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ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 26, 2011

Brandt Snedeker

AVONDALE, LOUISIANA

DOUG MILNE: Brandt, we appreciate you stopping by for a few minutes here prior to the start of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Obviously quite a big week for you last week, ended successfully for you, not necessarily in regulation, but the way you wanted it to end. Just a few comments about last week and then a few comments about how excited you are to be here this week.
BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah, it's a been a whirlwind for 48 hours since I left on Sunday. It was a great week last week. I've had some time to sit back and reflect and realize how special Sunday was and the round of golf I played, and to be able to beat Luke in the playoff and everything that entitled was a huge confidence boost for me moving forward. I'm looking forward to this week now as fun as last week was and as much fun as I had on Sunday night and Monday. Spent time with the family; that was great.
But now I'm here in New Orleans and I want to win again this week. I love this golf course. The golf course is in great shape, great week, and love being here in New Orleans. It's fun.

Q. Did you see the final round coming?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: You know, to be honest with you I didn't see it coming that low. I thought I was -- I knew I was playing well, but I didn't think it was all clicking at the same time. Kind of funny how that works sometimes where you feel like you're playing well but you're not really clicking on all cylinders, and then just somehow Sunday morning something kind of clicked, and I hit the ball fantastic all day Sunday and made a lot of putts.
Those days happen once in a blue moon really out here where on a Sunday you put it all together and make a big charge like that, and that was exciting.

Q. On TV you looked real relaxed during the playoff. Were you in a comfort zone there?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: No, a duck on a pond. I was definitely, definitely super-nervous. Had a lot of thoughts going through my head, but the biggest thing for me was I drove the ball in the exact same spot all three times. I knew the exact number, the exact shoot I needed to hit, and that was very comforting. Knowing that and also knowing that this is what you want to do, if you want to win a golf tournament this is what you have to do, you have to step up and hit the right shots at the right time, and I was as confident as I'd ever been in the way I was hitting the ball that day and the way I felt. For some reason I just didn't think I was going to lose. I wasn't going to let myself lose. I literally thought the playoff might last nine holes because of the way Luke had be playing and us birdieing the first hole and a couple pars, but fortunately enough Luke made a mistake and I was able to capitalize on that.

Q. What's behind that confidence?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: Just getting healthy. I had some surgery in the off-season and got -- took about 12 weeks away from the game is what it took to get me healthy again. When I came back at the Bob Hope I was 100 percent healthy, my golf swing felt great, and I just really played great golf, you know, all year. I've missed some cuts, and people were calling me going, what's going on, why are you missing so many cuts, and I said, I can't explain it to you because I'm playing great and just getting some bad breaks here and there, just having one of those weeks where nothing goes right.
I broke through last week, and everybody is starting to realize now that, yeah, you're right, you are playing pretty good. So it's kind of nice.

Q. There was a lot of talk last week about rankings; Luke could have taken No. 1 if he had won. Is that something that you pay a lot of attention to, where you are, where other people are in the World Rankings?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: You definitely pay a little bit of attention to it because the TOUR is so geared to that right now. We're geared towards -- a lot of tournaments are based on World Ranking and so you pay attention to it. You want to be in that top 50 in the world, kind of a magic number, gets you in all the events. But at the end of the day, we all play to get -- my year is successful if I get to the FedEx Championship in Atlanta. That's where I want to get every year. That's how I base my year on.
World Ranking is great, it's a great number to have and it's cool to say you're the 38th best player in the world or whatever it is, but it also means nothing if you're not winning golf tournaments and playing good. I just didn't want to be the guy that got Luke to No. 1, more than anything else. That was a big motivating factor.

Q. What does this do for the way you view yourself?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: It gives you a huge boost of confidence. I know I've been playing well, but until you actually put it into practice and do it in a pressure situation, you don't know how your game is going to hold up. You can sit there and play that round, have an hour and 45 minutes to think about what was getting ready to happen, and then to go out there in a playoff and do it, it spoke a lot to how mentally tough I was and how ready I was for that situation, and that's exciting for me. That gives me a lot of confidence going forward, knowing that I didn't play perfect golf for 72 holes, yet I was still able to get out a win playing really, really great golf on the last day.
I look forward this week. I've never understood, a lot of guys take weeks off after they win, and I've never really understood that. They say they're tired, and I was like, well, you also just finished playing the best golf of your career and won last week. Why don't you keep going. We tend to play on runs. I'm not naive enough to realize that most golfers make their year in about six or eight weeks if they play 30 tournaments. Hopefully I get on a little six-week run here that's really special, so I'm looking forward to doing it.
DOUG MILNE: Brandt, we appreciate your time. Best of luck this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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