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TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP BY COCA-COLASeptember 20, 2011Luke DonaldATLANTA, GEORGIA CHRIS REIMER: Welcome, Luke Donald, coming into the TOUR Championship by Coca-Cola. You're in position you've strived to be in all year, being in that top 5 in the standings, controlling your destiny. If you could, talk about reaching the TOUR Championship. I'm sure that was one of your goals to start the year. LUKE DONALD: Yeah, it's always great to be here. It's a little tick in the box. Obviously excited to be here and have the opportunity to win the FedExCup. I'm in a great position. I think last week after that disappointing start, it was nice to have a great fight back and obviously gain some confidence from the way I finished but also keep me in that No. 4 spot. Top 5 is pretty important; gives me a lot more control going into this week. I know exactly what I need to do, and the higher up you are on the list, the better your chances are. Q. If I told you at this time last year you'd be world No. 1 coming into this week with Tiger 48 spots behind you, would you have questioned my sanity at all? LUKE DONALD: Probably (laughing). Yeah, obviously there's been a lot of change, especially in the World Rankings. But that's how they work; if you don't play and you don't perform, you're going to drop down, and if you play well and consistently, winning tournaments and having high finishes, you're going to climb up that World Ranking pretty quickly, and that's obviously happened to me. Q. What do you think of the Player of the Year race? It seems like there's half a dozen guys, including you, in the mix. LUKE DONALD: Yeah, more incentive to play well and hopefully win the event. I think, again, it is a little bit open. There might be a few guys that probably have more of a shout than others. But I think a win this week would sway a lot of people's minds. No one has really dominated as much as they have when Tiger was winning. A couple guys won a few events, two events, but there's no clear-cut winner, and I think the guy who wins this week, especially if it's out of the bunch of guys that are in contention for it, I think he's got a good shot. Q. Could you just tell me your strategy on how you attack the 11th hole? LUKE DONALD: 11th hole is a slightly uphill par-3, a mid-iron, somewhere between 7- and 5-iron, depending on the pin locations. The big key here is not to short side yourself. Those front right pins, if you hit it right, the green slopes away from you and makes it very tricky. Good, solid, conservative targets, just giving yourself uphill putts hopefully. I think that's one of the things around this course at East Lake, you need to put yourself in the right positions and give yourself good looks. These greens can get quite fast, and putting uphill is a big advantage. Q. And the 18th hole, and then talk about it as a finishing hole. Do you like par-3s as finishing holes? LUKE DONALD: You know, I'm not a huge fan of long par-3s in general. I think that it takes a little bit of the skill away from it. The players will be hitting anything from a 4-iron to rescues to probably -- in that kind of area. I don't mind the hole. I think it takes away a little bit of excitement because you don't see too many birdies there. It's a hole that is a little bit tougher to make 2s on. But at the same time, I suppose if you need a 3 to win, like Jim did last year to beat me (laughter), he was able to do it, and it produced some excitement. So it can go either way, but I don't think it's going to produce a lot of birdies and excitement in that way, in that regard. Q. You know this course pretty well now, the setup. I played it a couple weeks ago and struggled badly. What do you find more challenging about playing here at East Lake? LUKE DONALD: Probably the shift back to playing on Bermudagrass. I think the last month or two, we've really been playing mostly courses in the north, Midwest, the east coast and all that kind of stuff, and we've not really been playing on Bermuda. You've got to kind of shift your focus back a little bit to play on Bermuda, playing on Bermuda greens, dealing with those kind of fliers out of the rough from the fairways. Those are the kind of things that we haven't really seen. Other than maybe the PGA Championship, we haven't seen those kind of situations for a few weeks. That would probably be the toughest part about this week for me. Q. About 18, would it make a difference to you if one or two of the days if they moved the tee box up and made that much shorter, a little bit more excitement, bring some skill back into it? LUKE DONALD: They could. It's certainly a tough enough green where you don't have to play that hole at 220 yards. It's got a pretty significant two-tiered green on it where the angle of the ridge just makes it a little bit difficult to get to some of those pins that are cut just over the ridges. Usually your safe line is a few feet to the right, but then that catches the ridge again because of the semicircle kind of shape of the ridge. It just makes it a tricky hole to get close to the pins. But yeah, putting it up a little bit, and obviously some of the weather we're having right now will soften the course, and that will obviously make the hole play a little bit easier, too. Q. What are your recollections of the back nine last year as it relates to the pursuit of the overall prize, the FedExCup? LUKE DONALD: I remember similar weather to today, even worse, pretty rainy, the course was playing long. I remember hitting rescue into 17, and Thursday we were hitting 9-irons and stuff like that. It was a grind. I was a couple shots back, but when I chipped in on 17, I thought I might have had a chance. Obviously Jim did what he needed to do and got up-and-down on 18 for the win, but it was exciting because -- you know, Matt Kuchar obviously had a bad week; he was kind of out of it. Being the No. 1 guy entering, he kind of had it in his hands and didn't play that great. And Jim Furyk, I'm not sure what he was ranked coming in, but it was outside the top 10. CHRIS REIMER: He was 11. LUKE DONALD: 11, and he was able to win. That's unlikely, but it happens. Q. What was that pressure like when you chipped in on 17 knowing it was close going to 18 and then watching Jim finish? Is there anything you can compare it with? LUKE DONALD: I was feeling pretty nervous, but I felt good about that chip for some reason. I knew I was two or three back, and I knew I needed to get something done. I told my caddie, I'm going to chip this one in, before I did it. I was obviously pretty excited when it went in. I showed kind of similar emotions to what I did at Augusta this year. Playing the last, I thought if I could just get it somewhere on the green and give myself a chance for 2, if I made a 2, I thought I had a really good chance. It's a big opportunity and a big prize that awaits you if you can win this week and win the FedExCup. So there was a lot of nerves there. Hit a pretty good shot into 18 and just missed the putt. But gave it a good shot. Q. Could you talk about the fact you could walk off the 18th green on Sunday $11.4 million richer? And have you thought about what you might buy or do with that money? LUKE DONALD: Well, I thought this question might come up. My coach, I'm sure, will get a percentage of something there. But I'm not really thinking about the money. I'm really more concentrating on winning the tournament, picking up another trophy, winning the FedExCup, hopefully winning Player of the Year that comes with it, all the spoils that comes with it. But the bonus money is nice. Where I am in my career, I have been very fortunate, and I don't know where I am on the Money List, career Money List, $25 million or something, it's not like I can't afford to buy things. I have two nice houses. I don't spend a lot of stuff on materialistic stuff, but the money, it would be nice to kind of keep it away. I haven't really thought if I won it what I would spend the money on, but the money is really the last thing I'm thinking about. It's not really the important factor for me. Q. Would a win here kind of help solidify that No. 1 ranking in your mind? LUKE DONALD: It would give me a lot more points, yeah. Q. I'd be curious, my thinking here is how you and everyone else can kind of get their game in shape or ready for this tournament. But when you've had a year like you've had of this, has trying to peak for the four majors been different? Could you consciously try and peak for the four majors this year, and how do you do that when you're playing at a pretty high, consistent level to begin with? LUKE DONALD: Absolutely. The No. 1 goal at the beginning of this year was to try and compete and be in contention for majors. In that regards, I suppose it was somewhat disappointing. I had a chance in two of them, which was an improvement on previous years, but two of them weren't that great. I think that always has to be the focus. I think you've got to try and peak for those four events as much as you can. Certainly things -- I'll look back at the end of this year and realize maybe I played a little bit too much leading up to the U.S. Open. I felt a little bit over-golfed. Maybe some of those other successes took away from what I was trying to ultimately achieve, and that was to be very prepared for the Open, for the majors. Yeah, it's something I'll think about come the end of the year, but the goal is always to try and peak for those events. Q. Did you do something different this year to try to do that, to try to peak more? LUKE DONALD: I've tried a lot of different things. I've tried, in terms of playing the week before, giving myself rest. I haven't really found one thing that has worked, obviously, because I haven't won one. But I did some of the same things -- at the Open Championship, I went and played before for a few days, played a lot of links golf leading up to it. I went to the tournament sites more this year, I suppose. I went to Augusta for a couple days before, I went to the U.S. Open course. The only one I didn't do was Atlanta. So I'm always thinking about new ways to try and prepare and find the right scenario. I'm not sure if I've found it yet. The biggest thing for me, I guess, was taking that big break at the beginning of the year and concentrating on my swing. I think if I felt like I got my swing in a better position, it was going to hopefully help me play better, which would help my chances in the majors. Q. Will you do that again this year, shut it down? LUKE DONALD: The only possibility is I might throw in one tournament in the Middle East, in Abu Dhabi. But other than that, I believe I'm going to start in LA. Q. Ending when? LUKE DONALD: Aussie Masters. Q. You've been out here for a while obviously and have, as you've stated, the bank account where this money doesn't matter quite as much. A lot of the young players out here quickly get a full bank account and money doesn't matter quite as much to them. If the FedExCup were to go away from the $10 million jackpot, so to speak, at the end of the rainbow, would it matter as much to players? Do you think players would still compete in the four playoff events if the $10 million weren't there? LUKE DONALD: I think it would still be important. You know, it's a year-long race, and it's important to -- I think like anything, there's always got to be a finale to the end of a season. Since they've come up with the Playoffs, I think the fans have enjoyed it. I think the players have kind of -- some have enjoyed it, some might not have enjoyed it. But you know, it's always important to have that kind of end of the year, something to set your goals towards. I think after the last major, you know, you don't want the year to go flat, so it's important to continue that, and we've always had an end-of-year tournament that's been very important. For a lot of these guys, even getting to this event is important. It gets you into all the majors, it sets up your year for next year. So there's definitely some importance there. Obviously I think that the $10 million number makes it seem a lot more special, not just to the players but to the fans, as well, and it gives it a certain wow factor. Q. Apart from not cracking that winning recipe in the majors, have you generally been happy with the way you've structured your playing time between the PGA TOUR and the European Tour? And as a follow-up, just curious if increased media commitments since you became world No. 1 have affected preparations for tournaments in any way? LUKE DONALD: You know, I have generally. It's been a very satisfactory year. If I had my way, I would probably play a few less events. But the way I decided to prepare this year was taking a big break at the beginning of the year. I'm going to take a bit of a break in a few weeks' time, as well. So my schedule is really concentrated into a smaller time period. You know, from February to now has been very, very busy. And that's just the nature of playing both Tours and the sacrifice I'm willing to make to be eligible to play on the Ryder Cup team, and I'm very happy to make that sacrifice. If I had my ideal schedule, I might play a few less tournaments, but it's just tough to do. Q. And media commitments? LUKE DONALD: I don't feel that's really gotten in the way of my preparation, no. Q. If the season ends today, who wins Player of the Year for Europe? LUKE DONALD: For Europe? I suppose it would be between -- Q. That would be even tougher than here, wouldn't it? LUKE DONALD: Bjorn, Schwartzel, McIlroy and myself, I suppose. You could maybe throw Darren in, another -- keep forgetting all these European Tour members keep winning majors (laughter), not to rub it in. Yeah, it's finding that balance between how important is winning that major compared to the consistency of a year. What does the Player of the Year stand for? Does it stand for having that great one week in a major which is extremely important? I would love to be in any one of those guys' shoes. Or is it weighed by being very consistent week in, week out? You know, can you look at Money List? Can you look at World Ranking points? I don't know how -- what everyone's thinking is. I mean, it could go a number of different ways. Q. The tougher question is who do they put on the cover of the media guide next year. LUKE DONALD: I don't know. Well, I'm sure they'll just fill it up with the major trophies again. CHRIS REIMER: Luke, thanks so much, and good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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