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THE BARCLAYS

August 19, 2008

Lee Janzen

PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY

CHRIS REIMER: We want to thank Lee Janzen for joining us at The Barclays. If this were football or baseball you would be the wild-card coming in at 144th standings in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.
LEE JANZEN: I guess that's better than the last guy drafted, Mr. Irrelevant.
CHRIS REIMER: Talk about what it's like to get in and be in the Playoffs now and with the changes in the point system, there's a chance for you to really move up with good playing.
LEE JANZEN: Well, right now all I have is an opportunity to play well. If I play well and miss the cut, I haven't gained anything, because 145 and 144 are basically the same. I have the opportunity to move up. A good week, hopefully at the end of this week, we can look back and say this was a great opportunity.
CHRIS REIMER: You're a champion of this tournament, different course, but you just came off the course, your impressions what you saw out there.
LEE JANZEN: I think it's very challenging off the tee. Feels like we are playing a U.S. Open course or a PGA, the way the course is set up. I don't think the rough is as penal as maybe a major would be, but it's still going to be a penalty to miss the fairway.
The greens also are great green complexes. Some are flatter than others, but you want to put the ball on the right side of the fairway all day long. So a guy like a Jim Furyk who drives the ball in the fairway a lot; Padraig Harrington must drive the ball in the fairway a lot, too; that's the type of player I think that would play very well this week.

Q. You're not too far from another Tillinghast course you had success at a number of years ago; any similarities?
LEE JANZEN: I think because Tillinghast, you know, I didn't think of any holes today that reminded me of Baltusrol. I know Tillinghast has a certain style, just as Nicklaus and Dye and Ross and all of the designers, they have a certain style, and you play the course and you know it's their course, so I could tell that.
I would say it reminded me more of Winged Foot, some of the bunkering, than it did Baltusrol. Baltusrol, there's a lot of humps between you and the green where you just see the top of the flag and you don't really see the course as well, where here you see everything. Even though there are some uphill and down hill shots, you still see the fairway where it's defined and everything.

Q. Did you notice anything standing over that putt, were you thinking that you needed that to get in?
LEE JANZEN: I had no information whatsoever that told me that I needed it, but I knew it. At the beginning of the week, I did not look to see how many points I needed to move up, because whatever 144 was, you figured you had to go past that because there was going to be more than one guy that was going to move in. With that being said, I didn't even know, even if I knew how many points that was, what place I had to finish to get that amount of points.
I was just trying to play the tournament as well as I could, and hoping to finish in the top five. I was close, a couple shots here and there, and I could have been there. But when I walked off of 18 and made the putt, I just looked at my caddie and said, "What do you think, that was enough?"
He said he was looking at the projections on the board and it had me at 138 at one time. He thought it was enough, and it was 144 exactly when I signed my card; dropped to 146, and went back to 144. I was in by eight points, out by five points, and made it by 20 points.
So any one person that was tied with me or behind me could have knocked me out by one shot if they would have done something, the amount of points right there.

Q. Just wondered, if you play the fifth hole?
LEE JANZEN: Today? Yes, I played the fifth hole.

Q. Your thoughts?
LEE JANZEN: It's a cool little hole. It's a very small green, and I think the wise play is to hit it in the fairway and hit wedge every day and give yourself a putt for birdie.

Q. My colleague told me to ask about what Imada was doing on his approach shot there. Were you in his group just now?
LEE JANZEN: He was trying to make par, so he tried to -- I think he tried to hit about an 80-yard hook over the clubhouse from the trees with a restricted backswing. He one-hopped it off a concession tent I think, or something, a green awning. We thought the ball was still in play, and if he had any speed, he would make a double out of it.

Q. You actually made some good putts at 16 and 17, also, coming last week, can you talk about that?
LEE JANZEN: All week I made more putts, which was good. I figured I had to finish in the Top-10. My goal was to finish in the Top-10 so I was trying to play the last few holes trying to birdie every hole. I didn't birdie 15, which was a reachable par five; so I felt like I had to birdie the last three holes to have a chance.
And I guess it was about a 5- or 6-footer on 16, if that; and then 17, I had not made a putt on that green all week, practice rounds, Pro-Am or whatever, and just noticed that all of the putts seemed to be a lot straighter than the read, so I played that particular putt straight and went in. It was a tough putt, downhill. You don't get to hit them as hard so they are not rolling as fast, so they can sometimes veer off-line on the downhill putts. On the uphill putts, you can hit them firmer so they stay on-line better.

Q. You have to be thinking about getting your playing privileges for next year and a lot of things you normally would not be thinking about. What is your order of priorities now as you think about the next few weeks?
LEE JANZEN: That's what I need to do. It's just trying to play better every week. I've worked on my game and I've worked on everything in my game. Most everything has come around except for the scoring. Last week I scored better. Just like I said, I made more putts than I've been making. That's the difference.
If I putted the same last week like in Reno, I probably would have had a run at the tournament. Hit the ball great at Reno. Only missed a few fairways and a lot of greens, just didn't make putts. So it felt good to make putts, and that makes a big difference.
So if I can make some putts, I can make some birdies and have good tournaments, that's all I can do is the next tournament I play in, try my best and finish in the Top-10 and that will get me in the next tournament and just try and keep going.

Q. Can you talk about this year, it's been inconsistent; you've said things are all starting to come together with two good finishes here at the end of the year. But can you talk about what you've been doing this year, I guess get yourself back on track, would that be a way to put it?
LEE JANZEN: I've been working with Mike Bender for over two and a half years now doing stuff with my swing. The first day we worked, if he told me we would have got my swing to where it is now, I would not have believed him. In fact it was a challenge the first day to get my hands moving in my swing where I needed to go.
But I knew I had to do something. I could not play the way I was playing. It's been a long thing, a long process. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I just took a year off and worked on my swing. So trying to work on your swing and trying to play golf at the same time, not easy.
I marvel at guys that make swing changes and continue to play great; Tiger and Phil both have done that, and Vijay, too. He still won a tournament this year.
But it's very difficult to change your swing and play week-to-week and get any momentum going. Some weeks it seems like I've got it, hitting great; and the next week it doesn't seem to be there at all. My misses are definitely a lot better than they were. I don't have to worry about some of the misses that I had before, where I might hit three or four fairways in a row and hit one 30, 40 yards off the fairway and wonder what the heck was that, and have that in my mind the rest of the day.

Q. Can I follow up and ask, were there times where maybe you really talked about just putting it down and just working on the swing? You kind of alluded to maybe you should have, but were there times where you actually thought about it and talked yourself out of it?
LEE JANZEN: Well, the time to do it would have been right when I started working with Mike. I could have held off on my Top-50 all-time money exemption and waited until the next year and maybe just played a few tournaments on exemptions that year, and had it last year, and it would have worked out better that way, possibly. We don't know for sure.
My position is I really can't afford not to play tournaments that I'm in; I can only get in so many, and I've got to play when I can play and do the best I can.

Q. The debate over Player of the Year seems to be a two-man race, Tiger and Padraig; where do you fall on that?
LEE JANZEN: It would be a tough vote. I mean, Tiger won four out of the six tournaments he played in, and you look back at Ben Hogan in 53, played five tournaments and won four of them, three of them were majors. Ben just played a small schedule that year.
Tiger is hurt, so do you give him Player of the Year because he doesn't play the whole year? I think we all know that if he played the whole year, he would be Player of the Year. So it's a tough thing. You have to weigh that, do you weigh the injury into it or not. If I was going to vote today, I would probably vote for Padraig because he won two majors.

Q. Just in terms of Padraig, where do you slot him now in your own mind in terms of golfers of all time; like in that category, in the category of best of his generation, where would you put him now?
LEE JANZEN: He's the best golfer named Padraig I've ever seen. (Laughter).
I don't know, when the guy wins a major, it certainly changes everybody's perception of him, and he's won three now in the last six. So that's very impressive. I mean, there's no doubt about that.
Phil Mickelson did something similar, and everybody looked at both those players as very good players, but there is a different respect when they win a major.
So I don't know that I would rank him anywhere other than what he just did was pretty impressive and pretty awesome. I don't have a ranking, so I don't know. I would just say it's really good, very impressive.
CHRIS REIMER: Lee, best of luck and hopefully we can get you to do something really impressive this week. Thank you.

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