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THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENTJune 6, 2009Geoff OgilvyDUBLIN, OHIO DOUG MILNE: Geoff Ogilvy, thanks for joining us for a few minutes after quite a successful third round here at the Memorial Tournament. 9 under par, 63. Think you made one more birdie today than you did the two rounds combined. I know you talked out there a lot about the round, but just share your thoughts about how you're feeling about it and as you move into tomorrow. GEOFF OGILVY: Obviously, very happy with a round like that. Frustrating first three days for me really. I wasn't playing that bad but didn't hit any putts. I missed the green in horrible spots. I finished double bogey, bogey yesterday, which is not a very nice way to finish. So I went out this morning and saw we had pretty decent conditions, as easy as we're going to see the course this week, easier than the first two days. Hit close on the first, and that always puts a nice taste in your mouth and tapped it in for birdie and went on from there. It was a nice day. I hit some pretty decent shots but I missed the green. I seemed to be in spots where I could get up and down. I made a few long putts that I had been making a couple of 20 footers. Hit a few close. Just a nice -- obviously, all 63s are nice, but it was just a nice, comfortable day. It was really nice. DOUG MILNE: Let's go ahead and open it up for a few questions. Q. You went to the range last night and worked out some kinks, if not anger issues? GEOFF OGILVY: Frustration, probably more than anything. I mean, I want to hit some balls. You don't want to go to bed with a bad taste in your mouth. So it's nice -- it wasn't all horrible yesterday, but it's both. Get some rhythm back in the golf swing or whatever and get a little bit of frustration out before I go home and take it out in the hotel room. Q. Are the greens any different today than they were the previous two days? GEOFF OGILVY: Similar. I mean, they're so nice to putt on early in the morning. They're really, really, really fast. But they're really, really, really true. So if you hit it online, they go in. They're perfect in the mornings. They're probably the best greens we play on all year. Q. Before you shot this number this morning, my thought was to come and talk to you and try to figure out what exactly was wrong with you yesterday. It was just -- it was uncharacteristic of the Geoff Ogilvy that I'd seen over the last three or four years. Can you explain it? GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess. It was one of those days. I don't know. Everything was getting to me. No real valid reason. I've had a lot worse days than yesterday. I was just getting real frustrated for some reason. I guess every now and then you have a day like that that makes you realize, what are you doing? So one of those days. Q. Just to follow up, did what happened yesterday and how you thought about it last night, does that contribute at all to you going out here and saying you don't have to act yourself out, just go out and play golf. GEOFF OGILVY: Sure. I thought about it a lot last night, carrying on like I did at moments yesterday. I must have looked very silly. I didn't feel very good about myself. It's just not a nice way -- you're just not in a good frame of mind for a few hours. What you're doing, it's not very nice. Like I said, it was one of those days. I just sat down at home, in the hotel. And after hitting quite a few balls last night just to chill out a little bit. Every now and then, it just builds up to a point you realize, hang on a minute. Let's get back to reality here. Q. I walked with you for quite a bit yesterday. I saw you making a lot of swings with the driver, almost like baseball swings. A little putter and so forth. I wonder if it was something technical or so forth you were working on or just passing some time? GEOFF OGILVY: I'm working on hitting more balls than I normally would. I'm working on a few things, nothing too exciting. Q. You were even swinging with your putter. GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, sometimes -- that was probably part of the buildup of frustration. I just wanted to make it feel good, and I just couldn't. And then every now and then you make a swing and you think, that felt decent. And you can go for a month from one practice swing, just something can click. Just searching. Whenever you've got a club in your hand, you keep searching. Q. As bad as yesterday was going when you had to wait on 18 for Vijay, was it just like, oh, this is just the perfect finish to a perfect day? GEOFF OGILVY: Well, it was but it wasn't. I've never seen a ball bounce like that. It was incredible. So it was kind of -- I mean, not funny. One of those amusing little incidents. No one would ever believe someone would hit it up against the club house or anything. It's frustrating, but I was actually past my frustration. I was actually quite level-headed for the last two or three holes. My crescendo was about at 15. Q. Geoff, did you go out to play Bethpage on Monday? GEOFF OGILVY: Yes. Q. What did you learn about the setup? GEOFF OGILVY: The setup is predictable. They've got that kind of graduated rough again. The rough is very thick. But the first bit of longer stuff, 15 feet or so, it's not that long, and it's not going to be a very good spot to be. Bethpage, it's all green. Bethpage is carry -- I mean every green, I think it's all carry. I don't know if there's any green you can run up on. About two or three greens maybe you can run up on. So the rough's going to be a bad spot. It's not super narrow. The fairways are very hittable. And if I play it off the back tee, it's going to be historically long. I mean, it's a really long course from the back tees. I mean, it's incredible. So Mark Davis hasn't done that the last few years. I'm sure he's going to go for a lot of long tees on the day. It's up to the weather and the tee positions really. I think it will be fine. If they're smart with the tees and we get nice weather, it will be a really fun Open, I think. Q. You've played in many events out at the U.S. Open, did you notice a stern evolution in setup as far as being more forgiving of shots that are just off the mark? GEOFF OGILVY: Not that they're less forgiving. They're still bad when you miss, but they're giving you a par 5 or two that you can reach. They're not -- you don't have your back foot hanging off the back of every tee on every day. There seems to be less of an obsession except for Oakmont. Just absurdly fast greens. Last year was the exception because of the kikuyu rough, whatever you call it, the balls sit up in it. So it's tough. Most of the time you're in that first cut, you're actually okay because it's set, and it's still going to play hard. But the ball's going to sit down in the rough next week, and it's going to be really bad. I don't know if it's any more forgiving, but they give you a little more chance before you start the hole. The tees are up a little bit in that section. We had two regional qualifiers last year. So normally, if you could reach a hole in two, it was a par 4. That was it. There was no question about it. So they want to see birdies. They want to see both. I think Mark likes to see both, and I think that philosophy has improved. Q. Since the Match Play, how has your game been since then? Have you played at that same level, or have you fallen off a little bit and you're struggling to get back to that? How would you describe it? GEOFF OGILVY: I've played obviously very well from Match Play. I haven't played like that very often ever. So I haven't quite finished up since I was in Match Play. It's been okay. In the match play, I hit the ball and putted really well. Since then, I've been hitting the ball normally. So okay. And just one or two putts a day. Really that's all it is. And then Augusta, I was falling back to 15th. One or two putts a day and I would have been there, but I just didn't make it. I made all the 5 footers and none of the 12 footers. I'm sure the guys at the top of the leaderboard did. And Charlotte and Augusta, just more of the same stuff. And last week I was just all over the place. So it was more just playing okay, just nothing great going on. Q. Is it easy sometimes to let one bad day turn into a bad week, or is it not a big deal to sort of snap yourself out of it like you were talking about last night? GEOFF OGILVY: I think if you recognize that you're getting off track, it's relatively easy to get out of it. But sometimes you get in a little -- it's hard to be objective about it. You carry on about how bad it's all going and I'm never going to get another good shot. We all do it as professional golfers. I think the reality is yes. I think I took it harder when I was 20, and then the older you get, you gain the skills to be able to snap out of it a little better. Q. Does there come a day -- golf's never easy, but where it seems easier? GEOFF OGILVY: Yes. Q. Where things just sort of fall into place? GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, it was really nice. As I said, I was just -- the ball kept going well. When I missed the fairways, it wasn't that bad. When I missed a couple greens, like on 18, it was just a really nice spot. It's one of those days that makes you wonder why you find it so hard sometimes. But then you wake up tomorrow, and it's back to normal. And it's days like this that kind of frustrate you. It's just nice to have one every now and then. It's nice when you do. It's nice when you do have one of those days to capitalize on that and shoot a really, really low score, which I did. So it's nice. Q. When you have the day you're making just a putt or two and you're hitting the ball just okay, is it frustrating because you realize there's not much you can necessarily do to try to make that change? It just has to evolve over time? GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I guess. That's kind of the way I view it because whenever I try too hard -- like if I sat for three hours on the putting green every afternoon in Augusta and tried to putt there, I would have putted horribly or wouldn't have putted there. I know it's counterproductive for me. In that respect it's frustrating. You just kind of go out there and try to get a better feel for the greens. Do better the next day and hope they start going in. I'm yet to work out -- I think most people are -- how to -- just trying a little bit harder and actually have it work. That's a frustrating game of that. So again, I think the older you get, the better you get at knowing your own game. Perhaps in a few years' time I would be able to recognize why I wasn't making that extra putt or two during the day and fix it. Q. When you're an Open champ and you start thinking about that a little bit, sooner than you're used to, when does the thought of the Open coming up start creeping into the back of your head and all? GEOFF OGILVY: Once I finished Augusta pretty much. Before I went to Winged Foot, I thought about the Majors, and I knew they were big tournaments and wanted to win one of them. After Winged Foot, I thought about that more because I wanted to win again. I wanted to win Majors more often than what I did before. Because it was quite enjoyable. So I think about them. Yeah, I think about Augusta when you start the PGA. Not all day every day. I've got to get ready for that. And then the use open's the same. Q. Is there anything that Open champions tend to have in common? Obviously you putted well that week, but is there a characteristic or a trait, whether it's physical or mental, that they tend to shoot? GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know. I'm just going through the people that have won it backwards. There's a potpourri of golfers. I would never say Cabrera and I would win a U.S. Open because of the way we drive it. We drive it okay, but we don't go very straight. You would think that Tom Kite and Furyk and you think of those top players would go in U.S. Opens, but they haven't tended to. It's been a mix of everyone. Which justifies the USGA setup, in a way, I guess. They get a blend of players winning it now. I don't know. I think the common thread between all the guys that have won the last 15 is there is no common thread. Q. Geoff, after a day like yesterday or in the past when you had maybe a bad round and then you had a great -- a good round, how do you mentally prepare for that? What do you mentally tell yourself after that bad round to get ready for the next day? GEOFF OGILVY: I guess the longer you play on tour, the more you realize that you're probably going to have a lot more 74s than you're going to have 63s. So just realize that it is what it is. You've just hit 2 over. It doesn't mean you play horribly at the moment. You've just had one of those days. Don't try too hard to fix it. Just got to do what you just -- just go through your normal stuff on the range and come out here with a good attitude again tomorrow and try to shoot a good one. I mean, when I was younger, I would have definitely kicked stuff around the hotel room and knocked around all night and been frustrated and come out still frustrated. But last night, I guess I'm just getting a lot better at realizing that one or two bad days really doesn't mean a whole lot in the big scheme of things. Q. Just a moment ago, you were talking about wanting to win Majors now. Do you put more pressure on yourself to do so? Do you find it's harder now? Do you have an appreciation -- more of an appreciation for what you did knowing how hard they are to win? GEOFF OGILVY: Maybe. I think maybe the aspects of it that make me try too hard. I think we've all suffered from that. I'm sure if you asked Phil five years ago or six years ago before, he would have said he'd done that too because you want to win them so bad. It's counterintuitive to not try hard. So you just -- I try not to treat it any different from the normal week. With an eye on -- it's a little bit more important than a normal week, I think. When I'm out there, from the 1st tee on, I try to think this is just golf. Hit the ball down the fairway and get onto the green. But before the tournament, I pay more attention to how to play the golf course. To me, that's the ideal way to prep for a Major. DOUG MILNE: Could you just go through and give us some holes and so forth. GEOFF OGILVY: 1st hole, much more docile hole today. I hit 3 wood with an 8 iron stiff, a foot and a half maybe and made birdie. The first couple days -- I drove a 5 iron Thursday. The 1st hole isn't a very nice hold when it's like that. 3, I got really lucky. I pulled the 3 wood off the tee, and it actually went left of the water. So that was the big lucky break of the day. It was right next to the water and hit it on the green, and I made about a 20-footer. I mean, the creek's only so wide. So it wasn't freakishly lucky, but it was a pretty bad tee shot. And made birdie. 7, drive a 3 wood in the front bunker. Two really good shots. Driver 9 and a carry. Really simple birdie shot from the outside to the front of the bunker from about three feet maybe. 9, 3 wood, 9 iron. Again, pretty stiff like a foot and a half maybe. Nice shot. 11, driver in the right rough, which is pretty standard procedure on the hole because you don't want to hit left. Laid it up with a 4 iron. It was a reasonable line. Out to about three feet. It's a pin we haven't used for a few years, the front of the green. Has a very scary looking pin because it appears like you're just going to spin it straight off the green, but you're not. It was nice to make birdie. Lots of birdies. There might be a few others. Nice birdie. 13, driver on the fairway. 9 iron to about 20 feet in front of the hole. Made a nice putt. 14 with a 4 iron and a sand iron to six feet maybe. 15 was driving a 5 wood just off the left edge of the green and chipped it down about five feet. 18 was 5 wood onto the fairway, 6 iron on the front bunker and one bunker shot. End of FastScripts |
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