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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIPMay 8, 2009Alex CejkaPONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA MARK WILLIAMS: Alex Cejka, welcome to the media center and pressroom at THE PLAYERS Championship. Good scoring today, 67 following up a 66 yesterday. Been looking at the numbers, probably not as many greens and fairways hit today as yesterday but looks pretty good with the putter. Talk about your round and tell us what it was like. ALEX CEJKA: Yeah, I missed a couple of greens today. It was a little bit trickier for me. I didn't really hit the ball as well as yesterday. Yesterday was kind of flawless. You know, but I still made a couple good up-and-downs, and when I had a birdie chance I took it. I'm pretty excited to sit here two days in a row. MARK WILLIAMS: Pretty tireless the first 11 holes; looks like you were 6-under and then just one bogey coming home. ALEX CEJKA: I had a really good tee time, no wind really at all this morning, and playing with Kevin Na, and we both were playing well. We were just cruising basically, and the first 11, 12 holes I really played well and had a couple good shots and a couple good putts. Made a stupid bogey, I think, on 15, but that's golf and that's the golf course here. Q. I know you addressed this yesterday so I apologize, but you preferred to a procedure you had last week on your neck; is that correct? ALEX CEJKA: Yes. Q. What was that? ALEX CEJKA: I had an epidural injection. I had a pinched nerve and I had a numb arm for three weeks, so they had to go in there and put some cortisone shot right in the nerve, so it's healing better. It's still not 100 percent, but I feel my hand, so that's a good sign. Q. Do you feel any pain? ALEX CEJKA: No, no pain, no pain. It's still a little bit numb, but there's no pain. I had a major surgery end of last year where I had a fusion in my neck. I had to take like three months off, and I probably came back too soon, and it was just a little bit irritated. Q. Do you have to do anything to treat it during the week or after you play a round of golf? ALEX CEJKA: Yeah, I have special exercises. I have to put it on ice every afternoon, at least twice a day, and literally not practice too much in order to just try to calm it down. It's tough. I like to hit a lot of balls, so it's tough to just hit one bucket and relax, but I think it's what I have to do the next couple weeks. Q. Did they go through the front and put like a plate there? ALEX CEJKA: Yes. Q. Titanium plate? ALEX CEJKA: Yes, that's correct. Q. Do you have cadaver bone or what did you get put in there? ALEX CEJKA: Exactly. Q. So do your fingers tingle? ALEX CEJKA: Yes. I had it really severe before the surgery, end of last year. After the surgery everything was fine until I woke up one day and it was just numb and it was just inflamed, irritated. So that was kind of a shock for me. But after the shot last week I headed into San Diego on Tuesday, and I've been recovering pretty well so far. It's getting better. They think it's going to take a couple weeks, a couple months. Nerves don't heal that well, and everybody is different. So it's a big improvement right now, and hopefully in a couple weeks it's going to be all gone. Q. But they didn't say anything about -- you didn't loosen any of the screws or anything on the plate? ALEX CEJKA: No, it's easy, they give me a screwdriver, I can just adjust it between the holes (laughing) -- no, the plate is well. I did a lot of X-rays and MRI, as well. It was just -- I think I just came too early back to playing. Q. Did you come back because you could kind of see your name dropping on the Money List? I noticed you came back and played some of the Fall Series. Why did you kind of push it there last fall? ALEX CEJKA: No, I played actually I believe just one in Florida, I think the last one. I was pretty safe. I think I was like $900,000 when I stopped. I thought I was safe. In the end I was safe. Of course towards the end you're always, like, keep an eye every week on what's happening. But I wanted to play the World Cup with Martin Kaymer in China, and I thought it's maybe good after three months, play one tournament before the tournament. That's what I did, I just came to Florida to play, to have the feeling of playing competition golf. I mean, I played terrible. I think I shot like 80-79. But I had to start somewhere. Q. Before you had the surgery did you ever feel like it might be career threatening or anything like that? ALEX CEJKA: No, not really, no. I think that's -- I don't want to say a common thing, but it happens. Apparently it's a minor procedure, but you never know. We are professional athletes. Anything can sometimes go wrong. But I never had doubts. I had positive thoughts, and I think I was in good hands, too. I wasn't really scared. Q. What was it like by the time you guys got to the back nine? You had a five-shot lead and nobody is really following your group. There was literally 15 to 25 people. Was that nice to be able to sit on the lead and virtually have nobody following you? ALEX CEJKA: It was nice, especially even yesterday on the back nine. It felt like a Monday afternoon practice round. I mean, I've never seen it actually that empty here over the past years. But it was kind of nice. I don't know, we were just walking and talking and making good shots, and yesterday, too. It was nice. I mean, towards the end, people were more on the back nine with the exciting holes like 17, 18, 16, but I think it's going to all change on the weekend. Q. For those of us who don't know the story, briefly, the circumstances of you and your father leaving Czechoslovakia at the age of nine, was it something kind of out of the movies or was it not that dramatic? Could you briefly talk about how you guys left and what were the circumstances? ALEX CEJKA: I was too young to understand what's going on. My dad told nobody what he was doing. I was nine years old. Back then I didn't know. For me it was a vacation, so for me it was a smooth ride. Of course probably my dad was nervous as hell just leaving everything behind, taking the son and a little backpack and just leave through three or four countries into the west. For me it was just a little trip, I guess. As I said, I don't remember really that much. But I think for my father it was quite scary. It wasn't that easy to flee from a Communist country basically. Q. How did you travel out of the country? ALEX CEJKA: By foot, by train, by bike, everything. Q. By swimming? ALEX CEJKA: Yeah, swimming, too. A little bit of everything. Q. Where did you swim across? ALEX CEJKA: I think we swam across the Rhine. Q. You did learn to play golf in the Czech Republic? ALEX CEJKA: I started to hit a couple balls in the Czech Republic, but my first lesson I had was when we came to Germany. We settled in Frankfurt, and that's where I kind of had my first clubs, first practice facilities. Q. I don't know that I can think of two farther extremes on the spectrum than going from living in a Communist country to living in Las Vegas. How did you end up there, and is that sort of more fitting of your personality because that's sort of the height of the free market, wild west mentality? ALEX CEJKA: When I came here, I made my TOUR card in 2002, I think, I had a place in Florida, in Boca Raton or West Palm Beach, but I didn't really like -- I don't want to say I didn't like Florida, but it was always too humid, thunderstorms. Bermudagrass, everything was close to home, direct flights from Miami, it was easy. Then I liked the West Coast when we were playing in the beginning of the year, and I liked the particular area, and I just decided, why not there. Q. How would you sum up your career to this point? ALEX CEJKA: When I was in Europe I had a little bit more success. I think I played there seven years. I had a couple wins. I don't want to say it was easier, but I was playing well and I just won a couple tournaments. Here it's tough to win. I mean, everybody is just a great player, and it's tough to win. I had a couple chances. I'm maybe a little bit disappointed that in the past six years I haven't won. I've been a couple times close, but I knew the putting was holding me back for a couple years, so the last couple years I'm working hard on it, and hopefully I can turn it around. Q. Would it be safe to say given what you've just gone through this past week and so forth that you might be a little surprised by where you are? What were your expectations after getting the epidural? ALEX CEJKA: I must say not really. I played actually kind of well in Hilton Head, just had, I think, a bad Sunday. In New Orleans, where I didn't feel anything at all, I really played from tee to green phenomenal. I just had no feeling and I couldn't make any putts. So the game is there. You know, I'm glad the numbers are going this way. I don't think about it. I was a little bit scared, when the numbness was there I didn't see any doctors, so I was a little bit worried, so I think my focus was a little bit more on the injury than on the golf course. I continued my good game to here, to this week, and the feeling is better and I can see it on the greens and the short game, so we'll see what happens in the next two days. Q. At what age did you aspire to be a pro golfer, and I would guess you didn't have a lot of peers who were thinking along the same lines. How difficult was it to want to be serious about golf in Germany? ALEX CEJKA: I think it was when I was kind of 14, 15; it was the Langer boom. He just won the Masters. Of course in Europe he won like three, four, five tournaments every year. He came to play the German Open in Frankfurt every year back then in I think the mid-'80s, '88, something like this, and of course I watched him. I skipped school and I watched him even in pro-ams, and he was my inspiration. He was the only German guy who was on Tour, the only German guy who won tournaments, the only German who won a major, so that was inspiration, and I watched him wherever I could. We had like two, three tournaments in Germany on the European Tour, and I watched them all, from Olazábal, from Ballesteros, you name all these names, and that's what inspired me to become a pro, too. Q. It looks like you have a longer putter. Is it a belly putter? Do you anchor it? ALEX CEJKA: Yes. Q. How long have you been using that and why? ALEX CEJKA: I started at the Honda Classic a couple months ago. Q. You also picked up Tom at the Honda Classic, too. What is it with you guys? Caddie for a year, break up, caddie for a year, break up, and now you're back together again? ALEX CEJKA: It's worse than a marriage (laughter). Tom has been caddying for me for a long time. We just had a one-year break. You know, I've been trying a couple caddies, but I like him as a person. He's a good caddie. He kind of suits my life, and we've been doing kind of well since we started again at the Honda. Q. He says that your breakups -- that you're both kind of stubborn and you kind of get away from each other a little bit, but he said it's better this time. ALEX CEJKA: Yeah, we're older and wiser (laughter), at least he is. Q. I'd be curious, with having watched Bernhard and skipping school and whatnot, what was the occasion the first time you met him and first time you actually played with him, and what was that like? ALEX CEJKA: The first time I met him -- well, I don't want to call it met him. He was playing in Frankfurt, a pro-am. There was nobody there, just a couple German pros. I was a young kid, and he was a superstar but nobody knew that he was coming, no press, nothing. He was in the Frankfurt golf course and it was raining so hard, and I was following him 18 holes. I remember the first time I approached him on No. 9. It's a long par-4, the amateurs are like 50 yards ahead hiding in the trees with their umbrellas, and he goes on the tee, everything is like wet, and he takes his rain jacket off, and I'm like in school, "Mr. Langer, can I hold your jacket?" And he just looked at me and threw it in the water on the tee. For a young kid, this is your hero, you want to touch something, whatever. So I followed him 18 holes, he shot like a 1-under par. After the round I told him, "Great round." I expected that I'd get a ball or something. Nothing, he just walked past me. That's not typical Bernhard Langer; everybody knows he's a nice guy. I told him, of course, the story a couple years later when I played with him and he couldn't remember this. But that was kind of the first time I saw him and I admired his career. And then when I got on the European Tour we played a lot of practice rounds together, a couple times in the tournaments, so that's how I got to know him closer then. Q. The first one must have been intimidating for you, the first practice round you played with him? ALEX CEJKA: For me? Oh, yeah. I was shaking like I had a six-shot lead on the last hole. I was shaking like that on the first hole on a Monday in a practice round. But then he was really nice, and that fell off me pretty quickly. Q. How old were you then and what course was that? ALEX CEJKA: It was in Frankfurt I think in '85 or -- I think '85. I was like 15. Q. After he won the Masters? ALEX CEJKA: I think it was, yeah, just after he won the Masters. That's where the golf boom started. Q. Do you think he didn't let you hold his jacket at that point because he was just so focused on playing? ALEX CEJKA: I don't know. Maybe he didn't trust me. I had shorts, I had a ripped tee shirt. I looked like -- I don't know. Q. Do you remember the name of the course? ALEX CEJKA: Yeah, it's Frankfurt where the German Open was, Frankfurt Niederrad. Q. Bernhard had a very good record here. He never won it but still was in contention frequently, and then you've had at least one good tournament I can remember before this week. And it's always described, Pete Dye's design, as a point A to a point B to a point C course. Is there something about Bernhard's game or something that suits the way you approach the game out here? ALEX CEJKA: No, I think all of us play kind of that game from A to B. I mean, course management is important, not only out here but every week where we play. The course management, he was one of the best in that department, and I think we all tried to do the same things we all know. If we miss the greens it's better to miss it left than right if we make a bad shot. I think all of us are kind of playing this kind of game. MARK WILLIAMS: Let's quickly run through your scorecard. ALEX CEJKA: Birdied No. 2. I made a great up-and-down, just left of the green. I holed a 15-foot putt. On No. 3, I was just pin high just off the green, a 10-footer. I holed the putt. On No. 4, I hit a sand wedge to about 15 feet again, holed the putt. On No. 7 I hit a beautiful 7-iron to about a foot. On 10, I was kind of pin high on the left just off the green, maybe 15 feet, 20 feet, holed a nice putt. Laid up on 11, made birdie from 50 yards, hit it pretty close to about a foot. Bogeyed 15. I hit it in the left bunker and didn't make up-and-down. Q. How long was the putt on 18 to get up-and-down? ALEX CEJKA: I hit the drive right, had to lay up, and I hit a pretty good chip. But it was a good 20-footer on 18. Q. Could you tell us how long the putt was that you made the big par save on 8? ALEX CEJKA: On 8, yeah, that was a good seven meters, so I don't know, 30 feet maybe. Q. I'm wondering when you played with Kaymer, did he ever express any of the same kinds of thoughts and things that you had expressed to Bernhard? Has he followed your career, kind of the next generation back? You're really the only active German player over here now. ALEX CEJKA: He told me he watched me when he was younger, that he watched me play. I don't think the impact was as hard as I had with Bernhard Langer. He's still Germany's Golf God, what he achieved. He's a good kid, too, and we have fun together. MARK WILLIAMS: We appreciate your time. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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