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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIPMay 8, 2014Martin KaymerPONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA MARK STEVENS: I'd like to welcome Martin Kaymer. Martin tied the course record; no one else has ever shot a 29 here at TPC Sawgrass. Talk about your round today and then we'll have a few questions. MARTIN KAYMER: Yeah, okay. I didn't make many mistakes today, which was nice. I think I missed only one fairway, which was on 16. So overall ball‑striking was very good. Fortunately I could take advantage of some putts on my back nine, on the front nine, on the golf course. It was just a very, very good round of golf. Q. You've shown steady improvement since March. Can you pinpoint what's going on to do that, and did you have any idea this was waiting to happen? MARTIN KAYMER: Well, I stopped thinking. (Laughter.) That's pretty much the bottom line. I thought a lot the last two years about swing changes, about this and this, that every shot I made I reflect on it, what I did wrong, what I did right, and then I think a couple weeks before the Masters I worked a little with my coach. He came to Phoenix, and then I went to Germany the week before, and we had a good session. And then it just clicked a little bit that I thought, okay, I know I can hit pretty much every shot when I needed to hit it. If it's a draw, if it's a fade, low or high, I know that I can do it. It's just a matter of getting the confidence on the golf course and then letting it happen and really doing it. You can play the safe way. You can play a round of golf in a very safe way and make your putts. Maybe you pick up a birdie here or there, but sometimes you need to try the impossible to make it‑‑ that you know it's possible. Does that make sense? Yeah? Do you understand what I mean? You have to hit very special golf shots sometimes where you know you can hit them, and then you gain a lot of confidence from that. I just trust myself a lot more, and I stopped my thinking. I think the bottom line is I think less. Q. 66 players under par right now, and that is a front and back nine record. Is the golf course playing as easy as you've ever seen it, and are you able to be more aggressive because of the softness of it? MARTIN KAYMER: Well, you can be a little bit more aggressive because the greens are softer than the last few years, but it's not an easy golf course. You have to hit a lot of fairways. If you hit the fairways then you can go for some flags, but once you're in the rough, especially with that grass and the Bermudagrass from the rough, it's very difficult to judge the distances. Then it's a very tricky golf course. But I hit a lot of fairways today, and therefore I could go for some flags. But at the end of the day, you need to finish it off with some good putts, and it was nice today that I had a couple‑‑ I had two bonus putts here and there, and then I just played good golf. It's a difficult golf course, but if you hit fairways, it's manageable. Q. Why do you think it took you two years I think is the number you used to get to the point where you stopped thinking? MARTIN KAYMER: Well, the first year I wasted a little bit I would say because I was distracted by too much what was going on off the golf course, with being No.1 in the world and all those things. I think I didn't have enough energy to really focus on the main thing because I was doing a lot of other things, which was okay afterwards because then it was just part of the whole process, I think. And then the last 12, 18 months, or let's say after the first 12 months, the second year, I was working very, very hard to get back, and then it took me maybe another six to eight months after this to stop thinking, stop trying to play perfect golf, and I think that's the key in the end because it's the reason why everybody is on the PGA TOUR out here. At one stage we played really good golf. We trusted ourselves. We almost didn't need a caddie, we didn't need a coach. It was all within ourselves. We had it all. We just need to find a way to get it out and let it happen, and that is what I noticed the last four or five weeks, that those things come out. I trust myself a lot and I hit a lot of good golf shots. Obviously you screw up here and there once in a while, but it's okay. You can't hit perfect shots all the time. It's about acceptance and trusting, and it's really nice to play golf like this. Q. Did you ever used to think back in say like '08, '09, '10, '11, did you think then? MARTIN KAYMER: No, I didn't think much. I just played. I really loved, and I still love the game. I think it's only distracting if you think too much and if you try to play perfect golf. But when you change, you have to think automatically. You need to reflect and you want to improve, you want to get to the goal a lot earlier, and then sometimes you can get caught up in the thinking process. So you need to go back where you came from, and that's just‑‑ it's feel, it's your natural shot. It's the fade, so it is my shot, accept it, it's my shot, so go with it. You don't need to hit perfect golf shots all the time. But for me it was just important to be a complete player, and that's why I need to change and I need to think, and now it's over fortunately. Q. I don't want to overthink this‑‑ MARTIN KAYMER: Go on. Q. Have you changed your swing or gone back to what it was? This is where I'm a little confused. MARTIN KAYMER: The simple way, in the past I could only hit left to right. Then I wanted to hit the other way, as well, to add it to my repertoire. I did this, and now the normal shot is how it was in the past, but when I need the draw, I can hit it. Sometimes. (Laughter.) Q. Whistling Straits is a very different golf course from this one from the looks of it, when you're on there, but the same designer. Is there anything similar in any way about Whistling Straits and this course and what the designer‑‑ MARTIN KAYMER: Well, they're both really beautiful golf courses, that's for sure. And it's about ball‑striking. It's not really a putting competition. I enjoy a golf course where you have to play well, where you need to hit fades and draws from the tee where it's not boring. Every hole here, when you tell someone the 14th hole or the 6th hole, people recognize that hole right away. It's not boring. It never gets boring, and it's really about ball‑striking, those courses, when we talk about Whistling Straits and Sawgrass here, and I enjoy that. When you play well, you get rewarded, and it's not just about hitting it 350 yards and just chip it out and try to make birdie that way. I enjoy that a lot more. Q. You mentioned feeling like you had to play perfect golf. Was that a byproduct of getting to No.1, and by that I mean did you feel a need to kind of live up to a certain perception, if you will? MARTIN KAYMER: No, I think it's because of where I'm from, in Germany, we always look for perfection. This is just in my nature, I think. The expectation from yourself when you're No.1 in the world, you look for perfection. Everybody is expecting you to win every week, especially from my home country where golf is not as big as here in the U.S., but everybody expects you‑‑ you are the best in the world, so why didn't you win. It's very difficult to deal with all those things. If you win or not, people tell you their opinion, and it's very difficult to deal with all that, and I didn't really know how to handle it in the past. Now it's a lot different, but there are a lot of things besides the golf. The golf all of a sudden doesn't become that interesting anymore. You need to deal with other things in order to play good golf again, which a lot of people don't see, and that's okay, I'm not expecting them to see it, but just for yourself that you know where the problem is. The problem is not the golf, it's the distractions off the golf course. Q. What does thinking too much mean? MARTIN KAYMER: If you don't play with your feel, with your instinct. I can say confidently that I can hit any shot. It's just a matter of if you can handle the pressure, if you can hit the right shot at the right time when you need to. That's the tough part. But everybody out here on the PGA TOUR can hit any shot really if they want to. It's just a matter of really making it happen when you have to, and that is something that you need to trust yourself, especially on a golf course like this that's very difficult, especially the back nine like the last three, four holes, you need confidence and you need to hit‑‑ you need to hit brave shots. Even if you screw up once in a while, it's okay, everybody does that once in a while, but at least you play brave, and that's good playing and that's not playing like a wimp, just trying to get it over with. But that's not the way I like to play, and that is what I noticed the last couple years, that's the way I played because I was not that confident. I thought too much about making too many mistakes and just staying in the tournament, making the cut and trying to work yourself up. That's too much crap. No one needs that. Just distraction. Q. If that first year was I think the wasted year as you said, at the end of the year you played in a very high pressure situation, the Ryder Cup. How difficult was that to go through that week with maybe the game not quite as sharp as it might have been, and did you get anything out of it the way it ended? MARTIN KAYMER: Well, wasted, I mean, golf‑wise. I learned a lot, and I'm very, very thankful that that year happened. But then the Ryder Cup is‑‑ yeah, I didn't play well at all going to the Ryder Cup. I almost thought, you know, I shouldn't play because I'm not really helping right now, and that's why it was okay for me to play only one foursome I think I played out of four, which was completely fine with me. But then in the end when you play singles, it doesn't matter how bad you play. Through playing with your heart and playing with passion, you can just get it done somehow. If you have all that team spirit helping you, and Olazábal there, it creates something that you feel like you gain all of a sudden a lot more, and you can beat Stricker and you can‑‑ we can still beat the USA. Even though it's tough, it's possible. You just play with your heart and with your experience, and then fortunately it worked out for us, and fortunately I could make that last putt. Q. Did you hit any right‑to‑left shots today? MARTIN KAYMER: I needed to on 2. It's a tough tee shot for me. But I stood on the tee box and the wind is into off the left, and you need to draw the ball, so it's shocking. It's shocking, you standing there, but I just told myself, you've done it many times before in Augusta. You need to draw certain shots. You have to. That's being brave. If you hit a bad shot, okay, it happens, but at least you tried the shot, and I pulled it off and I had a good eagle chance. Through those shots you gain confidence. But again, today was a very special round, so I think we shouldn't talk too much into that round. It's different. The same when you shoot 3‑ or 4‑over par, it's not normal. Something normal is around par for us, but today was different, so it's only a quarter of the tournament happened today‑‑ Q. So let's not think about it? MARTIN KAYMER: Just play. Just play, yeah. Q. As you say, you and Bernhard Langer have been kind of the face of German golf. Has that been an honor for you or a burden for you? MARTIN KAYMER: No, I think you need to realize that you will never really get there where Bernhard is. It's very, very difficult, it's a long way. There's no pressure. I'm a different player than Bernhard. It's a different era. I play different golf than him. He's still winning lots of tournaments. Every week you look on the leaderboard at the Champions Tour and he's up there. If he's not up there on Friday or Saturday, then later Sunday afternoon. To compare yourself with him, it would be too much thinking again. MARK STEVENS: Good way to end. Thank you very much, Martin, for your time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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