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CHILDREN'S MIRACLE NETWORK CLASSIC PRESENTED BY WAL-MARTNovember 4, 2008Stephen AmesLAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA MARK STEVENS: We have Stephen Ames in the media room. Last year Stephen won the Children's Miracle Network Classic presented by Wal-Mart, and we'll have him start off with some general comments and then we'll take questions. STEPHEN AMES: General comments. Okay. Obviously, you consider it was the last event of the year. I had a mediocre to good year coming into the week, and the initial thought pattern of the week was to come down and work on the course and play golf, and it just happened to end up that we ended up winning the event on top of it, too. A lot of the things that we worked on all year kind of added onto that week, and we were heading in the right direction and some of the shots I was hitting or trying to hit were coming out, and it was just a matter of learning to play with the changes. And that kind of solidified the fact that the changes that we were making were in the right direction. MARK STEVENS: Okay. Questions. Q. Stephen, we all know the year you've had, very strong year, but where does your swing stand now? Is it 100 percent where you want it to be or are you still learning what you're doing out here? STEPHEN AMES: No. I would say that position wise and power wise and everything else, I think it's gotten to the stage probably where it feels extremely comfortable now and just basically when I -- for me when I take two weeks off from golf, I take two weeks off from golf, so coming out here this week as an example, I hit balls once. So I had to find a way to work back into my game where it was when I left it before the two weeks off. And it didn't take me very long. It took me two days to get it back. We hit balls yesterday, then we hit this morning, and I started feeling a lot more comfortable and started hitting the golf ball consistently solid all the time, and that's basically what we're trying to do. And with my short game of putting it's a matter of getting the touch back and the feel back which we've done already, which is good. Q. When you have that consistent type of game, does everybody fear that when you walk away from the game for a week or two, that it won't come back? Do you worry about that or is that something the younger players worry about? STEPHEN AMES: I used to. I used to worry about it a lot, but working with Shaun over the last two years coming up working with him has made golf simplified a lot better. It's also gotten me to the stage where I understand it a lot better, how it feels and stuff like that. And there are a couple of drills that I do that we do relentlessly when we're starting back the weeks off and probably within two days we find it again right away. And that's nice because one, it's easier for me. Two, it's easier for me to find it, but two, also the fact that I'm pain free doesn't hurt. And taking two weeks off, usually when you come back out, you're a little bit sore. Your hands are usually sore and your back is usually very sore, and this whole year I had one week where the back was sore. That was it. That was at Akron, Ohio. Q. What's the longest lapse in your career that you've gone, consecutive days without picking up a club? STEPHEN AMES: Oh, easily a month. Q. Really? STEPHEN AMES: Oh, yeah. I do it at the end of every year. It's two months off, and then I go to Hawaii, and then I start practicing for the last couple years it's been for Maui, I practice for the Hawaiian Open, but usually it's a couple months. It's just working out that I do when I'm home at that time of the year. Q. I know a lot of golfers find that scarey to step away from the swing for that long. STEPHEN AMES: I think it's refreshing because when I start back it's like starting all over again. It's like a kid getting a new bike. Every Christmas he gets a new bike and he lets his eyes gleam. That's exactly how I feel when I start the game over. I'm anxious to hit golf balls, to feel that feeling of hitting that solid shot again, and I have to work at it to get that solid feeling and that feeling being correct all the time when I play. For me that's intriguing and it's resilient because I enjoy the fact of having to work and try to find it again and I'm refreshed and ready to go when the year starts. Basically I've emptied my glass, in other words, mind wise, thought wise, and when I come back out, it's like starting fresh completely, which is I think a good thing. Q. That was kind of my next question I have. As a writer or reporter sometimes we take time off, but there are still phones ringing in your head and emails going off in your ead. Does the game just leave your mind for a while? STEPHEN AMES: Completely. I don't think about it at all. The only time I start thinking about it when I know I'm getting ready to start coming back down to it, like two or three days prior to leaving Calgary to come down here I started having dreams again about playing golf. Those are the things that happen with me. Q. No nightmares? STEPHEN AMES: No. Nightmares are watching how much money we're losing in the market. Anyhow. (Laughs). Those are the nightmares. Q. You have golf dreams? I know a lot of golfers do. STEPHEN AMES: Yeah. I do. Yeah. Q. What's it like to have the experience or what do you think it's going to be like to step up to the first tee and be the defending champion of a particular event, in this case the Children's Miracle Network Classic? STEPHEN AMES: It's fun. Anytime you step up on the first tee and you're announced as the defending champion, it's warm-hearting because of the fact you know you won this event. All other events are sailed together, that you've gone in the right direction in your career, and you've made the best that you can or done the best that you can in something that you made as your profession, and yeah, those are the good things about it I like altogether. Can you imagine how Tiger feels winning 65, 67 events? That's unbelievable, phenomenal. Q. Success breeds more success? STEPHEN AMES: Always, without a doubt. It goes hand in hand with anything that you do in life. MARK STEVENS: Any other questions? Q. I have a question. (Inaudible). STEPHEN AMES: 61? Q. When you're having a good round, what's that like and what's it feel like? STEPHEN AMES: Those kind of rounds are where you've basically hit every shot that you pictured beforehand, a lot of visualization, and it's pulled off, it comes out. Obviously, the 62, the putter started to work. If you look at the stats that week, that was my low-putting round for the week because I had 32, 31, 32 putts per day the first three rounds, and I had 25. The greens weren't great the first couple days when we played there at Texas Open, and as the week went on, they actually got better, and I think everybody started to feel a little bit better. They're not as good as these greens were. I don't think I've ever seen the pile as good as here, which is nice. I haven't seen Magnolia yet, but I think overall it wasn't quite as it normally has been in the past, Texas Open. That was unfortunate. As the week went on, the greens did get better. Sunday was a lot better. I saw the lies and the speed was perfect, and obviously you can make a lot of putts that way. Q. When you have a score like that -- STEPHEN AMES: To some extent. I mean there are rounds where you absolutely knock the flag down all day long depending on the golf course. You're hitting a lot of bullets, too. A lot of things have to kind of add up. You gotta drive the ball well. You have to get the right number. Not only do you have to get the right number for club wise, where it's a perfect one, 65 to the flag, it's a 7-iron kind of thing, usually you're in between shots and you have to play shots to either take off numbers or add on numbers, and those kind of things add up to it making it a little bit more difficult. Q. Players in the championship I don't think you really in that last round noticed what was really going on around you too much, did you? STEPHEN AMES: No. My recollection of the day was pretty much a blur. I was shaking the media's hands on the first tee and shaking it on the 18th hole. I don't remember what happened in between. That's how much of a blur it was for me. I was in my own world, my own element, which is always a good thing to do, but always the hardest thing to do. (Laughs). Q. Off-the-wall question, but the sponsor here the Children's Miracle Network Classic you won the inaugural. As a professional you're off and you're working on your game, you're thinking about your shots, your swing, hotel, driving range, golf course, hotel, airport, but how often do you guys rub up against or come into contact with, for example here, the children that benefit from what you guys do? Do you guys bring the people out? Money goes to charity. How often do you think about that and how often do you actually come in contact with that? STEPHEN AMES: Actually my money was donated to Alberta Children's Hospital, and I've visited there a few times. It is a state-of-the-art hospital that we just put in in Calgary. I did have the opportunity of doing that when I went and donated the money to them, but I think on whole we do do a lot, especially with the St. Jude Classic, they do a lot of that there with the hospital. I think a few guys have actually gone and done the same thing here this week. I'm sure a lot of us have. I haven't had the opportunity here in the United States, but I have in Calgary. I've done it a few times, yes. Q. What that a satisfaction for you? STEPHEN AMES: A big time, without a doubt. That was one of the reasons I started the Stephen Ames Foundation was for that, not so much the fact for sick kids, which my wife does at home. She gives to needy people at home in Calgary. She's part of the program as well, but also to give the kids who don't have the opportunity like I did to play golf for a living or pursue golf for a living. And my foundation is gained around the fact of giving the under- privileged at home the opportunity, which there are a lot of, opportunities of getting a new set of clubs, balls, shoes just to be able to go play the game, an introduction to the game. It's very warm-hearting when you see a lot of the kids you've helped in the past come up and they're in the Stephen Ames Cup or they're here in the States on a school scholarship. It's a big satisfaction, without a doubt. Q. Do you think they donated -- STEPHEN AMES: It was $25,000, I think it was that came from this event went to that. It was Alberta Children's Hospital. Q. Stephen, how did you get hooked up with Shaun? He's based -- STEPHEN AMES: He's based in Toronto. He's Canadian. And when I had the Stephen Ames Cup in Toronto the first year, the inaugural year, I asked the CGGA, who is affiliated with the Canadian Junior Golf Association, if they had anybody if they had any knowledge of the golf swing, course management, eating right, psychological part of the game that could help the kids as a promotional program towards helping them out, and they said yeah, they had Shaun Foley at the time, and I said great. Give me a price. Tell me how many days, what's included in that. I said, great, I'll get the ticket. And after the kids did their seminar -- it was a three-day seminar that they went to, I asked the majority of the kids that I've worked with in the past what they thought of Shaun and what became of things that he was working on with them to better their golf swings, and the majority of the things that he asked them to change or try to change were basically the same thing that I would have done myself, so I thought, well, this is nice, this is good. And gave him a call and said, look, I'm looking for another teacher. Are you able to help me? He said, sure. And prior to my first LG Skins game when, was 2006, 2006, I went down and spent three years with him, and the changes were immediate, right off the bat. Q. And this is after your back and neck started to act up; right? STEPHEN AMES: That's after I had three months, four months off. Yeah. I think it was three months off. Yeah. I went with his changes and hit balls for three days straight and didn't have any back issues, and that was the first clue right there that obviously this is the right guy, the right person for me. MARK STEVENS: Any last questions? Okay. Thank you, Stephen. STEPHEN AMES: Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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