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AT&T PEBBLE BEACH NATIONAL PRO-AMFebruary 6, 2014Stuart ApplebyPEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA Q. Give us a few highlights of your round, please? STUART APPLEBY: Can I give you the highlights of round? I didn't make a bogey so that's a highlight. I chipped away, obviously being the second group out we had some pretty bad weather that obviously was taking its toll on Pebble Beach golf course more than the others. Certainly Monterey was probably the best handled course for the conditions. So, really we got a‑‑ I birdied the second hole and in the ugly weather and we ‑‑ they shut us down and then it was a waiting game. I spent quite a bit of time, myself and our partners, in the halfway hut, whatever you want to call it on the course there. And managed to get back to the course a few warm‑up balls for the second session and I just played pretty solid. I putted really well. Made quite a few putts of nice length to keep everything going. Definitely made a couple of nice saves, made probably a 15‑footer for par here and there, that sort of kept the round going in the right direction. Hit the ball decently, but it was just heavy. I haven't really played in conditions like this, the heavy air, the shortness the ball's going in these conditions and we certainly got a break with the weather clearing up from the afternoon period on. It definitely was much easier to ‑‑ less guessing involved. Q. Can you accept the quirky weather just given the fact we're at Pebble? STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, you have to be. I guess Pebble doesn't quite rain like certainly like Monterey, I guess the greens were in quite a bit of trouble there. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize that you have to shut everything, you know when you have something like that. Although I got to say, the weather was pretty crappy here, we certainly could have played from the physical point of view, no water on the greens, but from an emotional point of view it was pretty testing. So maybe the break for everybody was good for those guys physically at the course there at Pebble and I think emotionally for us it was giving us a bit of a break too. Q. How much did the weather conditions affect the golf today and how much will it in the next couple days if we get any more rain? STUART APPLEBY: Well, look, I think if we did ‑‑ if Pebble could drain better, it would have been a real tough day. If we had to keep playing and Pebble didn't get the wet greens, I think you would have seen three shots worse by almost all the field. It was just ugly enough where it was the stage where caddies would have been struggling to keep grips dry, gloves dry, score cards would have been wet after three holes. I mean it really would have been quite difficult. So, I guess the drainage issues or weakness at Pebble certainly gave us all a bit of a reprieve from what was going to be a long, arduous day. Now, it just turned into a really a long day for us. Q. You mentioned a couple of par saves that kept it going. Can you give us an example of one, and what hole, and also maybe one or two of your better birdies by your standards? STUART APPLEBY: I don't know, I don't remember the score so well. I think, what? 14? Par‑3? 14? Yeah, no, I totally misread a putt there from 40 feet and hit it 15 feet by. Sort of wanted to slap myself afterwards, because I thought I had my name on the golf bag, sort of knew what I was supposed to be doing, but, yeah, I knocked that one back in. So that was just nice to not make a soft bogey. Otherwise, it was really just easy steady as it goes. I had the odd circle on the card here and there that was obviously we had a par‑5, 7? It used to be a par‑4? 7? No. Sorry, you're right. 16. 16. That was a par‑5 this year where typically we had ‑‑ when they had the tee back, I almost wanted to pull my hair out, 500 some yards in cold weather. But thankfully they gave us a five there. And made a birdie there. But it was good solid golf. I saw the phenomenal start that Daniel got off to, but I haven't seen the scores, but it seemed like Monterey Peninsula Country Club was the easier course. Yeah, it looked like the easier of the courses. And I don't know if that's whether it was smoother or less wet. I don't think it's obviously anything to do with the golfers. But good steady golf. If I have three more days of sort of ball striking like that or getting the right roll on the green, it will be a successful week. Q. A little bigger picture than today, can you give us a sense for sort of where you are in your career? We obviously heard about you with the 59, but it seems like you haven't been in the contention a lot the last few years. Do you feel like you're getting back in the groove a little bit? STUART APPLEBY: Well, I think getting back on track or the groove, you can use a million analogies, but they're all appropriate. Certainly I struggled with some swing issues that sort of more a little bit of a injury that sort of affected my swing. I think my swing's certainly doing better. I think emotionally I took a real hard hit of just not playing the golf that maybe I was accustomed to. So certainly that was dented. So I'm really trying to not rebuild, but improve upon some of the things that I've done really well in my career. I've lost a bit of my focus and I think that certainly it hurt performance and really building or trying to ignite the feelings of being in contention again and that's what we're all looking to do, because that's sort of where you get to learn the most about your game, where you get to obviously be at the fat end of the leaderboard at the end of the week and that's where all the trophies are. There's only one of them. And typically these type of greens I've struggled on, I haven't really putted well. I've improved my stroke where I've got an upward hit now where the ball rolls a bit more fluently than the days where I was descending. That really did not make the ball roll well around poa annua greens. But I'm 42 years of age, there's not a lot of guys, I guess, winning in their 40s, but certainly there has been, but there's not as many as you would think. I feel pretty good right now. Mentally I can always get better and better, no doubt about that. But, yeah, I just, that's the beauty of this game, you get so many second serves and so many chances. DOUG MILNE: Well, that will do it. Thanks for calling in. Keep it up. STUART APPLEBY: No problem, guys. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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