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WACHOVIA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 9, 2004

Arron Oberholser

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

ARRON OBERHOLSER

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Arron, you gave it a great shot today out there for 18, 20 holes now, and you've got to be pretty proud of yourself. Share with us a little bit of your emotions and we'll go into questions.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, I'm a little disappointed, but everything that I set out to do today I did, so I'm extremely happy with -- I guess I'm happy for myself, playing in the final group on a, in my opinion, a major championship caliber golf course and hanging in there for 18 holes, as you see Tiger and Vijay and those guys climb up the board at you. I'm very happy. It really proves to me that I belong out here, that I can win out here. In the future, I will be contending for Majors, as well, as long as I keep focused on the process, which is what I did well today.

Q. When you come off 15 with the eagle, what's your mindset there? I know you don't want to get ahead of yourself.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I've got a lot of golf left, is my mindset. 16, 17, 18, are -- I really can't think of tougher finishing holes on this Tour than 16, 17, and 18 on this golf course. I'm sure there are some as tough. You can't really throw TPC in there because you have a reachable par 5 on 16, but I would be surprised if you could find three holes tougher than those three. I definitely thought there was a lot of golf left and I tried not to get ahead of myself.

Q. Were you at all juiced at that point?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Absolutely, I was amped, no doubt.

Q. You had a bad swing into 17, anything happen?

THE WITNESS: I got out of the moment. What happens when you hit poor golf shots, you get out of the moment. You don't go through your routine or you don't focus on your routine like you should, which is really what gets you through these situations. I lost focus on my routine on the 17th tee, was the only one, really.

Q. The shot out of the trees on 18 in regulation?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, I don't remember much, to be honest with you.

Q. What did you have there?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I had very little. I had a gap of about five, six feet to hit an 8-iron, and I had the tree in my way so I couldn't make a normal golf swing. I had to put it back in my stance and pick the ball up quick and make a manufactured golf swing, and then hook it on top of that. Under the circumstances, probably the best golf shot I've hit this year.

Q. You had a lot of time to think on the 17th tee box. What went through your head there? You had about 5 minutes before you were able to hit a shot.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I wasn't thinking anything. I was just trying to stay calm, trying to remember to breathe, just tried to look at it as just another golf shot.

Q. After you hit the shot, were you sure it stayed up?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I thought it was in the water and I thought the tournament was over at that point. I was hoping it would get over, but it was falling out of the air pretty quick. And I hit it rather fat, so I was very thankful that it hung up on the bank like that. Funny things happen.

Q. How many times did you check the leaderboard today?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I think the first time I looked at the leaderboard today was on number -- I could see a leaderboard somewhere around 14 or 12 -- 13. I can't remember. It was around 13 or 14, and I saw that Geoff and I were tied for the lead at 11-under. I didn't see Joey's name up there, so he was playing -- the big roar that I heard when I was on the 13 or 14 tee or 14 green, I don't know if that was Joey making a putt on 17 for birdie or Tiger making a putt on 17 for birdie, but I knew someone was getting close to 11 and making a charge coming down the stretch. But I knew I was right there. I knew I wasn't out of it.

Q. (Inaudible)?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Which one?

Q. The last one.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: 16, the playoff hole? I hit a good drive and it just didn't turn over as much as I thought it would. It hit the fairway and bounced down and took that little swell and bounced into the rough. And my caddie and I, Dave and I sat there and tried to -- we were sitting there going, well, it was 169 front, 189 hole, I think is what I had, and it was into the wind a little bit, but it was downhill, I didn't know if the lie was going to jump or chunk. He said, do you think it's a 7-iron. I said, I don't know, I think it's a 6-iron. I think if I can get it up in the air, even it's a flyer, the wind is going to kill it, and it just came out heavy. It was just a tough lie. It was a tougher lie than I thought it was going to be.

Q. How much closer are you now winning on Tour than when you got here this week?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, one putt, evidently. It's going to happen, you just have to be patient and you have to enjoy the process. I think that if you don't enjoy the process as a professional golfer, you better find something else to do, and it's easy to get frustrated with the process, and it's easy to get frustrated with going through the motions, so to speak, and coming up empty time after time after time.

You just have to have faith, you have to keep believing that all the work you're putting into it, and you have to love it, you have to love it and you have to believe that all the work you're putting into it is going to pay off, and there's no doubt in my mind that it will, and it will in a bundle if I can stay healthy and if I can continue to grow there will be contentions for Major championships in my future, contention for Ryder Cups. Those are things I want to accomplish. I don't think there is a doubt in my mind I can do it. I am 29 and I have a lot of golf in me.

Q. (Inaudible)?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, I never thought that, because of those last three holes. I realized that, like I said before, those are probably three of the toughest golf holes that we finish on on this Tour, and so by no means did I think I had the golf tournament wrapped up. It was just a nice boost.

Q. Did what you learned at Pebble Beach help you around the golf course today?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Absolutely. I played the golf course today, I didn't play the leaderboard or the man, I played the golf course. The pins were tough today, the wind -- we hadn't had wind before today. The wind made it tougher, and it was a good test today. It was a really good test today.

Q. Talking a little bit about enjoying the process and being patient and whatnot, Joey hasn't won in 14 years on Tour here, 300 and something tournaments. Can you talk about that? I know it's tough for you to do that because you have got your own issues in terms of the tournament, but can you talk about --

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I don't have any issues.

Q. I don't mean it that way.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I'm perfectly well adjusted. You know what, I'm happy for Joey. Joey is a class act and he's one of the guys out here that no matter -- I don't care what, the sky could have fallen and he would have found a positive with the sky falling. He is a joy to be around, a joy to play with. I don't know that there's a guy in the locker room that would have one bad word to say about him.

Q. (Inaudible)?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: You just have to love what you do. You've got to love -- it's not all about -- for a lot of us, it's not about winning, it's the fact we have the privilege to play at this level and to play golf and get paid for what we love to do. It's that simple. If it's all about winning to a lot of guys out here, there's a lot of boys that are going to be disappointed, because you're going to lose a lot more than you're going to win, if you look at it that way.

Q. A lot has been said about what a great field it is. Do you feel more proud to finish second in a playoff with a field this strong than if the field wasn't as strong?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: For me to say yes would be knocking fields like maybe the B.C. Open or the Tucson. And to finish second and losing in a playoff in any tournament is a privilege and a nice accomplishment.

I think that finishing second here, the golf course is what does it, it's the golf course really. It's a hard golf course. I mean, it's a difficult golf course. They could easily -- they could have a U.S. Open here tomorrow morning, get the rough up a little more and you could bring a U.S. Open here quite easily. I'm just happy with the way I performed on what I consider a championship style golf course, major championship style golf course.

Q. Talk about the stress, for a lack of a better word, for making the last two putts on 18 that you had to make, in regulation and the playoff.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: The one in the playoff was easy. I just got up there and hit it. You have got nothing to lose at that point. All you can do is make the best stroke you can, if it doesn't go in, it doesn't go in. But the first one, that was nerve racking because that one was to give me a chance to win. That three feet, if there was ever such a good thing of making a good 3-footer -- on Tuesday afternoon when you're out practicing, or even on Thursday, you brush those in, no problem, especially on greens this good. Sunday afternoon, with the tournament on the line, they look a little longer, so I was real happy with my execution on that short one.

Q. (Inaudible)?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I had it. I knew I had it.

Q. (Inaudible)?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, not really. I knew it was left edge to left center, just hit it, just trust it. I've been putting well all week, go with it.

Q. Did you almost fall in the water?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Pretty close. I'll tell you what, I took one step back, and I thought I was going in for a second because I was a little -- my adrenaline was going so much, I was a little light-headed at the time, and I was a little, you know, fired up, and you don't have your wits all about you when you're really fired up and you have your adrenaline pumping 100 miles an hour, so I was pretty close to falling in the water there, one foot on the rocks.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Let's go through your birdies and bogeys.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: 7, I hit driver into the left-hand rough or left-hand short cut, hit a good 5-wood -- choked down on a 5-wood and hit it in there to about 5 feet and made a great putt, but it didn't drop and made birdie there.

8, 5-wood and a lob-wedge to about 10, 12 feet, and made that.

9, I hooked the drive left, played a lob-wedge out, missed the sand wedge, missed the green with a sand wedge. Funny story about that one was, I'm in the middle of the 9th fairway with my third shot and I could hear the curve ball CBS broadcast down in the pavilion or whatever down there, and I could hear McCord, and it almost kind of cracked me up, because he was setting my shot up for me and it was driving me nuts. It kind of threw me off a little bit and I ended up missing the green with a wedge and ended up making a good bogey there.

11, if I could go back to any shot this week and say that was, for a lack of a better term, a brain fart, it was the one on 11. I had a 8-iron from 145 into a little breeze and I just came out of the shot, didn't stay in the shot, and it upshot and dropped into the bunker. From that pin I had no prayer to get it anywhere close, I was going to have to make a 15-footer at best, and unfortunately missed that and made bogey.

15, hit a great drive, hit a great 5-wood, bounced up there to about eight feet and made that for eagle.

16, I pulled the drive a little bit, hit a spectator and bounced underneath a bush, ended up making a good bogey there.

And 17, I chunked a 3-iron, and then wedged it up there, hit a little hot wedge, wedged it up there about eight feet behind the hole and hit another great putt and just misread it. Hit it right where I wanted to and it just didn't move right.

Q. You really beat yourself up after Pebble Beach. I'm just curious, it seems you view this really as more of a stepping stone?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I think so. I don't have anything to beat myself up about. It does you no good in the long run, what happened was I beat myself up so bad for not performing the way I should have or could have, shoulda, coulda, woulda. It was a detriment to me for the next 2 or 3 tournaments.

I've got it going pretty good right now. I feel comfortable with my game. There's a few things in my golf swing I need to work on that I'll work out on the range on Tuesday at Byron Nelson in Dallas next week, two courses I really like. I'm going to go out and try it again.

Q. After Byron Nelson, what are you doing?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I love Colonial. I played Colonial for the first time last year, and as long as I'm invited back, I'll never miss Colonial. I love old style golf courses. I come from an area in the world where a lot of the golf courses were built in the 20s and 30s and they don't get any better than that. A lot of guys need to take notes from guys who used to design back then. I'll never miss a Colonial, so I'm playing there. I won't play FedEx, and if I'm in Mr. Nicklaus's tournament, I'm going to play Memorial.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Arron, congratulations.

End of FastScripts.

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