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ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 26, 2011

Jerry Kelly

AVONDALE, LOUISIANA

DOUG MILNE: Jerry, thanks for joining us for a few minutes before the start of the 2011 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Obviously a fond place in your heart, 2009 champion here. Just a couple of comments on your year - so far you've had a third-place finish already this year - and just how you're feeling as you're heading into the week back here where you won two years ago.
JERRY KELLY: Well, the game has been pretty good to me this year. I've had some good ball-striking weeks, had some good putting weeks. Only one week have I kind of put it together. It's been a search the last three years, but starting to feel a little more healthy, and hopefully that relates into my game.
DOUG MILNE: Have you had a chance to see the course yet? Everything we've heard from players is that it's in the best shape they've ever seen it.
JERRY KELLY: Yeah, I mean, the course is fantastic. I really hope we don't get too much rain tomorrow. That's going to be the big question, I guess, for the week. But it's going to clear out, so it should be better by Saturday and Sunday firming up again, even if we do get an inch or so. It's in great shape, the greens are rolling perfect, and it should be a great week.

Q. Being past champion, do you get the run of any restaurants?
JERRY KELLY: I keep on dropping the names. Yeah, I mean, there's some fantastic places here obviously, and I partake in as many as I possibly can. I'll be at John Besh's place tonight at the bar having a full meal there, and then Susan Spicer's place. Gonna hit Emeril's NoLa, and man, I don't know. I'll find another one. Paul Prudhomme is going to be out here and Drago is out here tomorrow, so I'm going to tear those up tomorrow.

Q. Being a former champion, what does it require to navigate this course, to not only play well but to have a chance to win the tournament?
JERRY KELLY: You've got to drive the ball in the fair here. The bunkers are fairly difficult. You know, they're fairly flat, but you always seem to be able to just drive them or just get right under the lip, so there's an awful lot like that. You always kind of want to burn the edges of them to make the holes shorter, so they come into play quite a bit. You get the ball in the fairway, you're able to control the ball coming into these greens. There's a lot of humps and valleys; you've got to know where your ball is landing to know where it's going to finish.

Q. A couple of players have told me the course is favoring long hitters, but you've won here, Jason won here. Is it fair to call it a bombers' course?
JERRY KELLY: You can call a lot of places these days bombers' courses. They're going to have shorter clubs in. It's just a few of them that you can't, Colonial, Harbour Town, things like that. Everywhere else, you can pretty much bomb. Now, it had better be a straight bombers' course. If they bomb it sideways they're not going to do well here this week. There's not a lot of room for error. It looks like there is, but there's not, and they'll find that out pretty quickly.

Q. Can you kind of go through some of the stuff you've had to overcome and the state of that?
JERRY KELLY: Torn bicep, dislocated rib, double hernia. I've battled groin injuries. Yeah, there's an awful lot of stuff that's been going on since I turned 40. Really I felt great at 40. It was 41, that was the point. I just started with some new trainers at Augusta, which probably wasn't the best week for me to start, but my body felt so bad in so many different places that I've got to get started and repairing some of the damage that I've done.
My body feels very loose right now. It feels healthy, but loose is not the way I play my best golf often. But we have to repair before I can start to strengthen again because I had really gone down a pretty bad path for at least three years now.

Q. Focusing on anything specific, strength training, flexibility, or what?
JERRY KELLY: It's kind of called a little sports chiro right now. We're trying to get the fascia unstuck from the muscles in all the spots that -- I've been trying to get strength from all the wrong areas because the main strength points are the ones that have been hurt. I've definitely put some bad patterns into play, and no matter how much I can envision my swing, which normally is enough, I still can't make the body do the correct motion because the strength and flexibility hasn't been there due to injury.
So it's been a struggle, and I've been working really hard the last three years through these things still playing, but it's time now. If I want to play 10, 15 more years, I've got to get to it now. I can't let it go any further.

Q. Are you happy with the timing of this tournament? It's like three weeks after the Masters. Is that a good time, because I guess there's an issue of how humid it's going to be, although we might have a front coming through and it might be less humid this week. Is that a concern of yours? Do you like the timing of this tournament now?
JERRY KELLY: Would you like to have it in August or July? I mean, I think we're pretty lucky right now. I don't think it's bad at all. I mean, it's going to be an oven here later in the year. You don't want any part of that. We can take 80 and humid, even 88 and humid. When you start getting up to those 100s and still humid, you're going to see guys dropping out there.
You know, we've had it cold here in the past. It's kind of a crap shoot what you're going to get if some of those northern fronts this late get down like the one that brought nine inches to Green Bay last week.
You know, I think it's a good date, I really do. You've got a pretty darned good field. You know, the more the talk gets out about the golf course, I think even more guys will show up.

Q. You mentioned the field. Which players other than let's say the three guys in the top 10 in the rankings should fans in New Orleans come out and watch and see them play?
JERRY KELLY: I'll tell you, that Jerry Kelly has a lot of fun out there. You can follow him, please.
You know, there's some great young players. Watney is one of them. I don't know if he's one of the ones in the top 10. Maybe he is. I'm not sure. But he will be eventually because he's a great player. There's so many of them out there now, you know, it's tough to put a finger on one or the other. But I like Nick's game, his attitude and the way he goes about it.
DOUG MILNE: Jerry, we appreciate you coming in. Best of luck this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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