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THE BARCLAYSAugust 29, 2009Paul GoydosJERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY LAURA HILL: Paul, thanks for coming in, basically the same intro as I just gave for Steve, it's a nice 68 to jump back into a tie for the lead. Feel good about your position obviously heading into the final round. PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, absolutely. If you told me on Thursday I wouldn't have to play and start Sunday tied for the lead, I wouldn't play. Played good. Another day where pretty solid tee-to-green and this is a tough golf course to go around without making a bogey. Made a couple but it's going to happen out here and you've just got to press on. But a good, solid day for the most part. Kept the ball in front of me and putted reasonably well. Q. Any particular secret to your success this week in terms of bats and balls and anything you're doing well or keeping to a minimum? PAUL GOYDOS: I wish I could answer that question. I'm still working out the answer why I played well for the last three months. I just think that I'm just feeling pretty comfortable with where my game is. I think I'm more knowledgeable about myself than I've ever been before. I think playing good, you can learn something about why you're playing well and the things that you're doing. I think that in working with a guy named Jamie Mulligan who works with Mallinger and John Merrick, and also a little bit with Pat Burke, their style is more to teach you to learn about yourself. This is what you do when you're playing well and this is what you do when you're not playing well, as opposed to do this and do that. Which I like. I don't like being told what to do. I just think I'm learning a little bit more about myself and my game and I think that in the long run hopefully it will lead to better golf. Q. You and Steve are like near the top of the stats in putting, Tiger was talking about how the greens are difficult to read; what's been the key to you being so good on the greens this week? PAUL GOYDOS: I've made a couple of long-ish putts but I've been good inside 15 feet, the double breakers you get and I've tried to stay a little more patient with anything of length there. The putt I had on 18 I was just trying to get it around the hole and I've been very good at that and I think there's a level of patience that comes with that. You don't feel like you need to make birdies and that's part of the reason I can be more patient over a 35-footer that breaks twice is that I've made a lot of 10-footers for birdies and I know there's no sense of urgency in a sense over those putts. And the other thing is when you have greens that are this undulating, you are not going to get fooled on where it's going to break that much. There's lot a lot of subtlety. Yes, they are double-breaking, but you know, they are two elephants you're looking at. It's not hard to kind of -- you kind of have to do some calculations on speed in your head and stuff but the reality is you should have a pretty good idea starting the line and just because they are so severe. That make sense? Q. Curious how you have seen it for four days? PAUL GOYDOS: Obviously for me it's held up for quite a while, again I think the thing that has really held has been the field staff, the field staff has done a good job. And with the rain, and you have to make up for the fact the ball is bouncing and the field staff has done good job. Once they come here, and they come back here, they will have a better idea what works and doesn't work. The first time out, it is difficult for the players but it's also difficult for the staff trying to set it up because they don't have a good feel about how things are going to play. I think they are probably erring on the side of caution more than anything else which I give them credit and I think is a good thing. I don't know how many people are under par but it's not tons, only 25 or 30. I think the golf course is standing up quite well as a test of golf. Q. I know you've been out here long enough that you don't have to worry about any other guys, but with Tiger on your back, do you find yourself looking over your shoulder tomorrow? PAUL GOYDOS: First of all, he's going to be in front of me, not behind me. (Laughter) So I'll be looking straight ahead. I think that this is a golf course that can yield, obviously, although you can shoot 65 or 64 -- the field staff in a sense will dictate that ability to shoot that score. But if the golf course is set up like it's been for the first three days, the level of difficulty, someone at four or three or two could shoot 7- or 8-under par. It wouldn't be a big surprise. Q. What are you anticipating from the field staff tomorrow? PAUL GOYDOS: The weather is supposed to be a little better. I think that their big deal tomorrow will be if there's going to be any wind. You know, you don't want to have a 500-yard par 4 playing into the wind or whatnot. But I would imagine we are going to have similar -- they have had different holes set up, shortened and today 15 was pretty short, 17 was up a little bit. I think today, actually the forecast, I think maybe they were more scared of the weather today than yesterday. Q. Tiger said you played ladies tees today. PAUL GOYDOS: Well, I don't know exactly where the ladies play from on this golf course. I think it was probably just a little over 7,000. I think that's a function of -- I think there is a level that the weather report wasn't very good. They set the golf course up probably at 8 or 9 o'clock this morning with a weather report that wasn't very good. I think their ultimate goal is to make sure that we have a nice Sunday finish on television tomorrow. Q. I think both your victories, Bay Hill and Waialae, was a very bunched leaderboard like this; what's the trick to playing on Sunday when there's a lot of possibilities? PAUL GOYDOS: Well, I don't have tons of experience in that. I've played a lot on Sundays at 8:00 in the morning. (Laughter). Yeah, I think Bay Hill, both my wins I was in third place second-to-last group, I don't know how that worked out but I guess you've just got to go out and play. Again this is a golf course that in a sense that like in a major a bad swing can make a pretty good number and you have to make sure you're careful and accept what this golf course gives you. No. 7 today, I've got 230 that sloped pretty severely and I didn't make a great swing and got myself in trouble and made a bogey. You have to be careful to take what this golf course gives you each day. And the way they have kind of moved the tees around on different holes, we are going to have kind of take that as it comes tomorrow. I don't know what to expect tomorrow. We may play the tips for all I know. That would change everything, play the tips. Wouldn't need irons. (Laughter). Q. You had a couple of chances to win what, do you think your mind-set will be tomorrow, with next week and the week after, and do you think there will be a different kind of feeling? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know that next week -- I think there's definitely a little -- how many opportunities do you get? I don't think that my attitude, there is no tomorrow. And I'm saying that tomorrow. (Laughter). I'm just going to go out; I've played well. I think what you take from that is that basically at valuer oh my game held up for 70 holes. At Memphis, I played pretty good and Brian Gay went bonkers. Marino could go out and shoot 7-under, 8-under; the golf course is playing hard, what are you going to do. And I played reasonably well at Hartford, especially down the stretch and Kenny Perry just put a clinic on how to win a golf tournament from the first hole right on through. But I think my game held up reasonably well and I think that hopefully we'll use that to say, hey, your game is good enough and your golf game is capable enough to win. Essentially done it three times but it's hard to do out here, or at least I'm finding out; before I didn't even know. (Laughter). Q. You've gone through a lot of the successes you've had this year; would you consider this the best season of your career? PAUL GOYDOS: Well, the season is not over but so far it's heading in that direction. I'm a firm believer that my best season on TOUR was probably '96 when I won and my second best season when I won was probably 2007 when I won again. I think you're out here to win and not accumulate top finishes or whatever and I'm going to measure success of a year by winning and I'd rather have one win and no Top-10s rather than ten Top-10s and no wins. I think we measure ourselves by how many numbers there are in that victory column. Mine is two, modest. But at the end of the day that's how we are going to measure ourselves, at least that's how I'm going to measure myself. Q. What do you attribute this year's -- PAUL GOYDOS: Again, goes back to I know my strengths and my weaknesses better. I'm better at -- having a better understanding of why I am successful makes it easier to repeat what I'm trying to do, I guess because I'm not as -- again, I like the direction my game is going, and I understand it better than I ever have before. Maybe I've learned more about the game in the last few years starting with Pat Burke and working now with Jamie, two of the smartest guys in the game. I've just learned a lot the last few years. Q. It wasn't one of your wins but you hung in pretty good at THE PLAYERS Championship last year, too. PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, I played very well. That was a really tough day there. I played very well. I've said a number of times, I was 5-under standing on the fourth tee and I was thinking, if I finished under par I would have a chance to win let alone shoot even par from that point and not win. I think you really -- Sergio played awfully well to win that golf tournament in my opinion. And Jeff Quinney, he was really right there, too, to the last hole. Q. What do you take out of that? PAUL GOYDOS: Again my game is good enough to get it done but it's just a matter of getting it done. Those are two different things. I know it's good enough but now you have the other part of that which is to go out and do it. Q. What do you hear from Hawaii, and you told us on Thursday, it will look great on TV? PAUL GOYDOS: I have my watch. Thankfully I've been playing well and I've been on TV. I do usually do watch it on TV on Saturday afternoon. My daughter hasn't left yet. My daughter, I have to call her, her flight leaves in about an hour. I think the weather is hurting obviously but I think tomorrow is supposed to be nice, I'm assuming, or sunny even, and I think it's going to be a wonderful show. That wonderful gas ball is going to show up. I think this is going to show really well on television and hopefully we can give something for them to watch, too. Q. Did today feel like two little duels? PAUL GOYDOS: I had never played with Webb. I may have talked to him a couple of times before today. I was just going out playing. It's Saturday. We are just kind of trying to get as low as we can in a sense without doing anything stupid. The tournament is not going to be one today for the most part and it's just going to be a day where you go out and it's the day where you just kind of dig in and kind of keep moving forward. I'm very pleased with the way I played today. Again, those types of things might happen late in the day on Sunday and it doesn't happen with me; I don't know if it's ever happened with me. Once you see a tournament break, the Bridgestone -- what's it called -- with Padraig and Tiger, that kind of attitude. Saturday and almost invariably on Sunday, there's so many good players, it's tough to key in on one player; you're going to have to keep the field. Q. Just wondering, it's taken five-plus hours every day, is it just the difficulty of the golf course and reading the greens? PAUL GOYDOS: I think obviously putting the ball in hand today slows things down. That's another whatever it is. Today I think there's 78 players in one wave; the previous two days we only had maybe low 60 players in each wave. So today the fact that it played longer was not a big surprise. I think tomorrow, twosomes, may spread it out a bit, every ten minutes. I don't know how they are going to do it. I'm sure tomorrow will be much more what we are used to on a Sunday. But I'm of the ilk that, hey, I think going two tees like today is probably a little fairer. If the weather is fine all day it doesn't matter but the reality is on a Saturday, you know, everybody is still kind of in the tournament and if you have a guy who is in the morning and plays a lot easier in the afternoon, to me that seems like a fair way of doing it, split tees. But I think television kind of likes those twosomes. Q. Would winning this trump the first two; is that stating the obvious? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know. We'll find out tomorrow. Hopefully. You know, winning Arnold's event is a pretty big deal to me. I love Hawaii, that course, one of my favorite places we go, one of the first places I ever played on TOUR. I think the Playoffs, the TOUR, we are on to something here with this Playoff thing. I think they are going to get it right this year, if not this year, and I think down the road these events are going to be maybe just a little more important than a regular TOUR event. It's the top 120, you can't get a better field on the PGA TOUR. LAURA HILL: Thanks, Paul. End of FastScripts |
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