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BAY HILL INVITATIONAL PRESENTED BY MASTERCARD

March 15, 2005

Stuart Appleby

ORLANDO, FLORIDA

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Stuart, for joining us for a few minutes in the media center here at the Bay Hill Invitational.

You've had a great start to the year and you're close to home this week. You had a little success here last year. Why don't you talk about the golf course today and how it played; you had an opportunity to play in the Pro-Am already.

STUART APPLEBY: The course today was very, very soft. The rain we had yesterday afternoon was somewhere around about an inch in less than an hour. I only played nine holes yesterday afternoon on the back nine and the course was unplayable. Probably three or four of the holes on the back nine, which surprised me, the rain was that strong. We haven't had that much rain lately and the course just didn't handle it well at all, just really soaked it up. The greens are very soft this year and very slow, very unusual for this course, and I'm not sure whether the sun is actually going to get the speed into them, whether it's just the rain or it's a combination of rain and sun, but seems to be in pretty good shape. The fairways are very lush, very thick, but the greens are very receptive and pretty slow. So I would imagine if you can get the ball near the hole, they are going to be very aggressive.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Questions, please.

Q. What happened to you here on Sunday last year, was there any hangover the rest of the year for you at all?

STUART APPLEBY: No, no. I'm lucky to remember what hotel I stayed in last week. Move on to the next event and try and learn from your mistakes.

But, you know, I guess it would have been a nice fairy tale for me to go out and play well on Sunday and never have given Chad a chance, but that didn't happen. Really what it's about now is, you know, when you do have rounds where things just don't seem to go your own way, I guess it gets worse emotionally you start to feel really battered through the day and you need to understand and learn for that sort of stuff not to happen again.

Q. There seems to be a lot of guys that hit the ball a really long way with not much -- I guess they don't seem to have much regard for hitting it in the fairway, and yet it's not just guys like Vijay and Tiger. Do you think this is a conscious decision to try to hit it as far as possible?

STUART APPLEBY: No. I think the only way you really honestly can say that driving is not important is when you putt well. That's the only way driving becomes not important is when you can make a lot of putts.

If you don't putt very well, first thing a player will do, is, hey, I can't expect to make everything; I'm not putting it in the fairway. So yeah, you look at one tournament here or there and you go, well, he drove it pretty ordinary and made a lot of birdies but the putter was doing it. It's the putter that does the talking. That's the one that really puts a score on a card, but you are just never going to win a U.S. Open in the rough. You are going to win hardly many tournaments hitting it in the rough. You're going to have to putt unbelievably well. I know that one time in a around, as any of the players sitting there going, if I just smash it down here further is better, there's no way -- no one has that attitude.

The longer you are, the more inaccurate you are, that's just a fact of life. Short hitters are always straight hitters. Long hitters not very straight hitters. It's very hard to have a combination. The fact is, hitting out of the rough with a wedge in your hand is always better than hitting a 7-iron out of the fairway. Certainly no way we are sitting there blase thinking, "just smash it down there," no way. We're always trying to hit -- I guarantee you, he want to hit 14 fairways a round; doesn't happen, but we feel much more confident and dangerous from the fairway.

Q. Why hasn't an Australian won the Masters?

STUART APPLEBY: Don't really know. Greg had a few opportunities. We really haven't had that many opportunities. Don't really know. No obvious reasons. All of the Australians that have played in the event have all of the skills to win any tournament anywhere in the word. I don't really know. It's probably one of those things that it's just a matter of time.

I mean, if you try and have a reason why an Australian has not won the Masters, you could say no Australian could hit a draw, no Australian could a hit a fade or no Australian could make putt, there has to be a reason, but none of those are even close to plausible, so there's no real reason.

Q. Is that a tournament where there's an actual appetite for it back home? Is that a point of emphasis?

STUART APPLEBY: Not media-wise. Maybe that no Australian has won it is something the media might dwell on, but no, it's not any larger or smaller than any other major. It just happens that as Australians, we have done pretty well in British Opens, and predominately that's been won by one person.

It's one weird little event that we have not managed to get two or three wins out of yet.

Q. You've played extraordinarily well or not so well here; is there a key ingredient to this course that makes for a good day?

STUART APPLEBY: Par 3s are pretty long, so certainly you need to really get through the par 3s comfortably, you need to get through those. And you need to make a real advancement on to the par 5s. I think that's the secret, and there's a bunch of good, strong par 4s out there.

I think you have to beat up the par 5s and you have to play well on the part 3s; you have to play smart there. Some of those greens are quite small and you have to have the right yardage, so really having good length control with your irons is very important here.

Q. With so many guys living here in town, how does the home game affect your routine? Is it a positive? We all sort of assume it's a positive because you're not traveling, but is it?

STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, it's a positive whenever you're close to home and in your own comfort zone and your own routine and your own bed and it's only a small drive down the road. That's a good thing. Yeah, that's a positive thing.

But I still ultimately it boils down to how well your game is and how your game is and what sort of shape it's in; that's the biggest dictator of what your form is more so than sleeping in your same bed and being five minutes down the road. I don't mind driving 30 minutes if my game is good even if I'm staying in a crappy hotel.

Q. This has been characterized as the year of the superstars and all of the tournaments being won by guys high in the rankings, including you; does everybody seem to be coming more focused now?

STUART APPLEBY: We had years where it was all about first-time winners, and then years where it was about the old guys winning. Predominately if you want to look at averages over years, the best players are going to win most events. That's why they are the best. But yeah, you're going to have stories where there are stretches of Tiger not winning, Vijay winning all the time. There's all of these stories and Vijay winning like 12 times in two years, Tiger winning three times, and then Vijay is not even No. 1 in the world, how does that confuse you, no one can understand that.

You've got so many different stories to look at but is there one reason? No. The best players will predominately win two-thirds of the year's events, and the other players, potential top players, because that's where maybe they may be starting and growing. And you're going to have the other end, the guys that are retiring come out and win.

Q. When you win the first tournament of the year like you did, do you change your goals after that? Do you have to kind of reassess the year?

STUART APPLEBY: Don't know. I can't remember. The last two years, I've won, so I don't know what I was thinking the years before. (Laughter.)

Q. You just said you couldn't remember last week.

STUART APPLEBY: That's right.

Slightly. It's a bit like getting your exam, a test handed in a week early; you feel better about it and you feel it makes life a little easier from then onwards. It's very easy for a lot of players to climb past you if you don't get your game going. So there's a motivation of, I've got somewhere, I've got to keep going; or, hey, I haven't won and need to keep going. So it all balls down to being competitive and wanting to continuously play well for a first season, from week one to week whatever.

Q. Everybody is aware that Orlando has sort of become the home to so many PGA TOUR players. How much did Arnold Palmer have to do with that or do you think it would have evolved no matter where Arnie would have pitched his camp?

STUART APPLEBY: Actually, you're probably talking to the wrong guy because I didn't grow up in Florida and I know Florida is probably one of best climates anywhere in the world to play golf. And I came here because I have friends here, so it's a bit of following the leader for me.

Coincidence; this is not Arnold's hometown, this is not where he grew up. So this is sort of his home away from up north. Yeah, this was his bit of an adopted home.

So I don't really know. I don't believe he had made any difference to players moving here. I think Florida geographically is a very good place to commute in and out of for tournaments, probably 80 percent of the tournaments for the year; it doesn't get any better than here. And I guess no state tax is handy if you're in Tiger Woods' range, it's quite handy. (Laughter.)

You know, obviously, you can play all the time. There's plenty of places in the country right now where you don't even think about pulling a club out of the bag.

Q. You're Top-10 caliber player here in the world, what is it going to take do you think for your reputation to sort of jump up that next step to being one of the Top 5 or 6?

STUART APPLEBY: I think playing better, playing more consistent. That's really what makes the best players, they just play better more often. That's what I want to do, obviously winning more events or winning majors, and that sort of thing is going to escalate your play and your reputation and your confidence.

So I really think there's nothing major I have to do. It's just become a better player, and the beauty of the game now is being where I am right now, I have ten or 15 plus years, 20 years potentially or 15 years of perfecting that goal.

Q. How hungry do you feel for the majors? I mean, as you get deeper in your career, do you feel more like, "I really need to focus more with that?" Is there an urgency?

STUART APPLEBY: Probably as I get older. I've almost maybe stepped away from it a bit more because you just get more mature and understand that you have to sneak up on them and coax them and massage this friendship with each major every time you're playing well. The best players understand that all they can do is control what they are doing and play their game and prepare the best they can and go out and execute what they have been practicing. That's really what you do in any event, but that's particularly something that you've got to keep track as you head into events.

Q. This is nothing to do with this tournament, but the Tavistock thing around the corner, the second hole out there from all the way back, where does that rank among the harder par 3s you play?

STUART APPLEBY: Back tee, I think I played the other day, back tee and back pin is around 250 yards. You've got 24-gap to hit through a 75-yard mark, and you've got trees all the way continuing through that gap another 100 yards and you've got water on the right all the way and the green is probably not even 30 feet wide.

So, yeah, it's one of the hardest par 3s. I've hit more balls in the water there than I've hit on the green. It's a little bit too hard, unfortunately. If I had my way, I would have chain-sawed a few of those trees and cleaned it up a little bit and I think it would be more fairer but to the average player, that's just impossible. It's just as hard as 17 is as Sawgrass. There's just so much -- I hit a good shot there the other day, middle of the tee, middle flag, middle of the green hit a 6-iron really nice and hit the tree. It wasn't like a hook in there or anything. It's a little bit tight, but it might be that extra 20 yards on that hole made it the longest hole in Florida, longest course in Florida.

Q. Would you talk about how TOUR courses as a whole, the setup has changed, and are there more courses since you've been out here, more courses with more rough? Are the pins substantially closer, and do you think the courses are set up tougher now than when you first came out?

STUART APPLEBY: Unless they have stats that show the average fairway each tournament for the week for the year, I don't know. I don't know if the average has dropped in fairway widths or whether the grass is grown, I don't really know. My gut feeling is I don't see anything changing; I haven't seen anything changing. Maybe, maybe the rough is a little bit longer on certain tournaments, maybe some of the non-majors, the rough is up more than five-plus years ago. But really the greens haven't gotten any quicker, and pins I don't believe have gotten any tougher because gravity is still, what's the pin going to do based on weather conditions. Just the rough may be a little longer at a few more tournaments through the year, but not unfair.

Q. Of the top few players ranked, only Mickelson missed this week. Do you think it's an event -- you've always basically played here, do you think it's an advantage to the players to play this and prepare for Sawgrass or to miss it?

STUART APPLEBY: I mean, it would be nice to think that the conditions you have here would be replicated of what you're going to have at Sawgrass. That's a bit of a flip of the coin whether that happens.

There's some similarity to this place and Sawgrass and some that's not. But what's very similar is they are both very testing layouts and you need to -- this is good preparation. If this was a really easy golf course where 20-under par won, it would not be very good preparation. It's a good, tough golf course that emotionally gives you the feeling, a good feeling for the final weekend at Sawgrass.

I would say it would be good preparation. The only reason you wouldn't play is if it didn't fit into your preparation before the next tournament, being TPC, and that you maybe have played too many events the weeks before.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Stuart for joining us.

End of FastScripts.

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