	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIP

May 7, 2011

Stewart Cink

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

DOUG MILNE: Stewart, I know it's late, so we'll get started. Great round today that culminated with a very nice par save there at 18, 4-under 68 today. Just a few comments on the round, 12-under, you're right in position for tomorrow. You commented that you haven't played that well as of late but you're obviously in great position, so you've got to be feeling good about where you are as you head into the final round tomorrow.
STEWART CINK: I do, I feel really good about what's been going on this week. It's been a scrappy kind of week. I didn't play that well Thursday, and then Friday the second round I played very, very well, made some nice putts, hit a lot of greens. I felt like I found a little bit of something.
And then today I went back to being scrappy again. But overall still, I think my bad shots are a little bit better than they have been being this year. That's a big part of it. You know, if you're going to miss a little bit, everybody is going to miss, but if you miss big, you really start to cost yourself on these difficult courses. I think that's been the big difference this week is that my misses haven't been quite as bad. I've managed them well, and I've gotten up-and-down a little bit here and there and made some good par saves.
DOUG MILNE: You said you found something this week. What was that something that you found?
STEWART CINK: Well, you know, I've been working with a new coach, Pat O'Brien, and some of the changes that we've been making, I think sometimes when you work on new stuff it sort of runs counter to, you kind of -- you cannibalize some of the stuff you do well in order to make a change, and I think sometimes you have to sort of take inventory and say, am I doing the right thing here.
This week was one of those weeks where I said, now, part of the strength of my golf swing has always been really good width and good power and acceleration through the ball, and I think I was sort of eating away at some of that by making some of the changes. So I went back to trying to create a lot of that width and being real big with my shoulder turn and just making a big person's swing because I'm a big person.
And the ball seemed to like it right away. I was hitting my irons farther. I haven't driven it very well, and my stats I'm sure are horrible on driving. When I hit good drives and when I just barely miss, my tee balls have been really long again, which has been something I've missed a little bit this year.
DOUG MILNE: Frank said afterwards, let's go out and let's hit ten balls on the range. You guys were pretty much very focused on your shots. Did you achieve the goal of going out there and finding what you were looking for?
STEWART CINK: Yeah, the main thing is I tend to get my weight out of my toes, and when you get your weight way out of the toes your body is always trying to make sure it's balanced really well, and it -- you kind of spend a lot of your energy trying to balance instead of making a good move at the ball, and you end up kind of locking yourself up down in your lower body.
So I was trying to get my weight more centralized on my feet and getting a good grip on the ground so I can free myself up to make a nice pivot at the ball because that's my main fault is a bad pivot. In technical terms, yeah, I went out there to try to get back to the good pivot with my weight on the center of my feet, and actually the drills I was doing out there, I was really trying to work it on my heels where I could almost feel my toes up in the air. That's why I stood on the umbrella, to feel my toes up in the air. Yeah, it seems to free my swing up a little bit. But every shot is like a new ballgame, and it's always a work in progress.

Q. Obviously you'd like to be in the lead going into the final round, but you're three back. You're going to be in the second-to-last group. Is that a great position to be in?
STEWART CINK: Yeah, it is. It's a really good position to be in. I mean, just being 12-under par through three rounds is a good position to be in from where I've been lately. It doesn't matter where everybody else is. I'm just glad to be under par, quite a bit under par. It feels good, and yeah, I have a chance to win tomorrow, but I'm not thinking about that. That's a macro thing for tomorrow. I'm going out there with the attitude of trying to attack every hole the best way I can attack it, and sometimes attacking means laying up and playing it the right way. But I'm just going to go out there hole by hole and try to do the best I can, and at the end if I'm in the mix I'll be pleased. I'm just pleased already it's been a good week.

Q. You're three shots back. Are you going to be looking for a number? You said you were going to be aggressive.
STEWART CINK: No, I won't be looking for a number. I just believe that the best way to play a golf course is to go out there and hit the shot you know to be right and stay calm in your decision making. If you execute the shots right and you make good decisions, then there is no reason to shoot for a certain number because you could blow that away. But if you try to go -- if you say I want to shoot 66 tomorrow and post a number, well, that's crazy, because what if it's real windy or what if it's perfect weather and everybody shoots 66, that's not going to help you a whole lot. I never thought that was a good idea to go out there and try to think of a number. I'm just going to go out there and try to do the best I can every hole and take it hole by hole by hole by hole.

Q. Twitter you did a raffle or you did a hunt, a scavenger hunt yesterday. Is that the first time you've done that?
STEWART CINK: I'll tell you what, I had fun doing the scavenger hunt. Last night I had some tickets in my locker that weren't being used, clubhouse tickets, so I put them in my pocket and I left thinking I'll either do some kind of a giveaway or something like that. I needed to stop at the ATM, so I thought, instead of giving away the tickets to somebody who answers a question, then I have to like look at my Twitter all night long, what I'll do is I'll just put the tickets up on the ATM machine on the top of the ATM machine and go back to the room and let everybody know that there's tickets waiting at this address on top of the ATM machine, and I did that. I put the address, and I actually fed bits of information out slowly.
First I just said there was going to be a scavenger hunt. Then I said the address. As soon as I said the address a bunch of people must have swarmed right to it because within just a couple minutes they were gone and there was a bunch of people responding that they got there just as people were taking pictures of the tickets and all that. So it was fun.

Q. Where was the ATM?
STEWART CINK: It was at a local bank.

Q. Any tie-in with them?
STEWART CINK: It was at a local bank. It used to be a sponsor of this tournament. They're all the same company. It was at a Wachovia. Actually we're Wells Fargo customers, and my bank is actually still called Wachovia where I live, but it was a Wachovia.

Q. Something you're going to do more often?
STEWART CINK: Yeah, I am. I think the next time I do it I want to make sure I put the tickets so I can see them from my hotel room so I can be there peeking -- watch the swarm. It was fun. I mean, I love doing stuff like that on Twitter because it creates a little bit of a bond between me and them, and I think the ones that live in Syracuse and Sacramento and Tokyo think it's pretty fun, even though they don't get a chance at the tickets.
It was fun, yeah. There'll be more.

Q. I'm assuming you've heard about the passing of Seve Ballesteros today. Thoughts on him, and as you look back on what he meant to golf and his career.
STEWART CINK: Well, yeah. Our paths did not cross very much because his golf game, or his career in the pro ranks really was finished before I came out here in the '90s. I think of Seve as sort of the world's Arnold Palmer because of his style and the ladies loved him, and his era to me, I perceived him to be sort of more of an Arnold Palmer era than a Greg Norman guy, but he really was a contemporary of Norman and Faldo. But I think of him as he did for the world what Arnold Palmer did for the United States because everybody wanted to see what Seve is going to do next and they knew he was going to hit some bad shots and he was going to hit some great recoveries, and he was always fighting until the very end, and that's a little bit like Palmer did it.
So yeah, I just -- I wore the ribbon today both for Alabama and for Seve, and mainly because I didn't really know Seve personally, just because of the respect for all the people out there that did love him and that loved his golf career, to show to them that I also -- I respect that, that they felt that way about Seve. It's a huge loss for the game.
But I think his death, considering the struggles that he's obviously been through with his health, I think his death, it serves as a -- it's appropriate now to really look back at Seve's career and really look at what he did, his body of work and really all appreciate that even more.
DOUG MILNE: Stewart, we appreciate your time as always, and best of luck tomorrow.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297