WGC American Express Championship

February 4, 1999

Jeff Maggert

LEE PATTERSON: Very nice. One under par to start for the tournament. Maybe some comments about the day and we'll open it up for questions.

JEFF MAGGERT: I played pretty solid today. I made a few mistakes. I just played a good solid round, I kept the ball in play. It's important to keep the ball in the fairway here, obviously. And I'm pleased with my start. I haven't really hit the ball all that well the last few months. I've got a new set of irons that I've worked pretty hard with the last three or four weeks, and I worked on it a little bit on Tuesday. So I felt like I fine-tuned pretty good for my game right now. I've got a little more confidence in the way I'm swinging, and I'm hitting the ball really well with my irons. So hopefully I can just play steady this week. If I drive the ball well I feel like I have a good shot to have a chance to win on Sunday.

JEFF MAGGERT: It was breezy. It made play pretty difficult. I don't think the scores are going to be really low today. I'm pleased with one under. A good start to the tournament. Playing early sometimes is an advantage, but the wind was definitely windy this morning. The only really big advantage is probably the greens. I think the greens are going to have a tendency to spike up pretty bad this week. So being first off, the greens were just perfect to putt on. And I like to play, I'm a pretty fast player, so it was fun to get out without anybody in front of me and just kind of -- played in about 3 hours and 25 minutes. It was a nice pace to the round, and just had a good rhythm all day.

JEFF MAGGERT: Actually started playing them back in August. Actually the last World Golf Championship Golf Tournament in Akron, Ohio was the first week I started playing the irons. I kind of went back and forth for a couple of tournaments to my old set. But these are a new iron, a Ping iron, the I-3's. I really like the club. It's just taking me a little bit of time to get the loft and lies kind of adjusted to where I feel comfortable with them. I really started hitting the ball well yesterday afternoon with them. And today I hit the ball pretty well, as well.

JEFF MAGGERT: We lost. Seriously, that is probably the main memory. I played well here in the Ryder Cup in '97. This course is really a good course for my game if I'm playing well. It's very narrow off the tee. It's not a golf course where you need to hit the ball 300 yards on every hole to an advantage. So I was looking forward to coming back here. I played very well on the Ryder Cup in '97. I wish the whole team would have played a little bit better, but I was playing well then, and so I have a bit of confidence playing the course, I think, because of the Ryder Cup.

JEFF MAGGERT: Well, it's obvious the way Tiger Woods has played the last half of the year, really all year, that he's -- right now he's head and shoulders above a lot of us out here in the way he's playing. So I wouldn't say that I should be put up there in his ability right now. Certainly I'd like to be playing a little better, and certainly if I win here it would be a great end to my season. This is pretty much going to be it for me until January.

JEFF MAGGERT: Let's see, I birdied the par-5, the first par-5 on the front, No. 4. That hole was playing downwind today. I hit a driver and 3-wood right on the back edge of the green, and 2-putted for a birdie. The next hole I made a double bogey, that was one of the mistakes that I made today. I missed the fairway to the right. Really got kind of a bad break, had a very poor lie there. And I was not able to advance the ball very far. And I missed the green on my third shot and I didn't get it up-and-down, made a double bogey there. Then I birdied the 8th hole. A good shot in there, pretty close to the hole. I birdied 10. I was in the bunker --

JEFF MAGGERT: Pitching wedge, ten feet. Birdied 10. I missed the green about pin-high in the bunker. And I had a pretty difficult shot to try to get close. It was a pretty good downslope down to the pin. I just tried to get the ball on the edge of the green and let it roll down to the hole. It was one of those shots that had pretty good speed on it and went in. That was a good break there. I made birdie. The very next hole I 3-putted for a bogey. So again at times I felt like I made some mistakes out there, but I played pretty well. Then I birdied 17. I couldn't go for the green on 2, so I laid up and hit an L-wedge in there about five feet and made birdie there.

JEFF MAGGERT: 25 feet.

JEFF MAGGERT: Today it's downwind. I imagine there will be a lot of guys going for the green. I drove it in the left bunker, and didn't have an opportunity to go for the green. If I had been in the fairway I could have gotten it on fairly easily. They changed the hole since the Ryder Cup in '97. I like the hole better, even better than the way they had it playing in the Ryder Cup. They used to have a strip of rough that cut across the fairway that didn't seem to be very fair. If you hit a good drive you wound up right through the fairway in the rough. The tee is a little longer. They've added a new tee, so now you can -- you've got to hit a good tee shot, there's a bunker that's about a 250-yard carry to get it out in the fairway, but today that shouldn't be much of a problem, because of the wind, straight downwind. No wind it's a pretty difficult driving hole, at least for me. That's a long carry for me to get it out to the fairway.

JEFF MAGGERT: Not really. You never wish any ill luck on your competitors. He's just playing really solid now. I think he's getting in a real comfort level with himself. He's been on the Tour for a couple of years now. I'm sure in his mind he's probably struggling a little bit, inconsistent up-and-down. I'd like to be inconsistent like him. But certainly the way he's played this year I think he's just getting more comfortable with his game. He's got a lot of confidence, obviously, with the way he's playing. If there's any course that we could play right now where I feel like I could play him head-to-head it would be this course. I feel like the way this course is, it takes the driver out of his hand most of the time. This course is a position course off the tee. The distance that you hit your tee shots is very important, as is the direction. But on most of the holes you're looking to hit the ball 250, 260 yards. Some of the other shorter par-4s, you're lining up, hitting the ball 220 yards, 230 yards. Other than the par-5s, it certainly takes the driver out of his hand, takes the length away from him.

JEFF MAGGERT: It's still in the bank. I'm sure the government's got a big chunk of it by now. I said back then that it was a lot of fun to win a million dollars, but at that time it was -- the money was pretty insignificant. The fact that I'd gone five years on Tour without winning, just winning the tournament was more important. The money is in good hands with my banker, and hopefully it will be there when I retire.

JEFF MAGGERT: Not really. My fiancee gives me a hard time that I didn't really do much with that money. She gives me a hard time because I went out and bought a few new shirts for myself. I did buy a boat this summer, so I guess -- a very small boat. So I guess you could say that was my gift to myself.

JEFF MAGGERT: Just a little ski boat, no yachts. I used to ski as a kid quite a bit, actually. But I haven't been up on the skis this summer.

JEFF MAGGERT: I think it's fine. You've got 64 players, they all are very capable. I don't see any sense of having another qualifying to narrow the field down to 16 or 32 players. I think the 64-player match play form at is a pretty classical format. We play at the U.S. Amateur, all the guys on Tour have probably played that type of tournament. I'm not sure how the British Amateur is played. I know our U.S. Amateur, they do have a qualifying, but it's the top 64 players. The only -- it's just a tough tournament. You've got 64 players that are very equally matched. In our sport everyone likes to see the top-10 players in the world kind of meet at the end of the tournament. But in that tournament it's difficult. There's always going to be a lot of upsets, because the players are very well-matched.

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