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SAAB WALES OPENMay 31, 2011Bradley DredgeNEWPORT, WALES Q. Nice to be home? BRADLEY DREDGE: Very nice to be here obviously. So, yeah, at least the weather is going to be better this week obviously, now that we are in Wales rather than England, so looking forward to that. Q. Over the weekend you played well and maybe a little hiccup at the end. BRADLEY DREDGE: Disappointing Sunday but to be honest, I think I was more surprised than anybody to find myself in the situation that I was in going into the Sunday. And then, as I call it now, I got 'Wentworthed' on the Sunday. I think that's what I would call it around that course. I've always struggled around the course. It's the sort of place, it's a very tough course now, and I got away with some bad shots hit the previous round and didn't get away with them on the last day and even some good shots end up in sticky spots. And I had a really bad finish, bogeying 16 from middle of the fairway, double 17, par at the last. If I just birdied one of the last three, being 3-over, it wouldn't have been such a bad day, but 3-over on the last few then wasn't quite what I was looking for. Q. But now you're in home, your own bed, chill out, nice week in Wales. BRADLEY DREDGE: Exactly. I haven't played the course since last year, unfortunately. Be nice to see it. I am sure it will be in good condition and see how it goes. Q. Do you still target something like The Wales Open? Because it is your home event. BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, of course I do, definitely. Outside of the Majors, for the Welsh guys, it's certainly probably -- I know Wentworth was last week, and you look at the prize fund and you look at World Ranking points but we also look at this week, and why not a Welsh winner. I'm sure Rhys Davies Stephen Dodd, Jamie Donaldson, we are all looking forward to performing well this week. Q. You've come close of course, not necessarily on this course, but the old one, but you know what it's like to play on the final day with the Welsh crowd behind you. BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, I'm sure Rhys experienced it, as well. It's a big buzz, you have a lot of friends and family with you and you get an awful lot of support and much more so here than other tournaments. Q. The pressure is off this year, because every time it's been building for Ryder Cup, Ryder Cup, Ryder Cup; but actually you're on a golf course this time and doing your best against the course. BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, like other years, it's another tournament and another Wales Open that I want to do well in. There's always pressure in some ways and like you said, it's off in other ways. Just got to go out and try to play the best golf you can around this course. Q. How would you sum up your season so far, ten events, and not too many Top-10 finishes? BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, only one Top-10. Q. Dubai. BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah. So I've been finishing sort of around the 20th mark in quite a few tournaments. So it's been steady but nothing spectacular. I did feel as though a few weeks previous, it did feel as if I was starting to get a little more consistency again. Last week was better. So it's getting better and better, but we are still sort of -- as we are all after, better consistency. More consistency. Still struggling a bit with that really. Q. Not going to be trying anything different this week, something different to get that consistency, or is it literally keep on playing as you are and hope it comes off? BRADLEY DREDGE: Just keep doing the things I'm doing. Like I said it's gradually getting better and better. I don't really believe in trying to fix things on a Tuesday and Wednesday before a tournament. The time to have a go at some sort of fix would be weeks off and in the winter. Q. Have you tried to do anything differently? BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, just spot the same faults but going about the fix in a slightly different way so, pretty happy with that. I think the consistency comes now from getting a bit more used to playing on the golf course, just playing tournaments. I mean, last week, my short game let me down a little bit sometimes, so still working on the short game and keep that up to a good standard. Q. Graeme McDowell was talking about the short game at Wentworth last week, he didn't think the greens were -- the way he putted, he thought they were a little bit crusty, a bit new and he didn't have a very good putting sort of couple of days? BRADLEY DREDGE: I think compared to the old surfaces, there's quite a big difference, and you know, I putted well, certainly two out of the four rounds, so half the time I was pretty good. I think, yeah, to be honest, I thought they were pretty true. Not easiest to read sometimes and there are some big slopes on the greens, so you could get some good shots to the greens, get to the wrong side slightly and have a day of tough putts. You could just have days like that. But on the whole, I thought surfaces were pretty good, but everybody finds them different ways. Q. You said Jamie identified a few faults, are they fixable? BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, gotten better and better over the winter. I've been playing better this year, so better signs with the ball-striking. So just a matter of just keep working at it, and hopefully I'll see some better results. Q. Can you turn the expectation of obviously people would like to see a Welsh winner here, can you turn that into your favour? BRADLEY DREDGE: Of course, yeah. I think the expectation, it can help or hinder you sometimes. I've never really found it a problem. I just go out there and know that it's nice to have support and that expect me to do well, so I actually prefer that rather than playing somewhere else with a local guy. Q. Going head-to-head with Harrington in the Irish Open, did it feel as if you were playing against the whole nation. BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, I was a bit worried, if I do actually win the playoff, whether or not I was going to get out alive. (Laughter) There's a par 5 and we had to walk over like a bridge on to the green, and there's all of these people there and I'm thinking, oh, my God. Q. But that obviously might have helped him, having home support in that situation? BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, of course. Like I said, the support that you get, obviously there's more friends and family here, and it's nice to have that. Q. How many ticket requests do you get? BRADLEY DREDGE: I get one or two. I've got a lot of friends. Q. New friends? BRADLEY DREDGE: New friends; we played on the inner team match in 1981 (laughing). Q. The Ryder Cup, I know I personally have probably asked you about 700 times in the last five years, so is the target the 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor; is it almost kind of a nice relief that it's gone and The Ryder Cup isn't going to be back in Wales in the near future and you can concentrate on matters on the course rather than the hypothetical question? BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, I know what I mean. Personally I think I prefer to have The Ryder Cup here every year so it would give me a chance to come to Wales. Unfortunately it was probably going to be -- well, certainly for me, once in a career opportunity to play The Ryder Cup in Wales. It would have been great to have done it obviously. And personally, would I like to have another chance to do it. So I've got no problem with chatting about Ryder Cup or whatever else. It was a big thing. And Ryder Cup comes around now and again, and hopefully I can improve on what I'm doing and I'd love to think that I'm not too old, still motivated enough, and I'd like to keep thinking I can do it. Q. What are the targets for the season? You're talking about form just in numbers, definitely getting better. BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, it's a matter of, I haven't had many opportunities to get myself up there this year, and it's a good opportunity last week, especially with a matter of World Ranking points and points available. Shooting 78 wasn't what I was trying to do, obviously. So it's when I do get myself in good positions, try and play better on the weekends and try to get myself, I mean, really, to make Ryder Cup, you've got to be looking to get inside the Top-50 in the World Rankings and then you push on from there. I think that's the way I've got to look at it. Obviously I know I have to play well to get into the Top-50, but to get into the Ryder Cup, the next Ryder Cup, if I start the year off where I'm close to the Top-50 or inside it, it makes things a lot easier. Q. That's the sort of thing a lot of European golfers would say, but obviously you've been there and done it, and you know obviously that you have the faith in your ability that you can get there again and the benefits that comes with it, the major entry? BRADLEY DREDGE: You're playing a totally different schedule, and if you do play well then on that schedule, you're really accumulating points. But you still have to play very well to get there. But I do think the World Ranking system the way it is, you can actually climb the World Rankings quite quickly. So if I perform well over a period of a month, you can do it very quickly. Q. How did you set your schedule this year? Obviously last year you played more with The Ryder Cup in mind. Have you gone back to previous years, or are you still happy with it? BRADLEY DREDGE: I was pretty happy with it. The thing now is there's more tournaments on the European schedule. So in a way, I have to play more tournaments. I'm not playing big events or the WGC events and Majors, and so I have to play better in the smaller events that I play in. So at the end of the day, it's a matter of playing better. It's getting me in the place I want to be and push on from there. Q. Are you still based here and Spain? BRADLEY DREDGE: Yeah, wintertime is in Spain and then this time of year we are in Cardiff and go back and forth a little bit, depends where the tournaments are. Q. Do you still have the practise stuff in your garden in Wales? BRADLEY DREDGE: Got the green and little chipping bit, yeah, still there. Q. A number of us in the Welsh media make more than the players care about, sort of the status of the top dog in Welsh golf; are you enjoying the rise of Rhys' status or is a part thinking that you want to get back above? BRADLEY DREDGE: Rhys has played great over the last few years, and I know for me, to be honest, I don't really look at being Wales No. 1. I've got my personal goals; if Rhys was No. 10 in the world, I would be struggling to get there, so I've got my own goals that I'm striving towards. I've got a lot more golfers to try and get ahead of than rice to be honest. I'm very pleased, he's playing great golf, and hopefully he'll continue and he's the sort of guy I think can really push on and really keep going at the World Rankings. Q. Coming so close to winning around here, does that act as -- if you think you're in that position again, this Sunday, do you think that will actually be a helping to back to that experience? BRADLEY DREDGE: Definitely. The more times you get yourselves in position to win, the more hopefully you can learn from it the times you don't win, and the times do you win, hopefully you can learn from those situations and try to keep on applying and try to all improve yourself. I think that's one of the big things I've learned, I've been playing for a long time now, and I'm still always striving to get better, trying to learn. I would have thought by now, you would sort of know what you need to do, but that isn't the case. You always try to get better here, try to get better there, try different things here and I think that's part of the enjoyment of actually playing golf for me. Q. Mentioning the Irish Open, do you go back to that as probably the worst moment, because it could have been the best most of your career, because you played so beautifully that final day? BRADLEY DREDGE: To be honest with you, it was very good fun. Playing with Pádraig, we were both playing well, and you know, obviously it would have been great to have won. I was a bit disappointed, if I remember the recovery shot from the right-hand side of 18 very well, thought I hit quite a good shot. So it was disappointing to get down there and the ball is on the side of the hazard. That was frustrating because I felt as though I had really done the right things on the hole. And you know, it happens like that sometimes, and like I said it would have been nice to have won. But I don't really worry too much about it now. I did the best I could at the time. I wasn't trying to hit in the hazard and you always try to do the things that you think are right at the time. Q. Is it more of a kick in the guts the one here because it was birdie, birdie, birdie on the final day and it looked like you were actually going to do it. BRADLEY DREDGE: Playing on the last here, I thought I needed par to win and it dictated how I was going to hit that tee shot. But I think that was probably more disappointing to me than losing in Ireland because obviously winning in fronts of a home crowd, I felt as though I got myself in a great position. I birdied 17 and was feeling pretty good and felt as though I knew what I needed to do going into the last hole. Q. Have you been out this morning? BRADLEY DREDGE: No, I just arrived. Q. The feedback has been pretty good, have you seen any of the holes, the recovery work from the Ryder Cup? BRADLEY DREDGE: Somebody did mention it; that after Ryder Cup, the walking space, there was a little bit of a mess, and they have done a great job of tidying things up; I think Monty actually said. Q. Getting older, you have a comfortable lifestyle, the sort most people would like to have -- how much does your hunger keep you going? BRADLEY DREDGE: I think that's the biggest thing. I look at -- I have looked after myself physically through the years, so I've always had the thought that I'll stop playing when I want to stop, not when I'm forced to stop. And outside of that, outside of the physical aspect, the most important thing I think is motivation. I think it's quite easy to accumulate money and have a very nice lifestyle and think, oh, wow, I don't have to try so much. I think it's easy to do that. For me, I don't want to do that. I want to keep motivated, and I want to keep playing for as long as I can, as long as I want. So the biggest factor in that is motivation. Q. Because you don't always sort of -- the anger, the time you snapped your shaft on the 18th. BRADLEY DREDGE: That was a weak shaft. (Laughter). Q. If it was Monty, you know, people would just expect it, but not you, it was almost, gasps, when that happened, because you never seem to -- whether it's 78 or 68, you're always coming in and you talk to people. BRADLEY DREDGE: I always have the view, again, the only person's whose fault it is who shot 68 or 78 is me, so I have to take responsibility for whatever that is; and it's not, you know, a boy's fault if he wants an autograph on the last, or somebody walking around. I'm hard on myself. I try not to take it out on other people. Q. You understand why people like you, who don't sort of show any sort of emotion, so to speak, and why some people say, well, the anger -- BRADLEY DREDGE: Don't get me wrong, I know that I was talking to one of the other guys, we were playing one of the tournaments really, and going on about experimenting with microphones, mic'ing some of the players up, and I really would not fancy a microphone attached to me when I'm playing golf because it can get a little colourful sometimes. You try not to verbalise yourself so loud. Like I said, a five-year-old kid in the crowd who is looking on thinking, dad, this guy is doing what I want to do when I grow up; and then you're swearing or throwing golf clubs around. I've got a bit of a temper on the golf course like probably all of the other guys have. I try my best to curb it, and try to let the language not be too colourful. If it does get a little bit colourful, just keep it to yourself. That's the way to do it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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