	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

BUICK OPEN

August 2, 2009

Roland Thatcher

GRAND BLANC, MICHIGAN

Q. What a solid round. 64 in the final round at the Buick Open. You have a share of the lead. You're in the clubhouse. Tiger Woods still has some holes to play.
ROLAND THATCHER: Yeah. I think that's probably not going to be really worth waiting around for that sort of thing, but I am going to sit around here for another hour or two and watch him go out and make about five or six more birdies before I head to the airport to go on home.

Q. What a great round of golf, especially coming down the stretch. You get the long birdie putt at 16 and at 18. I mean you drive it any really gnarly lie over there on the left-hand side. Take us through the rest of that hole.
ROLAND THATCHER: 18th hole was playing pretty difficult today. Front came through. We had a pretty strong head wind, and first and foremost, you gotta hit the fairway there in order to play the hole the way you need to.
I hit a poor tee shot, ended up in a really nasty lie. Wasn't able to advance it as far as I would have liked and left myself another tough lie and a pitch up to the bunker. And tried to stay on the hole, and I was fortunate enough to knock in to 25 feet from the ridge there. That was a bonus. I certainly didn't play the hole well enough to be able to make par. So I'm pretty happy to walk away with 4.

Q. You're at 163 on the Money List. A Top 10 this week would mean a lot. A Top 5 would mean everything. Did that affect the way you played, the layup on 13 or the pitch shot on 18 or you were just trying to go as low as you could?
ROLAND THATCHER: No. The layup at 13 was, like I said, I didn't hit the tee shot well enough to get on the green. It wasn't a question. I just couldn't get there.
But yeah, there's a lot of things riding up on it. We are heading into the FedExCup Playoffs, and I certainly now put myself in position to find a way to make it into those. And coming off a medical extension with a little good luck today, I'll be out of it. I'll be fully exempt for the rest of the year, which would be a huge bonus for me to be able to not be worried about that anymore.

Q. Roland, great playing today. Congratulations. Talk about that par save on 18 and what this round means not only for your week here, but maybe for your career.
ROLAND THATCHER: Well, par save on 18 was pretty amazing. I didn't deserve a 4. I hit a poor tee shot, a poor second shot and a poor third shot and saved it with a 25-foot putt from the fringe. So among all the other really good holes I played today, I played a really awful hole there, but I walked out of it unscathed, got lucky.
And as far as for me and the career and everything else, this will be a good week for me. I'm going to be moving a little bit up the Money List. I've got a fighting chance to make the FedExCup Playoffs, and I'm on a medical extension from wrist surgery from last year; and this should have a chance to put me out of that category and no longer worry about that status and I can worry about this year and next year.

Q. How did you like the birdies that you had? I mean early on, you got some early, did that give you a little added advantage from the other golfers that are teeing off later?
ROLAND THATCHER: Yeah. I think any time you get a chance to tee off well before the leaders, you're going to get a golf course that's a little more playable than they're going to have. I was eight shots behind Tiger Woods, so I'm not looking at it in a way to go out and compete for the tournament. I'm still not looking at it like that. I know he's going to play a pretty good round this afternoon and make my round kind of moot, but I certainly had an easier golf course than they're going to have, and I got off to a good start and was able to keep it going.

Q. Are you going to stick around now just in case?
ROLAND THATCHER: I'll stick around just a little while, but I'm not going to be sitting around at the putting green working on anything. I'll go in there and get cleaned up and get ready to head to the airport and fly on home.

Q. What is the state of your game (Indiscernible)?
ROLAND THATCHER: Well, I feel very confident about it. Twice this week I shot 64. Just the first and third round I got 70 and 73, which prevented this week from being something really special. But I feel really good about the fact that I was able to put together those two rounds and hopefully build on it for the rest of the year.
I'm usually a late-season player, so this is coming into the stretch of the season where I tend to play a little bit better.

Q. What was the difference between those two rounds and the first and third rounds for you?
ROLAND THATCHER: The second and fourth rounds were obviously very good, but the first and third rounds should have been better than they were.
Yeah, they didn't have potential to be 8 or 9-under, but they certainly had potential to be 4 or 5. And I just didn't get the ball in the hole. I felt like I struck it cleanly yesterday, struck it cleanly the first day as well. Just wasn't able to overcome a couple bad situations, and that's the difference between winning the tournament and having a good finish.

Q. How serious was that wrist injury, the surgery? What happened and do you feel lucky to be playing?
ROLAND THATCHER: Yeah. I'm very fortunate. I had an arthroscopic procedure to clean out some tissue that was crammed into a place, right wrist, that was crammed into a place it shouldn't have been.
I injured it during the season last year and only played 15 minutes last year through May and had to shut it down. I didn't touch a club for eight months, which for someone in our situation where we play as often as we do, eight months is a long time to come back from.

Q. What was the surgery?
ROLAND THATCHER: I had an arthroscopic procedure to clean out -- no, actually it would have been August. I tried a couple Cortisone injections to take out the swelling. It didn't take, so the only other option was surgery, and that's a pretty scary thing when you look at it and realize I'm not really qualified to do anything else. So that was really scary.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297