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EDS BYRON NELSON CHAMPIONSHIP

May 14, 2004

Daniel Chopra

IRVING, TEXAS

TODD BUDNICK: We welcome Daniel Chopra after a 2-under 68 today, puts you at 6-under for the tournament, Daniel. Just two birdies and no bogeys today. Some might say a dull day but a good day for you. You're still in the hunt.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah, it wasn't as solid or as consistent as the scorecard might seem. There was a lot of good par saves in there. It started off pretty difficult. The wind was strong and you have two really tough par 4s straight off the bat. I managed to get through those.

Then the wind started to switch around a little bit. It came out of the northwest and then out of the north, so the difficulty there was to try to gauge which way it was going. I didn't really play as well as yesterday, but I fought really hard and I was very proud of squeezing a good score out.

TODD BUDNICK: Let's take it back to yesterday. You start 2-over on the front and then run off six birdies on the back to really put yourself in contention. Talk about how you went through that streak yesterday.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, it was quite incredible really because nothing, again, was going -- it was a bit like today's round. I wasn't really on all cylinders. I almost forced myself into -- I really got aggressive on the back 9. I said, "I'm 2-over, I'm going to try and make something happen." It was quite incredible because I missed a five- or six-footer on 10 for birdie and another five- or six-footer on 1 for birdie. I thought just make a couple, we've got a par 5, and then it was incredible. A friend of mine, Jaxon Brigman, showed up, and I knocked one stiff on 12, and I said you finally show up and I made a birdie, you'd better stay, then I made another birdie, and he stayed until 17 and I birdied every single hole he was there.

TODD BUDNICK: You're a rookie this weir and you've made five cuts. How difficult is it to make the adjustment from the Nationwide Tour to the PGA TOUR?

DANIEL CHOPRA: The courses are more difficult for starters. Much more severe, the penalties for missing, longer, getting used to playing with big name players in front of the crowds. It's not so difficult playing with the name players but having to handle the crowds cheering mainly for them. I'm a bit of an unknown right now, so nobody knows me. That was the hardest part I found as of right now. But the courses are definitely a lot more difficult.

TODD BUDNICK: You're an unknown player and you had an interesting story last year, finished 21st on the Money List of the Nationwide Tour, kind of right on the edge coming down the stretch and then ended up earning your card at Q-school. Just talk a little bit about how that finish went last year.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, it was probably the most painful day of my life, that back nine of the Tour Championship of the Nationwide Tour. Ever since I was a little kid and started playing the game of golf I dreamed about playing on the PGA TOUR. I always deep down inside believed that I'd get here.

Then I turned 30 and I still wasn't here. I played every other Tour in the world, Japan, Australia, Europe, Asia, but I never played the PGA TOUR, and I didn't get in through the Top-20 and I almost felt a bit of a resign like maybe it's not meant to be. If anything, that might have helped at Q-school because it took the pressure off for the first four or five days anyway. I kind of felt like, hey, if I'm not going to make it, I'm probably not going to make it.

But I played great, and then the final round was -- I learned so much from the final round of the Tour Championship when I let it get away from me and I was determined not to make the same mistakes again. It was quite incredible, missed one fairway, one green that final round. It was probably the best round of golf I ever played and I shot 68 and cruised through. It was incredible how it happened. I ended up with a better number and got more starts to play early in the season than I would have gotten had I finished 20th, so it worked out for the best.

Q. For those of us who don't know you, can you just go through a little bit about where you were brought up and how you started to play golf? It looks like a very interesting biography.

DANIEL CHOPRA: It was very complicated. Well, I'm half Swedish, half Indian. My father is from India, hence the name Chopra. At the age of seven I moved to India. Actually I didn't move, I went there just so I could kind of see -- I thought it would be cool to see what the other half of my family, to live there for a little while, and I started to play golf. My entire father's side of my family played golf.

I was there for a couple years and it was pretty much time for me to go home back but I loved it so much I didn't want to go back to Sweden. I was playing golf almost every other day and just making new friends. I started to learn how to play cricket, which is probably one of my favorite sports to this day, and I stayed there until I was about 16. That's where I started my game.

Then I moved back to Sweden for a couple years in the summertime, turned pro when I was 18, started playing in Asia and in India and kind of wound my way from the very bottom rungs and kind of step-by-step climbed the ladders, and now I'm here.

Q. Who did you idolize growing up and who would you say your game models?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Growing up, Greg Norman. Greg Norman was definitely the person I really looked up to the most. Seve, as well. They were pretty much at the top of their games until I got out on Tour playing in Europe and so on, and then once you do that, you don't want to have any more idols, in your game anyway, because you might play with them one day so you don't want to give them too much of a head start.

Q. You talked about all the Tours you were on. Can you go in order of where you started?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Wow. My first professional event I played -- India actually has a Tour of its own, 32 or 33 events, run like the PGA TOUR, in the same format. I started playing my first events there. Then I moved onto the Malaysian Tour, which was a bit of a mini-Tour underneath the Asian Tour circuit. I played my first year on the Asian Tour in 94. I got some invites and earned enough money to keep my card.

I actually finished 2nd on the Money List to Brandt Jobe that year.

Then in 96, I got my card in Europe, birdied my last two holes at Q-school just to get my card there. I stayed in Europe for about five years until 2000.

In the meantime I kept playing a little bit on the Asian Tour and Australia for two or three years.

Then in 2000, I decided that Europe, I'd had enough. Every alternate year I kept coming out here to qualify, but I would never make it. Second stage got me every time.

I played in Japan, I decided I'm going to go to Japan, try something different. Unfortunately I tried to play both Tours. I tried to play Europe and Japan, lost my card both Tours.

Then I came out, got back into the final stage in Europe, and I was in the second stage here in the United States and I had a choice to make, do I go to the final and at least guarantee myself having a card on the Challenge Tour in Europe, or do I take a big risk and come play second, which was the same week, and if I missed the second out here, which I had never gone through before, I'll have nothing, nowhere to play. I can't even play the Challenge Tour.

I thought, which decision would I regret the most, and going back to Europe I would have regretted if I had missed, so I came out here. I got through second stage, holed about a six-footer again, clutch, at the last hole to squeeze through, and then I was on the Nationwide Tour for the last couple years, and then I've been playing in Asia the last couple of years, as well.

Q. Along the same lines, do you have favorite sort of hard luck or downtime stories? What was the worst --

DANIEL CHOPRA: I've had a couple times where I've been down to my last thousand dollars. If you play traveling the world like I do -- I've always played, even when I was in Europe, I'd go play a tournament in Japan, play in Australia, play in Asia an event, a bit like what Ernie does and Vijay and Tiger and Greg Norman, I've always believed I always wanted to go chase the best events, not just the Tour but the best events and play worldwide, and doing that without a sponsor, if you start missing a few cuts, the bankroll hits bottom pretty quickly.

There was a couple times where I was down to my last thousand. The tournament that comes to mind, the Taiwan Masters, I got a last minute invitation to go play in that, and a friend of mine who plays on Tour helped me get that. I had to borrow money from him that week so I could throw any entry in for Q-school here in the States. That was the year I got in.

Q. What year was that?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Taiwan Masters, and I won $70,000. I won the tournament. Then all of a sudden that got me a two-year exemption on the Asian Tour, I had a place to play, I had some money again. And there was one other time, as well, where I was pretty much down to my last thousand and finished 4th or 5th in a European Tour event and got me back out.

Q. How do you deliver when the noose is so much around your neck?

DANIEL CHOPRA: It's very strange. Deep down inside, I've had this knack, I don't know if it's an inner self-belief in even the smallest of things, if I'm in a jam, trying to get to a plane, a flight to catch or whatever, I always believe somehow I'll get the job done. Somehow I'll squeeze through. I don't know how, but I've always had that knack. I don't know what it is, but when I'm really down and my back is against the wall, somehow I manage to squeeze through. It's like I said, there's so many putts here or there, to qualify at second stage, to get my card in Europe. There's always these little points I look back on.

Q. So when you didn't come through in the Nationwide Tour championship last year, how much did that kind of undermine that sense of --

DANIEL CHOPRA: That was one anomaly that I had. That one I didn't believe. Deep down inside I knew, yes, I'd get back out here, but I didn't think it would be this year. I think maybe it was because of the fact that all the excitement and anticipation of the final round of the Tour Championship, I started thinking about what it would be like to be out here, and maybe it was a self-defense mechanism that kicked in that said don't even think about what it will be like. If you think you're not going to make it, that might take some pressure off, but that final round at Q-school, not for one moment did I allow myself the luxury of thinking what it would be like if I made it or if I didn't, and I think that was the key.

Q. Your bio says that you think you're the first one to hit a golf ball off the Great Wall of China. How did that happen?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, 1995 the Great Wall of China opened. It was the first major golf four-round event to be played in China. That was the year I finished 2nd on the Money List, a season ending event. Sandy Lyle was No. 1 in the world at the time and he had been invited to play. Brandt Jobe had a big enough a lead on me so he didn't need to play that final event so he took the week off, so I was the highest ranked player in the field off the Money List, and they wanted me and a picture of Sandy Lyle on the Great Wall of China for PR purposes, and we went up there and we took a golf ball and a club each, and I wound up being the first guy to hit a shot. I would assume I would be the first person ever to do that.

Q. Did you get a good bounce?

DANIEL CHOPRA: No, it was quite an incredible sight. I hit a full shot up and over the wall. It was quite incredible.

TODD BUDNICK: Let's just go through those two birdies of yours. You had one on No. 5.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah, it was straight downwind today and there's a lake that's about 200 yards to carry and I teed it up as high as I could, and I knocked it up there 30, 40 yards from the edge of the green and pitched it up to a few feet, and that was an easy birdie there.

Then on 17, with the wind it was about 200 yards, and it was into and off the left, and I hit a beautiful 5-iron, turned it over a little bit, about 15, 20 feet short of the hole off to the right and knocked it in.

Q. What do you think you'd be doing if you'd ever run out of money?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Again, I always believed. It doesn't matter what. I would find my way back out. I always believed I would be a Tour player and I'd be out here playing, playing with the best players in the world. If the money ran out, I'd find a way. I would find a way to get back out. I never even thought about it. Teaching maybe, just do something. I would have done some teaching to get a couple thousand dollars, go out and play again and do it that way.

Q. It's interesting in that a lot of times throughout your career you could have taken an easier path to play maybe another Tour, but it was always coming here it seems that was driving you?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah. You know, I've always believed that I have the ability to be one of the best players in the world. I grew up, I won the World Junior Championship, I was always dominating at my own level, and I grew up with that belief that this is what I am meant to do. It's what I'm best at, and it's just a matter of time.

Q. And then I also just wanted to ask about today. How difficult were those -- you were at Cottonwood, right?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yes.

Q. How difficult was No. 1 and No. 3?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Wow. They only have two par-5s but it was four today. 1 and 3 were definitely playing like good par-5s.

Q. What did you hit into each of those?

DANIEL CHOPRA: I hit a very good drive on 1 and hit a 3-iron for my second shot, probably might have been one club too much but it just flew straight over the flag from the back fringe.

No. 3, the wind was so strong that I didn't think I could even get it over the cross bunkers. It was only about 260 to fly them, which was a bit of a mistake. I aimed it a bit too safe and I went through the fairway and had a bad lie and had to smack it out to the short left of the green and get it up-and-down.

Q. Was 3 the worst into the wind?

DANIEL CHOPRA: It's hard to say because I didn't hit as good a drive and I was off in the rough so it's going to have perspective, so I think 3 would have been a little bit tougher.

Although on 1, there would be some guys hitting woods and 2-irons and 1-irons in there that if you lost it to the right and the wind caught it, it would be in the water. I think they were pretty much touch and go, both.

TODD BUDNICK: Thank you, Daniel.

End of FastScripts.

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