BAY HILL INVITATIONAL

March 16, 2001

Paul Goydos

PAUL GOYDOS: Well, the conditions were fine. It was like yesterday. We're kind of getting used to it now, the wind blowing the same direction. So when you get a couple three days in a row, you start to ignore it. Let me see, my round, the first hole was a good start. I played good yesterday for the first time probably since here in '96. So it was good to get off to a good start. I drove it in the fairway and hit it six or seven feet from the hole and made that for birdie. Let's you know things are still kind of going the right direction. Made a couple of good pars on 2 and 3. The par 5, I hit driver, 3-wood ten paces short of the green and pitched it up about, I don't know, four feet and made that for birdie. 5, I got a little up-and-down for par. 6, the par -5, I hit driver, 5-wood and had 80 yards and hit it about eight feet and made that for birdie. 7, made a good par. 8 is playing tough. Good drive and 5-iron about 30 feet and made that. There's a trend here. I made that. I hit a perfect putt. It broke about four feet went right in the center. One of those luck putts. 9 and 10, good pars. 13, I hit driver and a 9-iron about a foot. Handled that one. Then I bogeyed 14 and 15. Just kind of didn't hit very good shots. 14, I missed about a 10-footer. And 15, I missed about a 25-footer. I hit in the left bunker. Didn't really have much. 16, I hit driver and I hit the cart path. It was going to the -- to go in the right rough and it angled toward the fairway. But Skip Kendall hit the same shot yesterday, kicked it in the fairway and got down in there. It was kind of borderline, go-for-it, but we didn't like the lie that much and we laid up and hit a wedge about 20 feet and made that, which was a good thing. 17, I actually made about a 10-footer for par to keep things going. And 18, I 2-putted from 30 feet to make par there. But I really putted well today. It started in the middle of the round yesterday. So, that really helps your score out a lot.

PAUL GOYDOS: I think it's a function of I've putted well here. I think I've got a lot of confidence. I've putted well here before. The key is playing well -- if you're putting well -- and if it's windy, you've got to be more conservative; 15 or 20 feet right or left of the hole, in middle of the green and you feel like you can make. The key is not let the elements bother you quite as much, as opposed to the opposite where if it's really windy, you feel like you're got going to get it close and that's hard to do in the wind. For me making putts is kind of like an antibiotic for the rest of my game. I start doing things better after it starts. And I don't worry if it's not. I struggled actually with my irons today and shot 4-under, just because it didn't bother me that I struggled with my irons today, because I knew if I got it up there somewhere I would have a chance of making it.

PAUL GOYDOS: Well, when you're putting bad, it's a virus. Hence, it will attack the rest of your game. And it works both ways. That's just for me. I would assume that's for everybody else, too. Once you start getting the flow of the putter, you know, you don't feel like you've got to hit three feet to make a birdie anymore.

PAUL GOYDOS: For me it goes back and forth. I struggled this year. But last year I putted pretty good, especially the second half of the year. You just do your work. I grew up in California and I've gotten to the point where I really like putting here on Florida in the Bermuda, and the greens this week are unbelievably good. I didn't putt particularly well last week, but the greens were phenomenally good. I watched a round on TV and they were making everything there. The surfaces in Florida this time of year are a lot more consistent than the surfaces on the West Coast.

PAUL GOYDOS: My wife bought me the cap, two or three years ago. Just a hat that I grabbed out before I left and that's what I'm wearing this year.

PAUL GOYDOS: No endorsement deal. It's just what I was born with, I guess.

PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, lucky. You've got to be careful what you wear around these guys. It will catch on you a little bit. I think there is a twist of irony with some of these people with me.

PAUL GOYDOS: The cart path is angled a little bit probably back towards the fairway. It is about two or three, four, five yards right of the fairway, but it's banked. It clinked and hit to the left. I watched Skip's do it yesterday and I had just bogeyed the last two hole and I watch this thing tail off into the rough, "This is nice." And if got a good bounce. Luck is a big part of. It just pure unadulterated luck.

PAUL GOYDOS: The hat. Absolutely. It's got to be something.

PAUL GOYDOS: I think so. Arnold respects the people, and I has his Champions Dinner Wednesday night, which is one of the great evenings you're going to have on TOUR, or I'm going to have on TOUR. I think this event is a players' event. He really treats the players very well. He's got the golf course almost always in immaculate condition. And I've had success here. I come here and the day just kind of brightens a little bit more than some of the other places I golf, but they are all great spots on TOUR, don't get me wrong. Just a little brighter here.

PAUL GOYDOS: Thankfully they had announced me as a champion on the tee, so that reminds them. It slipped everybody's mind. But, yeah, a little bit. I think the reporters who travel full time like you, if you just work at one event, you kind of remember the guys who played well each year more so than Gary and you and I who travel week to week. We get caught up in the fog a little bit, but this is a special week for the people at Bay Hill. I think they do remember more so than maybe the people in Atlanta that I won Bay Hill.

PAUL GOYDOS: A little bit. They ask me to grow it back. That seems to be the prevalent thing. You look back at things you do in your life, and, you know, I had not done squat on TOUR, walking up off the 18th green -- (inaudible) -- looked terrible. And, of course, that's the four-week period in my life that I win a golf tournament. That's just silly that something like that would happen.

PAUL GOYDOS: Four weeks. I think the first week I wore it was probably L.A. and then I took two weeks off and it got really thick and ugly for Bay Hill and THE PLAYERS, and that was about it. And I shaved it off just because it looked horrible.

PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, we took one -- they take one. That's the one downside. They put your portrait they take your picture like ten minutes when you walk off the course. Your hat is over here. You look like you just went ten rounds with Tyson. They don't want you to look good in a tie and a hat -- that would take an hour -- two hours. I told Arnold that when I come back to the Disney tournament, I'm going to take note. I'm not going to have that thing hanging on the wall.

PAUL GOYDOS: There's a deal over here where we register called the Wall of Champions, I guess.

PAUL GOYDOS: It's over by the locker room in that building. Kind of on the way to the pro shop. They did that immediately.

PAUL GOYDOS: I'm sure Arnold burned it. You'd have to ask him. That's what I would hope.

PAUL GOYDOS: You know, it was funny. I've been struggling putting all year, and the first hole I get up and hit two good shots and a 10-footer and 3-putted it. I'm like, "Oh, this is nice in the wind, downwind hole and you hit a good shot." Other than that, it was good. The keys to playing well in this weather is just hanging in there and knowing that you're going to have issues and things just went my way. I kept missing it in the right place; so a chip shot wasn't too bad. The round kind of fell into place more than I went out and beat the golf course or played better than anybody else. It was one of those in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time kind of deals, which you have to do sometimes.

PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, dominating the game. It's funny how things change out here. Someone just asked me the difference between the game pre-Tiger and post-Tiger and it's just a different game we play than I did when I won out here. There's no question about it. It's just such a group of players with the ability to play well each week. And there's been some talk around here that Tiger is not playing as well because he has not won. It's kind of like the bicycle racers. When they take off by themselves -- it's called the pellet toss (ph). Art Spander tried to explain it to me. That's what's happening to Tiger. It's not one guy catching him; it's the whole group. It's Calc one week and Durant one week and Phil one week and it's Davis; and they are catching Tiger through a group effort more so than anything else.

PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, mine's a flat tire. You know, but I'm pumping it up. That's where I'm at right now. I don't worry about those things. I have my own demons and I go out and do my work and improve. The way it is now on TOUR, I finished 122 -- if you want to finish 122 on the Money List this year you're probably going to be ten percent better than you were last year or eight percent or whatever the number is. So if you want to grow and you want to move up, you have to go even more. That's just the way the growth of the game is today, for a number of reasons. Look at all of the foreigners that are playing. I think that's good. It's almost a world tour we have now, as it is, from a competition standpoint.