So I worked on my putting last couple of days and it's pared off for the last three rounds. I putted great, but my ball-striking for some reason as has gone south. So, you know, 6-under today is a good score, but it could have been a lot better, because today, Kingsbarns is perfect conditions. There's no wind whatsoever. So it has not shown its teeth how strong it can be this golf course. I must have drove the ball lucky today to actually avoided a line in the wind I believe St. Andrews had, today and also Carnoustie.
When you play three different golf courses and it covers a range of ten miles from here to Kingsbarns to Carnoustie -- you can get lucky with this type of format, and I think I played Carnoustie on Thursday in benign conditions, very favorable wind. It really wasn't too bad and today was perfect. That sort of makes a huge difference to a score and the way you are drawn. So there is luck of the draw, definitely, on these type of courses.
Q. Have you changed your putting?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: I was going to say, my hands are a bit more forward and also just a little bit higher with my hands. I actually missed a putt on the first round, first hole. I felt uncomfortable and knew something was off. So I changed the position on my hands and they seemed to go in today.
Q. Inaudible?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: I've had the same coach for the last six years, Jonathan Yarwood.
Q. Inaudible?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: Found it off the Internet actually for 50 bucks. It's called "Putting Arc". It's just basically a device you put down on the ground and you put your putter flush against it and just follow the track of the arc of the putting arc and it's worked.
So for 50 bucks on the Internet, that's a very good investment, in U.S. dollars. 35 pounds.
Q. Inaudible?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: My rank on my putting last week was terrible. Obviously, when you have -- you are either too strong or too weak with the weight of your putts. Sometimes I get two short on the way back or too open. So I bring my hands around a little bit, it's helped me hit my arc straight back and straight through basically, a little bit of an arc.
Q. Inaudible?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: I've been fine. I've been out since the British Open, I think. It's helped me win the Irish Open.
Q. Inaudible?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: Actually it cost him 50 bucks. He bought it for me. It cost me nothing.
Q. A while back, the way you were playing, you had said you felt you had been captured by aliens --
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: Sigourney Weaver, she does it for me. She came along.
Q. Inaudible?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: I think just a simple combination of a lot of things. My injury was the first one. I started the whole lack of confidence. I couldn't even complete my swing at all. My rotator cuff was injured through luggage; and playing at the same time, playing with an injury, it's not good for your confidence.
The courses in America, I find more relentless. The rough is very long and I couldn't -- every time I hit it in the rough, I couldn't commit to the shot because of my shoulder. So obviously my confidence was affecting my technique. It just spread through my whole game.
Then I got my shoulder sorted out and I came over to -- not home, but my second home in Europe, and started playing well again. You travel as a family for three months, with two kids, my wife, Julie and a nanny, with no house, no fixed abode, basically from hotel to hotel, it's tough on us. We decided to pick up and go home to Brighton in England and at least I have my season. I came back and had my first -- played my first European Tour event the week of the Volvo -- no, no. Wentworth, the PGA, and made the cut for the first time that year. So it's a long time between -- my first cut and my second cut till then was four months later or five months later.
So it's just a great process, confidence is all it is. I'm confident right now with the way I'm playing and I see a lot of good shots out there.
GORDON SIMPSON: Michael, well played again, and good luck tomorrow.
End of FastScripts.
