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AT&T NATIONALJune 26, 2013Bo Van PeltBETHESDA, MARYLAND THE MODERATOR: Bo Van Pelt, thanks for joining us. You've been a great supporter of the AT&T National over the years. This is your seventh start here and finished runner‑up to Tiger last year. If we could start with opening comments about returning to Congressional, and last year was a little different situation with not only the weather but also playing in the final group. BO VAN PELT: Yeah, I've always enjoyed coming to the D.C. area.  Played the Kemper a couple of times, and then obviously AT&T coming on board. It's a great golf course. I think I qualified for my first Open Championship here, played a 36‑hole qualifier. I think that's the first time I ever played it and just fell in love. It's always been a pretty good venue for me. Obviously, last year was fun. I felt like my game was getting close last year. Drove the ball really well last year, which obviously with the rough was a big deal. And then Saturday and Sunday were fun, obviously, playing with Tiger. We go way back. We're pretty close in age. So played some golf together. Saturday was an amazing job. The grounds crew getting the golf course where we could even play with the storm that came through. I was talking to my driver that picked us up yesterday, and there were people without power for three or four weeks, so the fact that we played golf the next day was‑‑ like I said, my hat's off to him. Obviously, would have loved to win. I felt like I had a really good chance. From that standpoint, it was disappointing, but I was very pleased with how I played. If you just looked at the standpoint of the shots I hit and the putts I made over those four days last year, it was definitely something I took a lot of positives from. THE MODERATOR: You've already had a busy week this week if you want to mention that as well. BO VAN PELT: Played Travelers last week and partnered with Steve Stricker the last two days in Rhode Island in the CVS Caremark Classic. We had a good two days, shot 25 under, and won by about four, I think. Steve is as good a guy as you're going to find on this earth let alone on the PGA Tour. It was an easy two days. He's just a guy you love being around and watching him do his thing. His daughter was caddying for him, which was really cool. We gelled well and had a good two days. THE MODERATOR: Great. We'll take questions. Q. Did you ask for him, or did you guys get stuck together? BO VAN PELT: This was my first year. I don't think I really had the juice to ask for anybody. When I saw the pairing, I just texted him and said, I don't know if you had anything to do with it, but I appreciate the nod if you did. Obviously, I think anybody in that field would have loved to play with Steve, not only the type of player he is but the type of person. Q. What's your feeling on‑‑ this place is close to a Major, a few Majors, but it's here for a regular PGA Tour stop. Is there a balance there of how difficult you'd like it to be? BO VAN PELT: I think definitely the unique part about the Tour, you look at other sports, every football field is 100 yards long. Every basketball floor is the same length. Each tournament has its own identity. The Travelers is known for those last four holes. This tournament's known for long par 4s and heavy rough and you'd better be in the fairway and heat. You've got Phoenix Open's known for the 16th hole. I think that's a unique thing, and I think that Congressional can kind of stand on its own two feet. If you'd have played here two weeks ago, you probably could have had a U.S. Open if you wanted to. I think you know that coming in, and guys either like that and want to come play here, or they take this week off. Q. What's Memphis known for? BO VAN PELT: Hot and the corn dogs, the Pronto Pups. Is that it? Q. You mentioned you go far back with Tiger, same age and all that stuff. Do you have any good early day Tiger stories, college or juniors or anything like that? BO VAN PELT: Well, I guess the one that goes back to college is I saw Chris Tidland, who played out here a couple years ago. Chris Tidland and Tiger had the best‑‑ they played the best, it would have been‑‑ let me see how many holes that would have been. The best nine holes of golf I've ever seen in my life, Match Play at the Western Open. I think Chris was four or five down with seven to go, and he birdied them all to tie him, and then they went to the first playoff hole. Tiger hit somebody on the head, went over the green, then chipped it on and made about a 35‑footer for par. Chris left it on the lip for eight in a row to beat him. And then the very next hole, Chris knocked down a par 5 in two and two‑putted and Tiger made about a 15‑footer for eagle. It was the best nine holes I've ever seen in my life. Q. What were you doing? BO VAN PELT: I was watching. I'd missed. Kris Cox and I, we got out there on No.11 right as he went, I think it was 5 down. So we were the only two people rooting for Chris. So it was a lonely feeling out there, but ask Tiger about that sometime. It was pretty amazing golf, the shots that those two guys were hitting. Q. You were in college at the time? BO VAN PELT: We were in college, yeah. Q. So when he turned pro and started doing some similar things like that in terms of big putts and spectators, did you have the sense of maybe I've seen this all before? BO VAN PELT: No, it was‑‑ I remember we won NCAAs, and then he won his last amateur at Pumpkin Ridge. We were all up there, and then he turns pro. However many weeks later, they play the Tour Championship in Tulsa. So Coxy and I drove up there one day for a practice round. There was nobody there. It was kind of cold. It was late in the fall. We saw him over there chipping some balls. So we walked over and said hey. That was when Curtis said the famous line, hey, we'll see what you do when you come out here full‑time because he really hadn't played that well in the times he'd gotten in tournaments. Lo and behold, six weeks in, he's in the Tour Championship and hadn't missed cut in there. I walked over there and said to him, boy, you were sweating that 125, weren't you? That's one I'll always remember. I still think of all the unbelievable accomplishments he's had, the fact that you turn pro and then you play those last basically seven weeks in a row and you made the Tour Championship, I think is pretty ridiculous if you really put that into context for what that really was. Q. As a competitor, him not being in the field, does that do anything to change the field, level the field a little bit? BO VAN PELT: I think he's such a presence. Whenever he's in an event, you know when he's there, obviously just from the crowd size and the roars that you hear when he's playing well. So it makes it fun. I mean, to me, it's exciting when he's here. There's obviously a ton of great players that are in the field this week. So whoever comes out on top this week is not going to feel any less proud of their accomplishment from the field that they're going to have to play against and the golf course they're going to have to play against. For sure, you definitely know when he's here. Q. I don't have a list of all your runner‑ups and close calls and whatnot, but did this one at all sit with you longer just given that it was‑‑ I think it was a 5 iron that was probably a foot away from being perfect and just turned out to be a foot away from the hole instead. BO VAN PELT: I think this one was probably the hardest from the standpoint how well I played, I felt like, for the two days, those last two days with him. It felt like I probably could have taken advantage of a few of the opportunities early in both of those rounds to maybe even have a better score. I had a good chance to win the year or so before I won in Milwaukee in Puerto Rico, and Greg Kraft won, and that one stung too because I was looking for my first win just kind of anywhere. Played really well that week. That was one I looked back and thought, man, I played pretty stupid. The mistakes I made were just bad mistakes. To kind of take nothing away from Greg, he played awesome coming down the stretch the last six or seven holes to win that golf tournament. He flat out won it. But I felt like I made some dumb mistakes. This one, I really wouldn't have done anything different. I caught a tough lie there on 16, and then on 17 I thought I hit a really good tee shot. I thought I was on the left side of the fairway. It was in the first cut, and we kind of thought about it, and I was playing for a flyer. It just flew pretty extreme how far away. It was just obviously dead. You just can't make‑‑ can't hit it long on 17. Q. How about Muirfield next? BO VAN PELT: I've never been, but I love The Open Championship. Probably next to the Masters, probably my second favorite Major to play in. It's just such a unique experience to play that type of golf and the yellow scoreboard and the grandstands. It's something I get excited about. From everybody I talked to, it's a great test and a great golf course. So I'm excited to get over there. Q. When do you go over? BO VAN PELT: I'm going to play the John Deere this year. I haven't played since '09. I'm going to play there and take the charter. Q. You seem like a tractor guy. BO VAN PELT: You know, that's not the worst thing anybody's ever said about me. Q. Today. BO VAN PELT: Yeah, today for sure. Q. Do you have a tractor? BO VAN PELT: I do not. One of these days, you might find me on one. But my '74 International Scout is the closest thing I ever got to a tractor. THE MODERATOR: Bo, thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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