WGC ANDERSEN CONSULTING MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 26, 1999

Jeff Maggert

JEFF MAGGERT: I played some good golf this afternoon. Of the four rounds, I played probably my best round this afternoon, and I knew I had to play good to beat Tiger. He is a great player in Match Play, and the way I played the first three matches, I played some steady golf, but I didn't feel like I was making enough birdies. I felt like this afternoon I really needed to come out and make some birdies. I shot a good score today. I think I was 5-under for my round after 17. So Tiger struggled a bit. He probably wasn't as sharp. He didn't have his A-game. He didn't make the putts that he normally makes. I have watched him play Match Play and he seems like he makes every putt when he needs to, and I think that is why he has such a great record in Match Play. Today he wasn't in there quite close enough to make some of those birdies, and I think the other key today was the par 5s. I knew Tiger was going to have a huge advantage on the par 5s with his length, and I didn't want to give him -- I didn't want to give all those par 5s away to him. So I really wanted to play well on the par 5s and make some birdies. I think I was actually 1-up on the four par 5s that we played today. I think that was the difference in the match, because if he plays a par 5 well, he is going to make four birdies and maybe an eagle on one of them. I really thought that was the key to the match today.

JEFF MAGGERT: Well, I hit the ball close a lot today. The greens, they seem to have gotten better as the week's kind of progressed here. I feel pretty confident. I have been putting pretty well the last month or so. That is the key to Match Play. You got to make the putts to win the hole or save the hole. You can't win matches unless you make those, and I was putting well today. I think the key putt was on 15. I made about a 15-, 18-footer up the hill for birdie there. That put me 2-up. And when I got 1-up on 12, I birdied 12 to go 1-up, I really thought if I could get one more hole in there and get 2-up, that was going to be a big turning point in the match. Fortunately, I was able to do that. I made a nice little 4-footer for par on the par 3, 13 for a half, and I just played steady coming in. That was the difference.

JEFF MAGGERT: I wasn't thinking about Tiger this morning while I was playing, but I certainly knew last night that if I won my match this morning and he won his, we would be playing in the afternoon. Other than that, it really didn't make any difference. I knew Tiger was in my bracket, and if I was going to play Sunday I was going to have to beat him at some point in time if someone else didn't. You know, I just -- I struggled a little bit this morning with my game and I wasn't real happy really with the way I played this morning. So maybe -- you know, maybe that made me try a little bit harder, concentrate a little bit more this afternoon, because I knew I was going to have to play some good golf this afternoon. I got off to kind of a poor start. I made kind of a silly bogey on the 1st hole and gave him a hole, you know, starting out. I was like: Oh, no, let's don't do this all day. I just played some really good golf after that. I didn't give any holes away. That is the key in Match Play, if you start giving holes away, you know, with a poor chip here and you make a bogey and you lose a hole, you can't afford to do that in Match Play, especially when you play a guy like Tiger.

JEFF MAGGERT: Not really. I was more worried than anything. I hit some poor shots this morning, to be honest with you. A couple of tee shots that I drove in the rough that normally, you know, I just don't hit those kind of shots. I was getting frustrated and I was a little bit upset at some of the shots I hit this morning. But things came around this afternoon. I just -- I tried to approach the round this afternoon with a lot of patience, and I just tried to think fairways and greens and tried to give myself a birdie putt on every hole, and that is pretty much the way I played most of the day.

JEFF MAGGERT: I had a good lie in the bunker on the up-slope. As bunker shots go, it was probably a fairly easy shot. The bunkers here are very, very well-manicured and the sand is -- they are easy bunkers to play out of if you get a good lie. I have hit some good bunker shots this week. I have made some saves out of the sand. So I was pretty confident I could get up-and-down and make 3.

JEFF MAGGERT: I really felt the match turned around kind of on 8, 9 and 10. I made three birdies there. He was 2-up at that point in time, and I made three birdies to even the match. You know, the momentum was kind of on my side. I was hitting the ball well. I just felt like if I could make three or four more birdies, you know, coming in, I can really put the heat on him. And I did make a couple more birdies and, you know, Tiger didn't counter with any birdies down the stretch. He hits the ball pretty well out here and he hits it so far, you know, he is always around the green. He always seems like he is giving himself a chance to make birdie or save par. When I watch him on TV in some of his matches, he just seems like he makes every clutch putt that he needs. Today maybe he was a little bit off this afternoon and there was a few putts that really could have kept him in the match and kept the momentum from swinging my way, and he wasn't able to make those. I think -- I played a good, steady round of golf and that is the way I wanted to play today. I didn't want an up-and-down round where he was winning a bunch of holes, and then I would win a bunch of holes. I wanted to kind of keep it steady and keep the momentum from going back and forth, and I felt like if I could do that, by the end of the match, I can kind of just, you know, maybe wear him out, so to speak, but he is tough. He had some putts on 16 and 17 and I expected him to make those, just because he always does. But today they didn't fall.

JEFF MAGGERT: I birdied 2. About 15-footer there. Then I birdied the 8th hole. Hit a little wedge shot in there about three feet. Birdied 9 from about three feet. And birdied 10 from about 12 feet right in the fringe there. That was 10. Then birdied the 12th hole. I chipped it up pretty close, about five feet. And then the other birdie was on 15. That was about an 18-footer. Kind of just almost straight up the hill.

JEFF MAGGERT: It is probably easier playing one-on-one against a guy. At Congressional there were three, four, five guys that really were right there with a chance to win; so, you know, if you messed up, not just one guy can pass you; all four, five of them could. I think Match Play is a little bit easier to handle in pressure situations. I have never been really intimidated by matches on who I play. And even, you know, the Ryder Cup, it is nerve-wracking and I am very nervous on the golf course, but I always say it is a good kind of nervous. It really makes me play well and focus, and I think if you let the nerves intimidate you, it can mess you up. But I always think if I am not nervous then something is wrong; so I like to be a little bit nervous. It makes me concentrate more, and the key is, if you play well, you are going to beat the guy you are playing against. Doesn't matter if he is No. 1 in the world or No. 70; if you play well you are going to win.

JEFF MAGGERT: I don't know. You know, I probably would have been a little bit more up for the match this morning if I had Tiger this morning. Bernhard and my games are pretty similar. We hit the ball pretty straight. I felt like I could just kind of play my game and just play a nice, steady round of golf this morning; and you know, I would be in good shape with Bernhard, but I was kind of up-and-down. I think I made four, five birdies and four, five bogeys to go with him. So it wasn't the round of golf that I like to play. That is why I was a little bit worried about the round this afternoon. Maybe it did help me. I kind of got that -- those -- that type of round, I kind of got it out of my system this morning, and I was really ready to play a good round of golf today with no mistakes.

JEFF MAGGERT: Well, I don't know. When you got a chance to win the U.S. Open, it can't be a bad nervous. That is just part of golf. Every experience, you can't let it upset you and you can't get down about it, even if you fail under a certain situation or don't perform your best. That is golf, and you have to -- you can be upset, but you have to realize that tomorrow is another day and try to learn, if you can, what you did wrong in that certain situation, if you can. Sometimes you can't pinpoint one thing. But when you get in that situation again, you have kind of a comfort level that, Hey, I have been there; I have done this; let's see if you can do it a little bit better than what you did last time.

JEFF MAGGERT: Match Play is different because it is one day and you are out. If you make a mistake today and don't play your best, then you are going home. In a major tournament, if you play well for three days and you get to the last day and you are kind of -- you are struggling a little bit, you are still in there, but this tournament has still got two more days and if you struggled today and you don't win your match, you are going home.

JEFF MAGGERT: Not really. But it doesn't surprise me that the players in the bottom half of the rankings have played so well. I think it is very obvious that David Duval and Tiger Woods are, you know, neck and neck, the two best players in the world over the last couple of years going by their record. But once you get past those two guys, in my opinion, everyone is pretty much equal. And as well as David and Tiger have played, they are not head and shoulders above the rest of the players out here. You can look at Tiger's record over the last twelve months, and he played good the last couple of weeks. But it is tough to come out here on our Tour, and I know people expect Tiger to roll off a victory or two every month that he comes out here. But there are good players on our Tour, and if you struggle a little bit, you are not going to win tournaments out here. The guys that win week-to-week, the guy that wins that tournament, has played some really good golf to win, and there is lots of guys out here that can do that.

JEFF MAGGERT: The public lacks heroes, and it is great for golf to have guys like Tiger and David around. That is what makes the game exciting to have a couple of guys that are a little bit ahead of the rest of us. And you know, it makes us try harder and it is good. Every sport has to have their superstars. That is what makes it fun for the fans. Sometimes the underdogs come up and do something good.

JEFF MAGGERT: Galleries were pretty calm today. I have played with Tiger before, and they can get pretty rowdy, but you know, the fans turned out here to see Tiger, and they like to see him win. In Match Play, he is very charismatic. He is out there. He punches his fists when he plays well. The fans like to see that. He makes 20- or 30-footers when they are in do-or-die situations. He shows his emotions, and the fans really like to see that. Fortunately, for me, today he wasn't making those putts, because when he does make a few of those, it really gets the crowd going and it gets the momentum going his way.

JEFF MAGGERT: I had an uphill putt there. I wasn't going to lag and wait for him to miss. He had about a -- had a tough putt about a 6- or 7-foot coming down the hill. But like I said, those are the kind of putts that he always seems to make. I had a putt that was right up the hill, a little bit of a right-to-left break, and I wanted to make sure that I gave myself a chance to make that. I wasn't worried about running it by a couple of feet.

JEFF MAGGERT: I probably -- maybe drifted a little bit right. I was pretty much aiming for the middle of the fairway. I was in the first cut of rough there, and I had a 4-iron and, you know, maybe I hit it five or six yards further right than the point that I was aiming at. But the thing about that hole today is I didn't want to be all the way on the left side of the fairway, because it -- it made the next shot into the green more difficult. I knew I wanted to play it pretty -- a pretty conservative third shot into the green, and, you know, kind of the center or right center of that fairway kind of allowed me to play that type of shot.

JEFF MAGGERT: When I played in matches, I always put a mental note in my mind that my opponent is going to make the putt. The reason I do that is because you can let those things bother you when guys start making 20- or 30-footers; so just put it in my mind that he is going to make the putt. He makes a lot of them. I have seen him make them. When he had the putt on 16, I was thinking he was going to make it. The putt on 17, I was prepared to go to the next tee. I was preparing myself mentally for the next tee shot on the next hole. I mean, you can't just sit around and say: Oh, he is going to miss this and the match is going to be over. Because that is -- he is a great player, and he can make those putts. He had a couple of those late in the day that, you know, that I was kind of expecting him to make, but he didn't make them like he normally does.

JEFF MAGGERT: 16 didn't. When it was around six feet from the hole, I could tell that it wasn't going to go in. 17 looked like he hit a pretty good putt. I know he was kind of walking like he thought it had a chance to catch the lip there. From my angle, I was just watching it roll and I just said: Well, he is probably going to make this, here it goes and I was ready to go to the next tee. But it just slipped by the edge.