BOB HOPE CHRYSLER CLASSIC

February 1, 2003

Mike Weir

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thanks for joining us. Fourth round 67 puts you at 25-under, four behind Tim Herron. If you could just talk a little bit about your day today.

MIKE WEIR: Well, it was pretty much summed up in the last six holes. It was really a little bit uneventful through the first 12. I made two birdies and two bogeys through 12 holes and was struggling a little bit to get any momentum going.

Then I made a nice birdie. I started on the back side , so I think it was No. 4 I birdied and made about a 10-foot putt.

No. 5, I hit a shot in there very close for eagle about eight feet and missed it, but that was another birdie, anyways.

The next par 5, I rolled in maybe a 35-footer for eagle. I got some momentum going there and all of a sudden went from even to 4-under in a few holes.

And then birdied the last hole to get to 5-under.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: You had a Top-10 last week and you are definitely in the hunt this week, tied for second place. Talk about how far your game has come. You played well last year; you had 11 Top-25s, but probably not quite up to your standards. But so far this year, you seem to be on a roll.

MIKE WEIR: Obviously, I was not happy about my year last year. I was working too hard on trying to make things perfect, and the game is not about trying to be perfect; it's about just getting the ball in the hole. And I didn't do a good job of that last year with my wedge game, and my putting was not very good.

I played the World Cup the second week of December, but besides that, I had not played for almost a couple of months and I took a month off after the World Cup. I think I needed time away from the game more than anything.

I haven't done anything special. I just needed a little break from the game to refresh my mind, really, more than anything, to be really prepared to get out here and play golf.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: I know there are not a lot of scoreboards at the satellite courses. Do you like your position going into tomorrow?

MIKE WEIR: Yeah, Tim obviously played another great round and he's obviously playing great, so it's going to be tough to catch him.

On the other hand, I'm playing well. I shot 8-under at the Arnold Palmer course the other day, so if I can shoot another one like that tomorrow, you never know what can happen. It should be a good shootout tomorrow.

Q. From the nature of this tournament, there's only one way to play these courses anyway, which is to be aggressive, so you really don't have to do anything different tomorrow, do you?

MIKE WEIR: No, I don't. I've got some good memories from playing the other day, and hopefully things will just fall into place.

You do have to fire at the pins and be aggressive with your putting and try to make some. That's just the way it plays out here.

I heard the possibility of some wind tomorrow, so that may make it play a little bit different. But we'll see how it is in the morning. You're still going to have to shoot -- being four behind, I'm still going to have to shoot a low one.

Q. How do you stop yourself from trying to make too many birdies too early to make up that gap and just stay patient with the round?

MIKE WEIR: Well, you know, it seems like every day I have not gotten off to the greatest of starts, and I've just stayed patient, stayed with it and things have fallen into place.

Today was even a little longer than I wanted to wait and that's just the way it is sometimes. I was 5-under on my last six holes. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

Actually this golf course, La Quinta, it actually plays pretty tricky. It's obviously I think the toughest of the four. For me it was a pretty good score today. But tomorrow, you've just got to let things happen and hopefully they will.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thank you very much.

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