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WACHOVIA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 6, 2004

Stuart Appleby

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

CHRIS REIMER: Stuart Appleby, bogey-free 66. Talk a little bit about the scores out there. The scores were pretty low today.

STUART APPLEBY: I didn't even look at the leaderboard today at all. Being the first round, I don't think it really proves anything. Not much wind blowing. I think with the wind gusting, if the wind can gust a little bit here, I think it can become a lot more difficult. The trees are so tall and then there are these patches of gaps that can really play with ball flight. It's not windy enough yet today. The greens are receptive. I think with a few more days in the high 80s and onward, we're going to see a tougher course. The course is not going to get any easier, it's not going to get any calmer, or get any softer. There's no rain forecast. Today was the day where I think you can shoot that sort of score. I don't see it getting any easier, though.

Q. You were one of the guys who went to the race track this week. Talk a little bit about that experience.

STUART APPLEBY: That was great, that was my second opportunity to get out on the race track. The Lowe's Motor Speedway was just a fantastic venue, Richard Petty's score was fantastic. We all had a great time. They let us run our maximum laps. I think we all could have gone another hour or more. It was a real honor. It's a nice perk being on the Tour, you get some of those freebies now and then. I can't wait for next year.

Q. (Inaudible)?

STUART APPLEBY: I described it out at the track, when you're sitting watching a race on TV, you can only sort of hear the cars by the volume, that's about it. When you're in a car, you couldn't yell someone's name across the passenger seat and not even -- you wouldn't hear it. You wouldn't know they were moving their lips. Your hear, your sense, your smell, your taste -- you can just taste the fumes, every single sensory, it's just turned on the to max. G-force around the corners. It's abuse of information that you're just not used to.

I certainly think that any of my other street cars don't compare at all. They're running cars, they're running 630 horse power as opposed to maybe 750 or more or 800 and we're running 40 seconds as opposed to 29, 30 for the big boys, so it's quite a gap between the real stuff. And we got to go out with Christian Fittitaldi for a couple of laps. It was night and day.

Q. (Inaudible)?

STUART APPLEBY: I had more fun on Tuesday. 600 is not boring, but they take four and a half to evolve. This is an abuse of everything for half an hour to an hour. We got to drive. Everyone loved it. There's no one who wouldn't love it.

Q. (Inaudible) after you took two weeks off after the Masters, and you didn't fire up last year, what was the difference.

STUART APPLEBY: I was a lot more lucky this week. No, I just didn't get any good luck last week. Every time I made a choice, a decision, it was the wrong one. I wasn't swinging it that great, although I was in my practicing at home. I just finished doing two days in my M3 race car two days prior, the weekend prior to leaving for New Orleans, and I was worried, coming out of the car I felt pretty sore and I actually hit it the best on the range for 2 or 3 days and then as the week got on when I was home practicing, I sort of lost that and I couldn't get that through the -- when I went to the tournament I never really got that.

I worked on a couple of things this week that was setup related in my golf swing, and that seemed to improve the quality of my shots a fair amount. It made me feel more comfortable about what I was doing, and today I just went out and relaxed and played the shots and played the course. It was a pretty tough course. You've just got to play every single shot like you see it and not get wrapped up, just relax.

Q. Are you back to the form now you had up until March?

STUART APPLEBY: I don't know. It's hard to say. Ask me that in a week and I'll tell you whether I held that, progressed with that or lost some of that feeling. My average for two rounds prior to the cut is always worse than my finishing two rounds. That's something I'd like to improve this year, pull that stroke average down. Excluding the pin differences and the difficulty of the course, you know, after four days it really shouldn't be too much of a difference between your rounds, but I show that I'm a better finisher than I am a better starter from the midway point. 6 under is a good start.

Q. What has been the single area that's made the biggest difference in your play the last few months?

STUART APPLEBY: I don't think there is any single area. When you're in the top 50 in the world, I don't think there is a single thing. Mostly someone might say listen, I've got huge issues mentally on the course and I need to do this and that. Most players need to address all things. When we're practicing, we're not trying to look for something new every time we go home and practice before we come to a tournament. There's nothing really new, it's getting more of the perfect putting stroke going or the feeling and the perfect chipping action, and the perfect hitting, the good position. It's all those things, you mix them all up and come out with a victory.

I don't think there's big steps at all left in any player that's in the top 50 in the world, there's just absolutely no way. It's like racing, it's down to a 10th of a second. We do four days of golf and most tournaments come down to one shot. It's like a massive long -- it's like a Paris decca race, it takes forever and now we're down to one shot. In racing it's down to a tenth of a second, it's similar because it's so close. There's not one single factor. Most areas, not every area, but most areas I've had to show attention to.

I think for me, getting my swing to repeat itself or getting my body to be consistently feeling the same gives my swing the ability to repeat and then obviously mentally being more patient, I guess, more confident. And having a good start, I'm able to not try to feel like pushing buttons or anything.

Q. Do you have a goal this year for finishing on the money list anywhere?

STUART APPLEBY: I don't remember if I set one directly at the start of this year. Top 10 is something I've never done. That's pretty good golf right there. Anyone who finishes in the Top 10 is good, and maybe next year do it again, like backing it up. I don't know. I think you want the distance, you want a long-term goal, a medium and a short. And the short-term is all about creating the good golf you've had in the immediate past. That sort of thing. Long term, I'm on the track for the Top 10, and I think I can accomplish that no problem. I won't say no problem, it's a lot of hard work, but that would be the first one, off the top of my head.

Q. You started off so great and leveled off a little bit, do you feel today is the start of maybe a little jump start for you?

STUART APPLEBY: You're always going to go through patches where your game is not going to be quite right. Vijay at the moment has all the right buttons being pushed and playing really well. He'll go through a quiet patch. Everyone does. That's the only way you actually learn how to monitor whether you're getting better or not. Every sport goes that way. Yes, I'd like to think this is a start of another little climb up. I really would, yes.

Q. To follow that, regarding Tiger who we talked about in terms of the lulls. He's in a little bit of a lull in terms of Majors and whatnot. A lot of the guys out here seem to think ever time he gets backed into a corner he responds and shows everyone he's not in a slump. Do you think he's ready to take off again?

STUART APPLEBY: I think the problem with golfers, and the problem with the media is that we look at a round sometimes too close. We look at a tournament too close. We look at a month too close. What you need to do is look at this guy's career over a five-year period, blocks of five years. You look at the first five years and you look at the next five years, and that's how you come up with an average. We have stats, but golf is something that's not played over a football career or something like that of two, three, four years, it's many blocks of five years. You can say, hey, the second five years this is what's different about the first five years, and that's how you can be fair to judge how a guy is progressing either stroke average, Majors average, whatever you want to do, but I think you need to look at the bigger picture. And ultimately, the picture is when he started and when he finished, that's what you can start having long conversations over the coffee table.

CHRIS REIMER: Let's go over your club selection on your birdies.

STUART APPLEBY: I don't remember this course. Someone asked me the other day, they said, tell me about Quail Hollow, tell me about the last three holes of Quail Hollow. I said Quail Hollow? I've never played it. Did you play Wachovia last year? Yes, I did. That's the course. Sorry. Actually, I did remember the last three holes.

CHRIS REIMER: You birdied 1.

STUART APPLEBY: I birdied one, I hit it to about 5 feet there.

2, nothing special there.

5, I bombed a drive around the corner there, tough fairway to hit, and I went up-and-down from a bunker about 30 yards, I guess, made about a --

Q. (Inaudible)?

STUART APPLEBY: You reckon. Where you there? Okay, the computer is never wrong.

Hit driver, 3-wood in the trap, sand wedge to 15.

10, par 5, knocked it on in two, 2-putted from about -- we'll call it 40, because that sounds better than 35, doesn't it.

15, long par 5, knocked it in the trap again, pretty easy trap shot to about 30 feet there.

16, was about a good 22 feet, straight uphill putt for birdie. 8-iron out of the right trap. The sand was pretty good to me today.

17, 12 feet, right to left with a 6-iron.

1 was a wedge out of the left rough.

CHRIS REIMER: Thanks a lot.

End of FastScripts.

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