PATRICIA MEUNIER-LEBOUC: I have a much better short game. I really improved a lot on my short game. I putt well. I've always been a good putter. I had my ups and downs like everybody, but I know I can putt very well. I get it inside. Sometimes I don't putt well, sometimes I do. But I know I can putt well. My short game has always been the weakest part of my game, and now I feel like I can get up and down much more easier.
What is amazing for me, it's like on No. 8, the par 3, I just stayed short of the green. I was in the thick rough. I had the flag right behind that. It was a very tough lob shot, a feeling shot. I was really surprised and at the same time so happy that I just went there, I look at that shot, and I was excited to play it. I'm like, "I'm happy to play it." So I was not thinking about the result, I was just happy to play the shot.
Before I would have been like, "What's going to happen? That's a very tough shot." I was not. I was just enjoying playing this particular shot. I was like feeling it. That's what I'm improved very much in my game, too. It's my game and maybe what I have inside, too, the way I look at it. It's more trying to enjoy every shot.
You know, you have fun or you take it as a job, one shot after another. So I really try hard. It's not easy. I'm saying I felt that on that shot, but on some shots it feels more like work, "One more shot, I don't feel good." But I'm getting there, closer to just trying to enjoy every shot.
That's funny, because my husband, we were speaking with my husband, and it just gave me an example of somebody who knew, the past caddie of Tom Watson and Greg Norman, I think. He asked him what the big difference between these two. Norman never won the one he should have won, the majors.
"What is the difference?"
He say, when Watson arrive on the fairway and his ball is in the divot, Norman says, "I'm really unlucky." Watson would say, "Look at this one. Look what I'm going to do with it."
I just look at it and say, "That's the only way you have to play golf."
It's tough to play that way, but I'm trying really hard to get closer to this way of thinking because it's more fun. I don't think I'm going to get worst (sic) going this way. That's what I try to do at the moment.
Q.: Prior to The Tour Championship, how much had you played with her before?
PATRICIA MEUNIER-LEBOUC: I've played a lot of amateur golf with her actually. A couple rounds since we are professional, but not that much. Not as much as the last two months, for sure.
But when we were amateur, we were playing much more together. Then she kind of left to the States, I was playing in Europe, so we didn't really see each other much.
Q.: Could you tell back then how good she might be?
PATRICIA MEUNIER-LEBOUC: She's always been the same. I mean, she's still the same. Well, she improve like everybody. She was already, you know, the same relaxed person, the way she handles it. She seems so relaxed on the course, and at the same time she's so aggressive. You know, like I always say, when you want to - how do you say - put a flower in the ground, people who are gardening, you need a certain power to do it. If you are too strong, you break it. You just need the right one.
She's just the right one all the time, almost all the time. It's just amazing how she's so balanced in everything she does. When I look at her, for me the word for her is balance. She's really balanced. Her rhythm, her attitude, everything. She's not too aggressive, like pushing too much in front, and she's not laying backwards. She's just the right place, the right balance all the time. When she's not, she's going straight back to it.
Like on 16, she had some tough shot and didn't hit it well at all. I think she got too much powerful into the ball for a few shot. Next one, birdie, birdie. She comes back very easily to the balance.
Q.: How big are you in France, and how big is golf in France?
PATRICIA MEUNIER-LEBOUC: I am number one in France, I was last year, and am still right now. Golf is not as big as here. You know, we don't have live coverage on TV. We more have late coverage. We don't even have the ladies. Mostly we don't see them much. We see them, the European Tour, but late on not the national channel. It's the one like you see late at night. But it's getting there.
The first thing that improved really much the last five years also is Tiger Woods. I remember a few years ago when Tiger Woods just became really famous, came on the tour, played golf. Even people that didn't play golf knew his name, even in France. I thought that was just amazing. This guy can do whatever he wants, he's the best is the best for us. I think it keeps going the same way.
I think with Annika now, it's getting the same way. We need these people to be ahead. That's the only way. You always have to have people very much ahead of everybody for the others to get motivation and get everything out of their progress, their improvement. That's how any sport's going to get better anytime.
I'm not as famous as Tiger Woods in France. People who they don't play golf, they don't know me for sure.
I don't know if that answer your question.
Q.: Could you talk about your impressions of this course?
PATRICIA MEUNIER-LEBOUC: It was tough this week, yes. I never played here before. Was my first time. It's a major championship. Then I look at the starting order, "Okay, I'm playing again with Annika." There's something happening there.
This course is playing tough, like it has to be for a major. Without knowing that course, I was kind of a little bit stressed, you know, because I was first thinking, "I can't miss a shot here. You're dead in the rough, you have no shot from there." Then I kind of played first twice. When you play twice on the course, you get to know the course a little bit better, get to know how to play it.
Actually, if you are in the thick rough, you want to stay on the green or short of the green. You have to think, "If I'm in trouble, what am I looking for?" It's good to just practice first and see how you going to play it, what is your tactic on the course.
Then I told myself, "Okay, I'm going to miss shots, I'm going to be in the rough. I just have to just know about it, don't be afraid to miss shot. I'm going to be in the thick rough, I'm going to have to get up and down, now just let it go. After that, you have to make it."
I just told myself, "You're going to miss shots, like everybody will. That's not a big deal. That's this sort of course. Just try to reverse it and make it as a positive thing."
That's not easy because you can get on this tee, you don't feel well. That might be the shot you're going to put in the thick rough and get in bad position. It's kind of more tension than other courses where you don't have rough or anything.
At the same time it's a good challenge to play on that kind of course.
End of FastScripts....
