WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 23, 2002

Kevin Sutherland

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Kevin for joining us for a few minutes. Congratulations.

You came in here as the 62nd seed and you're going to play in the final tomorrow. Why don't you just share a little bit about how you feel about that.

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I'm amazed. You know, to be able to play Scott tomorrow is just -- you know because we grew up in Sacramento, played high school golf together, and, you know, he's probably told the story already.

When I first got on TOUR in '96, he sent me a photograph of the two of us shaking hands on the 18th green of, I believe it was the North California High School Championship. You know, it's just amazing that from that point, 1982, I believe it was, to now, 20 years later, to be playing each other in the finals, it's amazing.

Q. Are you pretty emotional about it?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I am. I'm a little surprised that I am, but I am. I think, just the fact that it's going to be Scott and I playing -- only person would be better than that would be my brother. I think it's just going to be a great day tomorrow.

Q. Scott said you were quite the dresser back in high school?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: There were these old pictures of me in shorts right there on the sides and I had this big afro and my hair was all over the place.

It's a crazy picture. My legs are about this big and I think I weighed about 110 pounds.

Q. Who won?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I did, actually. But that was 20 years ago.

Q. What did you shoot on the last nine? He thought it was 29; does that sound right?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: In high school? I have no idea. I remember I played very well that day but I don't remember exactly what it was.

Q. What year was that again?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: It was 1982, my senior year.

Q. Does playing against someone you know so well; does that make it easier or harder?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I don't know. I think it's going to be a little of everything. I think it's going to be a friendly match and I think it's going to be an intense match. Because we both want to win. There's no question about that. But, it's also going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun.

You know, someone asked me just when I got off the green, what did I think of my chances of getting to the finals starting the week, and my expectations were never near that, to be honest with you. But I just kept playing to take one match at a time.

This afternoon, I struggled and Brad struggled, too. I've got to admit, I'm exhausted right now. Match-play is an exhausting process. It's a lot different than stroke-play. You can play 36 holes in one day stroke-play and it doesn't seem to affect you as much as playing match-play because every stroke seems to mean a lot more.

So, I'm a little tired. I think that's one reason why Brad and I struggled is -- I don't want to speak for him. But I was tired.

I just know that Brad doesn't miss putts like that on 18. I was shocked. I figured he was going to make the putt on 14, I figured he was going to make the putt on 15, I figured he was going to make the putt on 16. I figured, mentally, he's going to make those. If he's not the best putter in the world, he's in the top two or three, there's no question about that. But strange things happen sometimes.

Like, I wasn't even -- I was even ready to hit that putt on 18, the second one, the one for 5. I figured that I had blown my opportunity when I made bogey. That's why I took a little longer than I normally would on a foot-and-a-half putt. I wasn't ready to hit. I kind of was going over my thought process of how I got in that situation. So, you know, I'm very -- I'm happy, I'm very fortunate to be in this situation.

Q. Were you thinking "playoff" at that point?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I was. I was thinking, what playoff hole are we going to, I really was. I was kind of -- because when I played in my playoff against Duval, it was on the first hole. But I heard that Brad played 10. So, you know, I figured we were going to 10, but I wasn't positive.

Q. What about the approach shot there?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: You know, I felt really good. I felt really good over it. You know, I was going to try to be really aggressive because I figure that Brad was going to hit a good shot in there and I was going to try to get it in there close. And for some reason, just at the last minute, I don't know why I got this negative thought in my head that the wind is pushing everything to the right, so, don't let it leak out to the right -- that was a terrible shot. It was easily the worst shot I hit all week, which is disappointing. When you're in that situation, you want to be at your best. And, you know, today that wasn't the case.

Q. What was the yardage?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I had 154 and it was pretty much straight across. I was hitting an 8-iron. 155, something around there.

Q. Did you do the best you could with the shot out of the rough?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: Yeah, it was a bad lie. It was a very, very thick rough and very, very heavy. I mean, it was very healthy. So, I took a pretty good swing at it. I was trying to land it on the fringe. The fringe, I think if I had been on the fringe it probably could have gotten pretty close to the hole. I took a pretty good swing at it but it just came out dead and landed in the first cut of rough and kind of rolled on to the green.

To be honest with you, I was satisfied with that. I got inside Brad, which was actually, one of the goals of my shot and I left it below the hole. I really had a pretty easy putt. I didn't let a very good putt; I pulled it, but I hit a putt that I thought I could make.

Being in the situation that I was in, any time you can get a makeable putt for par, you've got to be somewhat happy with it because it was a tough shot.

Q. Given that, did it ever flash into your mind to give him his putt?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: It did. Honestly, it did. But, you know, only for a second. It was at least three feet. It was not a gimmee. It was not a tap-in. And obviously, it's miss-able. Unfortunately for Brad, that was proven.

Q. Is your brother here this week? Is he going to make it down?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I doubt it. He's home. I've talked to him just about every night. I don't think he'll come down.

Q. Can you remember the last time you were this tired after a day of golf?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I don't think -- I don't know. I can't remember. It was a great day for me but it was a long day.

Q. Scott came in here saying he was ready to play 36 right now; you look like you're ready for bed?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I'm ready for bed. He can go play, that's fine. (Laughter.)

Q. Obviously, the lesson is in the Top-100 in the world anybody can beat anybody at any time, but when you look at the names you have taken down, are you overwhelmed with what you've accomplished this week?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: A little bit, yeah. I felt like I've had a pretty tough road to get here. I mean, I played with the 3, 6, 14, who is Brad -- I don't even know what Brad is on the list, but ranked players in the world.

I've played very well. My first four matches, I played some very good golf, and I played very well. Matter of fact, I don't think I had until this afternoon's round, more than one or two bogeys all week. So, I don't know what happened. I hit every green this morning. I played very, very well. For some reason, this afternoon, I really struggled.

Q. What was your best match?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: Either this morning or probably the Duval match. I probably played my best golf against -- I hit the ball without a doubt the best against David. I hit some very good shots -- like I had almost the identical shot today as I did when I played David Duval on Wednesday, on 18. The pin was in the same spot. I had almost the exactly the same yardage, very similar wind. Obviously, I hit a lot better shot that day than I did today.

Q. You were 2-down on 17 against Duval; right?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: Yeah. To think that at that point I'm pretty much done, and where it ends up now, it's pretty amazing. I mean, if I had parred those two holes, I would have been home Wednesday not night, or parred one of those holes. Funny how golf is. But that's patch play, though. If you can just keep winning and kind of keep advancing, it's amazing. You get a couple of good breaks here and there against the right guy or whatever today like I did against Brad, I was fortunate. Very fortunate.

Q. You were 2-down at one point today. Were you changing your plans as far as playing more aggressive?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: No. I was playing so poorly. I played the first hole very well. Then I just started playing so poorly. I was just trying to get my ship going the right direction. I pretty much had forgot about what he was doing, really because I was just trying it take care of what I was doing because I was -- something happened when I stepped on the second tee because I hit some poor shots between 2 and 6. I hit hardly a good shot on any of those holes.

I could have been worse, you know. I was fortunate to be only 2-down. I lost three of those holes, I believe.

So, I was just happy that I was still in the match. The big putts for me were on 8 and 9, though. Those were huge. Brad basically had a gimmee, about a 3-footer, and I rolled in about, I don't know, an 8-footer basically to tie.

Then I make a 25- or 30-footer on 9 when he has about a 6-footer and he happens to miss it so it was a huge turnaround there. So I went from potentially going from 3 down to only being 1-down.

So everything kind of turned around right there. Then I knock it to a tap-in on 10 and all of a sudden the match is tied.

So everything changed so fast in our match. It was looking like he might go 3-up and all of a sudden, three holes later, we're tied. So, that was, I think, that was where the momentum kind of switched a little bit in my match.

Q. What was your ranking coming into the year?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: In the tournament, I was 62. The World Ranking I think was 64, at start of the year I was around 67.

Q. So how closely were you following the rankings?

KEVIN SUTHERLAND: I was following it very closely. I wanted to play in the tournament. That was one of my goals starting the year is that I knew I had four weeks, and that -- and I hadn't played well on the West Coast the last two years. I knew I was going to be losing some points; so I knew I needed to play fairly well.

I had a Top-10 finish at Phoenix, but my other tournaments, I basically made the cut, but I didn't really play all that well and I wasn't really sure I was going to have enough. Fortunately, I was able to sneak in there right underneath the wire.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Kevin. Good luck tomorrow.

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