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RENO-TAHOE OPENJuly 31, 2013Davis Love IIIRENO, NEVADA JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Davis Love, III into the interview room here at the Reno Tahoe Open. First of all, welcome to the tournament. You're making your first start. I know you've been impressed with everything you've seen this area so far. DAVIS LOVE, III: Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I like playing in altitude, and I like Stableford, obviously. So I'm excited about this week. I've been playing better and better and hitting it more and more solid, so I'm excited to get another start and to try something new. I've never played in this area, so it's going to be a fun week. JOHN BUSH: And I hear, speaking of the Stableford and looking back at Castle Pines, I hear they have the milk shakes here this week, same recipe. DAVIS LOVE, III: Oh, I can stay away from the milkshakes for sure. (Audio cut out.) At the McGladrey Classic they were talking about it the other day, that my daughter, who plays little bit of golf, Oh, you're going to have to help me with the scoring this week, so hopefully I can show her that pluses are good and minuses are bad and make a bunch of points. But, yeah, it's exciting. I was on the board here when they asked to switch over, and my first reaction was, I want to play. Obviously you would rather be at Akron, but this is going to be a fun week for me. I'm excited to get to try Stableford again. JOHN BUSH: Questions. Q. Davis, a lot of players this week are out here really in the big picture fighting for their cards. Talk about that challenge in general for those guys and what they may be going through as a whole. DAVIS LOVE, III: It's tough. You know, I played with some of those guys this year, you know, like at John Deere and two weeks ago in Jackson. I see a different group in the locker room than you see at the bigger tournaments. I see 'em. They're grinding and struggling and they want to keep a job. I'll ask a guy, You playing next week? He'll say, No, I'm not in. You know, it's tough. I realize now fortunate I am to be able to play week in and week out. There is a lot of pressure. You don't want to go back to Q‑School, you don't want to go through the qualifying system now. It's going to be not right back to the tour for some of these guys. It might be web.com. A lot of pressure. But doesn't matter if it's Tiger Woods trying to win a major or Davis Love trying to get into the FedEx playoffs or a guy trying to keep his card, we're all playing hard for something. It's a distraction that keeps us from playing well. Q. The shorter season, everything ending at Greensboro, how does that pressure pack at the very end? Here we are now almost in August. DAVIS LOVE, III: Yeah, this year was short. It was really short for me because I missed three months. I had neck surgery. So I'm needing to play these next three weeks just to get my 15 tournaments in. You know, it's hard enough to make the playoffs, much less missing three months. So I need to play well. I don't think I've‑‑ I know I haven't been out of the 125, so I need to play well to get in so I'm in tournaments like the PLAYERS and the playoffs. So I got to get going. I got three weeks. Obviously this is a good format for me here, and then PGA Championship and Greensboro have been good weeks for me, too. Just need a good week coming up. Q. Davis, if you could go back, you were talking about being on the player advisory council when they asked to switch. How does that work? Is it a 50/50 vote? DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, it's the board. There are four players on the board. Then there is a player advisory council that's 16 other guys. I don't know if there was actually a vote. You know, we were all for it. Basically, the players own the board and there are four independent directors. We're for the tournaments getting what they want. You could argue back and forth about, Well, what difference does it make how you keep score? But if the people here in Reno Tahoe thinks that it makes their tournament better and they can go sell more sponsorships and whatever and more money for charity, then, yes, please go do it. We had fun in Castle Pines. Took them, what, 20 years of that tournament to get to the system they like in the end. Now we're seeing it work. So I think it's a good idea. It's nice to do something different and get some identity for this event. Q. And have you been out on the course yet? DAVIS LOVE, III: I have not. Q. Might want to hit you up later then. DAVIS LOVE, III: Give me five hours and I'll have an answer to that question. Q. You had the neck surgery. How have you done since then? Is it 100%? DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, I told my therapist I've never been 100%, so let's not make that the goal. Let's make it 80% or 90%. I think I'm at that. I'm at about 80%, 90%. I still need to get stronger. I had about two years where I was not feeling great, and then a surgery and then coming back from that, it's going to take‑ my doctor said nine months to two years to get back to where I wanted to be. Took Peyton Manning basically a whole football season to get back to where he looked like he was Peyton Manning again. So starting to see the signs though and I'm starting to hit the ball I want to hit it. I've had some really, really good ball striking rounds. Putting don't matter how strong you are. So that's up and down, but the ball striking is really coming around and I'm excited about it. Q. One more if I may: You're obviously in the small group of guys that the encumbered events really don't really enter into your year. What have you heard about this tournament over the years and the course, et cetera? DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, I've heard a lot about it. Obviously Scott McCarron has been very involved in the player advisory council and obviously with this tournament, so I've heard a lot about it from Scott. I'm a four‑time board member, so I hear about a lot of tournaments. This one has always been a big topic of discussion because they've always worked so hard to stay on the schedule. They have been bounced around a little bit and worked hard to get sponsors, so we had them on the radar a lot. Heard a lot of great things about the golf course. I mean, everybody compares it to Castle Pines because of the altitude and similar terrain. But guys come back with great reviews. They enjoy the tournament. I've been excited over the last few months to hear everybody talk about it once I said I was coming and figuring out where to stay and what to do. Guys have nothing but positive to say about it. I think I saw Ben Crane posted a picture of him and his kids out of the golf course and how pretty it was. So everybody is kind of excited. I got a great pairing with two of my guys I've played with for a long time, Ben and Woody, so it's going to be a fun week. Q. With the Stableford, people talk generally about being aggressive. Is there any sort of different approach you take? DAVIS LOVE, III: I been trying to remember. You know, you accumulate points for the week, so just making birdies and pars like every other week works. I think in some situations you're going to be more aggressive, maybe shooting at pins from the fairways and things like that, because a bogey is not going to kill you. Obviously six birdies and six bogeys is better than twelve pars. So I'm looking at it a little bit that way. I think when you get in trouble though you play a little bit more‑‑ you don't go for it quite as much. You want to make sure you got a putt for par and it's not a putt for bogey. You don't want to make others. I think that's really the only strategy difference. Birdies and Eagles are important, and you can survive a bogey here and there. That's why I think a lot of long hitters did well at Castle Pines. They generally make a lot of birdies but also a few bogeys, and it balances out a lot better for the bombers. JOHN BUSH: Anything else? Q. Talk about what the Ryder Cup, being captain of that, meant to you, and is that something you would you like to do again if you were approached? DAVIS LOVE, III: Yeah, I was talking about it with some of the players ‑‑ actually last few weeks there's been a lot of discussion because we're coming up on the Presidents Cup and I'm assistant captain with Freddy. I wouldn't want to do it right away. I wouldn't want to come right back and do it, but, yeah, I would love to be a part of it. I told the whole Ryder Cup PGA of America staff after I was assistant captain for Corey, I said, I'll do anything you want every year. I'll be the cart driver, the towel boy, just to be around the team. I told Watson I would do anything he wanted me to do, but I was going to try to play as hard as I could to try to make his team. I'd love to say that I played on both of his teams. '93, that was my first Ryder Cup. He was an incredibly great captain. There are so many guys that we all look up to him. Like Brandt Snedeker. Brandt and I are going to be grinding hard, but we want to be on Watson's team. If I don't make the team again I would be disappointed, but I would love to captain it again. It was a lot of fun. A lot of pride in the way those guys played and the way they carried themselves. Just to be around the team is exciting. It's going to be a lot of fun with Freddy this year. I get right back in with basically probably a very similar group of guys. Might have two or three different, but basically the same group of guys. Be fun for me to get back in there with them again. Q. Seen Keegan Bradley on a Feherty episode earlier this week. Did you catch that? DAVIS LOVE, III: I didn't. I caught a bunch of his tweets, though. I guess he and Dustin were picking on each other. Q. He also talked about the Ryder Cup, an experience unlike any other, and that he could hardly walk to the first tee. Then he said later that it still tears him up when he sees you. He feels so bad, so disappointed that they weren't able to bring you that victory. Have you guys talked about that? DAVIS LOVE, III: Yeah. And my number one goal, my number one sports psychology or mantra the whole week was it was their team and they should play for themselves. I did the same thing for Tom Watson and Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins. (Audio cut out.) I know that Justin Leonard and I completely got in our own way at Valderrama because we were trying so hard to win for Tom Kite. We didn't get any points, and we cost him winning his Ryder Cup. I saw Lanny and Tom and all these guys put so much work into it for a year and a half, two years, that you wanted them to get the final experience. Then knowing that I had some guys on my team, like a Keegan or Brandt Snedeker, guys that I had watched come up, that they were going to try too hard for themselves, for their teammates, for their country, and for their captain. I didn't want their captain to be a factor in it. It's hard not to. If you're a hockey player or football player, I mean, those guys are living and dying for Nick Sabin in Alabama. They want to play for him. They want him to win. They want to dump the Gatorade on him. I didn't want that to get in their way, and I think a lot of things put pressure on you on Sunday. That's one when you start losing you think about. When you're winning you don't think about it. When you start losing, when it starts going bad you go, Oh, no. You think of all the bad things. I think it effected them a little bit, but that's why the Ryder Cup is so hard. Final thingI'll say about it is we care too much and try too hard, and that's why we don't win it. I been on around eight teams I've and watched it every time. We try too hard and we care too much. We free‑wheel it at the Presidents Cup for Freddy. I'm looking forward to watching that. JOHN BUSH: Good stuff. Thanks, Davis. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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