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PUERTO RICO OPEN PRESENTED BY SEEPUERTORICO.COMMarch 12, 2011Troy MattesonRIO GRANDE, PUERTO RICO NELSON SILVERIO: We welcome Troy Matteson to the media center at the Puerto Rico Open presented by seepuertorico.com. Take us through your last hole there, three-putt at the end, and then go through your round. TROY MATTESON: Well, the last hole was one of those where you hit it and it just flies on you, and all of a sudden you've got 87 yards to the hole and you can't spin it. I've played here before. I know that location is pretty tough to spin it to, and obviously it ended up in the back bunker. There was a lot of sand underneath my ball, so I kind of had to play long and play a little conservative. And most of the times when I had a putt to get myself out of trouble, I just did. So it's not kind of -- it didn't happen like we drew it up, but it happened all right. During my round I birdied 2 and 4 and 7. Nothing out of the ordinary, and then on 8 I didn't hit such a great shot. I don't know how long my putt was. It was long, probably the longest one I made all year. And just trying to putt it close, and the next thing you know it falls over in the center. Got a little momentum, and then hit it in the water on 9 and kind of killed some momentum and get right back up on 10, which I was really proud to get in there and make another birdie after making that bad swing on 9. Then just played reasonably solid. I had one little hiccup on 12, but was able to recover. 14 I probably hit the best shot all day, hit it in there close and made a birdie. I played 14 pretty good, and 14's a tough hole. And birdied 15. A lot of guys like 15. It's a pretty good hole to hit two drivers and see if you get up by the green and see what you can do with it. Coming in I played a little conservative on 17. Even though they had the tee up, I felt like I could knock it to the green. I might get criticized a little bit for laying it up. But I hit my wedge right by the hole location. And then obviously 18. It was a pretty solid round except for a couple of hiccups. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: You know, I think it's an advantage, but I haven't won enough out here to not be a little nervous, and most guys would be nervous. And you know, tomorrow I'm just going to go out and try to do the same things I did the first couple days. I'm going to try to hit solid shots, give myself looks at birdie. There's so many birdies to be made out here, you know, three shots is nothing. You've gotta go out there and make birdies and try to shoot another low score. And I think that's why people like this golf course. There's a lot of birdie opportunities, couple of eagle opportunities. And we like coming to places where we can make birdies, and this is a really good place for us. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: Well, what I did was last year I used the standard putter and last four years I've just really struggled with my putting, and had a lot of days where I hit 15 greens and had 33 putts, and out here when you're putting with the best putters in the world, you need to get under that 30 mark more times than not. Especially if you're hitting 14, 15, 16 greens, you've got to find a way to get some rounds under 30 so you can shoot some of those rounds. They're down pretty far, but I've hit a lot of greens so that negates some of that, but there's no excuse to be that far down. So this year at Torrey Pines my agent and caddy got together and said, hey, why don't we just try something new. So we got a belly putter, and I've never really liked them because when you pick them up in the store, I think they're built for someone who's probably 5'8 to 5'10, and they're just a little short for me. Mine is little over 45 inches, so it's a lot longer than what you find in the store, and all of a sudden the ball's rolling straight. My speed's not an issue. Before, I just felt like I was lipping putts out. I was all over the hole, but I couldn't get them to go in. I just didn't feel like I could get a good decent roll. Now played Torrey Pines first week out, Top 10, made a bunch of putts on those greens, which is unusual, and I've just kind of stuck with it. So you know, I've gotta give a lot of credit to my caddy and my agent for cooking that one up and convincing me to do it. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: You know, when you've got a good round going and you make a couple of mistakes like I did on 18 and then you make that really good putt, and you almost feel like as it's on its way to the hole it's one of those putts that could stop short, but as the crowd yells, you just feel like it's going to get over the front of the hole. So you know, I think they helped me out there getting that ball to the hole, but it's always exciting when you're on the 18th hole and you make a putt and people cheer for you because a lot of us, there's a lot of days we play we don't get cheered at all when we play poorly, but it's really nice to do it in front of a bunch of people. And you know, the people down here are the best. They just root you on and they want to see you do well, and it's fun to have that happen on the last hole. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: I switched to Stack and Tilt 2009 at John Deere. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: Yeah. Like you know, I just ran into Mike Bennett one day playing, and Mike was playing and he hit the ball pretty nice, and I said, Mike, hey, what's the premise, what do you guys teach? He said, let me ask you a question. He said, is the start line of the ball affected by the face or the path? And I said the path. And some 60 or 70 percent of people get that incorrect. And I was one of them. So that kind of fried my noodle a little bit there for a couple of weeks, and I gave him a call and I said, hey, Mike, would you mind coming out and working with me. So they worked with me at John Deere, and next thing you know I'm hitting it really good by the end of the year and I win a tournament. Here I was down in the dumps, not even going to get my card and kind of ground through the changes and started to understand what they were saying, and lo and behold, it's become a lot easier. I still work hard at it and still have off days just like anybody does, but it's still based on liability to execute what they say. That's what golf is is being able to execute the right information. I'm getting the right information. I'm just now getting to where I'm executing it well again. So hopefully it'll stick with me for a good long while and then we'll get through the next little hump. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: We were actually playing at Avondale. My caddy and I decided to go play on a Wednesday. We weren't in the Pro Am and took a chance to get out there on a few holes and ran into him. So it was kind of lucky that I ended up running into him that way. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: You know, if you watch enough golf swings out here, what you'll see is you'll see a lot of Stack and Tilt in everyone's swing. There are two big differences. There are guys who shift back away from the target and there's guys who stay centered and turn. The guys that play well and shift back, by the time they get to the top of their back swing, they're back to center and their weight's on their left side. So other than a small shift there, most of the good players in the world are doing exactly what they're talking about. However, for years it was taught in the PGA books that you needed to shift one way, get back in turn, when in all actuality you don't have to do that. So they still get a lot of backlash to that. But it would be like rewriting the laws. When you go to someone and say, hey, we're going to rewrite everything you did in the last 30 or 40 years, there's going to be a lot of backlash to it. But I think these guys are onto something good and they've helped a lot of guys. And they don't teach everyone the same. That's probably the biggest misconception about them is they teach guys to be straw players. You look at a guy like J.J. Henry they teach him completely opposite. They teach him to straighten it out. So I think what you've got is there you've got a lot of naive people to the facts of what they do. They haven't read the stuff. They haven't worked with them, so you're not talking apples and apples. You're talking apples and oranges with what people know. So you know, I think as we go down the road, I think it'll become a little easier and people will begin to understand that there are really good components in there and they need to work on them. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: You know, for me, I have to do a better job of extending my arms through and making a long arc and having the club recock fast. If you do those two things, you'll hit it further, with less spin and a more predictable ball flight. When I first started working with them, I was a very short arc, my arms folded up on the front side of the swing, and I would completely come out of my tilt. So for me it's still straight arms and very little recock on the forward swing, and if I do those things, I'm going to hit it well. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: You know, my iron play's been pretty good, but I feel like it's getting really good. You know, from that standpoint, you know, I feel like if I drive it in the fairway, I feel like I'm going to have a very good day. And I've started to drive the ball further and more consistent. I've never been a guy to hit a lot of fairways, and I think as your driving distance goes up, it's hard to hit a lot of fairways. I don't know the stats on once you get above 290 how many guys hit and once you get above 300 how many guys hit. But I know I hit it further and more consistent now. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: Yeah. I think, you know, like I said, what they're doing goes really unnoticed, and for us, for their stable guys to go out and win and play well, that's always going to speak volumes. So you know, we go out and try and keep that, obviously. But on the other hand, you know, consistent play helps. You know, guys that consistently play well, I mean Charlie Wi's had how many good years, how many good tournaments in a row. You know, he would be the stereotypical guy that they have. But yeah, I mean obviously if I play well, you know, I'm going to do my best to promote it because I believe in it, and everybody that works with them believes in it. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: I like it here. I've been coming here since 1999. Played all the college events. You know, I like the golf course. I just like the people. I like the golf course. There's a lot of positives for me to come down here and play. I played Honda, but Honda is just a really hard golf course for me. Bay Hill is a really hard golf course for me, so I'm going to try to come to the ones got the best chance of playing well at, always enjoyed it down here. Q. (Indiscernible). TROY MATTESON: I'm going to say at that time you might have to look it up, but could be Lee Williams or Lee Williamson who played at Purdue. Williams. Could have been Lee. It might have just been by one shot because I think we were playing together that day, possibly. Maybe he was playing the group in front of me, but good player. I'm pretty sure he played at Purdue. I mean it's a long time ago now. It's almost a decade. But you'd have to look that one up. I'm sure it's in there somewhere, around 2002, I'm guessing. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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