Q. What is your mindset with this jammed leaderboard?
STUART APPLEBY: There's a bunch of people involved in winning this golf tournament with a realistic chance, a bunch of people. Someone could shoot a 10-under, come from nowhere. Usually on a Sunday, there might be 10 guys at the most available. I think you're talking about more here, plenty more. I am not going out on a limb by saying that it's pretty obvious. It will be a bit of a run to the homeward stretch. That's really what it is all about. That's what I will be looking forward to tomorrow.
TODD BUDNICK: Talk about the course today with the sun out now. Has it changed?
STUART APPLEBY: Got a little -- fairways have blued out a little bit. Greens haven't picked up any speed, basically pretty slow normal scheme of things. Fairways are firmer than what we normally see. Beautiful conditions, beautiful fairways, the rough a little lower than what we have seen. I think that sort of helped a little bit with my driving being a little crooked at times. I'd like to be up in the fairway stats a little bit. That's something I am going to hopefully iron out.
I like the way I am playing. I am relaxed out there. I like the way I am putting and everything else, I am hitting, obviously, a few greens, which I think most people are with the generosity that the green sizes are, and the pins aren't too hidden. It will be a slug fest, I think, tomorrow. It will be plenty of birdies being made by the top handful of guys.
Q. Are you comfortable playing that kind of golf?
STUART APPLEBY: Yeah. I am not -- today I wasn't really concerned about what my score was. I was just trying to hit one shot at a time, which is -- I think is the way I played good golf to think about what I am doing and just avoiding anybody else or outside influences. I know I can control myself and that's all I can worry about.
No. I wasn't looking at leaderboards, and I really wasn't concerned with what I was shooting really. Tomorrow you will have to play 18 quality holes or if you don't play 18 holes, you will have to concentrate for 18 holes. You will have to -- it is just too many guys in the running. You won't -- it's not very smart to turn yourself off at any time. You just got to stay on the ball and keep going. Go with the flow and feel comfortable and relaxed with what you are doing this week. That's all you could ever control.
Q. Even though you did have it under control, focusing on what you do, is there a feeling, like you said, it's a slug fest tomorrow?
STUART APPLEBY: Well, not a slug fest. We're not talking about 10 guys going to shoot 6-under or better I'd call that a slug fest. Some of the pro-am formats are a bit like that. I think there's going to be a handful of the portion of guys go out and shoot low numbers. Consistent with what they have shot so far this week although traditionally sometimes you don't see Sunday scores being as low because the pins get a little tougher, but there aren't too many really difficult pins out on this course. It's not like they've got an ace up their sleeves, the Tour. The greens are pretty receptive and pretty slow.
Again you've just got to do your own thing. There's no defense in golf, there's no -- there's no Match Play intimidation factor really. Got to do your own thing because guys like I did in my first round, come home eagle par, birdie, birdie, I picked up 4 shots in a handful of holes. That's sort of the stuff that can go on in the final stretches. Everybody will have their blinkers on and run.
Q. You have not won in a while. How frustrating is that for you?
STUART APPLEBY: I can't believe it's been that long. It doesn't feel like since '99. I mean, obviously I have hit a lot of golf balls between that time and now. I certainly feel like I want to win again and always have wanted to -- I guess ultimate goal for every player is to win every year on Tour. That's something I did early on; obviously I didn't do that by not winning in 2000. So it seems like forever, but at the same time I have got a lot of -- I guess a lot of good information I can look back on what I did and how I thought when I won those events. That's still pretty fresh in my mind. All of that basically comes from confidence.
Q. What did you do to get ready for a new course? What did you do because golfers are creatures of habits like a lot of people - what did you do to get ready?
STUART APPLEBY: Nothing unusual. I played a practice round Tuesday, pro-am Wednesday, so just two looks at the course. The course is straightforward. There's not many tricks to it at all. By 1st tee, there was no wind too which also made our decisions on what you were hitting off tees pretty easy. It's dry 99% of the time, so there's not a lot of -- when seven and a half thousand yards hard to think there would be too many iron holes off any tees. Nothing unusual. We don't play that many new courses in the season. I can't remember too many off the top of my head. If I wasn't playing Wednesday in the pro-am, I'd be out Monday. So like two looks at a course.
Q. Scale of one to 10 what do you give the degree of difficulty here this week?
STUART APPLEBY: I guess I'd call 10 really difficult course would be probably par or over par. I think some of the pro-am formats we play where you are talking about 20s and 30s under. You're probably talking in the twos and threes out of 10. This one would be -- I don't know what our Tour averages. Maybe that's an interesting stat to see what's the Tour average and see where do we fit from there. For a long golf course this plays a lot easier than when you look at it on paper. Because you are hitting it 330 yards consistently and you can run 4-irons from 225, you know, it plays probably mid-range 35 out of 10. There's a few more grades to get harder and a few more grades to get easier, I think.
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