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AT&T CLASSICMay 16, 2007Stewart CinkDULUTH, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: Stewart, thanks for joining us, coming off a Top-5 finish last week in Ponte Vedra, THE PLAYERS Championship. Back home here this week. Just a couple comments about last week and how you're gearing up for this week. STEWART CINK: Well, thank you. Going back to last week I was really excited to be playing down there with the new grass. They changed it over from winter grass to Bermuda, and I had had just a horrible record there before. So it was really exciting for me to get down there and see the place in new light, a new date and everything. I was really excited about playing it, and lo and behold, it turned out to be a good recipe for a for a little bit of success down there. I was proud of the way I finished, considering I had never played good at all down there. It always bothered me a little bit to have that big tournament there, such an important event, and never to feel comfortable on the course, never to play well. And I think now hopefully I'll start a new chapter. THE MODERATOR: Looking forward to this week, here you are back at home, celebrating a good week for you. You're always a popular guy this week. Just some comments about what it's like being back home. STEWART CINK: Well, it's always nice to play here at the TPC Sugarloaf. I play a lot around here. I know a lot of people. Every hole we go down, people are up on the balconies and waving, and it's always nice to see them out there supporting me, of course. At the same time, you know, there's a little bit extra that goes on here that normally doesn't happen at a golf tournament that I have to sort of push aside, and it's sometimes hard to say no. But all in all, it's a fun week, and it's a unique environment for me to play in because I get a lot of different kind of support, a lot of people that I know are out here. So a lot of fun, and lately I haven't played that great here, but maybe this week I'll be able to put something together and do something good. Q. A follow-up on your last comment. Basically is it harder to maintain for 72 holes that focus, golf focus, when you're playing at home, or is there more pressure? Is it difficult to get a Thursday through Sunday concentration when you're surrounded by friends and family? STEWART CINK: It is a little more difficult, mainly because of what all is going on off the course and when I'm at home. It's not just a retreat that I can go and just relax and take it easy. I mean, actually it doesn't stop once I leave the golf course here. We've got a houseful. I try to put that behind me a little bit and quell that to some extent and let everybody know that we're not going to be able to necessarily have a big hand-holding dinner affair every single night and sing kumbaya by the fireplace but we're actually here to do work and play golf. Everybody can stay at the house if they want to. We've got plenty of room. But it's not a family gathering. And in the past I've made a mistake of letting it be too much of a family gathering and try and take care of that end and really neglecting the golf end of things, and it shows in my results. They've pretty much stunk here over the past two years. Lately I've really tried to refocus and recommit and give myself a little bit more sense of purpose on the golf course, so I'm going to try to let that carry over into this week, sort of like a -- I guess it's an all-encompassing broom. It's going to sweep all that extra mess into the garbage can. Q. If you're on the road somewhere it's just airport, hotel, golf course, airport, hotel, golf course. Is it almost easier to focus on your golf? STEWART CINK: It is. When I'm on the road I've got such a routine, I fly in, I play a practice round, maybe, maybe not; I don't always play practice rounds, but I'll be prepared to play the tournament and I don't have anything else to worry about except my own game. It's a selfish way to look at it, but in a way I have to really be selfish to be prepared because the fields out here, they're just so much deeper now than ever, and you can't blink because everybody is going to run over you. So when I'm home playing here and also at the TOUR Championship later in the year, same thing happens. The life that I live at home doesn't stop just because there's a tournament in town. It just adds. Luckily my wife understands that and tries to take on as much as she possibly can, but she's only one person. I need to have like three or four wives maybe this week (laughter). She's great about it, but it's a lot. It just sort of adds to what we normally do in an off week; it's like I'm playing a tournament in an off week. I look forward to trying to juggle everything this week, and hopefully I can sort of maintain a little bit of composure on the golf course. If you see me pulling out what little hair I have left out, you'll probably understand what's going on. But hopefully it won't come to that. Q. Are you a teacher on a Pro-Am day or are you working on your game? What's your relationship to the guys you're playing with today? STEWART CINK: Well, as soon as I see them hit that first shot, I'll know if I'm going to be a teacher that day or not. Some days I'm a teacher. I have a lot to share out there. I'm not a really good teacher, to be honest. But when I see guys making obvious mistakes, places like the bunker, a lot of people don't understand the concept of a bunker shot. I can share something with them to help them out. Some personalities don't really lend themselves to being taught. A lot of times you play with people out here that don't appreciate the fact that you're trying to help them out. They think you're maybe trying to boss them around a little bit. I'll feel that out a little bit. But one thing that will be definitely taking place today is I will be practicing my own game and getting ready to play the AT & T Classic. The counting rounds start tomorrow, and I'll be intent today in the Pro-Am trying to get a little bit of work done myself, but in between shots I've got plenty of time to help out the guys if they need it. And ladies. Occasionally I play with some ladies out here, so who knows. Q. Do you think there are both positives and negatives to the new date for this tournament, and if so, what are they? STEWART CINK: Positives are obviously, I don't need to say it, the weather is great and the course is in phenomenal shape. I'm really proud of Mike Crawford and all the guys that work here for getting it prepared so well. It's really special how nice it is. Negatives, obviously coming after such a great events like Wachovia and PLAYERS, it's tough to attract the top players because everybody is looking for a little breather after those two. They're grueling events, and I wouldn't blame the guys for taking off. It's just unfortunate that we have to be right after those two tournaments here. But I think in the future, the weather and the course -- the word will get out about how nice it is here. I think the top players will start to return back. But it's a slow process, and it's one that I don't blame anybody for not playing, but I really almost personally wish that everybody would play, to come see how nice it can be here. Q. Does this tournament kind of have to reinvent itself? STEWART CINK: Yes, I think it does. Part of that, a big part of that is going to be how nice the weather seems to be looking at this week, and it'll look great on TV. There's leaves on the trees; there haven't been that for years here. The place just looks so much better now. Q. Along the same lines, I think you usually play the Heritage the week after The Masters, and that's a tournament that has kind of found its niche right after that. What does it take to find a niche when you're around a major event? STEWART CINK: Well, I think what it takes is the tournament has to offer something special, and Harbour Town offers a lot of bike riding. It's a real family environment. You're insulated away from a lot of stuff that goes on like a big city like Atlanta, not that we're not insulated out here at Sugarloaf. It's pretty much a little dome that we live in here. But the thing that Hilton Head is great about is the family environment. So they have a special attribute there. Maybe this tournament needs to find a little bit of something like that. Not that it's not a family environment because they do great things for the families here, but tournaments are always reinventing themselves like we just talked about last question, and this one here has got a real opportunity here, I think, to erase the last several years where the weather has stunk and the field may not have been as strong as they hoped it would before The Masters. But we're out from underneath The Masters' shadow, and maybe now this tournament can blossom on its own instead of being a couple to the Masters. Q. You mentioned the bike riding and the family events at the Heritage. Are there any ideas you have for this tournament? STEWART CINK: No. I'm talking to Dave Kaplan all the time and also talking to the Children's Health Care people about little things that I see tournaments doing out there around the TOUR that they could use here to incur things. They've been wonderful about listening to those and about implementing some things, like we've got a bass rodeo going on sometime this week. I'm not going to it, I don't know if it happened yesterday or today or what, but we've got bass fishing. We've got a visit down to Children's Hospital, which I went to yesterday, and just a lot of things that are really trying to cultivate a real good culture here about this tournament, and I think players are starting to feel it. Q. Along those lines about the date causing difficulty to the field, I believe I read somewhere that Phil's reason for not coming back is it would have been four weeks in a row. You've been grinding out here for several years. Golf doesn't seem like a real brutal sport, but there's a lot of travel, a lot of walking. How many weeks in a row can you comfortably play and stay at the level you want to and how often do you need a break, and how does that figure into maybe when you're planning your schedule at the start of the year? STEWART CINK: Let me address, first of all, when you say golf is not a brutal sport, it's not. Playing golf is not brutal; walking is not brutal; travel, we travel quite honestly by private plane pretty often, it's not brutal. The thing that's brutal is competing out here against these guys. A guy like Mickelson, playing against him, trying to beat him, it wears on you because you don't beat him very often, you don't beat Tiger Woods very often. Playing against those guys is what makes it tough, and keeping at a very high level of focus for that long is what wears you down. That's why you see Tiger Woods playing 18 tournaments a year, because he's at a high level, he's always in contention. He's doing a job out there on the golf course that is pretty different from what you see to the bottom half of the players doing. You can play 10 or 12 in a row if you're finishing 60th in half of them and missing the cut the other half. That's the truth. As far as -- I think you asked me playing a lot of tournaments in a row -- Q. Let me rephrase. For the top players to play, how grueling is it for the top contender type player playing four, five, six in a row, and how does that enter into their decisions on which to skip, which to play? STEWART CINK: Well, it's a major factor. I'm in the middle of a five-tournament stretch in a row right now, and then I'm going to skip one and then play the next two. So seven out of eight for me is a pretty hefty load for my schedule. But considering I live right here, this is a great place for me to be because the TOUR is never more than an hour and a half flight for me. I can go to Charlotte, I can go to Jacksonville, I can go to even Doral, Dallas, New Orleans, think about all those cities, they're real short trips for me. I can come home on Sunday night and not go back out until Tuesday and I'm home two days out of seven. It's almost like not playing two in a row. I can come home and get the dry cleaning done, get the dog walked, get some R & R with the kids. It's a huge luxury for me to be able to come home on such a short trip to Atlanta and stay here for a few days, recharge and go back out. I feel like I can play 12 tournaments in a row. Not everybody is like that. Mickelson lives out on the West Coast. It's a lot harder for him to get back and forth and fly back and forth and see the family. So I understand. To play four or five tournaments in a row if you're at a high level like Mickelson, I don't think he's finished outside the top three in his last at least three or four tournaments, so that's tough on you. He needs to go back and gather himself and get ready for whatever his next tournament is going to be. I don't know what that's going to be, but he'll do the same thing during this period of time that I do during the New Orleans and Byron Nelson stretch. I love to play those tournaments, but it's just impossible for me to just do them all. Same goes for all the other guys. THE MODERATOR: Stewart, thanks for joining us. End of FastScripts |
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