	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 23, 2009

Parker McLachlin

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Q. Nice round of golf.
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, thanks. It felt good out there today. Nice to get off to a good start early this morning. The greens were in great shape. Seemed to make a few putts out there.

Q. Yeah, for those who don't know, your alma mater, same high school as Barack Obama. You've had a little bit of a rough patch on the PGA TOUR season. But nothing that a nice win this week couldn't solve?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, I've been reworking my golf swing, and just trying to get that in. It's been a struggle. But my instructor and I, Sean Foley, we've been on on the right path. And it was nice to see some of the hard work pay off today.

Q. What specifically are you working on?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Completely changing my back swing. Changing my back position, and changing my follow through. So, trying everything.

Q. You're a PGA TOUR winner, you don't need to completely rework everything, do you?
PARKER McLACHLIN: You know, I felt like I was playing my first couple of years on tour I was playing well, three, four events a year.
I was hitting the ball well. That's not where I want to be. I want to be contending eight, 10, 12 times a year. It just wasn't good enough for me. So I thought take the next step to get to the next level to be a world class player, and I needed to make that change.

Q. Change can always be I little bit scary. You seem to have embraced it though?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, it was scary. Last week I shot 80, and I don't know where it's going. But it can be a little bit daunting.
You've just got to keep trying to -- every time you hit a good shot give yourself a mini fist pump on the range. Just try to take the little positives and try to build it into a big positive.

Q. Do you ever hear from President Obama? You played with basketball with the then President-Elect?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, my dad was actually in his office on Monday, this past Monday, about half an hour after Tiger was there.

Q. What office are you referring to, the oval office?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, correct.

Q. Just kind of dropping that. He was in Barack's office. Hey, Parker, great playing?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, thanks.

Q. Saw you on the tee. What happened on 18?
PARKER McLACHLIN: The wind was switching. It went straight down the whole day. Then it switched from right to left ask downwind. Felt like 6-iron was going to go over-the-air green.
So tried to hit 7 and get it up on the wing and have it bounce and get over that mound there. But just came up a little short, and it's pretty tough. A 40, 50-footer up over a three-foot rise there and then back down.
So just misjudged the speed a little bit. It's just one of those things, it happens. You move on from it. I'm not going to think twice about it the rest of the day.

Q. Tell us about playing earlier. How much of that helps?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Yeah, playing early is huge. Yesterday I had the last tee time on the Pro-Ams. And the greens were kind of baked on out and crusty. The ball was kind of bouncing all over-the-air place. You get out this morning, and it's rolling pure.
It just excites you to make putts. So it was nice to take advantage of that this morning.

Q. Hole number 6 is traditionally the toughest hole out here, and you were able to birdie that hole. What happened out there on 6? Lot of the leaders have been able to birdie that hole, while the others have had some trouble?
PARKER McLACHLIN: 6 is the one that goes around the water. I made par on that one. I birdied 5.

Q. Okay.
PARKER McLACHLIN: But it just depends on the wind. Some of the tees were moved up today, and I caught a couple of holes which was a good idea. Because some of these holes that are blowing into the wind, it's like 480, and then you're going into a 50 mile an hour wind, it's playing like 510, 520.
The rules staff did a nice job of setting up the golf course to make it fair for good scoring, but also pretty challenging.
It's been a bit of a struggle, I played decent on coast, but just trying to find my golf swing. Still working on changing it, and, even at this level, you know, we're constantly trying to improve.
And I felt like after I won last year, you know, the next week I decided I needed to make a change for the better. Trying to really elevate myself into that upper echelon of players on this tour and around the world.
So I just felt like it was something I needed to do. And it's been a bit of a struggle at times this year. Especially over-the-air last six weeks or whatever I haven't made the cut. But it's nice to see some of the results starting to pay off and around like it did today.

Q. What made the difference today?
PARKER McLACHLIN: Well, I think, you know, I've been putting in a lot of time and effort the last six weeks. I've been, you know, every week that I've missed the cut I've been out there four, five hours Saturday and a couple of hours Sunday grinding it out, working on it. So it's been a lot of hard work putting it in to get to this place where I can put a good round together.
But, you just hit a few good shots and it turns into a few more. So I'd hit in previous rounds I'd hit a bunch of good shots and maybe four or five offline shots that would either go in the water or out of bounds, whatever. Now you're looking at 75, 76. So today it was much better to keep it in front of me.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297