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THE BARCLAYSAugust 23, 2011Matt KucharEDISON, NEW JERSEY LAURA HILL: We would like to welcome Matt Kuchar, our defending champion here at The Barclays. And Matt, we joked at Media Day that you keep depending at places where it's not the same golf course, so you kind of lose that advantage, and I understand you haven't even played here yet. If you can just talk about your position coming in as defending champion and your FedExCup standing. MATT KUCHAR: Yeah, it's a bit too bad to have won three times and inform have defended on a course that I have won on. I am looking forward to this week a lot. I think it's great, what they are doing with the rotation with four courses. I think particularly up in this part of the country where the golf season isn't that long, where they don't have 12 months of golf season; to give up your course for a month or two or three weeks is a tough thing to do. So to rotate it amongst four courses I think is great for the memberships and also I think it's great for the field and the players. You don't get a course, say, Pebble Beach, being the Dustin Johnson Invitational or the John Deere being the Steve Stricker Invitational (laughter). Guys may do well at a certain site, but if they change up the course every four years, it makes it fair for the entire field. So I think it's good for a number of reasons. I drove around here on Media Day and the course looks like a fun golf course to play and I think everybody always looks forward to playing a Donald Ross golf course. So, I'm excited. Q. You had a pretty good year again, but for you, you had two missed cuts in a row for the first time since like 2009. What's going on? Are you struggling a little bit? MATT KUCHAR: There's something about the British Open, I think I might have played seven British Opens now and I'm 1-for-7 making cuts. I would tell you that I think my game suits a British Open pretty well. I don't hit it all that high. I don't put a lot of spin on the golf ball. I think I do well in windy conditions. But for some reason, British Opens have not been very kind to me. I like links golf and I think it's fun to play and I like going after different shots. But so far, I'm kind of one of those guys that links golf just has not been very kind to me. I remember working a couple of years ago with a sports psychologist Gio Valiante about my post-British Opens; I seemed to struggle. Every time I would come back from a British Open, I didn't feel like there was a jet-lag problem or a golf problem, but something about that, and it's called the third quarter I struggle with. Bounced right back to the Canadian Open, which is a course -- the Shaughnessy is a great course and I just missed the cut there this year. It was great to have rebounded from that and not had the big third-quarter letdown and had a nice week at Firestone, a nice week at the PGA. I feel like my game is in good form. I had some signs of some really good things going on at the PGA, and I'm actually excited about teeing it up at a golf tournament and about my chance of doing well here as I have been in a long time. I feel as if I have a great shot at getting in contention and doing well here. Q. A lot of guys talking about the long putters, the belly putters, three weeks in a row now, we have had guys using putters in excess of 35 inches. Yours is a little in between. Do you understand the scrutiny, and do you get that some people sort of look at that with a suspicious eye out there in civilian-land and wonder whether you should be allowed to do it? MATT KUCHAR: And it has certainly become the hot topic. I still don't know if I created enough thoughts about the attachment. I feel like I've been an old school guy when it comes to golf and the Rules of Golf and conventional putter; however, now I'm putting with a long putter, goes up my forearm. For a while, I thought it was an advantage to anchor it. And then you've got the point of, if it was an advantage, if it really helped, everybody would do it and certainly that's not the case. We have just had the guy for the first time in a major doing it. The belly putter has been around for a long time. So I still don't know if I feel like it's a real advantage or not. I haven't fiddled enough. Every time I try to pick up a long putter and anchor it to my belly or my chin, I'm terrible. So it's not been an advantage for me, I know that. Q. Do you think it's just more of a fad thing and a statistical anomaly, or now that Keegan won the first major, that we'll see more guys maybe monkeying with it, at least for a while? MATT KUCHAR: I could see how anchoring it, theoretically, should help. I see how that actually should be a benefit. I just haven't played enough to really know that it would help me, that it would really be a benefit. We'll probably see more guys tinker with it. Anybody that does something well, and is different -- does something well with something different, everyone wants to check it out and try it. I'm sure we'll probably see more people fiddle with it and trying it, and maybe have more kids trying it and fiddling with it. It seems for a while that cross-handed putting was the; fad, that everybody kid should learn to putt cross-handed. That was a better method. And now it may be the belly putter may be the better method. We may see kids trying that. Q. Do you like the format for the FedExCup, and if there's anything that you could tweak, what would you do? MATT KUCHAR: I'm not a mathematician as far as figuring out a better system. I haven't sat down and figured out if I would adjust the points in any way how I would adjust them. I think it's gotten better and better as the years have gone on. In the last couple of years, they haven't tweaked it at all. I think they have been pretty happy with the format. As a player, I understand the gist of it, five times the points, there's a lot more movement going on. I think most fans, it's pretty simple, it's five times more points, so there's a lot of movement and cuts from 125 to 70 to 30. It's a fun format. I think it does give you a bit of that knock-out. That last week was fun to watch the guys right on the bubble. It was interesting stories. Justin Leonard, as good of a golfer as he is, as good as he's been to be on that 126 mark is quite a story. It's fun to see who is going to make it, who was going to get bumped out. So it's definitely helped with some of the excitement. Gosh, having $10 million on the line is pretty exciting. Q. Obviously when you won last year, your World Ranking status was enough to get you into the majors the following year and some other World Golf events. What can the FedExCup do for guys who are not necessarily exempt into those tournaments already? MATT KUCHAR: Give me a few examples. Q. Guys who finish in the top ten in a few FedExCup events get to THE TOUR Championship and all of a sudden they are in the first three majors next year. MATT KUCHAR: Do you like that? Q. I'm asking you. MATT KUCHAR: What do you think? (Laughter). Q. I think it's okay. MATT KUCHAR: It's definitely a big deal. Without a doubt, it's a big deal getting in the majors. I've heard guys not be real happy about a guy that maybe just doesn't have the great year, creeps into the first tournament, the Top-125 here at The Barclays and kind of puts together a nice week or two and makes the Top-30 and all of a sudden a guy that you don't think of as maybe one of the strongest players on TOUR is now exempt in all the majors. Maybe they should -- and I don't know -- I don't know enough about the entries in the majors what other qualifications get in the majors. But you know, I'm okay with guys making THE TOUR Championship, getting into the majors. I think maybe they should continue to look at Money List and maybe there is still a Money List category to get in majors. But for an all-year basis, Money List is our most consistent thing of what we always gone on. It seems like there should be maybe several categories, which I think they are, and I'm just not well versed enough on all of the categories that do get in. Q. Take this from the reverse side of that. How much of the pressures on players, yourself included, dealing with fatigue, with the long season and being able to pace one's self as you go through this process, because now you've got a back-end situation where you are going to potentially play four weeks in a row, constant. That doesn't happen for a lot of top players? MATT KUCHAR: We have one break in the middle there, two weeks on, a week off. So it's four out of five. And you're right, a lot of guys don't even do four out of five. It is a juggling act trying to figure out a balance between how much you could play and trying to make sure you're ready to go the distance, and guys do it in the major championships, trying to figure out how not to wear themselves out by Thursday or Friday. You can do so much in practice rounds and by Friday be tired and not really have much left for the weekend. You want to kind of find that balance and here we have the stretch, four out of five weeks in a row you want to kind of have a steady -- and even a build-up to play better and better each week. You can get yourself in that Top-5 and then just play great THE TOUR Championship. You want to have this steady play with hopefully a build up to playing your best golf at the end. It's a hard thing to do, and I think it's a balancing act, a juggling act on how much to do beforehand. It's tough in that we have a couple of big events right before the, the Bridgestone, the PGA and guys certainly want to play well in the PGA Championship. So you have guys playing right up until the FedExCup start. Q. How many events can you really peak yourself for, for yourself, 20? 25? 15? I know you have to make sure you make your eligibility for the TOUR. But how much of that is possible, not just for yourself, but other elite players to play at that high level on that kind of continuum? MATT KUCHAR: Week-in, week-out we are playing in events, and I don't know if I speak for everybody, but to me, every event that I'm playing in, every PGA TOUR event is a big deal. I don't show up just to have a warm-up. My playing the Bridgestone Invitational is not just a warm-up for the PGA. I want to play well. It's a big event. The Sony Open to me is a big event. Every one I tee it up in, I would like to put my name on that winner's list, and I would like to be accepting the trophy there Sunday afternoon. It's tough, but you get -- you get used to it. You get used to the travel. That's what we do. I think Tiger Woods did it better than anybody for a while. He seemed to play a limited schedule but when he came out, he peaked and I think all of us have emulated that in a way. We want to try to come out and come fully prepared and give it our all and go back home and get ready to do it again. It's kind of different for everybody. I think he seemed to have it down the best. I think Phil Mickelson has showed a lot of people how to try to get ready for majors with tapering down, just doing nine holes on Wednesday. I think he was one of the few guys to really get going with that and be vocal about that and it seems like everybody now on Wednesday, you hardly see anybody play 18 holes now. So there's kind of a learning curve of trying to figure out what works best for and you how to peak. Q. What do you think of the 18th hole, how might you play it, do you enjoy it? MATT KUCHAR: I haven't played yet. I drove around in the Media Day about a month ago. It looked like the way they put the bleachers, they were just going to use the forward tee. That was always going to be a drivable hole. But I wasn't sure if the entire field was going to go for the green there. There wouldn't be much of a place to lay up. The green is pretty severe. I'm not sure if you lay up how close you can get on an approach shot, even if you lay up. It seems like guys maybe going for it 100 percent -- I really don't know. I haven't yet played it and taken a real good look at it. Q. What about par 3 finishing holes, what's your thoughts on those? MATT KUCHAR: Not my favorite. I think there's -- if I could design a course, I would like a more exciting finishing hole. I think the PGA Championship I think could have had an awesome par 5 as a finishing hole. I think they had room on the back tee. They could have even had another back tee added that would have made it a better driving hole and more exciting and seem like a good risk/reward going for it. If you drive it, you have 230 or 240 to the hole, water in front the green, that's an exciting risk/reward. Not many risk/reward par 4s we play. That's kind of what it became. That's not exactly my favorite finishing hole. Q. When you won The Barclays last year, it pretty much cemented your position on The Ryder Cup Team. When you get to that level, your life changes and you become a regular Top-10 player, can you just talk about the experiences of the last year and how your life has changed since winning The Barclays? MATT KUCHAR: Yeah, I think The Ryder Cup was solidified after the PGA Championship. So I was still on the bubble and nice to have a good finish at the PGA and make sure I was in that top eight. But, I think I was right at that 8th position, and so to win a couple of weeks later, it kind of really justified my being there and being a part of that team. Winning a tournament, especially a tournament that's such a big event, the first one of the Playoffs, has been my biggest win on the PGA TOUR. It's exciting. It's a great feeling to have -- it was a field of 125 guys so you feel like the field is at its best and at its deepest. And to go ahead and win a tournament like that is a fantastic feeling. You want to get into that winner's circle time and time again. This year, I've had a good year but I have not yet cracked the winner's circle. Something I'm usually shooting for by the end of the year. Q. I know you haven't played the golf course, but, there's a couple of drivable 4s here. You have 4, 9 if the wind is right, 18, two par 5s which can probably be reached in two. Is this golf course, if the conditions are right -- I know the greens are severe, but is this golf course very scorable maybe compared to some of the other ones? MATT KUCHAR: Say the last part again? Q. This golf course, can you put up a really low number, maybe by the end of Sunday. MATT KUCHAR: Not yet playing, it's going to be hard for me to talk about it. It sounds like some fun holes, and I don't know what 4 is like, and I don't remember what the drivable ones are like. I think that's fun to have on a golf course and it's fun to have some drivable ones, but I think the drivable ones ought to have some risk/reward. At the PGA, they moved up No. 5 -- or 6 -- I think it was No. 6 they moved up on Sunday, and it was a great risk/reward water short of the green, and you saw going back to the tee box a lot of divots and a lot of guys deciding that laying up is going to be the best choice. It seemed like that a heck of a lot of guys also went for it because it was a fun risk/reward. I'm not sure what No. 4 and some of the other drivable ones look like but on a drivable hole, you want some risk and some guys to lay up, probably as many guys lay up as you want to go for it. So you have some course management there, it's not just 100 percent smash your driver and go for it. It's fun to see some different course management strategies being used. Q. You're a quietly-spoken, gentle sort of guy but I'm sure there's clearly a competitor. Do you ever lose your temper or take it out -- do you ever get angry? MATT KUCHAR: It's been a while, but yes, yes, absolutely. I get frustrated. (Smiling). It comes out more in other sports, is kind of my outlet. In other words, tennis, ping-pong, some other type of sport may bring out a little more of the fire or anger. I can assure you that the fire is still there with golf, but the temper -- the temper will show itself every now and then but fortunately it's not that often. Q. Did you ever break a tennis racquet? MATT KUCHAR: I think it's been since maybe I was 12 since I've broken a tennis racquet. (Laughter). I've done pretty well with tennis lately, but I think I think more the competitive nature comes out in tennis, more in that one-on-one type of sport. LAURA HILL: Before we let you go, looking past the Playoffs, you have The Presidents Cup and then another team competition the following week, the OMEGA Mission Hills World Cup, which you are the leading American player, and I understand you want to announce who you've chosen and talk through that event. MATT KUCHAR: Yeah, a couple of weeks, I'm really excited to go to Australia for The Presidents Cup. And then to be elected to play in the World Cup is something that I think is just a super cool opportunity, to represent the United States in another competition and to have two guys representing the United States is amazing, I think to be one of those two guys representing your country is really an honor. I've chosen Gary Woodland to be my partner in the World Cup. He's been a guy that I think a lot of his game. I think he's going to be a guy we are going to see more and more playing some great golf. And so I'm pretty excited to have a guy that plays as well as he does and hits it as far as he does as my partner, I think there's a lot of upside to that. I think I can be the steady one that makes a lot of pars and watch him just make golf look pretty easy. So I'm excited to go to China. It's going to be a fun week in that it's thanks giving. I think the U.S. is the one country that has to deal with the holiday that week. It's a big holiday for us. But still a fun opportunity. I'll have my wife and kids. I think he'll have his fiancée over there. We'll have a fun little Thanksgiving over in China. Q. Is he your first choice? MATT KUCHAR: Yes, he was. Q. What did he say when you asked him? MATT KUCHAR: He was excited straightaway. I didn't have to sell him. I said listen, it's going to be tough, it's Thanksgiving, it's in China; I had dates and other things ready to try to sell him, but he needed no selling. LAURA HILL: Thanks for spending time with us. Good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports aa |
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