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BOB HOPE CHRYSLER CLASSIC

January 16, 2008

Robert Gamez

LA QUINTA, CALIFORNIA

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Robert, thank you for joining us for a few minutes here on the phone at the media center at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Good start to the week. 66. You're the first guy that we have spoken to on the phone that has played SilverRock. So give us a little information about the conditions and what you did well.
ROBERT GAMEZ: The golf course is in great shape for a new golf course that's, the greens are a little bit rough in some spots and they were a little bit slower than probably the rest of the greens will be around the rest of the golf courses. But it was in great shape. Excellent shape. The fairways were firm, so the ball was rolling out pretty good. The greens have a little firmness to them which actually makes it nice, I think.
So I was pretty happy with the way I played, considering I hadn't seen it before. So it was a lot of fun and I had a good group. Anthony Anderson and Jimmy Fallon and Thomas Gibson, we had a blast out there today. When they told me you guys wanted to talk to me I was like shocked because I didn't realize I had shot 66.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Great. Questions?

Q. It would seem like it would be a detriment not to have seen a course before to come out and shoot a 66, how were you able to do that?
ROBERT GAMEZ: My caddie walked around yesterday and he had perfect yardages, told me where to hit it. And I think I missed one green today, the one hole I bogeyed. And I don't even remember what hole that is. But I drove it in the fairway almost every hole except that one I bogeyed. I hit it in the bunker off the tee and missed the green.
So sometimes for me, especially the more I play a golf course, the more I get a little aggressive and start taking different lines sometimes. And that's when you can get into some trouble.
So I basically just hit the numbers. My caddie had really great yardages, had good lines. He told me where to hit it and I just pretty much tried to hit straight shots at those lines. And we were hitting shots into the greens and I just tried to play the yardages. And it just worked out.
I putted pretty well. It took me about six or seven holes to get the speed down. And I played the Tradition yesterday and the greens were really fast over there so this morning I tried to give a little extra time on the putting green, but it was just a little different than on the golf course. So again I just putted really well. I hit 17 greens and missed one fairway. So that's how you shoot some good scores.

Q. How do you cope with, if that's the right word, the format when you know you're going to be playing with amateurs and have maybe delays and long rounds. Is that something that you care about or are you just kind of just accept it and enjoy it?
ROBERT GAMEZ: I've always enjoyed pro-am format tournaments. This is in my top-5 favorite tournaments of the year. So I just love playing with the amateurs. On the PGA TOUR any week we take four and a half, five hours to play just threesomes and pros, so to add the amateurs is not a big deal.
You kind of try to joke around with them. And like I said, we had a blast today. I love playing in celebrity rotation, playing with some of these guy, because they like to have fun and I do too. And we had so much fun I didn't realize what I was even shooting. So that makes it nice. And I really appreciate the Classic board and Mike Milthorpe and everybody involved that help give me an exemption here and to play this year. Because I would have been sad to miss it. So I'm just happy to be here. And I'm ready to play some more golf.

Q. I would assume that the celebs want to talk about golf and you probably want to find out about their business, right, is that how it works?
ROBERT GAMEZ: Well I was giving some tips out there. I tried to help Anthony a little bit and then he hit me with a golf club, so you know, Jimmy Fallon, he just is beginning, I'm guessing, because he's about a 18 handicap. I tried to work a little bit with him. It's just fun for me and I do this with just amateurs when we play in the tournament, I try to help them out as much as possible.
And, you know, it's just a matter of hanging out and just talking to the guys and for the most part we just let Jimmy go. Jimmy started on the first hole entertaining the crowd and we kind of let him go and you know, it was just a, it was his first time playing in the Bob Hope, I don't think he's played in very many pro-ams either, so he struggled a little bit early trying to get, stay out of people's way. And he only walked on my line once, but he had fun. And that was the main thing. I had a blast with him.
And that's the main thing in this whole tournament is having fun with the amateurs and the celebrities and the people that come out to watch. They want to see fun. They're not -- people that came out to watch us play today, they're not out watching me play golf, they want to watch these guys entertain. So and that's what it's all about.

Q. You said you didn't know you shot a 66, does it help?
ROBERT GAMEZ: No, I had no idea.

Q. Does it help not knowing where you are on the leaderboard?
ROBERT GAMEZ: Well, I guess. I just never really thought about it. I really wasn't. And I knew I had hit some good shots and was making a few putts but I didn't know, I knew I had only made the one bogey, but I didn't know really how many birdies I made. So again, it's just, I never really looked at the board, except I think when we got done. I saw that somebody shot 8-under and I don't even know who that is. But it was just too much fun watching Jimmy Fallon out there and talking with Thomas and Anthony, they were, you know, they were talking a little bit of golf and a little bit of everything. And we just kind of hung out and had fun.

Q. Do you traditionally play in the celebrity rotation?
ROBERT GAMEZ: I try to get in it as much as possible. I've got some friends and we always, I request it. And I love it. I love the, I love having the people around. I know a lot of guys on TOUR don't like the distractions and we have a lot of TOUR players that just -- and a lot of the players, they just don't like having as much fun as I do, I guess. Not that we don't have the personalities, they just like to be a little more calm and go about their business. And I just, I enjoy all the hoopla. It's a lot of fun.

Q. You said Anthony hit you with a club?
ROBERT GAMEZ: Yes. Yeah. It's weird. It was our, let's see, the par-5 8th hole, I think. Or which one is the par-5? 7? On the front nine. I don't even know where the card is. It was our third to last hole and actually the hole before Jimmy Fallon danced in my line, he was pulling his ball out of the cup and walked in my line. And so we started laughing about that. I made the putt and then we went over to the next tee and I hit my tee shot. And I have been working, I was working all day with Anthony to get the ball position up in his stance. So he hits the first one and he asked me what happened and I said the ball was too far back. So he we kind of talked back and forth, I said just hit another one for practice and so moved the ball further forward in his stance and didn't hit a very good shot. And so I ducked a little, I ducked my head a little bit just because I was, you know, didn't want to hear what his reaction was going to be.
All of a sudden I looked up and I guess he had, I mean it was an accident, he tossed the club and it kind of hit me in the head. Luckily just the shaft got me. So and I got a hard head so, it really didn't hurt me too much.
But it was all in fun. It wasn't, he wasn't meaning to hit me. I just got in the way, I guess.

Q. Merely a flesh wound.
ROBERT GAMEZ: Yeah. Yeah. Luckily it hit my visor and like I said, I got a hard head, so it was no big deal. I birdied the hole too. I almost holed my third shot.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Robert, and play well and we'll see you at the Classic Club the end of the week.
ROBERT GAMEZ: All right. Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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