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MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 8, 2011

Geoff Ogilvy

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA

Q. Talk about your round today.
GEOFF OGILVY: I had a roughish start today. I had a nice day yesterday and a rough start, so it's never nice to double bogey a relatively birdieable hole on the 2nd. But after that I played pretty similar both days. I probably gave myself a few more makeable putts today, made a couple of really -- I birdied both par-5s on the back nine. I didn't do that yesterday. That was nice. My back nine was better today. But all in all, I played pretty similar.

Q. What do you think the winning score will be?
GEOFF OGILVY: It's hard to say around here. The guys who are playing well usually make lots of birdies and the guys who are not quite playing well really struggle. It's a field separator, this course. They were 12- or 13-under last year, and you're back at even par, and you're like, I'm playing all right and these guys are 13-under; it's hard to imagine. But when you're playing well, there's birdies. I don't think anybody has any idea what the winning score is going to be.

Q. Do you feel more relaxed this year?
GEOFF OGILVY: Probably, yeah. As I was saying, I'm happy with -- I'm getting the life balance worked out better, and I've worked out practice a little bit. I used to feel like practice was a bit counterproductive for me, but I feel like I've worked out how to go to the golf course and leave having achieved something, and that's a nice feeling, if that makes sense. I used to feel like I could go there and come away worse, which is common, I think, amongst pros. It's nice to know that if I just do a bit more practice, I might play a little bit better. That gives you a bit of peacefulness if that makes sense.

Q. (Inaudible.)
GEOFF OGILVY: It was probably pretty good. In times gone past I might have not -- definitely your first year or two you wouldn't take it like that. I think you'd have a harder time dealing with that. But yeah, you really only have one choice because if you overreact you are going to go bad, and you don't really want to go badly because you've been thinking about this probably since the PGA or even since the Masters last year. So you really don't want to waste it on a bit of self-indulgent carry-on.
I'm not saying I was perfectly peaceful and happy with the world walking down the third fairway, but I was better than I could have been.

Q. What's your experience playing with Rory and your impressions of his game?
GEOFF OGILVY: Any time I play with him he shoots about 8- or 9-under. He's one of the most impressive players in the world clearly. He seems to play with no fear. He's very aggressive, goes at the ball hard. There's not many pins he's afraid to shoot at. He's fun to play with because he always seems to be in a pretty cheerful mood. Even just watching him walk, he looks like he walks cheerfully. He's fun to play with and obviously a pretty class player. It seems like every major now he's playing well, so he's got a big future, I'm sure.

Q. Why was it so difficult for you last year, and when you talk about life balance, are you talking about too much time at home or not enough time, the new baby, all that?
GEOFF OGILVY: Well, we had three kids in four years starting four months after I won the U.S. Open, so there was a few changes there in four years. And it just takes a while to work out how to fit it all in, you know what I mean? And I wasn't playing very well last year, which was probably just one of those things. Golfers don't play very well sometimes, and that tends to wear you out a little bit more when you're not playing very well.
I played really poorly at the last three majors last year, really poorly, and they were good majors. You wanted to play well in those, those golf courses, and I didn't, and I had a bit of a think about it, really, I guess. Well, I was already thinking about it this point last year because I knew I wasn't playing that great, and it's always a work in progress, but maybe it takes two or three tournaments you really want to play well in and played really, really badly to make me work it out quicker.

Q. The Australian Masters set up your summer at home and then you didn't play until Hawai'i. How important were those weeks off?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, they're really important because by East Lake I was pretty over it. I played really well at Boston actually, the second playoff event we had. I was on the right track already. I knew I was -- by September I was playing pretty well. Yeah, I hardly touched one for six weeks, practiced for five or six days, played the Australian Masters okay, finished top ten, and then played great -- then two more weeks off, then played the Australian Open. It was really -- you can't underestimate time off for a professional golfer. It's just time in one place more than anything else.
It's hard to feel sorry for guys that just get to go and play golf every day for a living, but it's nice to not reach into a suitcase once in nine weeks for me in Melbourne. It was pretty good. And it was that more than no golf kind of thing. Anyone who's a traveler, when you spend nine weeks at home, all you want to do is go somewhere then because you're so used to going, so it gets you fired up to do it again. So it was important for sure.

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