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JOHN DEERE CLASSICJuly 12, 2013Troy MattesonSILVIS, ILLINOIS JOE CHEMYCZ: We welcome Troy Matteson in after a 7‑under 64 today with the ace that we'll chat about. Troy, you mentioned outside this golf course and your familiarity with it and your comfort level with it. Can you just chat a little bit about why it feels so good for you? TROY MATTESON: You know, this golf course, obviously I talked about this last year, but D.A. Weibring designed this course and I got a lot of opportunities to talk to him about it long before I ever came and played this course. He always talked fondly of this area, and when you get up here and you play it, it's a very eye‑pleasing course. I'm sure a lot of players will agree with me that he makes it evident on some holes what to hit off the tee, and then he gives you a choice on some holes what to hit off the tee. It's just a lot of fun for us because there's a lot of birdies to be made out here. The golf course really flows well. It's just been a place I've liked ever since I started coming here, I guess, eight years ago now. There's just a comfort level with the course. JOE CHEMYCZ: And today obviously very comfortable with everything that took place. Talk about the ace. TROY MATTESON: Yeah, so I was pretty comfortable with the ace. I got a good yardage there. My caddie finally gave me a good yardage (chuckling). They moved up the tee box on 3 today and they put the pin right over the bunker on the right, and it's playing in the low 130s, and playing early this morning obviously there was no wind, so for most of us it's just a nice wedge. The last thing I thought before I hit the shot was, let's try to make an ace here, or I just said, you know what, let's just try to hit a good shot, kind of get some spin on it, bring it back down the hill, and leave ourselves a good putt. Well, it was coming in there, and I go, man, that looks pretty good. It started coming back down the hill, and it just disappeared, and the guys behind the green went crazy. It was a really fun moment because we got to actually see the ball go in. Afterwards I signed the ball and I threw it to the ShotLink guy. I figured he's the one who had to do all the work with the shot, so I figured he's the one who should get the ball. Q. After an ace how do you keep your equilibrium? TROY MATTESON: I think for anybody it amps you up a little bit. If there's a lot of people there it amps you up a lot. I was in a group where Tom Lehman made one at Whistling Straits on 17 the last time the PGA was there, and everyone is going nuts. There's several hundred people there‑‑ well, it might have been several thousand. I don't know, there were a bunch. And everybody is amped up, not just the guy who made it, everybody in the group is. Sometimes going to that next tee it's really hard to settle yourself down. I was fortunate enough this morning that it happened early. There weren't a lot of people around. Getting to the next tee was a little easier, let's just put it that way, and actually I hit a very good drive. It's probably the best post‑hole‑in‑one shot I've hit because the next swing is always a little fidgety, so I was fortunate to not have a lot of people standing around because I know when there's several thousand people standing around and the crowd gets going, it obviously amps things up. Q. Did it help that that was the longest green‑to‑tee walk on the golf course? TROY MATTESON: I think so. Any time you make one and you only have to walk 20 yards, that does make it harder, but that is a long walk so it gives you time to work it out there in your mind. Q. Can you imagineif you had a hole‑in‑one on 16 at Phoenix? TROY MATTESON: Oh, man, when they show Tiger's hole‑in‑one at Phoenix, like you just‑‑ now would even be more. I guess there wouldn't be as many people on the grass because it's totally enclosed now, but I would still think there would be a few beer glasses thrown down there for sure. But Phoenix, the last one I remember it was probably‑‑ oh, who was it? It was‑‑ Q. Was it Rickie? TROY MATTESON: No, it was‑‑ the guy has got‑‑ he's been in the hospital. He's an Australian player. Jarrod Lyle. I think he said he hated that hole. He just hated that hole, and then he went in, what was it, three years ago or something like that and made a hole‑in‑one in the first round or something like that. He's like, I love this hole, was everybody just goes crazy. Making hole‑in‑ones are great any time you get to do it, but it would be something special at Phoenix. I don't know if you could settle yourself down. You might have to lay up on 17, and nobody lays up on 17. Q. Here it's not much of a spectator hole. TROY MATTESON: Yeah, well, you know, there's no reason for people to come out that early in the round. Most people‑‑ you can see more golf here if you're, say, 7, 8, 9 and you can hop over to 10 and 11. You can see a lot of holes in a very short distance. Same thing on the back side; you can kind of get there where you've got 12, 13, 14 and 17 are really close and even 18. This is a good spectator venue where you can see five or six holes from one vantage point. Q. You said yesterday that you felt like the story line of Zach winning the tournament was for the best. That's not an attitude that you'd get from a lot of players. Can you talk about that a little bit? TROY MATTESON: Sure. I've only been out on the TOUR for ‑‑ this is my eighth year, I think, on the big TOUR, and I spent two years on the Nationwide Tour, like many of the guys did. You know, there are a lot of stories going on out here. Obviously you want to win any time you get a chance, and it's nice to be the story. But at the same time there are bigger things in motion. Obviously what's best for golf sometimes isn't a particular player winning; sometimes it's the hometown kid, or sometimes it's a guy that people in that area can relate to, whether he's from right in town or not. Zach and Steve are really big stories, and they're great guys. I mean, if you lose to a guy like that, I'm not going to say it takes the sting off, but they're great guys. I mean, if you're going to lose to somebody, that's the kind of guy you want to lose to. Nobody likes losing to somebody that they don't like, and that goes for any sport. But out here there's a certain camaraderie among players, and when those guys win, genuinely I really do believe that most of the players are behind them when they win. There are some players where you go, gosh, I really hope he doesn't win, I really hope this other guy wins. But last year those guys got a lot of support. A lot of people come to this tournament to watch Zach, to watch Steve. They're not buying tickets to watch guys like me by myself. They're buying tickets to watch the synergy of the other players. I do think Zach and Steve you can actually directly correlate people coming to the tournament because they're here. When they win, it's very good for everybody. Like I said, there's a lot of silver lining for me. I got to still go to the British. It helped me keep my card. I got some more experience late on Sunday, and that's really valuable. Whether you win or lose, that's a valuable experience. It helps you the next time you're in it. But again, when Zach hits it to a foot out of the bunker, he's got the ball below his feet, he's got water and he's got to hook it in there perfect, you couldn't have a better ending to it. If one of us would have made bogey and won the tournament on the first playoff hole, it wouldn't have been very interesting. It just would have been, oh, well, that guy saved his bogey putt. I mean, the fact we both made double was actually funnier, and then him coming back and doing that was pretty spectacular. I don't really have any issues with it on my end. I do think it was really the best thing for the tournament because the John Deere people, they're so important to this part of the country. They're so important to this tournament. They're so important to charity. They deserve to have a champion that they can really identify with, and I think Zach is a pretty good example of that. Q. Do you feel like you got that out of the way and now it's your turn? TROY MATTESON: You know, I'd love to win. But you know, at the same rate there are certain people that if they win, they help the TOUR more than others. Hopefully someday I'll put myself in that position, and it'll mean more at that point. Q. Did you happen to talk to D.A. afterwards about the Sunday or the whole experience? TROY MATTESON: I did, yeah, I did. I saw him actually several months ago when we were in Dallas and we went out and played a few holes together, me, him and Matt. And I know Matt is struggling right now; he's got the same thing his father had. It's nice we all got to spend the day together, but I told him, you were right, that place is just perfect for the way I play. He's glad that guys like the course. As a designer that's the biggest compliment you can get is people saying, man, this is a fun course, a lot of birdies. Yeah, if you hit a bad shot you're probably going to pay with a bogey, but nobody is coming in here saying they don't like this course or they don't like this hole, and there's many, many golf courses during the year where you'll hear players say, this hole is terrible or this three‑ or four‑hole stretch here is really bad. This is just not one of those venues. Q. Is there a hole that you like here? TROY MATTESON: (Laughing) You know, he had‑‑ when he was designing, right, he had to come up with something. 1 is kind of a, hey, hit a 3‑wood out there, get a wedge into the green. 2, he's giving you a chance. If you hit a really good chance, you can make a 3. If you don't, you can still save your 4. He had to come up with something to throw a wrench in the works there, and I think 3 and 4 were good complement holes to that. 3 is a tough tee shot when it's on the back tee and it's a 6‑iron or 5‑iron. And then 4 you've got to avoid that tree. He gives you chances and then he gives you holes where you've got to play smart. 3 just happened to be moved up enough to where it was a perfect yardage for me. I know some guys late in the day there are going to get some wind and it's going to be, do I hit a three‑quarter 9. Well, I don't like the three‑quarter 9 because the pin is tucked over the bunker. But if I hit a wedge I can't quite get it there. I was very fortunate to roll through there early in the morning with no wind. Q. Could you see yourself going into the architecture side of it? TROY MATTESON: You know, there's so much involved in doing this. I've actually talked to D.A. a little bit about this, not for me going into it but I've picked his brain a little bit. My degree in college is civil engineering, and I took a lot of road‑building courses. And if you don't do your math right when you're moving dirt around, it's easy to go, oh, here's another $500,000 or here's another $100,000 or here's another $200,000. A place like this is really interesting because it's good that he had the freedom to do what he wanted here. I think they had a 380‑acre track and they said build us a golf course, and that's exactly what you need. You need somebody to say that. You don't need somebody to say, look, here's a 380‑acre track but you can only use 140 acres of it to build your course, and it has to be here. You need freedom because on a big track of land like this, if you start moving dirt around and you miscalculate, you can be a million dollars off or a couple million dollars off, and that's a big project no‑no. You won't get hired again if you do that. There's a lot more going into it than just saying, hey, I see the hole going down through here. I don't know if I'm ever going to get to that point where I'm going to have my own company and go do that because there are a lot of moving parts in building a golf course, and the architect is just one of those parts. And D.A. has his own entire company that handles this. It's really neat to hear that side of it on if you get the right contractors in that can move dirt, they can do it much more efficiently and cost‑effective. I don't know if I'm ready for all that, all that weight on my shoulders, because if a project goes south, who are they looking at? They're pointing fingers at you. Q. Can you just kind of assess your round quickly and how you like your position here? TROY MATTESON: You know, I haven't played good in the last bunch of‑‑ well, last two weeks I played better and then I missed a bunch of cuts before that in a row. I think I missed seven cuts in a row. I'm starting to play better, so to get off to a start like this is really important for me to build a little confidence for the weekend. I love playing here, so when you come here and you play good, that kind of double reinforces what you're working on. You know, if I can keep doing what I'm doing now for the next two days, I think I've got a really good shot at winning or finishing really high. You never know out here, a guy could get it to 26‑, 27‑under. Look at what Steve Stricker did; he ran away with it and hid. All things being equal, if play kind of continues the same, I definitely like my chances going into Sunday. JOE CHEMYCZ: Troy, thank you. Play well this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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