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CHILDREN'S MIRACLE NETWORK CLASSIC PRESENTED BY WAL-MARTNovember 7, 2008Troy MattesonLAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA CHRIS REIMER: Troy, second day back in here. Currently tied for the lead, I think 4-under today, get rid of the 9 and the 18th hole and you're even higher lead but assess the day. TROY MATTESON: It's always disappointing to finish on a bogey, but after you shoot 9-under, it's tough after a low round to come back out and try to repeat performance. Of course, out here you'll still see eights and sevens on the board by the end of the day and a lot of sixes, but I'm pretty happy with today. Magnolia is always I thought a little tougher to play on than the Palm, but if you knock down your putts, you still got some opportunities out there. But I'm not disappointed at all. 4-under after nine, I mean I know that somebody will probably get to 15 or 16 by the end of the day, but at least I kept myself kind of up there and in it. CHRIS REIMER: Questions for Troy. Q. Troy, I wanted to ask you about your approach to playing with an amateur. On number 18 you bogeyed, probably were not happy with that, but once you tapped in, the first thing you did rather than hang your head was kind of crouch and help your playing partner with his shot. TROY MATTESON: I think a lot of having these guys out here, obviously it's great to have the Ams out here. I like this format. I won in Vegas where we have this format. I just like helping the guys out. You know, they want to win this as bad as we do. There's a lot of bragging rights going on, and if you can help a guy knock down an extra putt, or be up there around the lead, maybe potentially win at the end of this, you know, that's really important. So you know, the guy's in there. I mean obviously what I should have done was picked my ball up and let him putt, and you know, obviously you can't pick it up. But you know, you want to help them make as many putts as they can or hit as many shots as they can or talk them through. We had a couple holes where should we go for it, should we not go for it. I said, hey, you got a pretty good shot here. Tim's a pretty good player. He played well today. He's the kind of guy you can coach into making a few putts. Yesterday Lee, my partner, same way, you can kind of coach him into making a few putts, and hopefully it helped them out. Q. Is there something about the fall that brings out the best in you? TROY MATTESON: I just like a lot of these tournaments. I wish we could play in and around here all year. There's a lot of places out West I like to play that we don't get to. We hit Phoenix very briefly. We have one in Vegas, but for the most part a lot of our golf is in the Northeast, and I'm still trying to figure out how to play up there. But I like Florida. I like the South. I play good in the South, but it's the end of the year when we come down here. We play Mississippi. We play Vegas, play Arizona, we play San Antonio. There's just so many great places this time of year. The weather's great. During the middle of the year you're fighting all the hot weather and we're trying to get out of that by going to the Northeast, and it can still get real muggy and hot up there, but I just enjoy this time of year. Q. Bermuda grass, does your game favor that? TROY MATTESON: I grew up in Texas for about six years, during high school, and that was all Bermuda grass. I've learned to play on it pretty well. I've learned to read it pretty well. I made a mistake on nine. I didn't read enough grain into it, but you try to get most of them right out here on the Bermuda, but it's been a good surface for me. Q. One of the other members of the media basically said it's almost like playing in a dome out there. The weather is perfect. Can you comment on that? TROY MATTESON: Yeah. You can't ask for much better weather, especially with it being Disney World. I don't think I've come to Disney World when it's been bad weather. I think it's always been pretty good. But you know, when you've got conditions like that, you're not really even thinking about do I need to hit an extra club, do I need to hit one less. I mean you're just getting yardage and you're hitting it. I would say very few times in the last two days that I think there was enough wind to carry a ball more than five or six extra yards or hurt it five or six yards, and I'm talking on a 230-yard shot. There's just not much wind out there. It's like playing out in the desert somewhere when it doesn't blow. It's kind of odd because it can blow down here from time to time, but this has just been great for the tournament. Q. When the conditions are this great, how do you win? I mean everybody's scoring. TROY MATTESON: You know, you just hope at the end of the week when you go back and you count it up that you didn't squander too many opportunities. It's kind of like playing the scramble. When you look back at the day, you can only say, we missed one opportunity, because that's how you win a scramble. And you know, this week is going to be no different. The guy at the end of the week is probably not going to miss many opportunities. He's probably not going to make many bogeys. And you know, that's basically what it takes to win a horse race. I mean you really have to not make many mistakes and you have to capitalize on the good breaks that you get. Q. Two-part question. On Wednesday what was the scuttlebutt on the range and putting green about the election? TROY MATTESON: Oh, boy. Obviously in this crowd you're going to have a lot of McCain-Palin supporters. That's all based on taxes. But you know, I think that the world in general, and I think, you know, you even hear it from guys out here, a lot of us have been smart, and we try to invest our money, try to be smart about it, try to maybe buy an extra house as an investment. And a lot of guys out here are being responsible with their money, but we're just like everybody else. A lot of guys are taking huge hits in the stock market. A lot of guys own multiple houses that they're obviously -- you want to make a few bucks off of, just like anybody does, but they've taken a hit, too. So you hear a little bit of that, and you know, there's so much fear in the world right now, economically, that you know, really we're turning to ourselves, and a lot of guys are saying, man, we're just lucky we're doing what we're doing and things are going good, because you know, what really hurts is the average person out there that's got 401(k) or has got retirement and they just got pummeled. My parents are no different. My stepfather is 67 years old, and he's trying to retire, and they have complete faith in our system, but I mean that's put off retirement even further. And you know, it's scary. It's scary to think that a lot of that's going on. So you know, we talk about it in general, but I think everybody felt like that Obama was going to win, and you know, the media obviously thought he was going to win, and he obviously did. There was no -- this didn't sneak up on us, or it wasn't a close race, so you know, hopefully now everybody can just kind of get behind him and hope that he does a good job. Q. Anybody snap a club over the results? TROY MATTESON: I don't think so. And hopefully the taxes won't be that bad, but hey, I don't mind paying my share. I don't mind paying my share to help people out. Q. What percentage do you think McCain got of the PGA TOUR vote? TROY MATTESON: Oh, I would say -- just players? Q. Yeah. TROY MATTESON: I would say 97 percent McCain. So you know, maybe let's say two percent Obama, one percent undecided, just to throw that in there, but yeah, I think -- I think a lot of it, though, is -- I think a lot of it is just deep-rooted -- you know, people kind of -- they're not really sure when you get a candidate in there that starts throwing around the change word that much. I'm not old enough to really know. I've only been through so many presidents, and life's been pretty good in my short life, economically in the world, so I can't speak to the fact of anything else. Q. Just to finish the thought, there's a joke used to be that they wanted a democrat (inaudible portion )and I think maybe Duval. Are there any staunch Democrats that you know of? TROY MATTESON: Not that I'm aware of, but I probably haven't kept up with it as much as some people. Like I said, my percentage might be skewed because I'm pretty much around a lot of people that would have been a McCain voter, but you know, like I said, you don't know unless you see their ballot. They could be saying they're McCain or Obama. They could be saying they're Obama just to play devil's advocate and be McCain. Q. How much sweeter does the way you're playing make this birthday you're about to celebrate, and do you and your family have anything fun planned for tonight or tomorrow? TROY MATTESON: I've actually got a cousin that was born in the same hospital. He lives just down the road, and he was born two days before I was, so we're going to celebrate both our birthdays tomorrow. Yeah, it's nice. It's always nice to play good around your birthday. It's nice to be at a golf tournament. It's nice to have your family around. There's been some birthdays that you're in college, you're on the road with the team and nobody's there, but it is nice to play good. It's a lot better than having to leave on Friday because you missed the cut, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow and having a good birthday. I guess this is my last one in my 20s, so I better savor it. Q. Is that at the hospital Rockledge? TROY MATTESON: Uh-huh. Q. What's your cousin's name? TROY MATTESON: His name is Luke Stewart, just like it sounds. CHRIS REIMER: Any specific shots today that either got you into it or that you would like to have back, you felt like was a bit of an opportunity wasted maybe? TROY MATTESON: I got away with one on 17, so the one on 18 didn't sting that bad, but I wish I could go back and hit that chip on 18 and just be a little bit more aggressive and a little bit more passive hands. These chips shots out here in the Bermuda this week, there's a lot of grain around the greens and you just have to keep accelerating. And then on 9 I hit a good drive. It bounced down in the rough and made the decision to go with a 9-iron instead of a wedge from 152 yards. I was playing for a little bit of a flyer. I wish I'd hit the wedge, even though I hit a good bunker shot. I just missed about four-footer. I'd either like to have the shot out of the rough back or the four-footer, one of the two, or mulligan or something. Q. When you're done with your round, do you follow the opponents pretty closely or do you kind of check out once it's over? TROY MATTESON: On Sundays, I follow it really closely, to be honest with you, when you play good because you're trying to figure out what you're going to pay your caddy, and it fluctuates a lot. On days like today, on Thursdays and Fridays, it's all irrelevant unless you're playing around the cut. You can't help but look when you're playing around the cut. You just can't help it. You try not to look, but somehow you end up either knowing in the back of your mind or somebody tells you or you peak at the scoreboard. If I'd have shot 2-under yesterday, it would be really hard for me not to look at the scoreboard. And you know, I think it's irrelevant until at least until tomorrow on the last hole or few holes where you stand because the only time you can ever make a difference is if you've got the last putt on the last green to win. And that's the only time it would ever matter. But I tend to look at the scoreboard a little bit more than most. I just can't help it. It's just fun to see where you're at. Q. Do you think there's more attention this week? Obviously guys are worried about keeping their cards, in terms of that, scoreboard watching and paying attention to that. TROY MATTESON: You bet ya. I means guys are watching the scoreboard. Guys are watching exactly where they are. It's amazing how many times you can say, you know, I need a fourth or I need a fifth this week or a fifth all alone will do it. Guys are calculating in their head where they need to be and what they need to be doing to get there. Sure, there's a little bit more attention. This is it. There's no more tournaments after this, and I think for a lot of guys, you know, it's hard to relax. It's hard to relax under these conditions, but we'll see who gets it done. CHRIS REIMER: All right, Troy. Thanks so much. TROY MATTESON: Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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