one thing, and I don't think that that gets disclosed to anybody. I don't think anybody except maybe the player and one or two other people would know if there was any of those type of things. Q. You said you're sure that there will be societal? STUART APPLEBY: Oh, absolutely. We've had a big warning now to stop. I don't know how long it takes, 30 days -- I'm sure it just depends on how hooked somebody is on whatever they might be taking. The law of averages say there has to be somebody taking something that is taboo. There's no way that you've got 250 pros totally clean. You would be naive to think that. Now, but performance-enhancing, I think a very extremely small amount and I know of nobody, or I've heard rumors of nobody that it taking anything that enhances their performance from a steroid taboo. Q. Do you think Gary Player should be tested? STUART APPLEBY: He probably should be on something to calm him down I think at times. That guy has more energy than you can poke a stick at. I don't know, I think 20 years ago, you talk about baseballers were taking it or footballers, but it was more a prevention or helping recover. Now the strains are greater and more improved. How you can equate that to golf, I'm not sure. I might be naive. I've never taken anything except an Advil or a Tylenol or anything like that or an anti-inflammatory, that's it. So I have no clue how I could -- I still think golf's about golf. It's not about anything else but the ball is down, clubface square up, reading a green and making a putt. I would love to know if anyone has ever done a study on what it does to golf. Beta blockers can make you relax, and concert pianists can play smoother and freer, but I have no clue how it could work for golf. Q. A recurring them this week, you're here, but a lot of guys in the Top-25 are not here. Curious as to why you think that is the case, and secondly, Tiger, you're a neighbor; did he ask you to come in? Does he do that at all? STUART APPLEBY: I doubt it. I doubt it. To answer your question about the Top-25, I have no idea why. I really don't know. I think you see a lot more people pulling out of tournament. Every week seems to be six to 12 guys pulling out. I think it's just more guys committing to a lot of tournaments, they just commit and they have really not a lot of attention to play. Whereas, when I came on TOUR, if you were third fourth or fifth, there was a chance you might get in the tournament. And I don't think it's that they get gunshy or anything like that, I'm not going to turn up, forget it, I don't want to play. Q. Does Tiger's being involved with it, though, wouldn't that be an inducement for guys to show up or don't guys care about that? STUART APPLEBY: Wouldn't make any difference. Q. Why? STUART APPLEBY: Because it just doesn't make any difference. First thing we look at is the date and the course. If you put Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus tournament in a terrible golf course; it wouldn't make any difference. It just happens that we have an Arnold Palmer tournament, a Jack Nicklaus tournament and Tiger's tournament on three great golf courses. The name is not that relevant. It helps promote and sell the event, but it doesn't to a player, by no means, no. Q. But if Jack says, "I need you to come to my tournament," most guys will do it, won't I they? STUART APPLEBY: It wouldn't happen. You don't have to. The tournament is self-sufficient. Byron Nelson is no longer with us, but that's still the Byron Nelson tournament. It's like he's still there. You don't need to have someone alive. That's when you know a tournament has been anchored by a new name. If Tiger puts his name to anything, it's a success. I don't know why you wouldn't get more players here. You've got a quality golf course. We're about to play here a few years from now as a major. The date looks good. Not sure. Q. What do you think the Open will be like, first major without Tiger since he won the Masters in '97 and kind of became who he was? Does it matter a lick? STUART APPLEBY: Does it matter? Certain people will say it will, absolutely. You know, certain people will just do that, will just do that. The radio programs, TV shows will argue that, for sure. But I don't think so. I think that yes, we know he makes a difference to crowds and appearance and the hype and the media and the whole thing, and yes, that's a difference. You look at last year's British Open, you think of what happened the last 30 minutes to an hour, you didn't need Tiger Woods to be in that mix. Yes, he's in a lot of mixes but there's a whole lot of other amazing stuff going on and nothing ho-hum about the finish of a major. I can't think of any ho-hum finishes of a major recently whether Tiger is in it or not. No, I don't think it really matters to what value someone will get, unless you're a Tiger watcher and that's all you want to do, yeah, you'll be disappointed. Q. I was thinking more from a player aspect; are some players going to be aware that he's not there and it's one less guy to beat? STUART APPLEBY: Both. I'm trying to post a low score and win and maybe that puts me four shots in front or maybe that puts me five behind, one week to the next. Having Tiger there, we definitely that if one is not there and happens to be him, there is a fractional percentage of he's now potentially winning it. You look at he's got a 30 percent chance or whatever he's got, 30 to 45 percent chance of winning a major -- he's winning basically one in four, an average, now there's one other guy going to win it and one other guy going to win the FedExCup. I think make hay while the weather is good I think. Maybe he can take 15 years to get over his knee, I wouldn't mind. Make my life a little bit easier. Q. During the Open, you may have seen highlights, two days later finding out that it's the ACL and double-stress fracture, how did that change the way you looked at what Tiger did? STUART APPLEBY: I think the only reason he was able to get through it was the pain was after the shot. If you had the pain on the swing or downswing, your brain would not allow you to execute. It just has an ability to turning things off or shut areas of muscle down, and you really would struggle. Being that it's after the ball, that always helped. I had my knee off ache about the same time and mine was a lot easier. When I was going through the pain it could just turn up, and it was vary weakening, but I always got mine -- mine was on my other leg. I would get mine if anything after the shot. Sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn't. But I've got to say that if you had it in your downswing, you wouldn't have been able to play. And I'm not a knee expert and I'm not sure if much of that happens where you get it in your backswing. Mine was on my other leg, and I had no problem getting it into my right side at all. But yeah, he's certainly got a lot of stuff going on there for a pretty young, healthy guy, he putts a lot of force through that left leg and a lot of snapping and force. So I think his jogging days will be done. I don't think that's something he should be getting into because he's pounding away on whatever cartilage is left. I don't think it will be career-threatening, I don't think. And I don't think he will change his swing because he creates so much power by loading and really driving up through the ground. I think it will be clean-up, and maybe a maintenance program and I'm not really quite sure. I think apart from he's got some determination, he didn't have a physical problem hitting the shot. I think the better his swing was -- people were saying it was only the bad shots where it hurt. I get a sore back if I don't swing it properly. So if you swing it properly there's a lot less stress going through the body and that does help. Good shots always feel better and better balance and everything. Q. He's talked about the snap -- STUART APPLEBY: He gets down, lowers his body and drives -- that's all the long hitters do, they go down low. Basically create thousands of pounds of force to drive up and gain traction. That knee, it has to straighten and snap. I'm pretty sure 20 years of pretty good quality of practice, that can't be really good for it. Q. You don't think he'll adjust back to the swing he had ten years ago? STUART APPLEBY: He'll lose length if he does, he really will. All of the biggest hitters, J.B. Holmes, measured at a performance place and he was over 2,000 pounds of force through his left foot, peak force. And that's how when you do that grip, you force down to the ground and push up and that's how you create it. The opposite is obviously trying to throw punch and walk backwards. You can't initiate the force and the short hitters don't have near the force off the ground off the force platform. Can he change it? I don't know. He may have to. Maybe his biggest injury wasn't the cartilage at all. NELSON SILVERIO: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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