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WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIP

May 4, 2011

Mark Wilson

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

MARK STEVENS: We'd like to welcome Mark Wilson, used to play at UNC just down the road. You're one of two multiple winners on TOUR this year and currently third in the FedExCup standings. Do you want to talk about your thoughts coming into this week and then we'll take some questions.
MARK WILSON: Yeah, I'm excited to be back in North Carolina for sure. I went to UNC from '93 to '97 and love this golf course. I think it's one of the best we play all year. The greens are slick and fairways are in great shape, good field, and just Quail Hollow is one of my favorites, so I'm really excited to be here.

Q. How do you feel your game sets up for this course?
MARK WILSON: I had a top 10 here last year, so I'm pulling on that. You know, it's a long course in sort of some senses, but it looks like we got all the rain out of the way last night, and course length isn't that much of an issue. It's just more about the greens; they get slicker and slicker every day and you've got to use your imagination around the greens, and that's my strong suit, I think, using my imagination to putt. So that's why I think I played well here last year and looking forward to this year.

Q. You've won a couple of times this year. Have you played more tournaments this year because of that, and if so, has that affected you physically, mentally?
MARK WILSON: I think it's panned out to about the same number but some different tournaments. I got to play the Masters for the first time and the Accenture Match Play for the first time. So it's about the same, maybe one more than normal, just because you can't skip a world golf event and majors and stuff like that.
I'm enjoying my schedule. A lot of firsts this year for me, a lot of new tournaments for me and new schedule. A lot of times I've had three-week breaks during the season because I wasn't in the majors, wouldn't play the week before, week after, so now my schedule is little different in the sense of I've found myself playing a tournament, taking a week off, playing a tournament, taking a week off. So that's a little adjustment. I'm excited for this little stretch. I've got three in a row that I'm gearing up for so I can kind of get into a little rhythm.

Q. Is there one particular part of your game that's really come around that's enabled you to have the success you've had this year?
MARK WILSON: I think just mentally just trusting my ability in the short game area. I think working on my short game has kind of really just helped me not even care how I hit the golf ball. It's important to keep it in front of you and everything, but in the end it's who makes the putts who wins the tournament. I feel like I don't really work that much on my long game anymore; I use all my time for the short time game, and that's the scoring shots, and I think my short game has really come through because of that.

Q. Can you just talk about your time at North Carolina? Did you get to play down here at all in college in this area and do you feel sort of an extra confidence when you're in the state?
MARK WILSON: Just enjoy coming back to the laid-back people here in North Carolina. That was a good lesson when I came here for college, just kind of sit back and enjoy life a little bit more than -- I don't know, I just always felt like I was a little uptight up there in Wisconsin and trying to get things done. It was because of the short golf season. We only had four months to get stuff done.
But never got to Charlotte, Quail Hollow to play, but we took many trips to Pinehurst. That was the thing we'd do on the weekends. We'd get up, and coach would make us tee times at maybe 1:00 in the afternoon and we would make it just in time for the tee time. It was an hour and 15 minutes to get to Pinehurst from Chapel Hill, and we would leave at 11:45 for that 1:00 tee time and just go right to the tee and have a fun game with about eight guys. So we did that numerous times, played all the Pinehurst courses. Never got to Charlotte to play but played Forest Oaks there. That was where the Greensboro tournament was. It was fun to play that site and going to watch the TOUR players play. We'd get done with classes and go down there and watch them and try to learn from the TOUR pros.
North Carolina was a great place to go to school. I'm happy I chose there.

Q. What's your favorite part about this golf course and what do you think is the most difficult aspect to it?
MARK WILSON: I think it's the greens. There are many different humps and bumps in them. You don't really ever have a straightforward putt, like okay, this is going to be one cup outside right and it's going to break. There's so many double and triple breakers. If you look at the 17th green, for instance, it's just got humps all over the place, and it seems in the wrong spots. So it's really hard to control your ball. Especially on 17 you're coming in a with a long iron or maybe even a hybrid club trying to hold that green.
So you see players still have -- you can hit very good golf shots and still find yourself with a 60-foot putt sidewinder that you've got to figure out, and it makes us look kind of silly sometimes. We get putts, 60-footers 15 feet from the hole or something and you're kind of scratching your head. That's what I enjoy. I mentioned before the imagination with putting out here, and I think it's one of the finest in the country for that.

Q. If they wanted to, how difficult could they make this golf course setting it up?
MARK WILSON: Well, yeah. I mean, you put the pins -- they put the pins in tough spots for us anyways, but they could make it even crazier if they wanted to. The chipping green I hear is -- I hit some shots over there the other day. They're testing out a Bermudagrass for the PGA Championship, and so I hit some over there. Just as an example, last year with the bentgrass it was easy to just stop the ball kind of right near the hole, maybe spin it back a little bit. Well, I couldn't get a ball to stop on that green within 20 feet of the hole. It would land short of the pin and roll out 30 feet. So they're planning on probably putting that kind of grass in because the PGA is going to the summer, and when they put that grass in and with these humps and bumps and then all of a sudden throwing rock-hard greens into it that won't hold, it's going to be a crazy challenge.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the last couple holes speaking of challenges?
MARK WILSON: Yeah, 16 is kind of just straightforward but it's a hard fairway to hit. There's some bushes kind of on the left and there's that bunker on the right, and it just kind of sets up weird. And then even if you do hit a good drive, you've got along iron into the green. It's just an awkward angle to it, and you can -- if the pin is on the left and you kind of bail a little to the right you can easily hit it over the green. There's just a lot going on.
And then 17, I'm always relieved and excited when I see the tee is up. They do it a couple times every year; maybe for two rounds you see there's that tee box down there where it ends up being maybe a 6-iron for me versus the other tee is usually a 3- or 4-iron. When I peer over from the 16th green and see that tee up, I'm excited, because that green, you see where the pin is, but with the way it goes away from you the second half of the green, it's just really hard to get the ball close.
And then 18 is just a fun tee shot right there in front of you. You see the water, it's elevated, and then if you bail out in the right bunker, in the trees, it's going to be hard to make a par, but it gives you an opportunity to try to recover from over there. I've been there before and I've tried to recover, and it leads to double or triple bogey. So it's just a fun finishing hole. Making pars around those holes the whole week, you're definitely picking up strokes on the field.

Q. Besides the skill aspect of golf, what do you feel is the most important trait to have for wanting to succeed in this great game?
MARK WILSON: I think it's definitely mental toughness. I think the more that you play this game, the skill level, especially on the PGA TOUR, is very similar, and then it's just how you can perform under pressure, trying to put that aside and just focus on what you've worked on all those years and just trusting your ability.

Q. When playing a tournament and you're behind, what do you do to keep yourself motivated to continue playing?
MARK WILSON: Well, it's easy on the PGA TOUR because all the finishes matter in terms of all the ways they rank us, World Ranking, every shot matters, FedExCup list, the Money List, getting into tournaments. Every shot really matters. You'll see me grinding down the stretch whether I'm going to finish 50th or in the top 10 because every shot matters completely.
I think it's a good time for people to come out and watch. You get a little bit more front row seat watching a couple guys go out early on a Sunday morning because it still matters a lot and they're going to be grinding and trying to shoot the best score they can.
MARK STEVENS: Thanks a lot, Mark. Good luck this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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