WGC NEC INVITATIONAL

August 24, 2001

Stuart Appleby

STUART APPLEBY: Second hole, par 5, lipped out with a chip off the green for birdie. Third hole was a -- just made a 15-footer off the pin-high left just off -- barely off the green by no more than a foot for birdie. Then 4, dropped a shot there. Had a 30-footer for par. Hit poor par drive, poor third shot. So dropped a shot there. Poor tee shot there on the par 3. Next par 4 was good drive, good iron. Made a 12-footer left-to-right downhill fast. Par 3, 2-putt par 3 from about 40 feet. 8 was good drive, good iron to about eight feet and made that for birdie. 9 was poor tee shot. Pulled it left in the rough. Hit a great second shot short. 10 was a little blockage right in the first cut. Hit a wedge, probably about 25 feet behind the hole 2-putt. 11 was par 3. Made about a 12-footer there pin-high right with about a 7-iron. Next hole, long par 4, good drive, good iron, 2-putt from about 30 feet. Next was a -- probably made my biggest putt of the day there, out of the right rough. Hit a sand wedge to about 40 feet and made that. At the most, maybe 35. Next was a long par 3. Hit a long 2-putt from about 40 feet. Par 5 hit a bad tee shot, hit it left and took an unplayable. Knocked it into the fairway. Hit a sand wedge over the back and chipped and putted for 6. 17, hit it in the right rough, right first cut of rough and hit a 9-iron to about a foot. 18, pulled my second shot long left about 15 yards past the flag and hit a lob-wedge sort of into the bank up into the hole. End of story.

STUART APPLEBY: I probably had eight feet there. Eight, ten feet tops.

STUART APPLEBY: It was always a good round. I guess finishing at bogey on 16, a really easy par 5 -- I mean, easy; worst you make there is 5. Making 17, 18 made the day just a bit sweeter, definitely. I mean, 18 was just a bonus, really because it was -- me making par there was probably not even 50/50, really.

STUART APPLEBY: I don't know why. It's a good course. It's never really hard, like in firmness, which I would like to see that. I think it would play a lot tougher, but I guess it's just timing, nothing else. It's nothing to do with the course.

STUART APPLEBY: If you're not playing well at this time of year, when this tournament turns up, you don't really play well. There's no real reason. I certainly think my game suits the course, I guess.

STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, I did have a good start last week in Atlanta. I'm playing more rounds where I feel better and it's just a matter of whittling out the stuff that's not working and then going with the stuff that works.

STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, I don't think it's going to change. The only way it's going to change if the humidity drops probably 20 percent and the wind picks up 10, 15 mile an hour; that's the only way you're going to get the course dry. Humidity helps evaporate some water, but you get a 10-mile-an-hour breeze and that makes a huge difference.

STUART APPLEBY: Well, I mean, you can say confidence, you've got to get confidence from somewhere. You've got to be able to find something in your practice routine that -- when you're practicing on the putting green that really is solid and you can repeat. I just concentrated on hitting my stroke to work a bit more efficiently and clear a few things out of the closet and then basically just putt from there and not get -- not -- seemed to be going backwards yesterday. Just seemed to be getting worse and worse because my confidence was really just a mess and I could not seem to hit a decent putt. So I had to really pull the plug out and start again and focus on the stuff that makes it work. I hit a couple putts yesterday, and it's just a feeling that you get. It was nice. But you won't have four days like I putted today. You might have -- a few couple times a year, you might have a few tournaments, hole a couple bomb putts, I holed a couple nice ones, too. Basically, that's the type of stuff you are looking for on a regular basis, somewhat regular, at least two or three rounds out of four.

STUART APPLEBY: They are sort of scattered throughout the year. The majors are obviously No. 1. Sawgrass, certainly, TPC is certainly the fifth major and probably the World Golf Championships are right in behind that, also with THE TOUR Championship being the final primo event of the year. Majors, TPC, is highest in the players mind of getting all of best players together and the world events are right in behind that. The Match Play, this one, obviously -- everyone wants to beat the best and know that the best turned up.

STUART APPLEBY: You're right. That's a good point. It's less players and it's probably the elitest event for getting the cream of the elitest -- elite sound like a weird word, but elite being the primo players, you've got the -- what, ten plus on the European Tour -- 12. Then you've got the previous Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup teams. So, it's a very pick of the crop of players that have played good now in Europe and players who played good before. It's a different format. I guess it's like a way for spectators to see all the current best team format, teamed players playing together in one place. Pretty cool idea. Maybe it's sort of a perk of playing in those teams.

STUART APPLEBY: That's damned if you do, damned if you don't. You can to and fro on those. World Golf Championships, you've got huge media attention worldwide, best players from the Cups playing, huge prize money, all that sort of fancy stuff that makes it look big -- big and juicy. And you've got traditionally great quality field, great course, good history, great winners; more history than this tournament's got. So take your pick; I've got to be honest, if I was coming down the stretch and I had to 2-putt the last, I would take either one of them.

STUART APPLEBY: To Seattle?

STUART APPLEBY: What's the deal next year, World Rankings, is it?

STUART APPLEBY: I like 40 players. (Laughter.)

STUART APPLEBY: That means there's more people to beat. I'd rather have it quieter. But it's a world event, you've got to use that word, "World" very broadly and pull more people in. You haven't really call it the Ryder Cup/Presidents Cup/Whoever Is Playing Well in Europe Tournament.

STUART APPLEBY: No. Just like the sun rises in the morning and sets in the afternoon. Nothing new for us. If you think it's new, Bernie, you'd better go and get another job. You've been in the woods too long.

STUART APPLEBY: What do you expect? I mean, the guy plays bad last week and I think David Toms said -- and he got beat only by a couple dozen people, maybe three dozen people at the most and played terrible. So he's World No. 1 by a mile because the reason is he doesn't -- his bad days are, by the rest of the world's standards, pretty good because his assets are just -- his depth of quality of play is so large that it makes it very difficult for players playing their best to beat him when he's playing his best, and he's proven that because he's won a lot of tournaments, convincingly. One of them, needing to shoot low scores; and that's why his World Ranking average per tournament is 650 points or whatever it is, 1,000 points a tournament. I've never seen Greg Norman, was leading the World Rankings for many, many seemed like decades almost and his average per tournament was not even close to this. So a pretty convincing No. 1.

STUART APPLEBY: Well, I guess simulating golf, if you look at the grass roots, he's getting a lot more people, younger people, not so much older people in the game -- I guess the different -- you have different things going on. But certainly the stimulation for young kids and boys and girls, and the programs that he has developed and the charity things that he's been doing, the stuff the Tour is trying to use, again with him -- using him as a huge anchor, the stuff I see on TV he's just saturated through the media constantly. And it's a huge load he has to deal with, and he's certainly given us more exposure. How much money has he made difference to TV contracts and that, who knows. No one can possibly talk that; no one has a clue, but he's certainly had an impact, and we all thank him for that, very much. It's really hard to say. It really is. It's certainly an honor to play in the era that he's competing in and it will just be interesting now seeing that I'm going to play through all of his career as much as he is mine, to say that, you know, played against a guy that was the hottest player in the latter half of the 90s and see what happens into the early mart part of this century. So how many -- it's just an enjoyable ride for you guys. You've got a lot of things to write about. He's done everything. He's just been a great role model for junior golf. He has a huge amount of pressure on him and you couldn't think of a guy at that age, or any age to pull it off any better, really.

STUART APPLEBY: It was a pretty tough shot. It was a shot where to be fair, to knock it like to a distance where it was a tap-in, you would be lucky to hit one in five or one in ten; it would be a tap-in. To get up-and-down, you would be -- you would be happy with -- certainly be happy with one in three, one in five, to get up-and-down. So your odds were not in my favor, because that's the way golf works; you are always fighting the odds all the time. I had a good day, and I guess the run of fortune and some skill was on my side at the time and a good selection of club and poor selection on my caddy's behalf to put me there and a better selection for me to get back at the hole. It was probably a 15-yard shot and I made my caddy look good in the end. He basically admitted to me he made a mistake; so I covered for him and hit a good shot. And thankfully very much, I didn't have to putt it.

STUART APPLEBY: I hit an 8-iron long left and a lob-wedge back into the back end of the bank over the hill and far away.