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U.S. BANK CHAMPIONSHIP IN MILWAUKEE

July 17, 2009

Greg Chalmers

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thank you for joining us. You followed up a nice round of 64 today with a 67 today, four birdies and one bogey. Maybe a few comments about trying to come out and put a good round together after such a good round yesterday; it's not always easy to do, but you're in the hunt and right now you're in the lead.
GREG CHALMERS: Yeah, you're right. I really felt like I rode the momentum from yesterday into today. I was really -- I probably didn't drive the ball particularly well, but once I got it back in play, I got up-and-down when I needed to. I made some great up-and-downs today. And when I got it in the fairway, I did particularly well from there.
My iron play has been nice if I get it in the fairway. It was a bit of a battle off the tee for me today but it was a working man's 3-under.

Q. You said you putted pretty well yesterday. Was it more the same today?
GREG CHALMERS: Yeah, I didn't hole any super-long putts today. But like yesterday, I holed some big putts. Today I made the ones you probably think you should make, but the last hole I missed about a 6-footer. I made most putts inside ten feet today, and so at this level, if you're going to lead a tournament or be competitive, you've got to make them.

Q. Talk about riding the momentum a little bit more, is it hard to carry momentum sometimes, or just depends event to event?
GREG CHALMERS: I think after you shoot a first good round, it's easier to get focused on your next day's work than it is if you shot 5-over, because you can get disinterested pretty quickly. You certainly, I find, I focus better and I work harder to save as many shots as I can.

Q. To have an afternoon and come back?
GREG CHALMERS: Oh, quickly the next day, you mean? Yeah, that probably helps. It just gives you less time to contemplate and you just roll straight into the next day. So that can work to your advantage sometimes.

Q. Did you come prepared for our British Open weather here?
GREG CHALMERS: I brought one sweater, a little surprised. I don't know if it's going to stay that way, but I'm hoping the wind keeps blowing, and over the weekend, I think this golf course really needs it. I think it makes it certainly a real challenge for us as players if the wind is blowing. If not, I think guys are going to shoot some low scores.

Q. Since you're back in the lead, can we go back a little bit in your career and just talk about your up-and-downs? You played on the TOUR for quite a while and then you did a Nationwide stint and went right back to the PGA and did two more Nationwide. Just the up and down; a lot of guys might have said, this has been fun but I don't want to keep grinding.
GREG CHALMERS: I never thought about it in that regard. I certainly felt like I had been on the PGA TOUR and I felt like I needed to -- I was good enough to get back out there. If I had been struggling on the Nationwide Tour to keep my card out there, I probably would have had some serious thoughts about my career or certainly looked at going to another tour somewhere else, in Europe or Japan. But I was fortunate I got my card back two of the three years I've been out there.
Yeah, a career is a long time. It's a roller coaster ride sometimes. I've had some good years out here on the PGA TOUR and I've had some really poor years. So you've got to keep trying to improve and ride the waves.

Q. Did you look up to anyone growing up that maybe played in Australia?
GREG CHALMERS: Probably Greg Norman. I started playing when I was 13 years old and he was -- at that point that was 1986, so it was right in the middle of his peak.
Yeah, probably Greg Norman.

Q. Met him?
GREG CHALMERS: Yeah, played with him several times. Played with him probably four or five times.
Kind of a strange game sometimes. I won the Australian Open in 1998 and he won his first Australian Open when I was one year old. It's a really weird game to me sometimes that Tiger Woods's next counterpart could be a 15-year-old kid right now, and in five to ten years' time, he could be playing against Tiger Woods. It's such longevity to the game sometimes. It's incredible. But yeah, I have met him and played with him a couple of times.

Q. Could you just talk a little bit about the decision to move and be based out of Texas, move from Australia to here and how that came about?
GREG CHALMERS: Oh, yeah, look, when you grow up in Australia and you want to play professional golf, you have to move somewhere. I played three years in Europe and my third year there, I did really well. I finished 21st on their Money List and I was exempt into the final stage over here. Went to that and finished third in 1998, and then brought my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, we were friends with a New Zealand friend of ours Phil Tataurangi, who plays on the Nationwide Tour this year. He said, Why don't you come and look at Dallas, it's a tax-free state. And easy as that. It's easy to travel.
It's a tough country to pick when you can live anywhere. You've got to stay out of the cold but then you don't want to pay too much tax and you want to travel nicely. We would all love to live in California, but you can't get around. So that's why we live in Dallas. There's a lot of us there now. There's about six or eight Australians that live there.

Q. Do you go party it up on the weekends? What kind of stuff do you do?
GREG CHALMERS: Surprisingly we don't see that much -- I see a lot of Stephen Leaney lives like two miles from me, around the corner, every now and then, but we are all kind of -- a couple of the guys are in the Top-50 in the world so they are playing a totally different schedule than the one I'm playing. It's surprising how little you see of each other. Not as much partying as you imagine, but when we do, it's good fun.

Q. Are you even scared of snakes?
GREG CHALMERS: You're really confused about the nickname, aren't you.

Q. We got that clear, it's just are you even --
GREG CHALMERS: No. The guys just picked up on it and run with it. There's nothing to do with snakes whatsoever. I don't charm snakes. I don't own any snakes. I've seen a load of snakes.

Q. But you're not scared of snakes, either?
GREG CHALMERS: Yeah, of course I am. (Laughter).
JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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