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THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY COCA-COLASeptember 23, 2008Dudley HartATLANTA, GEORGIA JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Dudley Hart, welcome to THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola, your first appearance in the TOUR Championship. I'm sure it was a special week for you at the BMW Championship. Finished second there to get into the TOUR Championship. Maybe some opening comments about a good couple weeks for you. DUDLEY HART: Well, yeah, I mean, going into the BMW I kind of -- you know, the best I could, figured that I needed to finish fourth by myself or better to get here this week. I wasn't totally sure on that, because you kind of have to be a mathematician to figure it out. But I was trying to do my best. But anyway, I kind of had that in the back of my mind all week. But you can't really dwell on it. You've got to go out and try to prepare yourself for to play a tournament and try to play the best you can. I was playing nice and solid all week. Was in pretty good position to do some stuff. On the back nine on Sunday I didn't play real well, didn't hit it real well early on. I was saving some shots, making some good up-and-downs to save par, and I made a nice birdie on 17. Then 18, I kind of hit it in the middle of the green. Had a long putt up over a ridge, and I happened to notice -- I wasn't really looking at the scoreboards much -- but I looked up and I noticed that I was tied for third. I didn't know with how many different guys, and I didn't know -- one of them, I thought was -- I think Furyk was behind me and Anthony maybe was tied with me also, or behind me. So I figured if one of those guys made a birdie I could be out. I kind of looked at my caddie, and I just told him, "We need to give this thing a run." I basically said birdie or bogey was kind of my mindset. I wasn't really thinking if I made bogey it was going to cost me money. I was more just trying to get into this tournament. Hit a good putt. A lot of it's luck obviously from 40 feet or whatever it was, but I hit a nice solid putt and it went in. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Your first trip to East Lake. Maybe some impressions of the golf course. DUDLEY HART: Yeah, I just finished playing. Great golf course. Love it. It's an old-style course. The greens, the fairways, the whole place is in immaculate condition. It's got some pretty long holes. I guess a couple guys -- the general manager was out riding around, and I guess it was blowing out of the -- not normal wind direction today, which made me feel a little bit better, because we had a 520-yard par-4 into the wind. We had a 600-yard par-5 into the wind. And couple 200 plus yard par-3s into the wind. I'm thinking, Holy cow. Somehow I need to gain 30 yards before Thursday. If the wind switches a little bit around then those holes obviously play a little bit different. But I really enjoyed it. I loved -- there's a lot of tee shots you have to shape your ball different directions. Dog legs left to right, dogleg right to left, the fairways tilting where you need to curve it a little bit into fairways to keep it from running up out of one side. There's a really nice variety of shots out there. Q. When you set your goals this year, was this one of them, getting here to this tournament? DUDLEY HART: To be honest with you, not really. My first goal is to win a tournament -- I always kind of set goals and try to -- you know, they're not necessarily crazy goals, like I want to win four tournaments, but I mean, I want to win a tournament. Then as you achieve goals throughout the year, I've always been one to kind of change them and update them. My first goal was to win a tournament, which I haven't done yet, but I've played a lot of nice, solid golf. When I got into the playoffs, that was -- you kind of set up a separate type goal for this stretch of tournaments. But obviously this wasn't something I necessarily looked at in January, because I had some other things I had to deal with as far as coming off that medical. I was just concentrating on trying to -- you know, one of my goals every year pretty much is trying to make sure, as crazy as this sounds, trying to make sure that when I am playing that I am prepared as I possibly can be mentally and physically to play that week. Sometimes a year is such a long year you can get in a stretch where you play four, five, six weeks in a row and you're just not mentally there where you should be. At least that's -- and I'm sure other players are like this at times. I've tried to eliminate that this year. I don't play as many tournaments in a row so I'm fresher. It's more mental, for me at least. After more than three weeks on the road, it just seems like playing out here this long and being away from the family and all that, it just seems like my head is not where it needs to be golf-wise. So that was one of my goals, was to try to make sure to recognize when I need to take maybe a week off and basically not kind of go through the motions. I've done a pretty good job of that so far this year. I've played -- other than injury years, I've played probably as few tournaments, definitely less tournaments than I normally would play up to this point. I'm having one of my best years, so there might be something to it. Q. Were you aware when all these permutations and possibilities are running through your head in St. Louis, that if you did get in the Top 30 that you were going to be a lock for the Masters? And when was the last time you played there? DUDLEY HART: Well, I knew that was one of the perks. I mean, you don't really dwell on that side of it, I mean, because your goal is kind of -- your goal every week is to try to play as well as you can, and win obviously. But my other goal after that was to get into this tournament. You know, I wasn't aware of some of the perks like getting in the CA Championship. I didn't realize it got you into that, which was nice, back in Miami where I spent a lot of time down there growing up. But that's kind of the way I looked at it, as a bonus thing. When I birdied the last two holes at the BMW I was just trying to finish as high as I could in that tournament so it would enable me to get into this week. That's obviously a great tournament to play in, and it's been a long time for me. I think it was '01 the last time I played. So another tournament. I'm going to have to work out a lot this off-season with all those new tees. I haven't played there since they lengthened it. I've watched it on TV obviously. I'm not the longest hitter in the world. Some of those holes played hard enough before, but they're a little bit harder now obviously. I'm just worried about I've got three kids at home that all want to caddie for me in the par-3 tournament, and I'm not sure if Augusta will give me three little bibs for all those guys. That might be my biggest obstacle of the week. Q. I asked a couple other guys who came in here, the last three months, no Tiger on the TOUR. All of them say we'd love to have him here, et cetera, but is it bittersweet he's not there? Is it a good thing? Or do you kind of miss him? How do you feel? DUDLEY HART: Well, I mean, I don't miss him (laughter). But to be honest with you, I'd rather -- and I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that I think speaking for every player in this field or every player that has a competitive bone in their body, which is pretty much everybody out here, because you don't get to this level without being a pretty competitive person, you want him in the tournament. Now, realistically we pretty much all know that he's going to beat us a lot more than we're going to beat him. But it means a lot more when you beat him and he's in the field, you know. But it's unfortunate he got injured. We all want him to get well. He's the No. 1 player in the world by far. He's a huge part of this TOUR and a huge thing for Golf worldwide. For me personally, I'd rather have him in every tournament I play, just because that's a challenge. I mean, you want to have a chance to beat the best player in the world. At the same time, I think not having him here, I don't think it diminishes -- it diminishes from a fan's perspective probably more than it does from a player's perspective. We know that everybody else -- there's such a fine line sometimes between being at the top and being kind of in the middle in this game that we still know how good everybody is in this week, and even guys that didn't make it here obviously. There's a lot of great players, and it's an incredibly competitive game week in and week out. Q. With Vijay having the FedExCup pretty much wrapped up, does it change your thrill or excitement a little bit playing this event this week? DUDLEY HART: Not really, because it's a tournament. It's a big tournament. They're still giving away a lot of money for first place. It's still a huge honor to win the tournament, so I don't think anybody is coming here any less prepared than they normally would be because they can't win that bonus at the end. I mean, it's a huge amount of money, but I don't think -- like some of my buddies asked me, How do you make that putt on the last hole at BMW? After Anthony made bogey behind me, it probably made me $300,000 more. I said, That's the last thing you think about. You don't think about the money. As crazy as that sounds, we're not all trying to play well every week so we can make that $10 million bonus in the FedExCup. It's nice. Believe me, I would love to have it. But it's not what drives you. What drives you is competing and playing well and succeeding. A lot of what drives you sometimes is playing crappy and trying to figure out how not to play bad, how to turn it around. That's how this game is, is you're always fighting certain aspects of your game. You're always trying to improve and trying to figure out -- you know, some weeks something is working and one week another thing isn't. You're always trying to figure out how to fix things and how to get to the highest playing spot you can get to each week. Q. There's probably a pretty good chance this probably hasn't even occurred to you, but let's say you win a million bucks in a bonus pool this week. What, if any, portion of that do you think would be fair to give to a caddie? DUDLEY HART: My caddie or any caddie? Q. I don't expect you to give it to Chad Campbell's caddie. I'm wondering, if Vijay wins the $10 million, does he owe his caddie a piece of the $10 million because the guy has been paid on a weekly basis? DUDLEY HART: I hadn't even thought of that, to be honest with you. I can't speak for what Vijay is going to do. Obviously it's all personal. You know, I would say most guys take really good care of their caddies, and I'm sure they take good care of them in regards to our bonus and stuff like that, too. That was kind of walking around it pretty well there, wasn't it? Sorry. Q. Nice stiff-arm (laughter). Still on the FedExCup, it's year two. There's no Paddy Harrington here. Two majors. Didn't play well early on in the end-of-year tournaments. What changes would you make to the format to make sure this is the very best it can be? DUDLEY HART: Well, I think I'd make it less volatile. I think rewarded guys for making the cut and finishing dead last on the cut basically more than we probably should have. For example, you could have made the first two cuts and finished dead last and get a little over 4,000 points, 4,200 points, let's say. And you could finish fifth in one tournament and miss the cut the next one and get less points for that. I think you need to reward guys for playing well a little bit more and not so much for just making the cut. I mean, it's -- in my case it ended up working out fine for me, but I played pretty decent at Barclays. I missed the cut by a shot at Boston, and I went from like 33rd to 67th and barely got into BMW. I missed a couple of putts coming in, but I made one more birdie and I shoot 90 on Saturday and missed the second cut. So if I made -- would have, should have, could have, but this is why I don't necessarily agree with the system. If I make one more shot, one more birdie coming in and make the cut on the number and then play terrible, I would have been -- I would have moved up one spot, minimum one spot. I still don't think I should have moved up by grinding it out, barely making the cut, not playing real well, and then playing not playing well the next Saturday and missing the secondary cut. You shouldn't move up, you know what I mean? I think that's the problem most players have with it. I think it's unfortunate for someone like Padraig to have the year that he's had and not be here. But at the same time, one of my best friends is the coach of the Buffalo Sabres. We were talking about it, and I said, I don't think it's quite right to move up and down that much. He said, Well, you know what, we could win the Presidents Trophy this year for the best record in the league and lose in the first round. So if we're trying to create a playoff system, it has to be somewhat severe. Last year obviously was a good case for the opposite because there really wasn't that much movement at all. You don't want that, either, because that almost defeats the purpose. So I think we're going to do it as far as I understand. Try to find somewhere between last year and this year that works a little better. Q. What's your friend's name? DUDLEY HART: Lindy Ruff. Q. I might be a little fuzzy on this, but weren't we talking to you at Pebble Beach, were you moving house or something this year? DUDLEY HART: Yeah. Move into a house? Q. Yeah. Did you change houses this year? DUDLEY HART: No. Last November. It will be a year in November. We just built a house last November. Just finished building a house out in Buffalo. A lot of golfers living up there (laughter). Everyone is kind of migrating that way (laughter) from Jupiter, Florida to Buffalo. I never said I was smart (laughter). Great place to live, just a little cold. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Dudley, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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