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CN CANADIAN WOMEN'S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

August 24, 2011

Paula Creamer

MIRABEL, QUEBEC

THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Paula Creamer into the interview room. Thank you for joining us today. Kind of just talk a little bit about being here at this event. Every year it's a different spot. How is it to be here in Montreal and what are your initial thoughts of the golf course?
PAULA CREAMER: This is my first time here so it's always nice to go to a place that you've never been to. I'm going to try to go to the city on Friday. I play early, so I'll try to get out there and sightsee.
But this golf course is nice. It's pretty generous fairways. Really big greens, so it becomes down to who has the best distance control with their irons, and right now that's kind of playing up to my strengths.
So I feel good, I feel ready to go out there, and hopefully the rain stays away tomorrow. But it doesn't really look like it's going to be a nasty day, so I'll try to be as patient as I can.
THE MODERATOR: Looking at your own game this season, how do you feel about it coming into this week and how you've been playing so far?
PAULA CREAMER: Well, last week I had a pretty good week. I've been working really, really hard on my golf swing. Trying to change some things that it's difficult to do. It's easy to do on the range, but when you're in tournament mode and you're out there and you have to hit a 7-iron, that's a lot harder. So I've been trying to do that as much as I can.
I feel good. I feel like I've been working really hard. Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards, and I've just been grinding it out. So hopefully I can finish this season strong and we'll see what it holds for next year.

Q. Last week was exciting for you personally in terms of how you played, but also the Solheim Cup team was announced. Looking at the team and what you guys, Rosie's two captain's picks, how excited are you about this group and what you can do in Ireland?
PAULA CREAMER: Well, Solheim is my favorite event that I've ever with played in. I think that is the epitome of all golf tournaments. I love wearing red, white and blue. I'm incredibly patriotic. So when you have 12 players, you bring them together to become a team, there is nothing better than that. I think our captain's picks will fit just perfectly with our team and we'll help, and try to get over to Ireland and play as much as we can.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Paula?

Q. Your putting has always been one of your great strengths. This year maybe it's a bit with it at times. Does reworking your full swing maybe affected some of the time you spend on the putting green?
PAULA CREAMER: Probably, yes. I would have said that maybe four or five months ago. I've been, like I said, working really hard on my golf swing ever since I had surgery, I've had to kind of work around the issue of my hands, so I've been dealing with that.
But lately that's not the case. I work just as hard on the putting green as I do on the driving range right now. That is at the greatest thing about golf. Once you work on something else, one thing kind of goes down the drain, and you've got to manage that. You've got to balance every part of the game. That's why it's so hard.
But I have been working very hard on my putting. Last week it showed. Normally Colin, my caddie and I read putts together, and lately I've been just doing it by myself. Kind of back to junior golf days again where it's that natural instinct and I have my own speed and that kind of thing. It's showing that it's a lot better.

Q. Do you have some goals for this week precisely for this tournament?
PAULA CREAMER: To win, that's No. 1. But just to give myself a good opportunity come Sunday. That's all you can ask for. Last week I didn't start off great after the first day, but I finished really strong on the weekend, and that's something that I'll take away going into this week.
I hope I don't get sick. I always seem to get sick when I come to Canada. I'm keeping my fingers crossed this year that that doesn't happen. But just to keep going with what I've been working on. You know, it's very easy to revert back to your old habits when you get to a golf tournament, and that is something that I don't want to do because I want to take this the rest of the season and into next year. So just to have fun, enjoy it, and hopefully make lots of putts.

Q. Do you have any superstitions?
PAULA CREAMER: Everybody's asking the superstition question today. I do. Pink is not a superstition. Everybody thinks pink is, but it's not. I just like the color. But I do a couple of things. I always bounce my driver twice in my bag before I hit it. Just the driver, not an iron, not a 3-wood. Just the driver, two bounces in the bag.
I have a '58 quarter that I use or I always have in my pocket, that kind of thing. And I do three putts about this far before I go to the first tee, always. Those are the last three putts.

Q. Is that a 1958 quarter?
PAULA CREAMER: Yeah.

Q. Why?
PAULA CREAMER: I never shot 58 in a tournament. So the number on my ball is 58, and I have a quarter in my bag that's a 58 also.

Q. Do you have an explanation why the golfers from Asia are doing so well, especially Yani Tseng? How come she's so good right now in the last year and a half?
PAULA CREAMER: Yani is a great player. She hits it really far. When she gets hot with her putter, she's very tough to beat. She has a lot of confidence, and that's what golf is all about is confidence and believing in yourself, and she has that right now.

Q. Yesterday during the junior clinic you were telling a story I think about making a 17 in a tournament somewhere sometime. I didn't hear all of that.
PAULA CREAMER: About my 17?

Q. Yeah, it was a pretty funny story from what I did hear?
PAULA CREAMER: Oh, my, I was 11 years old. That was a long time ago. It was a crazy hole that I played, and I kept hitting it out of bounds. But it wasn't my fault. The fairway was sloping like a steep slope. It was up in the mountains. It kept going out of bounds. I didn't hit a shot in the middle of the fairway.
My dad kept calling out -- it's junior golf. There are no spectators, so it's just your family out there watching. And my dad kept going OB, OB, OB. And finally I got one on the fairway, and it's a par-5 and I took my 3-wood, and he came out in the middle of the fairway and said it's OB. But I was like I don't understand.
But the hole went that way and it's a dogleg right, now I've never hit a golf shot without going to the top of the hill to see where I was going because of that. That was the learning lesson of it all. Find out where the hole is and figure it out from there.
But, yeah, 17, that was an interesting car ride home talking about what were you thinking, and I was like I don't know. I didn't know what to do. I ended up hitting 9-iron off the tee. Oh, well.

Q. You play a pink ball, right?
PAULA CREAMER: Uh-huh.

Q. Is it as good as a white ball?
PAULA CREAMER: Better.

Q. Better. Do you think it's okay for a macho guy to play a pink ball if he finds one in the woods somewhere?
PAULA CREAMER: Of course, anybody can play a pink ball.

Q. This is a course that you or very few others in the field would have seen. How long does it take you to figure out your plan for playing the course round to round?
PAULA CREAMER: Well, hopefully yesterday and today because that's all we've got. But sometimes you play your best golf when you don't see a golf course. Sometimes you play your best golf when you've seen it six or seven times. In this case this golf course is pretty straightforward. There are a couple of holes that the greens are a little bit out there, pretty slopy.
You just go about it, and that's the thing about golf is it's never the same every day, conditions, things like that. But I think that two days is enough out on this golf course.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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