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AT&T PEBBLE BEACH NATIONAL PRO-AMFebruary 13, 2009Robert GarrigusPEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Robert Garrigus, thanks for joining us here after a 71 over at Poppy Hills today. Well, you're right in contention heading into the weekend. Retief Goosen is 11-under with a few holes to play, but certainly you are in good position heading into the weekend, and a nice feeling, I'm sure, for you. ROBERT GARRIGUS: Yeah, absolutely. Today, it was a struggle. I was not hitting it as good as I was yesterday, but I was scraping it around, and keeping it around par. And I had fun with my partner today. You could see he was nervous because we were in the lead, and I kept laughing and telling him to calm down and stop shanking it. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time today. And my round, it was kind of up and down, back and forth. I only birdied one par 5 out of the five, and it was kind of a struggle. But I got a lucky break on 18 there. I tried to hit a 4-iron around the trees and hit it into the trees and didn't hit anything, and I got up-and-down for birdie. So, it was a nice way to end the day. Q. Is it hard for a long hitter? You'd think five par 5s, piece of cake, but doesn't necessarily always set up for a big hitter; do you feel that way, or do you disagree? ROBERT GARRIGUS: You know, yes and no. There's certain holes you can take advantage of, and I didn't take advantage of, and there are certain holes you have to lay back. I think No. 10 I 3-putted for par. I hit 6-iron there. I think I had three 3-putts today. If you take advantage of those holes, you can kind of play the other ones conservative. Some of the holes, like the one par 5 on the front side, the first one that we played today, is playing so long. It was raining and it was cold. There's no way I could have got to that one. I hit a good shot in there and missed it. But like No. 12, the dog-leg right, last year, I hit a 3-wood down the right side and thought it was perfect and hit it out-of-bounds. Today, I hit it down the left side just over the corner of the cart path, and it went all the way through and I had to chip out, which was a little frustrating because I kept hitting in the trees a few times. I do that all the time anyways, but luckily, I know how to get out of them. Q. Just watching your scores on the scoreboard, seemed like a wild ride, lots of birdies and bogeys, and I know you talked yesterday about keeping an even keel out there and having fun with it; was it tough not to let your emotions go up-and-down with your birdies and bogeys out there today? ROBERT GARRIGUS: You know, not really, because I felt like I was actually playing okay. And I wasn't emotionally up-and-down; I was even today. Just my mind, I usually tell myself, if I break par in my mind, I'm going to shoot under par on the golf course. Because that's just one of the deals where you're just going along the day and maybe you're not hitting good or maybe you're not making everything, but you can maybe scrape through the day and hit under par. I did that on the last hole, just three feet from the green. Today my mind was really calm and I was having fun with the guy. And I was a little upset on 17 green when I had a par putt and it was going right in the center of the hole and hit the footprint and kicked out and lipped-out. I got over it and went to the last hole and made birdie. So, it was a good day all in all. Q. Early on in the round, I saw you were standing at the tee box, and one of the marshals was kind of walking and pacing the course back and forth and looked like that kind of got to you. How did you buckle down and play through it? ROBERT GARRIGUS: Well, actually they were calling me "Tiger" on the tee box, because I took it back, and about three quarters of the way back, I was about to come down and I was able to stop; and I heard somebody hit in the fairway, I heard the splat. I heard somebody splat in the fairway over there, so I thought the ball was going to come on to the green and people were cheering and whatever. But there was a guy, walking back and forth, in the middle of the fairway, and he didn't know we were on the tee box. We were all whistling at him and trying to get him to move and quickly screaming at him. We were just sitting there, like what is this guy doing? I went up there and blocked it to the right and had a pretty bad lie and hit a good shot up there and misread the putt. I thought it was breaking left and it went up the hill, like everything was doing today. It was kind of hard to concentrate after that, because I had to back off three times, and after that, you're just thinking, all right, just put a good swing on it. I missed it two yards right of the fairway, and I kind of got a bad break. That really didn't bother me. And the next hole, it was pouring down rain and we get up there, and it was freezing. It was probably 45 degrees and raining, and I'm sitting there with my putter and my umbrella and I'm like, 'I really don't want to putt right now.' We didn't want to go, and I didn't even want to go to the other side of the hole to read the putt, and I should have, because it looked like it was downhill and I thought it was uphill and I hit it like eight feet buy and 3-putted. We had fun today. The guy, he was nervous, and he made a couple of putts and he was into it, and I tried to make it fun for him. We'll go out and have some fun tomorrow and we'll see what happens. Q. You refer to your partner as "the guy"; is he a friend or were you assigned him, anybody you know or you want to talk about? ROBERT GARRIGUS: It's Brian Greenspun. I think he's the chairman or the CEO of the Sun Times in Vegas, or Vegas.com; he's the owner of Vegas.com. He does all the multimedia stuff in Vegas. He's a really good guy and he's really interested in everything. He's always on the tee box -- he never goes to the tee box. He's always up on ours asking questions, asking me where I was aiming. And that's what it's all about, too. The Pro-Am format gets the guys into it. They really enjoy watching us play. You know, we try and make it fun for them. It's kind of hard with me trying to win a golf tournament. I've been in this situation a few times, but not in a Pro-Am. The Bob Hope I kind of was, but it was four days and I didn't see a camera for four days. I was 26 under par, and I was just kind of like, I'll sneak under the radar and try to win this thing. Brian was really nice and he was very excited about the next couple of days. Q. And to follow up on that question, there's been a lot of talk lately with the meeting at San Diego with Tim Finchem trying to encourage the guys to get a little more involved with the galleries and the sponsors; is it apropos that all of a sudden this opportunity happens with all of that on your mind? ROBERT GARRIGUS: Yeah, you know, I've always been the guy to thank a volunteer or thank somebody for being here, thank the crowd for being here; let alone, the meeting. I thought that needed to happen ten years ago. A lot of the times, I'm walking the golf course and I'll thank a volunteer and they will tell me somebody had not thanked them for ten years. That doesn't make any sense to me. Volunteers don't volunteer; they pay to come out here, whatever it is, 40 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever it is. They take vacations to come out and volunteer for the golf tournament, and some of them have been doing it for 25, 30 years. You see a 75-year-old guy standing out and they ask him -- some of them were talking to him, asking him how long he's been a volunteer and he's like, "This is my 27th year." You're like, 'I'm 31 years old.' It's just unbelievable to see the amount of volunteers that keep coming out. They like to watch us play golf, and it's kind of nice to be that guy to say, hey, you know, thank you, regardless of who it is. Q. What's the talk in the locker room; are you hearing much talk about this amongst the players? ROBERT GARRIGUS: I've talked to a couple of guys about it, and they are saying it's about time that we are getting into thanking everybody a little more. I try to do it every day, every week. You know, I try to set a standard where, just be nice. You can be in a zone, you can play well, and when you're walking past, even if you -- I try to make it a point to thank somebody after a make bogey, just to get it off my mind and say, hey, thanks for coming out. If I make bogey, appreciate your help for the week. It's easy to do. And as far as the sponsors, you know, they treat us so well out here. We are all blessed to be playing on the PGA TOUR regardless of where we are from or what we grew up doing, and it's kind of nice -- it's nice to be out here, and I love playing golf out here. It's a great atmosphere. Q. Speaking of thanking volunteers and sponsors, do you think the TOUR should somehow mandate the players to play at least one tournament once every four or five years, like they do on the LPGA, just to get some of the big names coming to Colonial or AT&T or wherever? ROBERT GARRIGUS: Yeah, you know, that's really hard, too, because I think Tiger plays 16 events, and most of those are sponsors, and then the big ones. But I think the world's golf ranking points system has a lot to do with that. I don't know if you guys knew, but Kenny Perry won in Phoenix and lost two spots in the World Ranking, which is ridiculous. I think that there needs to be some kind of change to that, because if you get the top players playing in the smaller events, your World Ranking points are better. I think it was Dubai where Rory McIlroy won. He shot whatever he did and he won the tournament, and he went from 68th to 15th; and Kenny Perry won the Phoenix Open playing against the best players in the world on a tough golf course, and he dropped two spots. That's kind of a deal where everybody is like, well, why would I play in the smaller tournaments if there are not that many points in the World Ranking? But I would like to see some bigger players play in the smaller events, because there would be so many low numbers. Because the smaller events usually are on easier golf courses, and you can shoot 25-, 30-under par, like the Bob Hope, Milwaukee. Warwick Hills is a fun one, because Tiger plays in it all the time with. It's nice to go out there and see Tiger out there and have the huge crowd and everybody asking for your badge to get into the locker room because security is tighter. It neat. Q. Is there any concern at all that because of the new TV contract coming up in a few years that the smaller tournaments that don't have Tiger or Phil are asked to pay the same as bigger tournaments that do get Tiger is that fair? I understand the World Ranking argument, but is there any thought that there should be some middle ground to get more guys at John Deere or -- ROBERT GARRIGUS: Well, it's really hard for me to understand how the business side of everything works. I know that the smaller tournaments are paying the same. In turn, they are also getting good crowds. Those smaller tournaments have been there forever: John Deere, Milwaukee, those tournaments have been running for a long, long time. And I think when a bigger-name player comes there, they are going to make money on all of the ticket sales, and, hey, Tiger is here, Phil is here. It's kind of hard for me to talk about, because, you know, I play in all of those small tournaments, and the bigger guys, the Top-10 in the world, they can pick and choose. I don't get to pick and choose. It's hard, because if I play well, I do; but I'm in a category where I have to play well to play next week. That's the category I've been in three times on TOUR. I've played out here for four years. Last year I had my fully-exempt status. It was nice to pick and choose, and I still played in 31 events, and that was a lot of golf for me. But you know, those smaller tournaments, I think are going to struggle, with not having those main-name guys. But you are still going to get the people. You are still going to get the volunteers that want to volunteer there. They have been there forever. I think that we are going to be okay. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Robert Garrigus, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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