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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 24, 2005

Jay Haas

CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA

CHRIS REIMER: Jay Haas, congratulations on a first round match victory. Talk a little bit about the match today.

JAY HAAS: Well, not the start I wanted to get off to. Jonathan birdied 1 and 3, and made pars after 3, wasn't what I was expecting. But I played well those three holes, so I felt if I hung in there -- I wanted to make it tough on him; I didn't want to hand him the holes.

But he made a bogey at 4, I made a long putt at 6. And he kind of gave me a hole at No. 9, went 2-up there at the turn, and just had a cushion the whole way. Jonathan didn't play very well, didn't play up to his standards today, and he drove the ball in the rough a lot, and you just can't do that out here.

That was kind of my goal starting off was to put the ball in the fairway and give myself an opportunity to make birdies, which I try to do every day, but you really have to do it out here, it's so wet, and the course was playing awfully long.

Q. From different accounts the greens -- ranging from footprints to lunar craters that you're having to putt through, I'm wondering how you found them to be.

JAY HAAS: We were pretty late in the day, so by the time we got to the greens they were pretty footprinted up. It didn't affect many of my putts; when I hit good putts they went in. You felt like you weren't going to make a lot of putts today, that was my mindset going in, just try to hit the greens, be consistent, make Jonathan beat me. And all you can do -- actually I almost putt better in situations like this, because all I'm trying to do is roll the ball. I have no expectations of the ball going in the hole, almost, just see what happens, hit it and hit it solid and see what happens. And I made it. I made the putts when I needed to make them.

Q. What does that mean, you try to roll the ball?

JAY HAAS: Just try to hit it solid, just try to hit it on-line, solid, which sounds easy, but as they say, easier said than done. And I think sometimes for me I try to make putts too much, just try to be too exact, rather than just kind of rolling the ball up there and letting the hole get in your way. That's what a good sports psychologist would tell me, I suppose.

Q. Does it change the strategy a lot when you're operating under the assumption you're not going to make a lot of putts, neither guy is going to make a lot of putts?

JAY HAAS: Well, I've had times where I've holed everything on bad greens like this, too. I don't think you can assume. I assumed that Jonathan was going to make every putt he hit. And he rolled a bunch over the edges, never really -- didn't look like he hit many bad putts, but not many of them went in for him. You know, I guess I don't assume anything other than the fact that he's going to hole out chip shots, and that's the mindset I have in match play.

Q. The bumpy greens, who does that favor? Does it favor the ball-striker, because it's an equalizer, takes the great putter out of his game?

JAY HAAS: I think the best player wins, no matter what the conditions are, short, long, hard, soft, windy, not windy. Vijay didn't get to be No. 1 because the greens were smooth or bumpy, he's just a great player. I don't mean to be flippant or whatever, but that's kind of -- to me, that's my mindset.

Q. In the long haul it proves to be right.

JAY HAAS: Right. I guess I don't give it a thought to-- I don't go out and think, boy, the greens are bumpy, this favors me or anything like that. So I'm playing well.

CHRIS REIMER: Speaking of Vijay, that's your second round match.

JAY HAAS: I knew that (laughter). I was looking at the pairings. I try not to look and see who I'm playing next, I try to focus on that first round match. But it said Vijay, Shingo, and Jonathan and Jay Haas. So I knew that was the second round match. And I tried not to think about that.

And I guess I just go into it with the attitude I had today. The way I've done it here in the last three years is just try to drive it in the fairway on the first hole and try to hit good shots. I can only control one hole at a time and only can control what I do. So hopefully the bumps will go my way tomorrow.

Q. You've had pretty good success in that last couple of years. Is that the reason being just -- you're just trying to do that?

JAY HAAS: I think that's -- I try to focus on in the moment, right there, that hole, not thinking about what if I won this match, who would I play or if I could win that match, then all of a sudden I'm in the quarter finals and I haven't even shot yet, in my mind. I try to avoid that and just think about this hole right here. I had Jonathan 2-down with five to play, and I three-putted No. 15 to tie the hole, my only bogey of the day.

So if I can get ahead of myself, I just have to look at situations like that where I had the hole won and three-putted from 30 feet. So anything like that can happen, and the matches can turn so quickly.

Q. We've heard for years and years and years about getting ahead of yourself and staying in it. Has there ever been a case in your career or cases where you were on the 18th tee thinking up a victory speech and things backfired?

JAY HAAS: No, I guess I haven't been in that many situations, leading that --

Q. Or getting ahead of yourself?

JAY HAAS: I think the only time I can recall is one year at Disney World I had a five shot lead going into the last day, and Hal ended up winning in a playoff maybe with Bill Britton or something like that. I ended up missing the playoff by one shot. And I won't say I was thinking ahead, any victory speech or anything like that, but I was playing very well. I had won the tournament in Pinehurst and the Texas Open the month before that, so I was playing probably my best golf I've ever played. And so I did not foresee not winning the tournament, I guess, which is a good thing, too, I think. If I can visualize good things happening, I think that's important, too.

But in a situation like that, I think we have to guard against thinking, boy, what am I going to say to the press after I win this match. That time will come, if it happens.

Q. Along those same lines, what's the craziest this game has ever made you with all the ups and downs that you've had?

JAY HAAS: I've got a book of crazy. I don't know. I've had a couple real bad spells in my career in the late '80s, and in 2000 I played pretty poorly. I don't know if crazy is the right term or more disillusioned, down about my game, things like that. But I think you can get crazy when you continually hit good shots and get bad breaks, but that just doesn't happen all the time. You don't hit a stretch where you just hit a bunch of good putts and none of them go in. Eventually they're going to start falling.

I've always been under the assumption that if I hit good shots, eventually it's going to pay off. So as far as being -- I don't know if I'm getting off the subject of your --

Q. When you get that disillusioned or down, how does that manifest? Are you sitting there with the Russian roulette in the hotel room? When you've gone your craziest --

JAY HAAS: I guess what I've looked at, everyone's career has ups and downs. The great players, their downs aren't as bad as down as the bad players. But everyone goes through the stretches where they're not playing their best golf. And what I found is hard work gets you out of those down periods. As much as I don't like to play or practice when I'm playing poorly, that's the answer for me, go practice.

Q. Could you beat the Jay Haas of your youth or youthful prime, your other prime?

JAY HAAS: Could I beat him?

Q. Are you a better player now than you've ever been?

JAY HAAS: It's just so hard to say, I think the game has changed so much in that -- that was 1981 or 2, almost 25 years. Steel shafts, wooden heads. If that guy was playing me today, yeah, he's probably 25 yards shorter than me, and so, yeah, that's a big advantage. But I can't look at it that way, because that's going to be me tomorrow against Vijay (laughter). So, yeah, he could beat me.

But it's so different today than it was, and I've always said that -- people have asked me if this is the best golf I've ever played, and I said I don't think so, because in '81 I won two tournaments, in '82 I won two tournaments. When I was playing well I won golf tournaments, and I haven't won in 12 years, so that answers the question for me.

Q. How do you stop from getting negative about not having won in 12 years?

JAY HAAS: I guess I don't think about that, other than I was reminded of it several times in the last couple of years, that what do you tell yourself when you haven't won and all that stuff. And I guess I tell myself that I've been playing very well to be sitting here today, to be in the top 64 in the world, to be in this tournament, to be in the American Express tournament, to have been on the Ryder Cup team and The Presidents Cup team. Those are the things that I look at, rather than looking at why haven't I won golf tournaments. I don't lose any sleep over that. There have been times when -- more times than not that I've not played good enough to win the tournament and there's been some times when guys have just played better. And it's just the way it goes. But I don't dwell on that fact that it's been -- I guess I dwell on the fact that I'm 51 and still doing this ten years past when I thought I was going to be doing it when I first started out here.

End of FastScripts.

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