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THE PRESIDENTS CUP

November 20, 2011

Fred Couples

MELBOURNE, VICTORIA

Q. Unbelievable performance by Tiger Woods, I don't think he missed a fairway, certainly didn't miss a green and his putting was just incredible.
FRED COUPLES: He was ready to go this whole week. He was ready for a month. A lot of people have asked why I picked him and how he was going to play. Certainly I couldn't answer how he was going to play but this week I think he showed to himself that his swing is back and he's healthy, and that's more important to me -- obviously we want to win the Cup, but it's more important for me to have people realize that he can play the game and not worry.

Q. This week you've thrown everything at them and they have just been unbelievable.
FRED COUPLES: I came in here in '88 and played the Bicentennial as a young kid and I love the course and I lost to Rodger Davis in a playoff. So I assumed that if I could learn the course in a day and a half or two, these guys can learn it in two or three practice rounds. It was never a concern.
What was a concern was to play a course like this in 30-mile-an-hour winds like they did on Friday. But today was tough but fair, and it's a lot of ours, one of our favorite courses.

Q. If I would have said to you at the start of the week that Jim Furyk would be 5-0, would you believe me?
FRED COUPLES: I would have said thank you very much; no. That happens. We needed it. He was a leader. He and Phil told me, which was very odd, I wasn't planning on it, on Tuesday night, that they want to play together. And they rode and rode and rode, and obviously I rested Phil in the afternoon yesterday.
But Jimmy going 5-0 is great. It's cool. It's unique. It's fun. And I think he's happy as the rest of the 14 guys are.

Q. Today was a microcosm of the success of the whole week, young guys doing well, as well as the veterans, really it is a team victory.
FRED COUPLES: I said it to all of my friends, and to a lot of the wives, not the players, they don't really need any kicks in the rear. It's a unique team. It's a team of bombers and good putters. If you ask anyone what you would like at Royal Melbourne, you would say someone who hits it long and someone who can putt. Irons, you can maybe get away with a little bit, but we made a lot of putts, and so did they, but we just made more of them. And we had guys that could really hit the ball.
I was never concerned with all of this I heard about, that we'll never get used to Royal Melbourne in a couple of practice rounds. They played well. We had some phenomenal scoring in what I think is very tough conditions.
But the guys, we are all different. And they teamed up extremely well.

Q. You're a loose guy and you feed that to your team. What did you feel this morning or even last night, did you sense that they were as loose as you wanted them to be?
FRED COUPLES: I felt really good last night. We were all tired. We didn't get back to -- we ate here in the cabins and didn't get back to our rooms until ten. A few people signed stuff and did their chores and got ready for the morning. We came out here, I'll be honest with you, when I got on the first tee, I was never nervous until all I saw was orange. I started to think, wow, this is going to be some day.
Once it kind of started to go the other way, I understood that if we lost some of those first matches 3 & 2 or 4 & 3, that would be okay, but I needed those guys to fight.
And so the only real thing I've ever done is I ran out here and I found Webb and he turned it on, and even losing your match makes -- I've been on a lot of these teams, but when you lose and you see where these guys went to the last hole, it gives you a little fire; and so did Bubba and Phil came back in a hurry and so did Dustin Johnson. Even though they lost it was meaningful to the team, and then Nick Watney's match settled things down for me.
Unbelievable crowds. I've played four tournaments here, besides losing to Rodger Davis one year in 1988, I think most people root for me everywhere I go, and I felt pretty good about it. We tried to get the people on our side. We did a few things. We auctioned off some golf shirts that we wore and tried to raise some charity money. Those were not things that were taken lightly. They were just to let people know, we are here to have fun, we are loosey-goosey guys, but we are here to win and we ended up winning, which is even sweeter.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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