Q. How long did you think about cross-handed before you finally it?
RICH BEEM: About two seconds. I did it on the 16th green in the final round of New Orleans. I told my caddie I was putting so bad, screw it, I'll putt cross-handed. Then I make a little 4-footer left-to-right downhill, and then made a 20-footer for par the next hole and 20-putted from 40 feet on the final hole. I was like, "It feels good to me."
Actually after that round, the putting green was on the way to the clubhouse, so we sat there and we putted for about 15, 20 minutes, which is something I never, ever do even in regular rounds, much less a Sunday; so that's how desperate I was. We worked hard on it this week, trying a few different putters seeing if there's any feel difference, but there wasn't, so we stuck with the one we had been using. Normally we would have abandoned it after last week, but we thought it might have a few putts in it still.
Q. Was your putting the bulk of it?
RICH BEEM: Pretty much. I haven't played well this year. That kind of seems to be my Achilles heel. I've been striking the ball well, been working hard at it. Been really working hard on my short game, my bunker play and everything has been kind of clicking of late and just the putting. I get over it and when the confidence isn't there, it certainly shows. You get over a putt eight feet long and you get tentative, you don't think about knocking it in the back of the cup; you're hoping to at least hit the hole so you have hope.
But, yeah, that's just mainly the bulk of it. I don't know what my putting stats are for the year, but they have to be pretty dismal. They have to be. There's no way there's any bright spot in that.
Q. You have such a sense of humor through the year, can you talk about how you cope with --
RICH BEEM: I have a five-year exemption. It's pretty easy to keep a good attitude.
I've kept a pretty good sense of humor about it. I've been beat up in the media a little bit with my play this year and some parts of it's rightfully so, but this is my style of game. When I'm bad, I'm pretty bad. But when I'm good, I'm really good.
It's not something I enjoy. It's not as though I enjoy having my struggle weeks where I miss a couple of cuts in a row, two or three perhaps, and then maybe break through and make a cut and then finish 60th. That's no fun for me. I enjoy coming out and I like getting in the mix of it and I like competing. Probably when I get in the mix of it, I actually fair pretty well. I think I had four Top 10's last year and two of them were wins. That just shows you when I do get it going, I do get in the mix of it and I don't like to get go.
You do have to keep a sense of humor. If you take the game too seriously, you're dead meat. You have to back off once in awhile and laugh at yourself, laugh at your game because this is not my life. This is what I do but this is not -- golf is not my life. It pays the bills quite nicely at certain times.
JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Let's go over your score card.
RICH BEEM: I started off on 10. Hit driver, 3-wood pin-high left, 2-putted from about 30 feet for birdie.
No. 12, I hit driver and then a 9-iron and then I had a really big sweeping, bending put there. When that one went in, that kick-started me a little bit.
Parred the next few holes or parred 13 and 14. Just missed one there but 15 was a pretty easy birdie there, driver, 3-wood up short of the green and chipped it up to six inches and tapped that in.
Bogeyed 17. Hit a 5-iron, that's such a hard hole, you can't believe it, it's ridiculously hard, so I was just trying to flare it out right and I'm pretty much going to play it as a par 4 this week.
18, I hit a good drive right down the middle, and had 192 to the pin and hit a 5-iron in there about just pin-high and made a really nice curling putt there. It wasn't a flat putt that I made on the first nine.
1, I hit to five feet and made that. That was a pretty easy putt.
Then the par 5, No. 5, I hit a driver, 5-wood to the middle of the green and 2-putted from 50 feet and that was nice. Didn't really give myself a whole lot of opportunities the last four holes.
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