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FBR OPEN

January 29, 2009

James Nitties

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

MARK STEVENS: I'd like to welcome James Nitties to the interview room. James shot a 6-under this morning in this morning's round, and is currently atop the leaderboard of the FBR Open. If you'd start out giving some general comments on your round today, and then we'll open it up to questions.
JAMES NITTIES: I hit it pretty solidly, obviously. I putted well today, fixed a little bit of my putting issues last week, and I putted well. I didn't really get into too much trouble all day, and if I did, I'd sort of make the smart decision, and it sort of worked together well.
MARK STEVENS: Also James shot a 62 last week in the fourth round of the Bob Hope Classic to miss the cut. If you want to talk a little bit about obviously you're kind of putting together some good rounds and just kind of where your golf is right now.
JAMES NITTIES: Yeah, I played well my first event out, which was Hawai'i, and had a couple bad holes through the middle there. It was quite windy, and I still felt like I was striking it well. Then going into the Bob Hope I figured you needed to start at the Palmer and Nicklaus to get off to a good start, and I started at the Bermuda Dunes course and Silver Rock and sort of tried to push my score. I didn't putt great the first couple days and hit a couple bad wedge shots, and then got there the last day and sort of fixed up my putting, tried something different, and still felt like I was hitting it well. I think I figured I had to shoot 60 or 59 to make the cut. I think I was at 8-under through 12 and was feeling like I was still having a good chance to make the cut, and I finished with three pars and two birdies. I figured I was going to miss by two anyway, and I missed by one.
Drawing on that, it was good, positive striking and golf to bring me into this week, and I pretty much did.
Q. The book lists one of your hobbies as "clubbing," and some of us old guys think we know what that means, but could you confirm that?
JAMES NITTIES: Well, it equates to going out to a club per se, or a bar, or a social area and having a couple drinks and sort of catching up with friends and listening to some good music. I figured you'd be the same when you were around 26, 25.
Q. You came to the right place.
JAMES NITTIES: Definitely. This was one of the events I was looking forward to the most. If you knew me, it's tough for me to concentrate out here. But on the flipside, I'm on the PGA TOUR and I'm not going to take it for granted. I know when to put my partying on hold and I know when to put in hard work. Yeah, there's some good sites out there.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about that, about your quest to get to the PGA TOUR? I think you've been to Q-school four or five times, and then finally got over the top. What has that been like? Has it been a steady progression to reach this point?
JAMES NITTIES: When I turned pro, I played well, really well, in one of my first couple events and finished second to Peter Lonard in the Australian PGA. We get about 20 TOUR players playing, and that was my third event as a pro. Some people think it's going to be pretty easy. I never thought it was going to be easy.
The next year I was playing well, tried to Monday my way onto the Nationwide Tour. I contained -- I got reactive arthritis, or juvenile arthritis, which put me out for a good part of the year, and I went to Q-school that year, which was my first event back, and was exempt for second stage because of the Aussie Tour and missed the final by one, had a bad last day, 77 or something like that.
Then the next year I was sort of just trying to get back on my feet, and I played a lot of Hooters events -- Hooters is okay but there's nowhere to go out of there. So you wait for Q-school, and I missed final stage by about three that year.
And then last year I was doing well on the Nationwide Tour early and Mondayed for about eight events -- not last year, sorry, the previous year. I Mondayed for eight events out here, and the lifestyle of Mondaying is just -- it wears on you. Week to week you're playing attacking golf, and you get to the tournament course and it's totally different to the Monday course.
And then last year was pretty much just building my -- I played well the previous year at the Australian Open, which was '07 again, at the end of the year. I finished fifth and played well in the Johnnie Walker Classic, which was a European Tour event, and on the Nationwide I finished fifth and I had three or four Top 10s and a couple Top 5s and that allowed me to get exempt through the final stage of Q-school last year. So if you finish top three on the Order of Merit, the Australian Order of Merit and non-exempt inside the top 10, you get straight through to the finals. So if you've got Adam Scott or Robert Allenby or Stuart Appleby in front of you and they're exempt, you get through to the finals.
So getting to the final I prepared really well. I worked really hard on my fitness and my game prior to the first three months prior to the tournament, and no clubbing or alcohol for three months, which is tough for me. But when you've got an opportunity like that, you've got to make the most of it. And I did, I played well at final stage and finished second.
It's been a rough road, but no excuses. There's so many guys with stories out there, and they try hard and they don't get here. You've really just got to keep battling, and I did that, and now that I'm here I want to make the most of it.
Q. Your father played with AC/DC for a while?
JAMES NITTIES: He played for about three nights. He was backup bass guitarist. I mean, he was good friends with Bon Scott, which was the singer before Angus Young, and he used to play pool and have a couple beers with him a lot. Dad was a guitarist, and he filled in for the backup bass guitarist for a couple nights, so it sort of got stringed on for a longer time. No, it wasn't like that at all.
Q. With the arthritis problem, does that make it even more difficult for an event like Q-school, to have to go through that many rounds in a row? And also, where is that at right now? Are things feeling good or under control?
JAMES NITTIES: With my condition -- it's young people. It's not hereditary, it's just luck of the draw. When I got it, it hit me pretty bad. I was over here in Dallas and I just played a Nationwide event, and I figured it was my back, and I had chiros working on it. No one knew what it was. It's not very common over here. It's actually more common in Australia, and they know more about it over there.
So I was in the hospital for about three weeks and had all sorts of tests done, and no one could work out what was going on with me. And then finally they brought in a rheumatologist because it's in the rheumatoid family. I got diagnosed with it, and it's something you have for life. But depending on how you keep your body, if your immune system is good -- my specialist was under the impression, you're healthy, you're fit, it's not going to really hurt you throughout the future. Some people can't walk and some people get it differently.
From then on, I'm on medication full time, but it's not serious. It's just a couple pills a day just to sort of keep it at bay while I'm traveling.
Q-school was fine. As I said, I worked really hard on my body in the gym and got really fit. Actually over Christmas, because my last four months prior to Q-school were so hectic, when I had a couple weeks off over Christmas, my hip started hurting. I think it's because my body was out of the routine of actually working hard. I had a couple beers over Christmas, and I think it made it a little worse. It was a little sore going into Hawai'i, but when I say that, no excuse. I can take a couple pain pills, and my specialist told me if you can play on the pain, you're not going to make it worse for the future, so it's not like you can make it worse. If you can just play through it -- it's been niggling in my right hip, so it's sort of on the follow-through, but nothing to the point where it altered my game in the first couple weeks.
So you just sort of manage it, and it should usually be all right. It's pretty good now, obviously.
Q. I have a semi-meaningless question. Do you have a hat sponsor?
JAMES NITTIES: No, definitely don't. Yes, blank hat, hint-hint, nudge-nudge. Actually I've got a little Cardinals pin on the back. I figured I might as well support the team that's in the Super Bowl where I'm actually playing the tournament, so brownie points.
MARK STEVENS: Thank you for being here, James.

End of FastScripts

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