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RBC CANADIAN OPEN

July 23, 2008

Anthony Kim

OAKVILLE, ONTARIO

ANTHONY KIM: It was really wet out there obviously from the rain last night and the course played a lot longer than when I played nine holes on Tuesday. I think I hit my 5-iron about 205 yards on the fly. It was going about 185 today. So it was playing a lot longer and obviously a lot tougher because the rough was wet.

Q. We used to always think that it was difficult to win on the PGA TOUR. Why have you found it so easy?
ANTHONY KIM: It's not easy at all. I've been playing really, really solid golf and definitely using my experience from last year to my advantage. It's just been some fortunate bounces and some good putts have fallen, and I've definitely gotten some breaks to go my way, and I think that's the only difference, really.

Q. Great season so far. I just want to say congratulations on that.
ANTHONY KIM: Thank you.

Q. As you're competing and as you're contending, do you ever find yourself halfway through a tournament asking if your belt buckle is big enough?
ANTHONY KIM: No, it's probably big enough (laughter). That's the last thing I'm thinking about out there, but definitely after the tournament is over I'm looking to always upgrade (laughter).

Q. Last week was your first British Open. Obviously the conditions were extreme, probably the worst they've been in at least ten years over there.
ANTHONY KIM: Right.

Q. You had a great year on the PGA TOUR. Obviously there's nothing like Royal Birkdale here in North America. Were you surprised how well you performed, given it was your first British Open and the weather was such as it was?
ANTHONY KIM: Well, I understand that there's not that many golf courses like that around here in the States or in Canada or wherever that I usually play. But at the end of the day it's just golf, and you've got to get the ball in the hole. You're playing against the same guys.
And obviously if you're playing on the European Tour you have a slight advantage, knowing the conditions and knowing how the greens are and all that.
But at the end of the day it's just golf. I would have liked to have had a better shot to win that golf tournament, but there's definitely things I need to clean up and get better at, so hopefully next year I'll have a better opportunity to do so.

Q. As one of the young guns, as they say, what was your junior golf experience? What got you to this point with programs that maybe were supportive to you?
ANTHONY KIM: Well, obviously the local junior golf association, the STPGA and the AJGA was very big, and I think that's when I knew I was going to play pro golf is when I was playing on the AJGA traveling, learning how to spend a week at a hotel, then go to another hotel and spend a week there. So I think I learned a lot from my junior golf days, and I owe a lot of credit to that.

Q. There's a player in the field, Daniel Im, who's playing on the Canadian Tour, won two events, and this will be the fifth Tour he's played on in six months. You played against him, I think, previously. Talk about his golf game, and it would be interesting to hear your comments because I think you played him as a freshman, or he was a freshman when he played against you.
ANTHONY KIM: You know, I guess we played in some of the same tournaments, but I really didn't get to know Daniel that well. I know he's a good player, and obviously winning twice on the Canadian Tour, it's not easy to win anywhere. And to win on a good Tour like that obviously means he's playing some good golf and he's got a good future ahead of him.
I really don't know how many times we played together, but I'm sure he has a good game and hopefully he can have a good week.

Q. Ryder Cup coming up, and you're obviously looking at your first one. I'm just wondering, with Tiger out, do you see more of a spotlight being put on the new blood coming on to the Ryder Cup team?
ANTHONY KIM: Yes and no. I mean, the spotlight is still on Tiger, whether he's injured or not. But at the same time, there's an opportunity there for somebody like me or whoever, another young guy, even a guy like Boo who it's his first time playing the Ryder Cup, to step up and make a name for himself and really solidify their position in the golf world. I'm looking forward to that opportunity. I'm grateful to be on that Ryder Cup team.

Q. Do you think having the new blood on the team kind of maybe enhances the chances for the Americans this year in that you're coming in and you're not really affected by the skeletons in the closet, so to speak, of the last few years?
ANTHONY KIM: At the end of the day, it's three days of golf, and it really is the luck of the draw. Everyone that's playing in the Ryder Cup is a great player, so to say that there's skeletons there, I don't believe that to be true. I think it's just who plays better golf that week. It's three days of golf or one week of golf in a whole year.
The Europeans have definitely played better than us, and hopefully we can turn that around.

Q. Obviously you're only 23, but I read since the past few years you've turned pro, you've matured you said. How are you a different golfer from 2006 to today, and this year winning two tournaments already?
ANTHONY KIM: Well, last year there wasn't a pin that I didn't think I could go at. There wasn't a putt I didn't think I could make. If there was a 320-yard cover I would try to hit a big sweeping draw over the corner. It really made no sense. I got nothing out of it.
When I made three or four mistakes I would compound that and make some other errors coming down the stretch and miss some cuts and just finish 50th.
And now I think my misses have gotten better as far as mental mistakes. I still get ahead of myself every once in a while and I feel like I did that at the British Open. But definitely I feel like I'm more patient out there, and I'm seeing the golf course a little bit slower than everything so fast-paced last year, where I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. I think that's helped me tremendously.

Q. At the Canadian Open there's always a lot of talk around how can we get it back to being a fifth major, quote-unquote, and how can we attract the star power. I think they're trying rock concerts, things like that. I think there's one in Phoenix; half the people are partying, half the people are watching golf. As a young guy, do you like that atmosphere? Could that be something that attracts people to a Canadian Open if they make it an event like that?
ANTHONY KIM: Well, I think whenever you can have a mixture of people, whether it's young people or older people, the average golfer, and like you said, if they like music and they want to come watch the bands, I think that's great for the game. However you can get people over here, I think that would be great.
Obviously as players we love having support from fans and people coming out to watch us. I think the RBC is doing a great job in definitely trying to get more people out here and make this event the fifth major, like you said.

Q. I read last September that you had approached Mark O'Meara at the Merrill Lynch Shootout, sought him out for some advice going forward. What did you ask him, what did he tell you, and how have you used that going forward this year?
ANTHONY KIM: Well, yeah, that's absolutely true. He's been great as far as being a friend and somebody that I feel like I can talk to and ask for advice. I spent some time with him at the British Open, actually had dinner with him at his house.
What he's done for me is just let me know that I have a lot of opportunity out there. If I practice hard, there's no limit to what I can achieve, and I truly believe that.
To hear it from a man who's won two majors and multiple times on TOUR and has been on top of the world and been Player of the Year, that means a lot to me. So to hear something from Mark like that was tremendous, and to make sure I didn't let him down and let myself down, I started working a lot harder and definitely put my time in and obviously have had some more success.

End of FastScripts

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