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BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

September 6, 2014

Billy Horschel

CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, COLORADO

MARK STEVENS: Okay. Go ahead and get started. Like to welcome our third round leader, Billy Horschel. Exciting bogey-free round day to get, to shoot a 63. Exciting putt at the last. Take us through that, and then we'll have some questions.

BILLY HORSCHEL: Yeah, obviously, today was a great round. This is, obviously, a really challenging golf course. Even though it's playing a little bit softer than Thursday's round. So, you got to be smart out there. You can easily make bogeys if you get out of position. So, to play a bogey-free round, that was pretty -- probably one of the top three, top five rounds all year. Obviously, to make that putt on the last hole was an added bonus. I hit a really good iron shot in there. Maybe a touch heavy, but we weren't trying to go over the green. If it came up a little short, it came up a little short. Just sort of saw the putt right away, saw the line, and I knew when it came off, I had a good chance of making it. I felt like I hit a good putt. And for it to fall over the front edge, it was just an added bonus to cap off the round.

MARK STEVENS: Thank you. Questions, please.

Q. Are you one type of player that uses the good result you had last week, even though that disappointing end, does that, is that something that really got you jacked up to go for this week again?
BILLY HORSCHEL: Yeah, I'm a momentum player. If you look back at last year when I got on a little roll, I kept it going for a long time. It's just the kind of player I am. I knew coming into this week I was going to play well. Obviously, what happened on Monday, the 6-iron into the hazard, it happened. It's not a big deal. Just a bad swing at the wrong time. You can't dwell on things like that. There was a lot more positives from last week to take than just one bad swing on the last hole. So, I knew coming in I was going to play well. I like the golf course, and I'm in a great position going into Sunday.

Q. A little bit on the same note, do you -- everybody would love to win by eight, but do you want to be in that kind of pressure position at the end to maybe get the same opportunity?
BILLY HORSCHEL: Yeah, we work hard to -- all the guys out here, we work hard to be in a position to win a golf tournament. And I'm in the best position you can go, going into Sunday. I've been in some leads last year, and they haven't worked out. But, you think I've learned enough in the last year or year and a half, to deal with what's going to come from tomorrow. I'm not going to change anything I've done the last two weeks, I'm just going to go out there, be focused. I'm going to do my thing and not let anything affect me. And have fun. Golf's fun. And as much as we -- there's a lot of stuff that's on the line, it's a fun round of golf. It's a challenge out there, and that's what I've been doing the last couple weeks, just having fun and embracing the challenge of playing a great round of golf.

Q. How do you describe your golf game? Your mindset going into tournaments, how aggressive you play, etcetera. I assume that the orange is not a coincidence. For your alma mater?
BILLY HORSCHEL: No, each tournament's different. I have a great team with my caddie Micah and my teacher Todd Anderson, I got two great trainers in Jeff Fronk and Randy Myers. And I have the best support system at home with my wife and everyone from my side of the family and her side of the family. But, this year we added one extra person to the team that we felt could enhance my chances of getting to the next level. And Mark Horton, who has been working with Sneds the last couple of years as a stats guy, we added him and he's been a big help. It's been unfortunate because I feel like he's helped a lot beginning of the year, the results just haven't shown. It's sort of frustrating, because I kept telling him like hey, we're doing the right things, it's not happening. And I didn't want him to feel bad about me not playing well, and I didn't want him to think he was the cause of it, because he wasn't, he was actually helping us. The results just didn't happen to show up as quickly as we wanted. But, having him on the team -- he helps us prepare for the way we should play golf out there. Just certain holes, how holes are playing, and everything. And he's been a big help with course management and a couple other things that you can always improve on.

Q. What do you think has held you back from building on the victory that you had last year at Zurich?
BILLY HORSCHEL: That's an easy answer. You look at my stats, it's been my putter this year. Last year I was Top-20, Top-25 in strokes gained putting, and this year, I'm somewhere down 120, 130. And I just haven't been making any putts from 10 to 20 feet, before the last two weeks to get some momentum. I played some good rounds, hit some really good shots, and I wouldn't make the birdies from 10 to 20 feet to get something going, it was unfortunate. And the last two weeks, only thing we really been focused on, because my putting has been really good, I just been focusing a lot on speed. Because the speed has been really inconsistent this year, hitting a little too hard, a little too soft. We read them really well. We just don't hit them with the speed and the line that we need. So, that's the thing we have been focusing on is just the speed and making sure that -- I keep harping on it, it's just speed. Focus on speed on the putting greens.

Q. Two part question: For those of us in Colorado, we recognize the logo on your bag, River Valley Ranch. What's your connection there and if you play up there, does playing at altitude help you when you come to a golf course like this?
BILLY HORSCHEL: Yeah, I got a really good buddy named Alden Richards who lives up in Aspen, the Snowmass area. He's been up there for 30 plus years, and I was introduced to him probably four years ago, five years ago, by Chris Di Marco who is a really good friend of mine. We do an outing for Aspen junior golf every year in July or August. And so, I've been up there for the last couple summers playing in the Junior Golf Foundation playing altitude. So, I understand that. And River Valley Ranch is the course that he owns, and he's a good friend of mine. And I had another course on my bag last year. And when that course went away, I said let me help out my buddy Alden. I want to put his course on there, get him a little recognition on TV. The first week we put his logo on the bag is when we win Zurich. So, it sort stayed on there. We don't want to take it off. But, I think that for all players, we have all played at altitude. Not going to say I have an advantage because I play in Aspen during summertime, but I played Reno. So, like I said, we have all played in altitude, it's just how quickly can we adjust to the conditions and how far the ball flies.

Q. You were talking about you weren't dwelling on the shot. How quickly were you able to get rid of that memory? Was it when you walked off the course Monday, was it Tuesday, when was it?
BILLY HORSCHEL: I've been asked that question, and I probably was over it quicker than -- hit a bad shot, went up to the drop for my wedge shot, hit the shot and I was over it. I wasn't -- I was more, I was more upset at the -- after I signed my scorecard when I found out that I went from being in the top-10 of the FedExCup to being 20th. I was more mad about that, because being solo second meant that I would be a top-10 FedExCup. So listen, I was not dwelling on that. It happens. I've got thick skin. I let things roll off me a lot. Nothing seems to bother me for too long. That's just the kind of person that I've been my whole life. And so, I didn't dwell on it. It was over, I had a lot of great people call me to make sure I was doing okay, and I said listen, I'm fine. It's just a bad swing at the wrong time. That's the way I looked at it.

Q. Did you watch the scoreboard and see the struggles maybe of Sergio and Rory?
BILLY HORSCHEL: No, I have not. The one thing that I have probably haven't done as well this year, as I did last year, is I haven't -- I've been looking too much at the scoreboard. I'm a guy who too much information sort of affects me. I think my mind starts going on and on. So, I'm trying really hard the last two weeks of not looking at the scoreboard. I don't know where -- obviously, I know where I stand now. But I didn't know where I stood out on the golf course. I was just doing my own thing. I seem to -- there's other tournaments throughout the year where we don't have the electronic scoreboards, and I seem to play really well there. When I missed the cut at Barclays, there was a couple things I was thinking about. Things that I needed to change to perform better because I felt like my game was in the right place. I just wasn't getting the results, and that's one of the things I saw was I just need to stop looking at the scoreboard. It does me no good. Now, in saying that, will I look at the scoreboard tomorrow some time on the backside? Possibly. But, my caddie knows, Micah knows that he needs to look at the scoreboard, and he needs to tell me if I need to do something coming down the stretch. So, yeah, I don't look at the scoreboard.

MARK STEVENS: Okay, thank you for your time. Best of luck tomorrow.

BILLY HORSCHEL: Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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