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FRYS.COM OPEN

October 21, 2008

Aaron Baddeley

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Aaron, for joining us for a few minutes here at the FRYS.com Open. I guess it's kind of nice to sleep in your own bed, play in your backyard, and this is an exciting time for you and your family with your wife about three weeks away from getting ready to have your first child. Just talk about the end of the year here and being close to home and playing in a place that you're very comfortable with.
AARON BADDELEY: Yeah, definitely I love playing in Scottsdale, living here. We've been here for almost a decade now. At Grayhawk is where I pretty much started when I came over here. It's where I used to play and practice all the time. So it's great to be here, it's good to be around here, and then just with the family, everyone here, and my wife three weeks away from a baby girl. So this is exciting times.

Q. What's your wife's name?
AARON BADDELEY: Richelle.

Q. Do you have a name picked out already?
AARON BADDELEY: We've got a first name.

Q. And a last name?
AARON BADDELEY: And a last name is picked out. The middle one we're not sure on yet.

Q. You took about the last six weeks off?
AARON BADDELEY: Yeah, haven't played since BMW.

Q. During that time did you do any practice or just kind of get away from the game?
AARON BADDELEY: Usually I'm like an all-or-nothing type of a person, where I'm either practicing every day or I'm not. And this time I'd play a couple days, a couple days off, then play a few days. I definitely didn't go a week without playing. But it wasn't like I was knuckling down and working hard and practicing. I was just going out and playing with some friends or just would go and hit balls for three or four hours or something like that.

Q. A lot of guys live within walking distance of the course here. It seems like last year not that many of them really had good week, so the guy from Canada came in and won. Is that something that's unusual?
AARON BADDELEY: I think it's also -- I mean, say like with the TPC, the Phoenix Open, a lot of people say, oh, you've got a home-court advantage. For me I don't really play there very much. So like here during the year, I don't play that much because this course is so popular, everyone comes and plays it, so it's hard to get a tee time. So usually I'll just go to my home course at Whisper Rock and don't play that much down here.
The past couple weeks it's been good to be able to come out and play a little bit and sort of get used to playing the course again.

Q. Do you have to prepare any differently when you're nearby, or do you try to like keep the same routine as you keep on the road?
AARON BADDELEY: Same routine. I get to the course the same amount of time before. I mean, at night it could be a little different having some friends over and stuff. But besides that usually the same routine prior to the round.

Q. How would you summarize how this season has gone for you?
AARON BADDELEY: I'd give it like a C. I feel like I made some good improvements, but they didn't really show on the scoreboard, and I didn't get into contention enough. That was the one thing I wanted to do more this year was be in hunt, and I didn't do that as often as I would have liked.
But next year I've got some good goals set. Things will improve. I've learned a lot from this year, so it's been good in that sense.

Q. Are you going to spend any time in Australia?
AARON BADDELEY: Depends on the baby. If she's doing well and she's an easy baby, I might pop down, play the Australian Open. But I'm planning on not going because I mean, it's our first baby, who knows what's going to happen.

Q. You have a new putting thing now, right?
AARON BADDELEY: Yeah.

Q. Could you kind of explain what that is and how it works?
AARON BADDELEY: Yeah, it's called See-It Golf, and you download it onto your iPod or your computer and you watch it, and basically it's seeing the ball go into the hole, the putts breaking different ways, just basically training your mind to see the ball going into the hole, the perfect stroke, and then seeing the ball track and roll perfectly and then going right into the middle. So when you're out on the course you can sort of look at the hole and you can already see the ball going into the hole. It's sort of like a psychology type of thing, but it's something that I found that I did that anyway, and this was a great tool just to keep reinforcing that, so I can just like press play on my iPod, it takes ten minutes to watch it, and you've just got so much positive feedback before you even hit a putt.

Q. So it's kind of a visualization thing?
AARON BADDELEY: Type of thing, exactly.

Q. Can you get it on your cell phone, too?
AARON BADDELEY: Maybe on your -- if you have an iPhone or whatever they have. You can download it. You can get on the internet and download it. For me, I put it on my iPod. You can put it on something else, as well, I'm not sure. But iPod is the main one.
JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Or an MP3.
AARON BADDELEY: MP3, yeah.

Q. Do you think that's the thing that's helped you? You're regarded as one of the best putters on TOUR. Do you think the visualization thing is what's led to that?
AARON BADDELEY: That's part of it, because I mean, a good ball-striker is going to see where his ball finishes and the shape of the ball before he's hit it. So for me I like to see how the ball is going to go into the hole when I putt. It could be a quick putt down the hill, and you sort of just see it fall in there slowly so you know you've got to feed it in there, where sometimes it could be an uphill straight putt so you just try to hit the back of the hole, so you already see it going in. That's part of it, as well as a combination of other things.

Q. What is the course like?
AARON BADDELEY: Pure. It's great. I think it's the best I've ever seen this golf course. I mean, I came over a few weeks ago, and the fairways are perfect, the greens are great. I played last week, and they were actually quicker than what they are today, and they're just rolling perfectly. Depending on the weather, we should see some good scores, but the course plays longer than last year because of the overseed.

Q. You won at the TPC. What would be like the biggest similarity and the biggest difference between this course and that course?
AARON BADDELEY: Probably the rough. The rough is a little thinner. It hasn't had time to thicken up, where at TPC it had all winter to thicken up and get thick. That would be the biggest difference I would say. The greens are similar. So yeah, that's the biggest difference.

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