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WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIPMay 5, 2011Bill HaasCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA MARK STEVENS: Bill Haas, got it to 8-under, in the lead after the first round. If you want to talk about your round and then we'll take some questions. BILL HAAS: Yeah, I got off to a nice start, hit a driver and a 3-wood at No. 10 and I knocked that one on in two, so two-putted for birdie there, which is nice because that's a tough -- it's hard to knock that one on in two. But hit a pretty good shot into 11, missed. 12 was probably one of the hardest holes out here, and I made 3 there. That kind of got me going, 2-under through 3. Made a nice save at 18, missed -- wasn't able to reach that green, left it short, chipped it up there about 10 feet and made that to keep my round going. Q. Just talk about coming back to Charlotte and doing so well today and what that means to you. BILL HAAS: Yeah, I look forward to this event every year, just Dad and Johnny Harris are pretty close. I've known him for a long time. Something about his event -- this course is a place that when I was growing up my dad would say, let's go play -- it would be a trip, let's go play Quail tomorrow. It was a bigger deal than just playing at home. I've got good feelings around this place -- I think everybody enjoys it, though, not just me being local. I always tell people I think I'm biased a little bit, but it's probably our best event outside of a major. Q. How many times would you say you've played Quail if you could estimate? BILL HAAS: Not that many. I say it like we came up a lot. Not a ton, but maybe a couple times a year when I was growing up, so this is maybe my sixth or seventh one as a TOUR player, so those rounds plus maybe 20 or 30 more, which is a little bit of a -- not an advantage, but I'm comfortable, I guess, out there. But the whole thing looks different with ropes and people and grandstands. Q. What do you remember about the year your dad and brother were here? I think you guys played was it the pro-am together? BILL HAAS: We played in the field. My brother Monday qualified and my dad was still playing out here. We did that one year, and the year before that we played with my dad and my uncle, his brother, played in this event. He qualified for it. And those years were fun. I wish we could do that every year. Hopefully one day my brother can get out here. He's been knocking on the door a little bit and wants to play out here pretty bad. So hopefully we can do that again. Q. What do you feel like you did well today, particularly well? BILL HAAS: Putted well, which leads into everything. It makes you more comfortable over your iron shots knowing that you can maybe miss this shot and your putter might save you because I just had the good feelings going with it. Kind of a different thought with my putter. I don't even know if I can tell you what it is, it's just different and it worked today. It's early, a lot of golf left to play, and I hope it can just work for some of that time. Q. Do you change your thought with your putter most of the time? BILL HAAS: Not most of the time. Even the last event I used a belly putter just to try it and I actually putted well with it. But I think I'm comfortable -- it was more just to scare my gamer into putting better. I don't know, I think it's just how you feel on these greens; if you get off to a good start and the hole starts looking bigger for you, it doesn't matter what you're putting with. Q. What model is your gamer? BILL HAAS: It's a Kombi, it's a Titleist Scotty Cameron, but it's called Kombi. Q. What made you go to a belly putter? BILL HAAS: Well, everybody is winning with it and playing well with it, so I just wanted to try it. I've used one before a couple times and liked it, liked the theory behind it. I thought these greens are a little more treacherous than Hilton Head which are almost completely flat. That was where I used it. And these greens are some of our most sloped greens. I just thought these greens it was more important to be have your speed more than necessarily perfect line, that stuff. Q. I don't think I've ever seen your dad use a belly putter, has he? BILL HAAS: No, he has used one, so he can't say he's got that one on me. Q. You shot a 62 earlier this year. What is it like to know when you're in that zone? BILL HAAS: A little bit, but you get to 5-under, it's easy to say let's get to 6, but you also don't want to go to 4, either. So part of you plays defensively. I was just lucky I got to 5 before I got to No. 5, which is a par-5, and then No. 7 is a par-5, which both if you hit good drives are reachable. So those you're thinking -- before the round starts those are holes you're thinking to make birdie on. That helped me, or the last five holes would have been 16, 17, 18 and a couple hard ones, and I might not have finished like I did. Q. Kind of on that same subject, this is your best round here competitively. Do you know if you've ever shot 66 here? BILL HAAS: Somebody said earlier my best here in the tournament was 68 before today. Q. I mean at any time playing here. You said probably 20 or 30 times -- BILL HAAS: Yeah, probably, yeah. Q. So it's not unfamiliar to you. Does it feel like it's sustainable throughout the week at this point? BILL HAAS: I hope so. 32-under would win. (Laughter.) Q. Growing up with your dad being a Tour professional, I'm curious now that you have five, six years out here, is it like what you thought it would be, different than you thought it would be? BILL HAAS: No, it's probably like -- it's not as sexy an answer, but it's probably like I thought it would be because I understood -- watching him, watching how good he was growing up, I knew how good everybody was out here. I knew there were guys, even including the Tigers and Phils that were playing and Davis Loves that I played with today, when I was growing up, I knew how good they were, so I kind of knew what that took. And even once I got out here, I knew just because I got here I still had a lot of work to do. That's how I've approached it as a pro is I just want to continue to get better. Obviously there can be a ceiling on that just because you run out of time, but I just -- that's kind of my goal every year is let's do something a little better than I did last year. So far so good, and that would mean I'd have to win this year again, but that's definitely my first goal. Q. Was there something specifically you pinpointed going into this year that you wanted to improve on? BILL HAAS: Just more consistent because I still missed like nine cuts last year. I missed a lot where I played okay, and I think players understand that you can play okay and still miss cuts, but like Matt Kuchar's year is something that I would love to do, to be able to have 13 top 10s, because even without winning that's a better year than my year last year in my opinion when I won twice. Just I think the best players out here are that consistent week in and week out, and that's kind of what I want to get to. MARK STEVENS: Thanks a lot. Good luck tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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