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CHARLES SCHWAB CUP CHAMPIONSHIPOctober 29, 2009Phil BlackmarSONOMA, CALIFORNIA PHIL STAMBAUGH: Phil, a nice birdie at the last two holes put you in at 6-under par, 66. No bogeys today. According to our records, you've gone now 55 straight holes without a bogey, and one bogey in your last 63 holes. PHIL BLACKMAR: Shhh. Don't tell the golf gods. I didn't say it. I didn't say it. PHIL STAMBAUGH: The good stuff just keeps happening for you after last week's dramatic victory at the AT&T Championship in San Antonio. Just sort of recap that a little bit and then talk about your round today. PHIL BLACKMAR: Well, last week was incredible, because I basically needed to finish top 5 in that tournament to finish in the top 50 on the Money List this year to have some status for next year. Or I had to finish in the top 5 of the Q- school in about a month. I had already determined that if I don't do one of those, then I was not gonna play anymore. You can't qualify on Monday and follow this tour around. It's just too hard. So I was fortunate enough to -- somebody jumped in my body last week, particularly on Sunday. I guess he's still there. I hope he stays for another three days. I don't know who he is. I haven't played very well at all year. I've had moments where I've hit the ball pretty good. I've putted poorly most of the year, and I've started putting better the last month or so. I played good at the Senior Players Championship in Baltimore. Finished seventh there and played fairly nicely and drove the really good there. Didn't hit my irons very good. Putted pretty good. Last week I didn't play well the first day, and I kind of found something in my swing that felt pretty good. I hit my irons really good the second day, put I drove it horribly. Then I went out on the range after -- or prior to the round on Sunday, and I worked on shortening -- doing the same thing I was doing Saturday, but shortening my backswing just a bit with my arms. My arm swing on my backswing with my driver. I drove it -- I hit the ball very nicely last Sunday. I played really well the whole day. So today was just kind of a continuation of that. I played quite well today. PHIL STAMBAUGH: You want to take us through your round? Bogey-free, six birdies. PHIL BLACKMAR: Yeah, I just parred the first five. Played them pretty good. One thing today I didn't do is play the par-5s very well. I only played them 1-under. I didn't birdie the second. I hit two nice shots just short of the green, and it got just into the rough. My pitch shot went by and didn't make the putt. I had a long two-putt for par on 3. I had a pretty good putt at it on 4 from about 12, 15 feet; I missed. Nice par on 5 on the rough. Then 6 I hit a really nice drive and a 9-iron in there about 12, 15 feet and made that. Just missed birdie on 7. Two-putted 7. 8, I was trying to hook my tee shot on the par-5 and get it running down the hill. I overhooked it into the left rough and had to layup. Hit about a nice 9-iron in there, oh, about 15 feet and missed that. Then 9, I hit a nice drive and a little flip wedge up the hill there about three or four feet and made that for birdie. 10, had a pretty good look at it there; missed it. 11, hit a real good tee shot and another really good wedge in there for about six feet and made that. 12, two really good shots; par. 13, two really good shots. Driver, 3-wood on the green, two-putt for birdie. PHIL STAMBAUGH: First putt was how far? PHIL BLACKMAR: Oh, about 20, 25 feet. Hit a pretty good putt. Broke a little bit too much. These greens are hard to read here, by the way. They tend to go towards the valley, towards Sonoma, but they don't all go that way. About the time you think they all go that way, you'll run into one that doesn't. 14, very nice rescue in there about 20 feet; just missed that putt. Par save on 15. I pulled my driver into the left rough, missed the green left, and hit a nice chip shot up there about a foot. 16, I tried to hit a hard drive and I pushed it out in the right rough. Actually, it was pretty lucky. Got on the other side of the deep stuff, and I tried to hit a 3-wood on kind of a bad lie and it ran down there short of the green. I had a pretty good look at a pitch shot, and hit it about six, eight feet. I missed that putt. Hit a good putt, but misread that one. It didn't go towards Sonoma. 17, I hit a very nice 9-iron in there two feet. 18 I tried to hit my tee shot really hard over the bunker and I pushed it a little bit. I thought I was gonna be in the rough, and somehow made it all the way to the fairway. So I had a perfect look at it with sand wedge. Almost holed that. Backed up to about six feet and I made that. This golf course, you're gonna have to -- over the four days, you're gonna have to hit a lot of fairways. The rough is very penal. And I think you're gonna have to hit quite a few greens. I think the rough around the greens is very, very lush and very thick. You can get some decent lies where you can hit some good shots, but you can get a lot of lies that I'm just not really sure. I tried yesterday in the Pro-Am. I had an opportunity to practice a little bit because I was in the last group, and I tried every technique that I know to find something consistent out of the thick stuff. I never really found anything that was really good, so it depends on the lie. But you need to hit a lot of greens, I think, around this course this week if you're gonna do really well. PHIL STAMBAUGH: Phil, before we go to questions, you mentioned that you found something in your swing last Saturday. Can you elaborate on that? PHIL BLACKMAR: It's a secret. (Laughing.) Tiger never tells anybody. He keeps it to himself. Um, I don't know really how to explain it. I'm trying to keep my arms more in front of me on my backswing and I'm trying to be more aggressive in my downswing down and into the ball. Because as tall as I am, if my let my arms -- when I change directions, if I let my arms do this -- however you want to describe this -- if I get up and under it, then I can't finish. I'm either gonna block it straight right or flip hook it, one or the other. So I'm trying to really kind of stay on top of the ball a little bit more. Trying to swing down and into it with my arms in front of me so I can use my entire body to swing through the ball. It's allowed me to be a little bit more athletic instead of standing there and trying to swing the arms. I feel like I'm playing a little bit more like an athlete and using my feet. The key for me is -- I have two main keys: No. 1, is not to let my backswing get too long with my arms. I can turn; that's okay. But don't let my arms outrun my turn. And then second, I need to stay grounded with my feet. If I pick up my left foot and spin it open, particularly with the driver, I'm gonna probably hit it left. So I've gotta stay pretty well-grounded with my feet. PHIL STAMBAUGH: Questions. Q. How much have you tinkered with your swing over the years because of your height? PHIL BLACKMAR: I have 3,433 things I've worked on, and I have several combinations of all those, and variations of those as well. Q. Like you said of, with your height, I would imagine that... PHIL BLACKMAR: I've always tinkered. I've never been, week and week out, a consistent ball-striker on the tour. I played 16 years on the regular tour, and never finished in the top 150 in driving accuracy. Not one time. I don't think -- I finished in the top 125 in greens in regulation once. When I hit it good I can hit it good, but it's hard for me at my size to maintain that week in and week out. So I'm constantly tinkering trying to find something. For me it like what I just said right now. I'm trying to find some way to synchronize my swing. When the pieces work together, then I can hot good shots. If I get out of sync, then I don't. People ask me a lot of times if it's harder if you're tall. Basically what I like to say, is if you're trying to work at being in sync, you want your hips and your torso and shoulders and arms to all kind of work together. Well, the more you have to bend over, then the more dissimilar the planes are that those things turn. Your hips are gonna turn where they're on a horizontal plane, and your shoulders are gonna turn almost on a vertical plane, and your arms are gonna be somewhere in between. So you're trying to sync out things that are syncing on different planes , which is why it's harder if you're tall to be consistent. Q. Jack Nicklas once said in a press room that it's on the driving range before a competitive round that he figures out or realizes what swing he brought to the golf course that day. Sounds like that might be the same process that you go through. PHIL BLACKMAR: I don't do it nearly as well as Jack did, though. I try to do it the same way, but not nearly as well as Jack. You know, Jack said that the biggest key for him he thinks to being a great competitor is to be able to make adjustments. That's what you're talking about right there. That's what I try to do. Sometimes I'm successful and sometimes I'm not. Right now it feels pretty good. It's been feeling better off and on for the last month or two. I've been getting closer and closer. I just haven't put three rounds together until here recently. Q. One of the baseball hitters said the ball looks nice and big and fat and he can hit it anywhere in the stadium. How does the golf ball look to you right now? PHIL BLACKMAR: Well, you know, I think the hardest thing about the golf is that the ball doesn't move. Baseball players, when they're hitting good, they see the ball. Well, easy for us to see it because it's on the tee. When I'm playing really well, what I feel, I feel my feet work well. I feel that my swing allows me to work on my feet nicely. If I'm out of sync, then I feel like my balance is off. That's what I feel. You know, my swing will look like I'm hitting it easier, when in fact it's just because it's together. I may be hitting it as hard or even harder, but because of the appearance it makes it look easier. Q. How often were you told growing up that it's hard to be a great golfer when you're so tall? PHIL BLACKMAR: Well, you know, I didn't get real tall until late. I gree three inches my senior year of high school, and three inches my first year of college. I was always pretty tall, but I just all of a sudden, you know -- in fact, my father was a Naval aviator, and I had designs on being a Naval aviator also. Was kind of trying to work on -- in high school working maybe getting an appointment Annapolis. Once I got to about 6'4", I said, you know, I've got no chance. I'm so grown I've got no chance to fly. That's when I decided not to do that anymore. But nobody ever told me that. I have my youngest son who's a pretty good baseball player. I keep getting on him to try to map out what he wants to do with his future and where he's going and all this kind of stuff. To be honest with you, when I was growing up, I just went day-to-day and I just played. It was a game. I played. I enjoyed competing. I didn't worry about it. Q. Did you play golf a lot as a kid? PHIL BLACKMAR: I played all the time. I played baseball and golf growing up. I played golf -- once I was a sophomore in high school, I went just to golf. I played golf at the University of Texas. Yeah, it was just always golf. Q. So what does it feel like it channel Tiger Woods right now? PHIL BLACKMAR: Yeah, Tiger's in his own league. I'm just trying to do what I can do. You know, if I can just stay consistent and put the ball in the fairways this week and keep the feel that I've got going with my short irons, I feel like I'm gonna have a pretty good week. For me this week, it's gonna come down to maintaining my swing, what I'm doing right now, for four days off the tee. That's gonna be the biggest thing. You know, last week you could hit -- you didn't have to hit that many drivers. You could hit a lot of 3-woods and rescues. There were five or six drivers you had to hit on that golf course, and that was all. This week, you're gonna hit driver on every par-4 and par-5. You better be hitting your driver well. Q. When you say you grew six inches in two years, you stopped then, or did you grow more after that? PHIL BLACKMAR: No, I ended up -- I've shrunk lately. I'm was 6'7" and 5/8s at my tallest. I'm about 6'7" now. I'm going the other way. Wish it would hurry up though. I can hit it really straight off my knees, so I'm just waiting until I get about that height so I can hit it straight. (Laughter.) Q. Over the course of your career, have you viewed your height been an advantage or hindrance? PHIL BLACKMAR: I've always viewed it as a hindrance in accuracy and an advantage in power. When I was younger I could hit it pretty hard. I don't anymore. My club head speed in college was 130, which was pretty good. Finished second in the national long driving one year and fifth another year. I could move it when I wanted to when I was young. So that was my advantage, was leverage. I could hit it out of deep rough. I could hit it hard and get it going out of there. But disadvantage was accuracy. Now that I'm 52, I still don't hit it that straight, but I'll hit it nearly as far. Tougher combo. I hit it straighter than I used to. Part of that is equipment. Q. (Question regarding swing complications.) PHIL BLACKMAR: I think it's a combination of both. I think most taller guys are moved into different sports as they're growing up. I also think that's why you don't see a lot of really good real tall golfers. There's been a few. Most of them have had really good short games. Archer comes to mind. He had a fantastic short game. George Bare a long time ago was a pretty good tall player. You got a lot of guys in that 6'3" range, maybe 6'4". Vijay and Ernie and Davis, a bunch of those guys. You just don't see many guys over 6'4". Q. Do you think that might change in the years ahead? PHIL BLACKMAR: Well, we'll see what -- we'll see how significant the groove change is. That's gonna be a big deal. If it -- I'm just kind of waiting to see how much it impacts the regular tour. Those guys have club head speed. I used to hit flyers back with the old grooves. Next year's grooves are not gonna be as small as the grooves we used to play with. I don't know what it's gonna do. I can tell you countless number times I've picked up a 7-iron trying to hit it 175 yards and hit it 240. Some of these that guys hit the ball hard on the regular tour are gonna do that a little bit. We'll see how much it impacts it. If the change that the USGA made was not significant enough or if the manufacturers find a way around it, then you might see some really big, tall, strong guys. On the other hand, if it makes a pretty good change, which I hope it does, it's gonna put a premium on hitting the ball in the fairway again. I'm telling you, you can put it 120 yards from the green in the rough if the greens are very firm, with those old grooves and you can't hit the green. The mentality on the regular tour right now is bomb it down there and if you've got a wedge to the green, you're okay. So we'll see. Q. I heard a story last week that you were so nervous you couldn't feel your hands. PHIL BLACKMAR: Yeah, they were shaking. I knew it because I could see it, but I couldn't feel it. It was pretty bizarre. I felt really very detached the last hole. I stood up there on the 18th tee, and it was like I knew the importance of the shot. I knew where it was and everything else. At the same time, I felt very detached from the moment. I felt like I needed to take some time and just stop and gather my thoughts and gather myself. Interesting in that point, is it seems time is actually going faster and you don't have the time to do that. You just basically get up and play. By the time I got on the green with that putt, I was extremely nervous and my hands were shaking. I really couldn't feel what they were doing. I just kind of got lined up and picked my spot and used my arms and shoulders a little bit more to make it go. I just hit it perfect. Q. Muscle memory. PHIL BLACKMAR: Pretty much, yeah. Just trust it and go. Q. Try to put it out of your mind and... PHIL BLACKMAR: No, no, no. To me, I don't understand the guys that try to avoid the importance of the shot. I mean, isn't that the point of why we're playing? To me, that's the whole point. I know some guys do that and need to play that way. But I enjoy looking at the leaderboard. That's why I wanted to play the tour, I wanted to see my name on the leaderboard and come down the stretch have that putt on the last hole to win. To me, that's -- tell me Tiger, when Tiger makes all those putts and shots and things he does on the last hole, tell me he doesn't know it's the last hole and the importance of it. He does. The great champions know that. Michael Jordan wanted the ball at the end of the game. He wanted to make that shot. So I disagree with some of the sports psychologists that teach avoid the moment. To me, the moment, if you can use the adrenaline from the moment, you can be better. So I knew the importance of it. I just was having a hard time feeling my hands. (Laughter.) Q. Were you that nervous because of what you said, you would've literally left the tour if you didn't? PHIL BLACKMAR: Well, yeah, that was part of it. Sure. I was nervous starting the round. As you get older, your nerves get worse. That's part of it. There's a few guys that still have good nerves, but that's just part of it. All you gotta do is go out and look at all the great champions that are here this week and look at how many different putting grips you're gonna see. That's because of nerves. I mean, Bobby Jones quit because he couldn't putt anymore. Look what happened to Arnold's putting as he got older. You can count -- great players, some of the best players, Sam Snead, I mean, that couldn't putt. Ben Hogan. It's just a natural thing, because you put so many pressure to yourself for all those years to compete, and at a certain point your nervous system says, Okay, timeout. That's enough. It's a natural thing. The guys on this tour that are successful find ways to deal with it. Q. When you were in high school. Why did you choose golf? PHIL BLACKMAR: I was really slow. I could hit it a long ways and hit for average, but I was really, really slow. I was telling Rosie last night I played first base, and we had this other kid, 6'3", blond headed, fast, left-hander. He could hit as good as me and run a lot faster. Who do you think is gonna play? This was high school. So I mean, that, part of it. Another part of it was I liked the individual aspect of golf where you don't have to rely on eight other guys on your team. Either way, it's all yours. I like that, too. Q. Was there a question of whether you would play basketball? PHIL BLACKMAR: I couldn't jump either. (Laughter.) Couldn't run and couldn't jump. End of FastScripts |
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