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RBC CANADIAN OPENJuly 22, 2009Mike WeirOAKVILLE, ONTARIO DOUG MILNE: Okay. We'd like to welcome always the fan favorite, especially here, Mike Weir, into the interview room at the RBC Canadian Open. Thanks for joining us for a few comments. Obviously this week really kicked up the level of attention on you. Why don't you just start off with a couple comments on the week. Obviously you wouldn't miss this. Just the demands on your time as you're also trying to hone your game and win a golf tournament. MIKE WEIR: Well, this is our national championship. So this is a huge event. Obviously sandwiched between a couple of majors and World Golf Championship events, so there's a lot of big tournaments this time of year, this obviously for myself and the other Canadian guys being the highlight really. So look forward to it. It's a busy week for me for sure, but I'll be able to get some work done this afternoon and get ready to go bright and early tomorrow morning. DOUG MILNE: You're obviously playing well right now coming off a Top 10 at the U.S. Open championship. Just kind of talk about what's going right and what you're working on as far as the game. MIKE WEIR: I'm not working on a whole lot really. I have been playing well. Actually played really well at the British Open. Just got in one of those tough bunkers that that cost me. But not a lot to work on. Just kind of maintenance with my game, and everything feels pretty good. DOUG MILNE: Okay. We'll go ahead and open it up for a few questions. Q. Given the good results you've had here at Glen Abbey the last two times the Canadian Open has been held here, I wonder if this is a place you feel better at coming to. I know early in your career you didn't. MIKE WEIR: Yeah. I didn't play well here early in my career for sure. But yeah, last couple times I shot some really nice rounds, had some low ones, so feel a little more comfortable around here for sure. Q. How does the shuffling of the first few holes kind of change things for you guys? MIKE WEIR: It doesn't change a whole lot. I think, you know, probably saves us a few hundred yards of a walk from 9 to 10, which probably maybe keeps the flow of the tournament going. I think it's a nice change that the RCGA incorporated this year, so I like it. I think it's good. We just come off the range there, and head over to the right, and we're on the first tee, and I like the change. I think that was a very difficult opening hole the old way. Now you seem to be more in the flow of the round, and that's now No. 8. It seems to be nice to have hit a few tee shots before you hit that one because that's a pretty tough one. So I think it just adds to the flow of the round, and it's good, good change. Q. Mike, did you actually shoot 28 the other day on one of the 9s? MIKE WEIR: Yeah. I did. On Monday I did. Just one of those things that I got on a nice roll on the Back 9. Birdied 13 through 15, eagled 16, birdied 17, eagled 18. So just -- I wish I could do that in a tournament. I haven't done that in a tournament in a long time, but it was fun to do it Monday. Q. Just the changing of 16 back into a par-5, does that alter anybody's approach there? MIKE WEIR: You know, now we're playing that. You know, we never really played that full back tee, so you really have to -- I think the long hitters can maybe in the right conditions get it down the hill. For me, that just takes -- that extra 15 yards takes probably me getting it down the bottom of the hill out of play. So for me it plays like a really long par-4 or par-5. Today I hit a driver and rescue club. Could have maybe hit a 3-wood. You still have to hit that fairway. There's deep rough. I think it's a good change. It brings that element where in the past I remember Nick Price nailing a 2-iron in there and making an eagle. You can make an eagle on 18 or make another. I think the finish of the tournament now is a little more exciting with that being a par-5 in my opinion. Q. Mike, can you describe all the things that make this just an even more busy week for you, and do those distractions affect you at all? Does it make it a tougher week than an ordinary week on the Tour for you? MIKE WEIR: I think without a doubt, you know, compared to the British Open, let's say, just last week, you know, the little things that I have to do this week compared to last week is a significant difference. There's no denying. I'm not as under the radar as maybe other tournaments. But that's fine. It's our national championship, and all us Canadians, we want to put to rest that it's been so long since one of us has won one. So it is what it is. Q. Do you think that's part of what makes it harder for you, the extra attention you have here? MIKE WEIR: It's probably the attention on all of us guys, yeah, probably makes it a little harder, no question. Q. When you look at where you were at in '03 and '04, and where you're at now, is there anything in the past five years you learned that -- steps you've taken that maybe you wish you hadn't or paths you could have taken that you didn't in terms of maintaining that really peak point you were at those two years? MIKE WEIR: I never really thought about that, I'd say no. There's nothing. That's not how I live my life. I don't look back. It's just part of an evolution. You look at making decisions. Some are good and some are bad, but no one's perfect. You don't make great decisions all the time. I thought my decisions in my game were good. End of 2004, '5, I was not very healthy, and I needed a change, and my golf swing wasn't very good, so I needed change. And it helped me a lot. I learned a lot of things, but now those things I learned from Mike and Andy have gone back to Mike Wilson and that feels very comfortable right now. So yeah, I have no -- Q. Could you have gotten to the place you're at now -- I mean it's been written about you're not with Jeff anymore and changing the coaching. MIKE WEIR: I still work with Jeff. Q. Well, okay. But he's not traveling, I guess. MIKE WEIR: Right. Q. But I mean the -- is where you've gotten to now as a result of the things you've been through in the last five years? MIKE WEIR: I'm not sure how to answer that. I think, you know, I think working with Mike and Andy on my golf swing, I guess the best way to put it is I learned a lot of things and I've stayed healthy. They helped me stay centered where I wasn't getting much leanback in my swing, which was causing a lot of neck pain and back pain. So I learned how to get rid of that. And you know, I don't think I'm -- I don't think I'm throwing Mike Wilson under the bus at all. We talked about it. We were at a stalemate. I think both of us were -- we weren't coming up with the answers we needed, so I think a couple-year break maybe was good for both of us. Now I'm back with him, and it's good. We both learned a lot, and he feels like he's learned a lot in the last couple years, but more than that, as I've told Warren before, I feel more self-reliant on myself. I know my golf swing. I know what I need to work on. It's a matter of doing it and putting the time in. And I've been putting the time in, so I'm happy with where I am with my game. It's just a matter of being able to do it. Hopefully I can do it tomorrow, but it's been a fun process. It's always been the fun process for me in golf is learning, adapting. You go down the wrong path sometimes. You bring it back. You know, that's part of why I think I've been able to stay a Top-25, 30 player in the world for a long time coming from where I came from is because I've been able to adapt and adjust, and when things aren't going well, figure out how to get better and make that part better. So that's always been a challenge for me to figure out, okay, we've got these young studs coming up and how am I going to beat these guys, the guys are hitting it 50 yards longer than me. And you've gotta be able to figure out the fine-tuning of the game to be able to beat power hitters, and my game's not that. I have to be precision, so I think my technique has to be even a little bit better. But I enjoy that. Q. Mike, talking about how comfortable you feel, you mentioned, what have you learned to like about this course that maybe earlier in your career you didn't much like? Where does that comfort come from from the standpoint of the golf course? MIKE WEIR: From the golf course, well, I think one thing, this golf course, Jeff did a good job, the tee boxes don't aim you down the fairway. They aim you different directions, so you have to get really good lines of where you're aiming, because if you're just lining up for the blocks, you'd be aiming 30 yards to the left of the rough on a lot of holes. That's the way the tee box is aiming. So paying attention to little details like that. I think the number of rounds I've played, where to take chances, where not to, where to play really smart on some really difficult pins. Just the experience of playing the course, I think helped me adjust. And I think my game's just evolved over the years. I think a number of the rounds and cuts I missed here I was playing on the Canadian Tour, and I wasn't a PGA-TOUR-caliber player then. So I missed a lot of cuts back then. Q. Mike, you've always been able to plot your way around a golf course very carefully and strategically, and I know you take pride in that. At the Open, I wasn't there last week, but I believe that you said when you made that triple on 8, the hole that you'd eagled the day before that you didn't expect to hit it in the bunker I think with your second shot. Maybe you took a little too much club trying to get out of there. If that's the case, I guess you could say you made maybe two strategic errors on that hole or is it just the nature of Links golf and how do you cope with that? And if they were strategic or mental errors, did that surprise you given the fact that's not usually what you do? MIKE WEIR: Well, yeah, I mean, I hit the shots I thought, I was on the upslope and it was howling into the wind and I had 175 yards to the bunker, and I hit a little 4-iron that was on the upslope, and I didn't think it could get there. And it didn't. That's golf sometimes. I thought it was the right decision, but it wasn't, and I thought I had a good enough lie to get it out of the bunker because it wasn't one of the steepest ones. It was probably only about a three-foot lip. It wasn't a super steep lip, and I thought I was far enough back, and I hit the lip of the bunker and plugged in there, and I hit a quick 8. But as you play this game a long time and you think you're doing the right thing and sometimes it doesn't turn out and sometimes you just gotta laugh at it. Q. That kind of golf, Links golf, which I know you like so much, demands that much more of you mentally. Watson, you probably saw it on 18 there, hit what looked like a perfect shot in the air and it still went I don't know how deep that green is, but it hit the front of the green and it went over the green. MIKE WEIR: Yeah. I know. Sometimes -- that could have very easily hit a little -- they have different patches of grass, you know how that is, and it could have easily landed a little softer and been 15 feet from the hole. That's that kind of golf. It's not like it's probably going to be here this week, where it looks like we're probably going to get more rain, and like last year where it was target golf, you could fly it there, flex golf. You're playing a lot of bounces, a lot of guesswork and you're relying -- any time you rely on the bounce of the ground it's a little bit of guesswork. Q. Watching it at that moment then was there much talk about it on the plane home? MIKE WEIR: I came earlier, so I was watching it just with my brother and Brad. And I looked at him. I could just tell by the look in his eye he loved the shot. It was shaping right in there right-to-left, coming right in at the flag, and you could tell he really liked it. He hit the ball solidly. And you know, I know from being a player that when it looks good in the air, you never -- especially Links golf, you just never know. You just don't know, and that was a beautiful shot. It's too bad he made a 5 there because that was a perfect shot. He played the hole perfectly. So it was too bad. Q. Mike, Matt Hill and Nick Taylor are here this week, and Matt being from your part of the province, I'm sure they both look up to you and see you as a mentor. Have you had a chance to talk to them, and if so, what have you said to them to help them prepare for the week? MIKE WEIR: I haven't talked to them a whole lot about this week in particular. Talked to them a little bit. I saw them Monday night, and I just saw Matt inside at lunch right now. But they're very -- we're actually similar players. You don't see that many flaws in their game. They just seem very consistent. Those are the kind of players that do well on the PGA TOUR. So hopefully that consistent game they can keep going with it, keep growing, keep learning. It's a big learning process. But you know, for myself, they haven't really asked me much about what to expect at the Canadian Open. And I don't want to just throw it out there unless they ask, but it's more than just getting to know the guys. I played with Nick at the U.S. Open. I played with Matt a little bit. So just kind of getting to know the guys a little bit. Q. Obviously over the years you've had a chance to see a lot of those good young Canadian amateurs that have come through and you've played many practice rounds with those guys. Are you at all surprised maybe in the 10 years or so you've been carrying the Canadian flag on the PGA TOUR that more guys haven't made it there with you or does that just say how hard it is? MIKE WEIR: I think it's a little bit of both. It is obviously very hard. But it's surprising. I'm surprised because every time I come to the Canadian Open and watch the different players on the Canadian Tour practicing on the range and watching their games, I see a lot of talent, for sure. So there's a little bit of, you know, that's how hard it is. And it's a little confusing to me why we haven't had more guys in my 10 years on the Tour. But it's great to see Nick and Matt doing so well and see Graham Delaet doing well on the Canadian Tour and other guys. I can't think of all their names right now, but there's a lot of guys on the Nationwide Tour, and there's that potential there. Now if they can just get over that hump. It's a big hump to get over. Took me 6 years to do it, to get from the Canadian Tour and Asian Tour and Australia to get on the PGA TOUR, and that was a big hurdle. I remember just getting through the second stage was a big hurdle for me. I got my Tour card for the first time. So it's definitely an evolution. Hopefully they can move along a little quicker. They seem to have the maturity, these two guys, to do that, but if they don't, they just gotta stick with it, persevere. And I guess best advice I can give them is just figure it out. Figure it out what's holding you back. Don't just keep doing the same things. That's been kind of my motto. Don't keep beating your head against the wall doing the same things. Try to figure out does my driving need to get better, I need to putt better and work on it. It's easy to work on your strengths, but you need to work on your weaknesses. DOUG MILNE: All right. Mike, thanks for the time. As always, we appreciate it and best of luck this week. MIKE WEIR: Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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