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TARGET WORLD CHALLENGE

December 16, 2006

Chris DiMarco

THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA: Third Round

DAVE SENKO: Chris, another 68 today, and you've got to be very pleased with the finish, three straight birdies to finish 10 going into tomorrow.
CHRIS DiMARCO: Yeah, it was nice to birdie I guess five of the last ten holes was nice. You know, the course was tough early. It was one of those kind of just hang-in-there-with-the-rain. You could have really let it get away from you. You could have maybe have been three or four over par and then struggling to get back, and I managed to stick around and then the rain stopped and I was able to make some birdies.
DAVE SENKO: If you can go through your last three birdies, what was the shot sequence?
CHRIS DiMARCO: I hit a 3-wood and a 6-iron, and then I had a 98-yard sand wedge, hit a good shot, landed it about to about four feet, made a good four-footer there.
17, I hit a 7-iron on the front right part of the green and made like a 35-footer, great putt, kind of down the slope, up the slope and just perfect speed.
Then 18, I hit a 3-wood and a 7-iron to about eight feet behind the hole and made a really good putt there.

Q. A couple of the guys talked about the weather and it changed so dramatically. Did the rain itself affect you, or did the course itself get so wet you couldn't play in the rough?
CHRIS DiMARCO: No, it wasn't the rough or anything. What it is, the golf balls and the club heads now because of the lack of spin that you get with your ball and also with the club face, if you get a little moisture on there it's really easy for the ball to knuckle off. It happened to me on No. 2. It squirted right on me. I was still able to make birdie. But 4 is a really difficult tee ball. I started teeing it low and tried to hit low tee shots into the wind and was fortunate to hit four really good drives on 4, 5, 6 and 7 pretty much right in the heat of the rain.
If you can play from the middle of the fairway out here, again, it's raining so hard, I think on 7 yesterday I hit driver, wedge. Today I hit driver, 4-iron.
It was just kind of survive out there.

Q. Did the rain also make the greens a little bit easier to putt on, slow them down a little bit?
CHRIS DiMARCO: They were still fast. You know, obviously the uphillers were a little slower, but the downhillers out here, you get some downhillers and they are smokin' fast. You just try not to leave yourself too many of those. The other thing is if you're feeling really good, you have to hit those downhillers a little bit aggressive. If you don't hit them aggressive you're not going to hold the line. If you try to die them around the hole you're not going to make them. I've been fortunate I made a lot of good eight-footers this week.
I had another three-putt today, so I've had four three-putts for the week, and all of them from 60, 65 feet. It's going to happen on these greens especially.
Overall I'm extremely happy with the way I played. I think I hit a lot of greens and fairways this week, and that's the key, and I putted pretty good.

Q. You guys play obviously so many courses -- Lytham St. Annes was a par 3 to open at the '97 Open and a par 3 to close. This is sort of a funky course with five 3s and five 5s. Does that affect guys like you? Do you like a more standard course, or does it matter?
CHRIS DiMARCO: You know, it really helps me because I pride myself on my iron play, so the more par 3s we have is good for me. And then for the most part, obviously today was a little bit different, but for the most part all the par 5s are reachable for me. So that's a huge advantage for me. So I'm getting to most of the par 5s and I have a lot of par 3s to play with.
If you can do that, for me, I feel like I can compete. The other holes are not obviously long. It's not like there's any 495-yard par 4s out here. There's some good ones. No. 4 is a great par 4 but I don't try to do much with that hole. I try to put it if the fairway, put it on the green, get my 4 and get out of there. Same thing with No. 14. 14 has probably been the key for me this week. Today I got up-and-down from 137 from under the trees out of the rough. I hit a great shot in there to about eight feet and was able to make par.
Yesterday I hit it in the bunker left, made an eight-footer, and the first day I got it left of the green and got up-and-down from about eight feet. I've made three really good eight-footers for par on that hole.

Q. (Inaudible.)
CHRIS DiMARCO: I'm very happy. I've been excited that I only have one more night here, and tomorrow night I'm going to be skiing or tomorrow night I'm going to be at -- Monday I'm going to be skiing. I'm looking forward to it.
I have traveled a lot in the last month going from -- I went to China and then two days after China I went to Hong Kong and then I came back and I went to South Africa, so China and Hong Kong was 13 hours ahead and South Africa was seven hours ahead, then I came back for six days and came here. I'm ready for some time off, put the clubs up for a little bit, and I'm going to be ready to -- I'm really looking forward to next year. Next year I'm going to kind of dedicate myself to really playing good consistent golf again.

Q. You've obviously put yourself in position to try to win this thing. How much would a win mean to you, to get that feeling that it's your best?
CHRIS DiMARCO: It would be awesome. I started the year with a win overseas in Abu Dhabi, and to come here and end the year and to be able to put that trophy over my head at the end of the year would be awesome. It would be nothing but a confidence boost for me going into '07.
There's a lot of great players here. I don't know what Tiger is doing, but there's a good chance I'm going to play with Geoff again in the final group, and that will be a lot of fun. Tiger doesn't really want to give his trophy up too easily here, so you know he's going to be gunning for it; Henrik is a great player. As long as we play good, I think that we put ourselves ahead of the other guys, unless it's a poor day. If the conditions are poor, anybody can win.
Four guys being four shots ahead or so, it's hard for somebody four or five shots back to come and win this thing.

Q. Are you one of those guys that looks at the weather report right before you go to bed? Do you actually like playing in different --
CHRIS DiMARCO: Today was a perfect example. It really doesn't matter. If you're worried about the weather the night before, then you're not going to sleep well, you're not going to put yourself -- you wake up and see what it's like. I wish I was a weather man because they've got the best job in the world, 30 percent right all the time, and it's great.
It was supposed to rain this afternoon and then not rain this morning, and yet it rained this morning and hasn't rained yet. Hopefully it'll blow through and we'll have a nice day. It was beautiful the back nine, and we'll have a good day for this tournament. It deserves it. They do a great job here, and it'll be a lot of fun tomorrow.

End of FastScripts

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