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WGC CADILLAC CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 8, 2014Patrick ReedMIAMI, FLORIDA JOHN BUSH: We'll get started. We'd like to welcome Patrick Reed into the interview room after a 3‑under par 69. He'll enter the final round with a two‑shot lead. If we can get some comments on your rounds today. PATRICK REED: The main thing with this kind of golf course is with how firm and fast and tough it's playing, you have to stay patient, and I felt like I stuck to my game plan all day and stayed real patient and felt like I got a lot out of my round. I feel like I left some shots out there but I feel comfortable going into tomorrow especially with the lead and hopefully go do the same thing. JOHN BUSH: Compare the conditions out there today compared to yesterday. PATRICK REED: Yesterday I feel like it was blowing, I felt like a hundred. It was blowing real hard yesterday. It felt like today, if we hit quality golf shots we could hit it real close and made a lot of birdies. Q. How are you going to feel when you see that red shirt in front of you tomorrow? PATRICK REED: That's fine. I've seen Tiger a lot on the driving range. Never had the opportunity to play with him and I still haven't been able to play with him. But you know, whenever he's close to the lead, he's a guy you have to watch out for. But at the same time, I have to go and just play my own game. I was playing with Dustin Johnson today and I could have gotten into situation where I started to play 'Who Could Hit the Ball the Farthest,' and I would have lost that battle every time. But I stayed in my rhythm, stayed in my golf game and my game plan, and that's why I'm sitting here with the lead because I'm not getting ahead of myself and not trying to play against other people, just playing my own game. Q. You took the lead into the final round at Humana; you've done this before and you've been in this situation. But being the fact that this is a World Golf Championship, how is this a different test than maybe those two other victories? PATRICK REED: To me it's another golf tournament. Of course, it's a World Golf Championship event and there's a lot more on the line. But at the same time, I have to treat every round and every event like it's just a normal event and another round of golf. Stick to the game plan I've had all week, and that's what's gotten me to this point. If I can continue to do well what I'm supposed to be doing and keep making putts, coming down that 72nd hole, I'll have a chance to win. Q. Could you club yourself off Dustin at all or is there too much of a gap? PATRICK REED: No chance. He hits it so far. I realized how far he really hit it when we stepped up on the second tee and I hit a pull‑draw drive, which usually will go a long way, and I had a soft 8‑iron in my hand. I think he had 80 yards. I mean, he hit it so far off that tee, and he flew the bunker on 6. So I know he hits it a very long way, and I knew that coming into today. I've seen him hit the ball before; it's like a missile coming off the face. All I can do is make sure I played to my strengths and plodded my way around the course where I left myself chances for birdie. Q. Were some of you guys joking about how far he bombed the shot on 18‑‑ PATRICK REED: Oh, yeah, for sure. I hit a great drive there. To hit that fairway on the right side is tough because it's very narrow. To watch him hit this tower draw straight into the wind and cover that water, it's just like, all right, you hit it a long way. Q. I can't remember, were you leading, also, going into the final round at Greensboro? PATRICK REED: Yes. Q. Do you consider yourself a good frontrunner? You're two‑for‑two right now. Does it bother you trying to hold the lead? PATRICK REED: You know, I mean, it doesn't bother me to the fact that I know I'm playing real well. If you have a 54‑hole lead, that means you're playing the best golf of the group through three rounds. You know, the thing is, I just can't get ahead of myself and tomorrow is Sunday, but at the same time it's another round of golf. Of course, anyone would love to win the event, but at the same time, you have to go in with the kind of mind‑set that if you happen to not get it done, it's not the end of the world. We've won twice since August. I mean, we've played great, and if I continue doing what I'm supposed to be doing, I mean, come Sunday afternoon, hopefully we're holding the trophy. Q. When you got to 18, you had the lead and that hole, you play a draw, that hole is not set up for a draw. You told me you had been working on a cut shot. Is that what you did? PATRICK REED: I definitely didn't hit a cut. No chance. Actually hit a perfect tee shot. The wind was off the least and into. I could aim down the right edge and feel like with my draw swing it would go pretty straight, which it did. As I was over the iron shot, I was in between 9‑iron and 8‑iron, and we decide to hit the 8 so I could hit it a little softer and try to hold it off. On the middle of my downswing, someone moved in the crowd and their shadow went right over my ball. So I just like, I gripped that thing as tight as I could and hit this high, basically floaty shot out to the right and ended up on the right side of the green. You know, it's one of those things that I've gotten more comfortable hitting the cut, hitting the straight shot; that if there is water left, I can still step up and make a confident golf swing and hit it straight. Q. How big was the eagle on No. 8, because up till then, you were 1‑over, string of pars. PATRICK REED: You know, I mean, it's always nice to make an eagle. But at the same time, my one bogey I had, I hit a perfect 3‑wood. It went 301 and a half yards. I mean, it was a half a yard too far and ended up just in the rough. Hit a perfect pitching wedge right at the flag and caught a flyer and went to the back edge. Hit a first putt and had to go up the ridge flat and then back down the ridge and it literally stopped a foot from the second ridge. If it went a foot farther it would have trickled out and gone to two feet, if that. So, I mean, I felt like I played that hole really well and ended up walking off with 5. So going into 8, I felt like I was playing really well, I was hitting a lot of high‑quality shots and hitting a lot of good putts, and I just wasn't‑‑ I mean, I wasn't making birdies. To make that eagle, of course, gave me a little momentum, hit a great iron shot on 9, feel like I hit a perfect putt that didn't go in and to birdie 10 and 11 back‑to‑back just kind of jump started the round. Q. There's a lot of trouble out there, and Dustin found some of it. Did that help you focus? PATRICK REED: Not really. Everyone knows that there's trouble out there and I have in my notes great lines off tees and great spots to put the golf ball. The thing is every player has to execute. Some players are going to execute and some players aren't. Just you have some of the top players in the world all at this event, and some guys are going to go shoot 66, 65, 67 and some guys are going to go shoot 74, 75. Just all depends on what they have that day. Q. There were a few holes where your approach shots were all pinpoint. When you are hitting it that well, is there a different feeling of precision? Like can you feel kind of that you're in a hot zone to some respect? PATRICK REED: Yeah, of course, when you're hitting the ball really well, you just have to have the confidence that you can aim at anything and hit it right there. But I mean, this golf course is one of those courses that even if it's real calm, even if you feel like you're hitting the ball extremely well, you could hit shots that land right at the flag and end up 20 feet away down a ridge or off the green short‑sided. This golf course definitely makes you stay in the present and almost play a little safer than normal. And, you know, the way they had some of the pins, you were able to play a little away from the flags, but use ridges to funnel is to the hole and I feel like I did that really well. Q. Two years ago, you are Monday qualifying out here and you get through Q‑School I think on the number, and now you haven't even played a major yet, but you're going for your third possible victory tomorrow in a WGC. Do you ever pinch yourself at how quickly this has all come together for you? PATRICK REED: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely come very fast but at the same time, for what my wife and I have done throughout the past 2 1/2, three years, we've worked so hard, not only at events, but also at home behind the scenes with getting my game where it needs to be. That's the reason why I'm playing as well as I am. It's one of those things that when you work as hard as we have at home, when you come out here, you're going to produce numbers. You're going to play well. The main thing for me is just stay more consistent and continue shooting low numbers and keep getting these kind of positions where I have leads going into Sunday. Q. You talk about those low numbers and you've talked in the past about being aggressive coming from those Monday qualifiers from a few years ago. Have you kept that nothing to lose attitude and that aggressive nature since then and did you have it before then? PATRICK REED: I've always had that aggressive, kind of go for everything. The main thing now is I feel like with how my golf swing is that I'm a little bit more consistent with it and I know exactly almost where it's going most of the time. That allows me to, when I am aggressive, pull off the shots. Probably five, six years ago, I probably couldn't pull off half the shots, even though I would try. Now I feel like 80, 90 percent of the time, I can pull off any shot I'm trying to do. That just gives me more confidence to the fact that coming down the 71st, 72nd hole, if I have to be really aggressive to have a chance to win, I can do that. Q. Can you run us through in detail the hard work you mentioned at home, what kind of stuff do you do? PATRICK REED: We work really hard with Kevin Kirk, my swing coach. We'll get out there at 8:00, 8:30, lessons, go all the way until about noon. And then after the lesson, we'll work on whatever we need to work on, whether it's putting, full swing, distance control and wedges, chipping. Then usually after that, we'll go play 18 holes or nine holes. We start at 8:30, usually ends around 4:30, 5:00. And that's one of those things that we do probably would say five days a week. For example, next week, Monday and Tuesday, I'm going to take off and then I'm going to be back at it Wednesday through Sunday morning before I leave to catch a flight over to Bay Hill. It's just one of those things that I feel like however hard you work at home and what you put in at home, that's how you're going to produce on the golf course. Q. Do you use TrakMan or any of that, and are you a workout junky like Tiger Woods? PATRICK REED: Not a workout junkie at all. I'd rather lay in bed and watch TV than get in the gym (laughter). It's just one of those things that I haven't really put a workout into it yet. Don't really watch what I eat. Just kind of live life and feel like if I work hard at the golf course, that's just what worked for me. I feel like that every time I have worked out in the past, I've gotten real tight and kind of bulked up even more and I'm unable to really be consistent and make the correct golf swings I need to. It's just one of those things. I mean, we are going to start doing some stuff and trying to figure out what works for us, but it's just one of those things that I haven't really done. When it comes down to what we do at home, it's more on a Shots To Hole, which is a program that Stuart Long made. I entered my dad‑‑ it's basically a ShotTracker on steroids. It gets way more in depth and it's one of those things that it shows every putt, if you missed it short, past, left, right, and a lot of these things are, did you do it‑‑ you might have missed it left but did you hit your line; if you hit your line, then you didn't miss it left, all that kind of thing. Because you can make putts; but if you didn't hit your line, I mean, you have to note that down. That really is key to what I feel like is being successful and more consistent, because a guy who it's had their line and hits their distances are the ones that are going to be playing well. JOHN BUSH: Patrick Reed, thank you, sir. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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