KEMPER OPEN

June 6, 1998

Stuart Appleby

STUART APPLEBY: Well, the wind was strong today. Probably the trickiest part here is the pace of speed, you know. From 5 to 15 miles an hour is committing to the direction it's coming from because the trees are so tall. It tends -- you tend to feel struck down. In reality, you've got to accept that it's not and that's just hard. Because when you feel a shot behind, it's the play that's shot differently. So, I mean, I played -- I know I'm very impatient. I think today I really played well. Recovery putts more than birdie putts. I didn't really get many opportunities to make 15-, you know, 20-footers. Just recovery after recovery that helped my round together, made a couple of bogeys to get me a couple under. So it was no real -- there was no real highs and lows. It was a tough day. Potentially stressful, I suppose, if I hadn't putted so well and made lots of those recoveries in the past. Just a tough day getting the wind right, probably. Unless you have a day out, you're not going to get five or six birdies unless you're playing exceptionally well. Because the course has changed. It's 69. I'm happy with that. That's probably on the better side of where it could be.

STUART APPLEBY: Oh, yeah. Okay, sorry. I had pretty good luck. It was lined good in respect to how it could have been, but it was in -- I don't know if it's a weed or what it is, but it's really strong, wiry stuff. And, basically, I said to Joe, I said I better try to land this at least halfway, get it flat. Not that scary, just the hard thing is getting used to hitting the ball down, getting a force that's deep. I hit the fringe and let it actually blow by. That was frustrating, because I was only three or four feet from keeping it on the green and having to putt out. But I'm at a good up-and-down.

STUART APPLEBY: Well, again, that's probably based on the weather, the conditions with the wind blowing. And based on, you know -- I mean, you don't even really have to make that many -- feel like you've made a mistake, and you can drop a shot when the wind blows, when you get a tunnelling effect. Depending on pins. I mean, if I hadn't putted well, I probably would have shot a handful of shots higher and not played that bad, maybe made a couple errors. So really putting kept me in the game. And there's a chance someone's gonna to slip up somewhere. Again, that could happen at any particular stage of the round, not just at the end.

STUART APPLEBY: Well, that's funny. Because not only is it '98 now, '96 was my first year on tour and I finished 130th on the list and made 160-something-thousand-dollars. It was a learning experience, playing the tour. And this year, financially, I've made more money. But I feel like I've played bad at times, like scored bad, but haven't played so bad. So it's nice to know that my rating of how my games go, it's gone up a little higher. I'm not -- the year's been good. I haven't played terrible; I've just scored terrible at times.

STUART APPLEBY: No. It would be different if I felt like I had no idea, like I couldn't hit, or I couldn't trust a shot. If I was in a real hole. But what was really was a problem was I wasn't maybe letting myself score the way I wanted to. Patience probably would make a difference. Maybe I was just forcing it a little bit. You know, I'm competitive, and I want to play well. Sometimes you can get in your own way. But there was no time where I felt like my game was in a hole. It was just a matter of helping myself out a little bit with a bit of belief in what I could do in my game, what I practice for. So if you don't get results, then you can throw back and say, what am I doing wrong? That's where everyone with that handicap has that problem.

STUART APPLEBY: Well, I don't -- I'm trying to remember back. Honda was my only other tournament this year, so I haven't had a lot of -- I don't know what you call it, contention competitive stress as opposed to play-well stress. I don't know if there's a difference. Maybe there is. At the same time, maybe I think the contention competitive stress is actually pretty good, if you feel up to it. I felt very relaxed out there today. I felt like whatever was going to happen was going to happen. If I shot a bad score, if I shot a good score, I was going to keep a mental state that was pretty much mutual. Because the conditions were going to get on top of me if I get a little ahead of myself.

STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, started with a bogey on the first. Didn't do much wrong for me at best. Poor second shot, didn't have much of a lie. Sort of putted out, made bogey. I suppose get that early system in there. The whole day was based around getting the wind, right positioning, your club selection. I mean it all adds up. Yesterday, it was still. So you know you hit an 8-iron X amount of yardage. Next day it may be 8-iron 30 yards further; next day even 30 yards shorter. So, yeah, you're pretty much playing for pars, you're lucky to hit the greens and give yourself plenty of putts. But that's easier said than done.

STUART APPLEBY: It does. Because you don't -- if you play with it every day, you're used to it. I don't know what the reason was, if it was a grilling or just straight-out slow play or just a problem hole. We were going along pretty fine other than that. That did throw us both rhythm out -- out of everyone, except if you made birdie. I made a great putt, so that was nice. But then I made birdies coming in the last hand for the hole. So that was -- but that was -- we had to walk up that hill and see two groups sitting on the tee so that's a little disconcerting when you see that, trying to get something going.

STUART APPLEBY: If you tell me what I made my birdies with.

STUART APPLEBY: 11 was about 12 feet for birdie. Not a difficult putt, middle of the green. The -- what was the next one?

STUART APPLEBY: 14 was about 3 feet. Not that difficult. A little left-to-right putt.

STUART APPLEBY: That was short today, that was like lob wedge, sand wedge. I was only playing somewhere between 60 and 100 yards, I suppose. It was probably just an easy putt... 17, I hit about 8 feet for birdie, 8, 9 feet for birdie. That was it. But I made those of pars to save around that three foot to six foot (inaudible).

STUART APPLEBY: At one, yeah. Yeah, that was just a straight-up bogey, nothing fancy. In the rough, I left it on the fringe green, chipped it up and putted her in.

STUART APPLEBY: Par 5?

STUART APPLEBY: The green was playing down left to right. I hit it right, chipped it down the hill, had 100 -- had about 215 yards to the flag. Hit a 3-iron, I drew a little bit too much, but hit it sort of too good, and then a draw that you shot too good is going to make it kick. So I kicked it out of the flag. I had a pretty ordinary lie, but chipped it to about five feet. Made a good putt for par. So, yeah, in today's weather type, you sort of save your round more than create your round.

STUART APPLEBY: Actually, three shots difference. I mean --

STUART APPLEBY: No, no. You're not going to -- that's not many holes to pick up, four shots. If you had six or eight shots back, you say, okay, I need to do this and this. If I had an opportunity, take it. You know you're going to have to make a decision. I think, the position where I am now, I play the course as it is and look for something -- look for some solid drives, good iron shots, good concentration, plenty of patience. That's the stuff that will win a golf tournament. If I don't do a handful of those things, then I'll have to recover myself, like today.

STUART APPLEBY: Yeah. I think -- yeah, I think that's going to be better for me. Still conditions like this, though, you know, a guy shot 63. So other people with some eagles and birdies, if you create opportunities like that, then those people can run you down. I hope it's like this again tomorrow. I grew up in the wind. It doesn't bother me that much.

STUART APPLEBY: That I grew up in the wind? I got no say about what the wind does. It just blew all the time. That was Australia, probably the weirdest country in the world to play golf in. There's not a golf tournament I can remember, off the top of my head, where it was dead still for a couple of days.

STUART APPLEBY: Most people were on the coast, 200 miles. No one else --

STUART APPLEBY: No. Yeah, pretty much the coast is -- I mean everyone is within 50 to 100 miles. It's such a dry climate, you have a lot of desert wind top stuff. So it's quite comfortable for us to play in 20, 40 mile an hour winds.

STUART APPLEBY: Well, that would be interesting. I suppose, as a player, you don't always notice changes. If you hit the ball different, if you're hitting it high or low. I suppose the big difference was I had to get used to playing out of a lot of thick rough. That's how to make a golf course in America tough, make thick rough. That was something I wasn't used to. I was used to more Colonial-type conditions or Chicago, where we don't see thick rough. So getting used to playing out of thick rough took me probably months, six months, to get used to, to know what to do. Otherwise, the principles of the game stay the same. The greens were obviously a lot slower, softer and slower. So I could get used to that again. I don't want to say again. We have a lot of fast, hard conditions in Australia. There was a little bit of a difference. Getting used to players shooting such low scores. I was used to shooting par. Par was a good score. Par could be, within a handful, the lowest score of the day. I found out that meant absolutely nothing here because the course was set up easier, the conditions were easier. As I said, there was less wind. I had to get used to guys shooting 63s straight out of the box in the first handful of events, the NIKE TOUR. That was the adjustment in getting used to the rough. There was a settling down period. It took me maybe a year to get really comfortable with what I was going to play with every week.

STUART APPLEBY: We sort of played the same. There's nothing much happening really. You know, he's -- just no birdie rolls, we hit bad shots, we made some good putts, good two-putts. Chris and I are pretty much copycats at times. Chris played well. I suppose as well as I did in a sense that we just hung on. We did what we had to do. There was no highs and lows out there. I suppose Chris maybe created more opportunities than I did, but, again, you know, you don't call a 30-footer -- 30- or 40-foot putt an opportunity. You chip around the green at times. It was one of those days where we were both hanging on. We really couldn't pull out our best goal.