Q. Last year at Pebble, Pat Perez had kind of a meltdown. Do you recall any time earlier in your career where you had kind of a meltdown and let your temper get the best of you when you were playing with a chance to win?
DAVIS LOVE III: You want it by year or by event? (Laughter.)
No, I've had a lot of them. Not really temper, but just let it get away from me quite a few times. There was a lot of tournaments that, well -- not last year, the year before at Riviera. I was playing great, I was winning the West Coast Swing bonus and had won at Pebble and played a couple other weeks, and all I had to do was shoot about even par on a cold rainy day. I just kept hitting -- felt like I was just going to hit good shots, but just kept hitting bad shot after bad shot and just squeezing it.
I ended up shooting 74 or something like that or a couple over and not winning, missing a playoff by a couple. You know, I ended up luckily still winning the West Coast bonus, but very easily, I think two of those guys in the playoff, if they had won, they might have won the West Coast Swing.
It happens. Sometimes you're leading and you feel like you should win, and that's a bad place to be. You know, if you hit a bad shot, it becomes a mental game and you start protecting. Whereas, if you're two behind or one behind and you're chasing, you seem to have a more focused attitude. And that's the challenge is when you do get ahead, to not let up, to keep -- as Tom Kite told me in my first Ryder Cup, keep trying to win every hole, keep trying to birdie every hole because you never know what's going to happen. You don't want to start changing your game plan.
I think that's what happens is we start protecting or doing something different than what got us in the lead or around the lead when you get close to it. The guys that won a bunch, nothing phases them. They just keep right on going. They don't know that . They don't recognize that they are in the lead or they can block it out.
That's why I said, today, the lack of scoreboards is nice. If you could go out there with no sign boy and no scoreboards and nobody clapping and you never knew where you stood, a lot of guys would do better because you can block it out.
That's another reason why we are seeing so many low scores. Guys like Bob Rotella and Dick Coop, all of these guys that are working with players, they are teaching them ways to block that out. It used to be a handful of guys that worked with a Bob Rotella, and now, you have to book your slot when he's out on TOUR because everybody wants him.
I think we are learning that when you get in position, a change in your game plan is dangerous and you need to just stick with what's working, and sometimes that's hard to do when it's going the opposite way.
Q. There's been more talk recently about women having some ambitions to play in PGA events. Wonder what your feeling is: Do you think there are women who could be competitive in certain events and maybe in the foreseeable future, do you see someone competing week-in and week-out on the PGA?
DAVIS LOVE III: Well, I'll just stick to talking about my game. That's a deep subject.
I know Annika, the way she plays, you know, could compete. But the length of our golf courses is just so extreme.
I think from a couple hundred yards in, there's no comparison. We're all pretty equal, but I think it's just the length. You see it out here. The length kills a lot of guys out here. There's guys that don't hit it as far that can only play well on certain type of golf courses.
And I think if you put Annika at Colonial, yeah, she would do real well. You put her at Bethpage; she wouldn't do too well. That's just the fact of the matter is that the Laura Davies and a few of them that do hit it, Beth Daniels, that hit it long enough, are still average out here, and it's tough to compete. You see guys out here, it's tough to compete length-wise. I think length would be the only factor. But that's a very deep subject.
JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thank you, Davis.
End of FastScripts....
