THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

May 30, 2003

Retief Goosen

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Retief, for joining us for a few minutes. Another 67 today, 10-under-par for the tournament, a great position going to the weekend. A couple comments about today today's round and we will go into questions.

RETIEF GOOSEN: 67 is a good round of golf today. I know I missed a lot of fairways and got a few good breaks around the green, able to get it up and down. In general I had a bit of an up-and-down round, but I managed to hang in there. Whenever I hit a good shot I was able to make a putt for birdie.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Questions.

Q. What sort of breaks did you gets around the greens?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Well, whenever I missed it, I sort of missed it on the right side, the way I was able to get it up and down, or an uphill chip shot or bunker shot. So I didn't really -- anything on the short side made it difficult to get it up and down.

Q. Retief, you came in here yesterday and also talked about not really playing as well as you know you can play and yet you are 134 here after two rounds. Are you guys are just this good when you are a little off? Can you play this well?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Well, you know, it's a funny game. Sometimes you feel like you are really hitting the ball great. I know a couple of months ago, I'm really driving the ball well, hitting my irons great and I couldn't make any putts. That gets you down when you feel like you are playing real well in scoring. These last few days I missed a lot of fairways and greens but got it up and down and made everything that I looked at. So that's really grinding it out there. This course is not an easy courses especially the way the conditions are turning out now.

Q. What was the difference in the conditions of yesterday to today?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Well, I think the major thing is the greens have burned up a lot, the fairways as well, the ball is starting to run on the fairways and not just stopping like it did yesterday. But the greens are definitely the key points. It's really firming up and with this breeze picking up now.

Q. Which way would you rather have it: Driving well and not making putts, or driving poorly and getting up and down?

RETIEF GOOSEN: I would like to have both really.

Q. If you had your choice?

RETIEF GOOSEN: In this course, some of fairways are quite generous. The rough is slowly getting thick as the week goes on. But I figured I would really like to putt well. You feel like you can make up some shots around the green if you hit some bad shots.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Retief, can we go through your birdies and one bogey to right, starting on birdie on par-4.

RETIEF GOOSEN: 3-wood, sand iron to about six feet.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Birdie on 4.

RETIEF GOOSEN: An 8-iron to about a foot.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Bogey on 8.

RETIEF GOOSEN: 8, I missed it in the bunker left, it came out to four feet and missed that.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Birdie on 10.

RETIEF GOOSEN: 10 driver, 9-iron to about an inch, and it nearly went in.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Birdie on 11.

RETIEF GOOSEN: Missed the fairway right, laid up with a 3-iron and hit a lob wedge to about two.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: On the par-3.

RETIEF GOOSEN: I hit a 9-iron to about three feet.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Birdie on 15.

RETIEF GOOSEN: Driver, 2-iron just left, chipped down to about 15 feet and holed the putt.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: A couple more questions.

Q. Did you have any other one-putt greens?

RETIEF GOOSEN: I one-putted the first, the second, both for pars. And really 17, one-putted that. 16, one-putted for par.

Q. Retief, yesterday Padraig Harrington decided to take temporary status on this TOUR, can you talk about the difficulty of playing on both tours in regard to travel and the difficulties of it?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Well, I don't think it's really that tough. You just got to work our schedule out that you have a week off or something like that when you travel in between Europe and here, so you could just recover from the jet lag. I know I traveled straight after last week's tournament in Europe and got here Sunday night. It's a lot easier from Europe to here to get over the jet lag than it is going back the other way.

Q. Again, on trying to work through the problems you are having in your swing, Kenny Perry was talking about how he found something last week just by slowing down his swing, it made everything come together for him. Is that what you're doing during the course of this week on the range, trying to find a key that's going to --

RETIEF GOOSEN: That's pretty much what I'm trying to do, work on a few things with my caddy. I'm just trying -- I think I'm going back to some old bad habits, so I'm just trying to work the way back to the right. But it's not always easy out there under pressure to get down and do it. You got to just keep grinding away. It's something small, most of these players out here, it takes something really small to real little to just click and get going. They all hit the ball fairly good, but it's just somebody that comes through at the end of the week that it's all coming together and winning the tournament.

Q. What are one or 2 of your recurring bad habits that you fight that you want to get rid of?

RETIEF GOOSEN: It's not something that I want to talk about. We all have our problems out there on a golf course. I'm just trying to do the right things.

Q. When you first looked at this course early in the week, you think it was the type of course you could do well on?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Yes, I liked the layout from the start. The golf course is in great condition and everybody is going on about how good it is. When I saw the course I really liked it straightaway.

Q. Will you think about coming back?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Yes, I definitely would be back next year.

Q. Apart from your birdies, you have any narrow escapes, any adventures on any of these holes?

RETIEF GOOSEN: Second hole I would say I got lucky. I hit a 3-wood down the right side and kicked off the fairway and rolled into the hazard and got there and the ball was actually lying in hazard but just about 2 inches away from the water, so I was lucky I was able to get in there and hit it out to about 20 yards short of the green. I hit myself a tight pitch shot and pitched it 20 feet past the hole and holed it for par, so that really settled me down a little bit.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Retief.

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