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SONY OPEN IN HAWAII


January 15, 2005


Charles Howell III


HONOLULU, HAWAII

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Charles Howell III, thank you for joining us. Great round today, 6-under 64. Puts you right in the hunt, heading into tomorrow's final round. A lot of players still on the course, but you have to be pretty happy about your position.

CHARLES HOWELL III: You know, this golf course isn't easy. The golf course isn't easy. In fact, I was very happy with even par after the first two rounds. I thought the first day it played extremely difficult with the wind. Obviously you see the cut last year was 1-under, this year it was 2-over, almost 3-over. So the golf course is playing a lot tougher this year. A 64 any time, any place, I'll take, but today it was very good.

Q. You seem to be able to hit a lot of the knock-down shots that at least in the past have never been the best part of your game, have you been working on that?

CHARLES HOWELL III: You know, I spent this off-season -- well, I'll start by saying, you know, after I missed the Ryder Cup last year, and THE TOUR Championship, I really thought I had to change a few things, and one of the things was my ability to play like a knock-down shot, a three-quarter shot, whatever you want to call it. I spent a lot of time working on that.

Apart from that, I spent a lot of time working on the short game. Obviously it's two areas I still need to improve on and still errors that I've still got to get better at, but at least I feel like I'm working on the right things now.

Q. Did you have that shot a year ago?

CHARLES HOWELL III: I don't think so, no. Not as comfortable as I am with it now and I still feel like I can improve on it.

So, you know, I can still improve a lot on it, actually. I'm a lot more comfortable actually hitting the shot in competition now than I was say this time last year.

Q. When specifically do you call on it?

CHARLES HOWELL III: You know, whenever Johnny Miller tells me. (Laughter.)

No, you know, a lot of times in this game you're always finding yourself in between yardages. You're very rarely ever on just a perfect number, or it's a perfect 8 or perfect 7 or whatever. When I'm in-between clubs now, I'm always trying to go to the more club and hit it a little smoother where in the past I always went to the lesser one and hit it hard. That's probably the best way to do it. I'm actually trying to go the other way with things. If I'm in between a 7 and 8, I'll try to hit the 7 with a three-quarter, a little more smoother touch, control on it, and go from there.

I know I can hit that high, hard one; so I'm trying to go the other direction.

Q. How big of a disappointment was it last year? A lot of people look at it and say nothing wrong with that year, but personally, how disappointing was last year?

CHARLES HOWELL III: You know, I played the Presidents Cup and obviously no matter what tournament you play with Tiger every day, it's going to be great, but that was awesome. That was such a great time for me playing that tournament with him.

You know, I really wanted to make the Ryder Cup Team because of that, and I felt that we probably would have played a couple of matches together at the Ryder Cup, as well. It's in America, wasn't all the way in South Africa, and by not making that, that was pretty disappointing.

But then again, you know, I didn't play well enough. And to miss THE TOUR Championship, you know, to be 33rd on the Money List, that was disappointing as well, but would I have loved to have played the Ryder Cup for sure.

Q. Do you think you could have stayed awake for all five matches?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Yeah, I probably would have -- (Laughter.)

Q. Go ahead. You were going to say ...

CHARLES HOWELL III: I'd better quit. It's early in the year. I'd have played every match they wanted me to.

Q. Do you think that last year was possibly a blessing in disguise because it may have forced you to re-evaluate what you were doing coming into this year?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Absolutely. Had I made that TOUR Championship, and let's say I would have played really well there, it might have put a sugar coating on something I didn't like. It might have actually taken a lot of things I needed to work on and kind of make them seem, well, they are not that bad. So in a way I think it was a blessing, absolutely, because it's not a good feeling sitting at home watching the Ryder Cup; and it's not a good feeling sitting at home watching THE TOUR Championship, either. You can't play another event the week of THE TOUR Championship and make it seem all right, and that was good for me.

Q. You talked about this yesterday, but you started last year with some Hogan blades and went to a mix-and-match, and I don't know where you wound up. Can you talk about more stability this year?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Yeah, when Callaway purchased Hogan and they gave us the ability to play a Hogan golf club if we wanted to, I tried those. I tried three or four different sets of Hogans. Basically I tried every golf club that Callaway offers. That wasn't a good thing for me.

It started in the off-season last year and kind of continued on throughout the year and finally now I have a set of golf clubs that I love and I'm settled on and I won't be switching those this year. I know that sounds like something really crazy to say and really crazy to do, but you don't see a lot of the top players in equipment change very often and you don't see them jumping around equipment. It's all very much the same. That was one of the few things I had to polish up, find a set of clubs I was happy with and stay with.

Q. Did that hurt you last year?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Absolutely, it did. I never played a blade. First set of clubs I had was a cavity-back set of clubs. I always played a cavity-back-style golf club. I tried a blade, but on the other hand I needed to play it because I thought it could help me. I thought wrong, but I thought it could help me. At least I got that out of my system.

Q. You kiddingly said you haven't been in here in a while, are you at all curious to see how you react being in contention tomorrow, are you pretty sure that you'll be fine?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Yeah, you know, it's the first event of the year and it seems like no matter how hard you work in the off-season, and all of the balls that we hit, chipping the putting and everything, you don't really know till you get here how it's going to be. It's always a bit -- it just feels funny when you tee the ball up on Thursday the first day.

So tomorrow hopefully I'll be in contention and have a chance for it, if the leaders don't run away too much, and I'm looking forward to it. I think the last time I sat in a press center was the Booz Allen, which means the last chance I had to win a golf tournament was the Booz Allen.

So I'm looking forward to it, actually. I played well here in the past and I finished fourth here in 2002, and so I like the golf course. I love the fact that pars are a good score around here; that you don't have to shoot 25-under to win. I think that's great, and I'm just looking forward to it. And also it is the first event of the year, too.

Q. Do you have any relationship with Justin Rose?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Oh, yeah, we've known each other for a long time.

Q. Is there some kind of connection with you two?

CHARLES HOWELL III: We've known each other for a very long time, all the way back to when we were 16, 17, and obviously now we share the same golf teacher, David Leadbetter. But since he came over to America last year and started playing a lot more over here, I've seen a lot more of him. He's building a house in Orlando now where I live. We've known each other for a very long time. We're a lot alike in a lot of ways. He's a great player. Obviously he had a few really good events last year, chances to win like at the Memorial I know. He's tough when he's on top and he's won a lot in Europe overseas.

Q. What do you expect of yourself this year? There in no Ryder Cup, but Presidents Cup. What is your goal for yourself this year?

CHARLES HOWELL III: I think last year I got too far ahead of myself a lot. With the way the schedule works now with the Ryder Cup, and the next year there's a Presidents Cup and then Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup, it just seems like you're always qualifying for something; and then I guess in the grand scheme of things, all the PGA TOUR is is qualifying for the Champions Tour. And all the Champions Tour is is qualifying your kids' trust fund, I don't know. (Laughter.)

But it just seems like out here it's so easy to get ahead of yourself. And it's so easy to look at, well, what's next, what tournament am I qualifying for; what am I doing this; what's the money list; what's the World Ranking. So I'm just playing to play each event and be at that event and that may sound oversimplistic, but I'm just trying to be careful to not look too far ahead. I would love to make the Presidents Cup team, that's in the back of my mind. But this year, I mean frankly, I just need to win. I just need to win golf tournaments, and you know, I've only won one, I finished second five times. And that's what you guys write about, that's what you're remembered for, that's what you have to do is win and that's what I need to do.

Q. Out of those five seconds, obviously you could have won all of them, but is are there any one or two that you feel you should have won?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Well, the one that stands out most is the L.A. Open in 2003. I had a big lead there, end up losing that and losing in a playoff to Mike Weir. That one hurt the worst. I lost two playoffs; that one and another one with Shigeki, but of all of them the one that was the worst that one, no question about it.

I was second in two TOUR Championships, but I was still a couple of shots off the lead there. Some guy named Vijay won one of them, not that much since. (Laughter.)

But no, yeah, of all of that was the worst yeah.

Q. When did you lose to Shigeki?

CHARLES HOWELL III: Milwaukee 2001. I lost in a playoff to him.

Q. Some players obviously younger like you are fazed by the field and who is in the field. Do you look at that at all when you're coming out here?

CHARLES HOWELL III: No, I don't care, no. I used to be. I can think back, and I guess just I'm getting older, but I can think back to 2000 when I played 15 events that year, I was looking at the field list and look who is here; oh, Phil Mickelson is playing, Tiger is playing, oh, this. After a while, you just don't care because you realize everybody is out here for the same thing and everybody is out here to play well and everybody hits good shots and everybody hits bad shots.

We are all trying to do the same thing. We are all human. You know, part of that just comes from playing. You can't make anybody for their first time out here feel that way. Everybody is enamored a bit for sure, but that just comes over time by playing golf tournaments and by getting in contention and by playing with those guys.

Now, it doesn't bother me in the least bit. But at first it did sure.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: If we can touch on your round and maybe take one final question. You started out with a birdie on the first hole, par 4.

CHARLES HOWELL III: That felt like an eagle that hole. I hit driver and a 4-iron on No. 1 to about three feet, and that's the best two shots I've hit all year.

But, no, the first hole is a very difficult starting hole, extremely difficult and a par on that hole is a good score. Fortunate enough to make a birdie there. It really does feel like an eagle when you birdie that first hole. That was just a great way to start the day. I had two bogeys today which were two 3-putts. Other than that, I hit -- I hit 16 greens today which compared to the first two days, I hit a total of 20; I hit ten and ten the first two days.

Yeah, the irons were much better today than the first two days.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Charles Howell, thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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