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TARGET WORLD CHALLENGEDecember 14, 2006John DalyTHOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA: First Round DAVE SENKO: John, thanks for joining us. Maybe just give us a quick rundown on your 69, how your day went. JOHN DALY: Front nine was great. The back nine looked like a jigsaw puzzle. No, I just got off to a rough start on the back. I bogeyed 10. I was real solid on the front, made three birdies and had it going, looked up on a chip on 10, made a great 5 there, made a good birdie on 11, actually made a good double on 12, made a good birdie on 13, made a good birdie on 14, good birdie on 16 and a stupid bogey on 17 and parred 18. Q. (Inaudible.) JOHN DALY: Nothing was really great about it. The rough around the greens is spotty so the ball just sits in these holes. I was in the deep stuff and tried to hit a flop and it just bladed into the bunker and of course I had nothing, so I just hit a bunker shot and took my 40-footer and made a good two-putt from there. Q. What word would you use to describe your year this year? JOHN DALY: You know, business-wise for me it's been great, but just the injuries killed me this year. That stretch kind of in June or July and my back when I had that sciatic nerve for like six or seven weeks, tried to play and couldn't play, that cost me six, seven, eight tournaments. Later in the year my pinkie broke and I missed three or four of the last tournaments with that, too. Just been a year with a lot of injuries. Q. (Inaudible.) JOHN DALY: I thought about it but there's only been two tournaments, and all my sponsors are great, they're cool with everything. Knowing that I'm getting the exemptions that I've already gotten so far, just about everything on the West Coast, right now I think I've got 19 to 20 exemptions for next year, so it's like playing a full year anyway. No reason for it, no. Q. Are you the least bit worried when you sent out to ask for exemptions, and how did it make you feel to have so many of them stacked up so early? JOHN DALY: It's great. I've done a lot for a lot of tournaments, but there's some I haven't played in a while, like Sony. They didn't really have to give me one and they did, and that's why I want to go play. That was nice of them. It's just a tough tournament to get to if you're not in the Mercedes. It's great to go there for two weeks, but they came back and said, yeah, we're going to give you one, and I said I need to play there. If I get 30 exemptions, there's no way I'd be able to play all of them, but I'm definitely sure going to try to play most of them. Q. Did you send out letters to just about everybody? JOHN DALY: Every tournament, yeah, except the ones I know I'm not in, the World Championships, PLAYERS and then Matches and the U.S. Open. I'm already in the PGA and British. Q. Did you send them to the invitationals? JOHN DALY: Colonial, Bay Hill, Memorial. Q. What happened this year? JOHN DALY: Injuries more than anything. I just never could -- the West Coast usually is okay for me, usually gets me going, and I wasn't hurt on the West Coast, I just played horrible. And then it just never got any better and then I got hurt. The sciatic nerve, that hurt and I couldn't play. When I tried to play it was just awful. It was just one thing after another. I just really wasn't able to do the things I needed to do to play well because I was hurting most of the year. Q. Was that a gradual thing, you started building up pain on pain? JOHN DALY: Well, it was just before I think the Memphis tournament. I tried to play -- I played the first day in Memphis, couldn't even bend over, then I had to withdraw from there. Then I went up to Memorial. The guys in the Tour trailer were great. They were trying to get it fixed. After the first day at Memorial, I get on the range and I couldn't even swing. There was another three or four weeks gone right there that I couldn't play. And tournaments that I usually have a chance to play really well in or feel confident I know them so well, just not being able to play those tournaments, whether it's $50,000 I made or $100,000, it helps. I just never could do that. I never had a chance to play well. Q. (Inaudible.) JOHN DALY: Yeah, my kids, my boys are here, and Sherrie is here, so we're having a good time. Q. (Inaudible.) JOHN DALY: Yeah, I mean, we're working it out. We love each other very much. We love each other just a little more than we hate each other, just like the book. We're trying to work things out. I think we will. Q. Another large gallery today. Your thoughts on why people gravitate towards you and the support you get from the fans. Talk about that a little bit. JOHN DALY: I don't know, I think people can relate to some of the things that have gone on in my life. Everybody has ups and downs in life, and I think a lot of them can relate. It's great to have them because I'll tell you, when things aren't going good, you just want to try your best and they motivate me to keep going. The fans have been great for the 16 years I've been out here, and it was an awful year this year but hopefully next year I'll be able to play better for them. Q. What did you do to your back earlier this week? You mentioned you tweaked it at something. JOHN DALY: Yeah, that's one thing me and Sherrie have really got to talk about, her packing. We're gone for seven days. The bus is just an hour and a half from here. We couldn't park it in here this week, so Mark Christopher, they give me a Tahoe to drive over, and I'm loading, and my bag, which is very light, and I pick up Sherrie's and I just hurt it go, kkkkkrrrrrr. It hurts. It's on the left side, which at least I can swing. If it was on the right side, it would be like earlier this year. It's not that sciatic nerve where you can't breathe. It's just sore, like a pulled muscle. Q. What sort of things are you having to do? Have you taken up yoga or done anything to try and keep that back healthy? JOHN DALY: No, I don't eat yogurt or do yoga (laughter). Yoga is not in my repertoire. Q. When you got the invitation here, a chance to play after a tough year, I guess that excited you a little bit just coming back? JOHN DALY: Well, it's great. I love the Target people. They've got some of my lion clubs in there and I've done some good business with them. It was great that Tiger invited me to play. I'm like 156th in the world, I didn't keep my card and they let me in this tournament, so it feels really good that he did that. I was supposed to play last year when I had a pretty decent year and my hand broke and I couldn't play. Like I say, I want to thank Target and Tiger for letting me play because some good things might happen this week that hopefully I can build on in '07. Q. Just curious, with Monty today, how was that, and did the Ryder Cup come up at all? JOHN DALY: It did. It's unbelievable talking to him about it. He was saying how passionate their team is to win that. But another interesting thing he said was about how the young kids in Europe coming up, they're not coming out of a college getting $4 and $5 million contracts where they won't be as hungry as some guys out of college, so the young players on the European team are probably a little more hungrier because they've worked so hard. They didn't have anything. They had to work for it. Not saying our guys don't, but it's a lot better coming out of college with a $5 million deal in place where you might be able to feel a little more relaxed. But passion he said is what was the European team more than anything. Q. Did he say anything like wish you were there, or glad you weren't? JOHN DALY: He said he was glad I wasn't. I don't know, that was really neat what he said, that the guys on the European team were so passionate to win that, maybe a little more than our guys had been. Q. My point is do you feel like you should have been on one by now, whether it was '91, '95? JOHN DALY: I felt '91 I really should have been on it, but they changed -- the PGA of America changed it that the winner of the PGA Championship usually got no matter what. I've always played good the first year before the Ryder Cup and not so good the second. But I think it's great, the two captains go at it on TV when they're announcing, they do funny things together, they're good friends, and to have Paul Azinger and Nick Faldo as captains, I think it's going to be a great Ryder Cup. Q. Have you given up hope of being on a team? JOHN DALY: No, because I'm going to make Paul pick me. I'm going to beat him up if he doesn't pick me. Q. If you would just give me a rundown on the bus, where is it? Are you going to take it back to Carlsbad or what's the status? JOHN DALY: Yeah, after a few more outings with Mark Christopher Auto Center, they've been a sponsor of mine for the last 14 years, we do a lot of dates with those guys, they're great, go back to Taylor Made and test some new stuff that's coming out. I've enjoyed it with Mark King and the guys. It's fun going there, and Sports Authority was there, and we launched -- Sports Authority is doing all of my Maxfli stuff. To go in and sit at the meetings with those guys, it's been really interesting to do that. It's just fun to go there and hang out with those guys. It's just one hell of a company. The guys are so great. They did a billion in golf sales this year, which is kind of unheard of in a golf company the way golf has been, the business side of it. So yeah, I'll be taking the bus back there and hanging out here. Q. Where is it? JOHN DALY: It's out in Ontario where Mark Christopher is. Q. Looks like you can pull your clubs out of the back of a car and shoot under par. Is there anything you need to do for the next year to be able to compete at the highest level and win again? JOHN DALY: I just need to work on it and hopefully stay injury-free. '06 has been nothing but injuries, and it's tough to play golf. You know, you break your pinkie in football, they pop it back in, tape you up and you go hit somebody. But in golf it's just not that easy. The smallest injuries to a golfer can cause us not to play, and that's kind of what's happened all year long. Q. (Inaudible.) JOHN DALY: Well, the doctor who does all the razorback guys and the ladies in sports there, he said it was probably broke for a long time. I was playing with J.B. Holmes and it was this pinkie here and I could literally turn the whole thing around. I thought he was going to throw up one time. He said don't show it to him again, so I kept showing it to him. But he popped it back in. You could see -- you put your hand on this plate and you could see where the bone was cracked. It was gross. He was kind of feeling it a little bit, and next thing you know he went kkkkkrrrrrrrr, and I said, hey, Doc, how about a warning next time? He popped it back in and it's stronger than ever now. He said it was probably broke from a long time ago. I had to change my grip because the ligaments were torn in this part of my hand in Jackson, so I was putting the club more up in this callus right here of the grip instead of where I usually put it, just turned it, popped it and broke it. End of FastScripts… |
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