home

jobs

	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 15, 2006

Geoff Ogilvy

MEDINAH, ILLINOIS

KELLY ELBIN: Geoff Ogilvy, ladies and gentlemen. Geoff is playing in his fourth PGA Championship this week, tied for 6th at Baltusrol last year in the 2005 PGA Championship. Geoff is also the reining U.S. Open Champion. Give us some thoughts on the state of your game and comments on what you've seen from this golf course.

GEOFF OGILVY: My game is okay. I played okay at the British Open without being really, really sharp. The Buick a couple weeks ago I played okay, I just didn't hole enough putts to shoot 24 like Tiger and all the others. But it's pretty good. I mean, it's very close. It's the sort of golf course that's nice to look at. I enjoyed yesterday. The weather like it's going to be perfect. It's in great condition, so I'm looking forward to it.

Q. Now that you've had success and experience in both the U.S. Open and at the PGA Championship. I wonder if you could discuss the similarities and differences in the course setups for the two events.

GEOFF OGILVY: This and the U.S. Open?

Q. Yeah, the PGA Championship versus the U.S. Open.

GEOFF OGILVY: The U.S. Open is narrower. I mean, Baltusrol was pretty narrow. Baltusrol was as close as a PGA comes to a U.S. Open, the setup last year, because it was pretty narrow and the rough was at the ridiculous stage right off the edge of the fairways. Usually the rough is a couple inches shorter and a bit more playable; you can get something on the ball out of the rough in the PGA. You might not have very much control.

Although, Oak Hill, when we play Oak Hill, that really was a U.S. Open setup when Shaun won in 2003. That was tough, like a U.S. Open. I finished 6 or 7 over there, and I was like 25th or something. I mean, that's U.S. Open type scoring.

Just usually they probably don't get quite as aggressive with getting the greens real firm on the weekend. I mean, the U.S. Open generally stops watering the greens on Thursday and they just get harder and faster all weekend, which is a good thing. I mean, I enjoy that.

Here they won't do that much as much. It's a little bit wider, the rough is not quite as tough. They're played on similar style golf courses, as well. The difference in the U.S. Open is it's narrower off the tee, and there's a little bit more room in the fairway than the U.S. Open.

Q. What's your reaction to playing the first two rounds with Tiger and Phil, and what kind of zoo are you anticipating? Will it be a distraction for you?

GEOFF OGILVY: It will be quite fun, I imagine. I'm sure it'll be a zoo. I don't know when the last time I mean, when the last time they played together in a big spectator market like this. There's going to be a lot of people turn up when we're on the first tee on Thursday. It's going to be fun. It'll be interesting to see how they got along with each other. I don't know, that's for you guys. I don't know, either. I've never played together with them both at the same time. I know them both well enough and I've played with them a few times, so it'll be interesting. It'll be quite funny, and the crowd will be quite vocal and right into it.

Q. Do you think it'll be a distraction for you with people moving around a lot?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, there will be that, I'm sure. Tiger's crowds and Phil's crowds, both of those guys more than anyone else tend to bring out non golf fans. Most of us, if we've got fans, they're generally golf fans and they know how to watch a golf tournament. There's people who follow Tiger and Phil who generally don't know how to watch a golf tournament. There might be a bit of that.

But I think all the photographers know what they're doing for the most part. They're all scared of Steve now, so they'll all do what they're told to do.

I think everyone inside the ropes is going to be good, and I think there will be the odd guy who's here to yell and scream, and as long as they yell and scream after we hit, that's going to be fine. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Q. Sort of along those lines, typically people paired with Tiger in particular don't always have their best rounds. Any thoughts on why that might be? Not you particularly, but just that seems to be the trend.

GEOFF OGILVY: I've always played all right when I've played with him. I think it's very easy to get caught up watching him play because it's so fun to watch him play. Most of us out here, we've all seen pretty much everyone play golf, and it's ho hum, a bit of a yawn, he hits it okay.

But when you play with Tiger, he is enjoyable to watch. I haven't played with him since 2002 maybe, I don't know, but I played with him a couple of times in 1999, and that was pretty impressive to watch. You do find yourself watching him playing, thinking, this is pretty impressive. All of a sudden you're on the 6th hole and haven't really paid attention to what you're doing.

As I said, I've always played okay when I've played with him. I guess there's a lot of distractions and stuff, but most of us are used to that sort of stuff now. Hopefully I'll play well playing in this group. Hopefully.

Q. Geoff, why do you think there is such interest in how they get along?

GEOFF OGILVY: Well, I mean, people in this tent like to make stories like that. I don't know when it started, but that Ryder Cup pairing a few years ago or was it the last Ryder Cup? That probably set it more in motion than it was. They didn't appear to be best friends that day, I don't know. They walked on the first tee and they were on both sides of the tee. I don't know, they don't play practice rounds together. They don't they're the two best golfers in the world, and you guys want a story, and that's a bit of a story. I'm sure they'll probably be best friends talking to each other for the first 36 holes, I don't know, but it'll be interesting to see.

Q. I know you are a student of the game as far as design and different styles of architecture, golf architecture. What does it say that we're playing a course at 7,561 yards and guys are saying it doesn't feel long to them? What does that say about the state of the game and golf courses and where are we going from here?

GEOFF OGILVY: I mean, the length of the golf course in 1985, no one ever said this feels like a long golf course. Length has only really been an issue in the last five years or something. There were long hitters; there were short hitters.

I think it would be a shame if you had to keep going longer than this with golf courses because you'd just run out of room. A lot of these places Medinah is blessed with a lot of land, but there's a lot of courses like Merion that have just got nowhere to go. It would be a shame if we couldn't play golf courses like Merion in 10 years' time or 15 years' time because they were too short. All new golf courses are way out of town because there's the only way you can get enough land to build 9,000 yard golf courses in 10 or 15 years.

I don't know, 7,500 yards, that's a long golf course, isn't it, really? It's par 72, there's four par 5s that are all Tiger and Phil can probably get on all four in two. The rest of the field is probably pretty close to him. A 600 yard par 5 isn't that long anymore, which is quite scary.

I don't know what it says. I think it would be unfortunate if course setups kept getting longer and longer and longer. I think there would be better ways, I think, to combat how far had we hit it. The longer you make a golf course, the more you encourage guys to hit driver and hit it a long way.

Hoylake was a pretty stellar example of that. You've got guys scared to hit driver on fairways that were really quite wide and the rough was not a big deal. You've got the best golfer in history not wanting to hit driver. I think a lesson needs to be learned from Hoylake, and there's definitely ways to test the best golfers in the world in how far we hit it and discourage hitting it a long way, as opposed to a long golf course you encourage people to hit driver and hit it as long as they can. Hopefully lessons are learned from places like Hoylake and St. Andrews and they start looking at other ways, as opposed to tacking on another 30 yards to every par 4 and every par 5 on a golf course.

There's a par 3 out here over water that's a 2 iron. I mean, yesterday, 13, Tim Clark hit a wood and I hit a 2 iron, and I hit a 2 iron quite a long way, and that's to a front pin. That's a par 3. It's not fun to have a tee on a golf course that the members can't play. I mean, I'm sure there's 30 members at Medinah who can play that tee, but they probably don't want to because they'll probably just be dropping balls in the water all the time. It would be nice if 244 is the limit to a par 3 length, anyway.

Q. After winning the Accenture Match Play and then the U.S. Open, how does that change your expectations of yourself for your career? Does it add pressure or does it take pressure off?

GEOFF OGILVY: A little bit of both. It doesn't add pressure. It probably adds my own expectations a little bit. But also it takes pressure off in the respect of I've already won a couple of big tournaments this year. The rest of the year doesn't matter. When I sit down at Christmas, I've had a good year and I've won a major. I can sit down when I'm 50 now and I've won a major. Hopefully I've won ten by then.

But it does a bit of both. I think when you play like I have this year, you come to tournaments like this believing you can do really well, and maybe being disappointing if you don't do really well. I go to the British Open; I finished 16th, which is a pretty good finish really, and I was disappointed. That wouldn't have happened a year ago.

It affects you both ways. I guess you've got to try to just focus on the positives; that I've won a couple of big tournaments and it's going to help me in the future.

Q. Do you actually pay much attention to the overall length of a golf course, like 7,500 yards here, and if not, what does get your attention and what makes you focus?

GEOFF OGILVY: I don't really pretty much I find myself hitting my tee shot on a hole, getting down there and Alistair telling me I've got 175. I don't really know how long a hole is. I just know what club I want to hit off the tee. You know if a par 4 is long or a par 4 is short, but I'm not looking at the card going, oh, no, this hole is this many yards.

You try to look at it in terms of where you want to hit your second shot from. On some holes that's as far up as you can hit it, an other holes it might be back or on the right hand side of the hole.

Hoylake was, keep it out of the bunkers; anything you could do to keep it out of the bunkers. The rough was actually not a bad spot to be. It was almost better than the fairways in a lot of situations because you had an angle, but you just had to keep it out of fairways bunkers. So that was the whole goal there.

Here it's probably keep it out of the rough. Fairway bunkers are probably a good spot to be in a lot of situations. There's a lot of overhanging trees, a lot of holes where you can be on the fairways like you can hit the left hand side of 16 and be on the fairway and have no shot. You want to just work out what sides of what fairways to be on and go from there because there's a lot of spots off the tee that you get up there and they're not very good, and there's a lot of spots that appear bad that are actually pretty good spots. That's what I look for, just to make the second shot as easy as possible, and that generally makes the rest of the hole play easier. Sometimes that's a long drive; sometimes that's a short one.

Q. With Tiger and Phil at the height of their power, you still have a chance to be Player of the Year. How much motivation is there in that?

GEOFF OGILVY: A little bit. To do that I'd have to win this week I would have thought. Maybe not. But if not this week, not next or TOUR Championship or something really big and have them not win any more at all, which is not going to happen the way Tiger is playing. It would be nice.

That's probably a cool award because it's voted by all the players, so it's a cool award in that respect. I haven't really thought about it. The only time I think about it is when I come in the media center and people ask me.

That would just be a nice thing. It would be probably cool to lead the scoring average or something for the year or tournaments won or something like that. I think that's just a bonus that comes along with a little nod from all your peers that you've played better than anyone else this year. That comes along with playing really well. If it happened, I think I'd have to win a couple more tournaments this year, and if I did, I wouldn't care what happened; I'd be pretty happy with my year.

Q. You made a reference to the way Tiger is playing. The way he won the last two times, did you say to yourself, "here he comes again," or anything like that?

GEOFF OGILVY: Not really. I mean, the British Open, his strategy impressed me, and I didn't really watch much of it because I was out on the golf course most of the time he was playing. But I had a couple of friends I had one guy that walked around with him the last couple days inside the ropes, and he said pretty much everyone else in the world had hit their second shots from where he was hitting second shots, they probably would have missed the cut.

Everyone talked about his strategy, and his strategy was fine, but if anyone else had that strategy they probably wouldn't have won the golf tournament because of how good his long irons are. He hasn't had a stellar ball striking week like that for a long time. Whether he says so or not, I don't think he's had that since 2001, 2002. Bethpage was probably the last time he played a major without missing a shot.

And then Flint, again, I didn't see much of what he did, but I saw him hit a few shots, and he had that kind of swagger, kind of twirling the club after he hits it; that kind of strut he has when he's playing really well, like no one is beating me look in his eye. He hasn't had that for a while. You don't think, "here we go again," but you're happy that the best player in history is back playing the way he can.

From our perspective, I don't know if he'd take offense, it was almost like: What are you doing? How good were you in '99 to 2002? Why were you doing? Why is that boring? Why is that not good enough? It seems like that golf is back now, which is, again, like I said earlier, he's fun to watch play when he's like that.

Q. They've obviously changed hole 17 a little bit, and this is going back to the course, but are there any other holes that since you've been doing your practice have found to be a little bit tricky?

GEOFF OGILVY: A little bit tricky? There's a few that are 16 is the obvious toughest hole on the golf course because it kind of forces you to lay it way back because it's awkward to you can't get a short shot because of the way the hill is. So you're going to be hitting between 3 iron and 7 iron into that green, and we're not very used to hitting 3 irons into par 4s anymore. That will be interesting. As I said, you can hit it on the left hand side of that fairway and be blocked out by trees on the fairway. It's a wide ish fairway that plays really narrow.

I think 9 is an awkward tee shot, that dogleg left, quite an awkward tee shot. There's a lot of awkward tee shots. The par 5s are very key because there's bunkers in play on both sides of the fairways in a lot of situations. If you hit nice tee shots, it's almost a one shot penalty to miss the fairways on the par 5s because you can mostly reach them or get them close in par 5s. There's a couple situations where you're going to have to wedge it sideways and have a 5 iron for the third. The difference between hitting the fairway and missing the fairway is going to be at least a shot. Driving is going to be key.

16 was not pivotal last time, but it was the exciting hole last time with Sergio's shot. It's interesting. There's a couple of doglegs you have to be pretty careful about your line. A couple of holes I think 7, the par 5, quite an awkward second shot, you have to hit quite a pronounced fade off that second shot, and you've really got to know where you want to lay it up. And there's some bunkers hidden from view because they're over hills. You've got to know your lines off the tees because there's trees overhanging everywhere. I don't know, I mean, not a lot of it's tough to remember, but there's a few tricky things out there if that answers your question.

Q. You said that you're impressed with Tiger 's approach at the British Open even though you didn't get to see a lot of it. Does that mean that you'll enjoy playing with him and Phil because you'll get to see how they approach everything in the next two days, or would you prefer to just kind of be the biggest name in your group and be on your own and doing your own stuff?

GEOFF OGILVY: I'm very comfortable being the smallest name in my group. Any time you get to play with the best golfers in the world, it has to be a good thing. Because they're the best golfers in the world, so they're doing it better than you; so there's something you can learn from them.

A lot of times there's every chance they're both going to be playing well, and usually when two guys play well in a group, three guys play well in a group. They can suck you along a little bit. Maybe I'll play really well and they'll learn off me, I don't know. Any time you play with the best in the world, you can learn, and I think however I play this week, if I play really well, I'll learn something from play with them, and if I play really bad I'll learn something from playing with them. So it'll be a good experience whatever I do.

Q. Do you feel better prepared this week than you did at the U.S. Open; that your game is probably a little sharper coming into this major than it was at the British Open?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, sharper than the British Open probably. I mean, I had four weeks off before the British Open, and usually when that happens, even if you're practicing enough, like your scoring ability kind of goes away. Like you're scrambling for pars and you feel like you play all right everyone who plays golf knows if you take a bit of time off, your short game and putting isn't as sharp. Your ball striking is okay but you can't score.

It was the reverse. I just started hitting it not very well at the British Open, but my scoring was really good, so that was kind of a weird one.

Here I feel I played Buick a couple weeks ago and didn't hit it great but didn't play that bad. It was hard to measure because it turns into a little bit of a putting contest there. I think 10 under finished 50th or something. It was pretty low scoring. I just didn't manage to hit it I hit it to 20 feet every hole and was missing putts, and the guys contending were hitting it to 15 feet and making them. I had that week, which was pretty strong. I got a lot out of that week.

And then last week I home I worked pretty hard, so I think I'm feeling pretty decent about it.

Q. Obviously there are guys you'd prefer to play with. It stands to reason there are guys who you would prefer not to play with. When that is the situation and you're with someone you don't particularly want to be out there with, is that other guy going to know that? And what do you do to kind of get through the round with someone you don't want to play with?

GEOFF OGILVY: I love everybody out here (laughter). I like playing with them all.

Really, there isn't anyone I get drawn with and go, "oh, no, not again." Sometimes the only you can get frustrated when a guy is taking longer than you do. But generally it doesn't matter for us out here because usually there's someone in the group in front of you taking longer than you do, so you're waiting for them, anyway.

There's definitely guys that you play better with than other guys. I mean, sometimes you might play with one guy five times on a Thursday and Friday for the whole year and you play well five times, but every one of those times is when you play with him, and he thinks you're the best player in the world. And every time there's a couple of guys that I generally play well with all the time, and I don't know why, it's just probably coincidence. And there's other guys you don't hit it very well with. I don't know, there's not one player on Tour I look at and go: "Oh, really, I don't want to play with him."

As I said, I've always played well when I've played with Tiger. I've had mixed results when I've played with Phil. So I'm sure it'll be fine.

KELLY ELBIN: Geoff, Tiger and Phil on the tee at 8:30 Thursday morning. Geoff, thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297