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BANK OF AMERICA COLONIAL

May 20, 2004

Jesper Parnevik

FORT WORTH, TEXAS

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Jesper Parnevik, thanks for joining us after a 5-under par 65 here in the first round of the Bank of America Colonial. Let's start with some opening comments. A good day for you.

JESPER PARNEVIK: A great day. This is one of the courses I love to play every year, and I think the feeling is similar with most of the players on Tour because it's a very old traditional style and it's not the grip it and rip it type golf we play every week.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Talk about your season so far. You've had a great season so far. Talk about your overall consistency and giving yourself a chance to win on several occasions.

JESPER PARNEVIK: I've been struggling pretty bad last year, and my No. 1 goal this year was to really make a strong effort to come back into the Top 10 again. I started feeling great and I worked really hard in the off season. I was very pleased to see where my progress is going, because I think one of the toughest things in golf is to be among the best in the world and then lose it and then try to bring it back again. It's easier to ride the wave to the top, so to speak.

Q. You talked about working so hard on your game. Did you make a lot of swing changes? Did you overhaul anything or was it merely practicing?

JESPER PARNEVIK: No, I practiced very, very hard, even in the years when I was struggling, but golf is a very, very strange sport in that way, and it's a strange sport in the sense that I don't think any other sport you get so much help from the other players like you do in golf. In any other sport if you have a secret you don't want to tell anyone, but everybody on the Tour who has a secret, they want to tell everyone and have them try it out. That's what happens when you're struggling, you start listening to everybody and trying stuff and so on.

My main focus, I had a hip injury that I was trying to play through and I started swinging around my injury. And when I got healthy again, I couldn't hit a fairway. It was a long, long struggle, and the confidence goes south pretty fast, at this level, I have to say, and I put a lot of pressure on the putting and I got very tense and started putting bad and it was a bad spiral.

Q. What kind of things do you do to break out of that? You say it's easier to ride that wave of good momentum. How do you reverse that? What do you go through?

JESPER PARNEVIK: It's very hard, I have to admit, because when you're really playing badly and you pretty much -- well, you're not looking forward to walking up on the first tee at all, because you know it's going to be a day of struggling. To go from that confidence level to really go up and really trust your shots, it's a long trip, so to speak. And what I have to do is bring back my fade shot again and really trust that shot, because I was spraying it too much for a while and I didn't really know if it was going to hook or fade or whatever. It's very hard to get confident playing like that.

I sorted something out this winter. I worked on keeping the club head in front of me, and I got a little bit of help from Butch and David Leadbetter, but I'm not really a swing coach kind of guy, so I have to find it myself, it feels like I did at the start of the year and I still see it. After getting confident with the game, it's easier to get confident with your putting.

Q. You had some terrific success in Dallas and Fort Worth, completely different style of courses, yet you've played both of them very well. Is there anything about it that you can think of why you've had such success?

JESPER PARNEVIK: It's two different tournaments. Byron Nelson is great because of the setup and you have the hotel there. Everything is perfect in that sense. I think the players love this golf course more because of the way it plays and all the shot-making you have to do. Even though it's not playing long, scoring-wise it's one of the toughest courses we play all year. Last year with all the rain it was playing easier than I've ever seen it because the greens were so wet. Even if you missed the fairway, you could knock it on the green and have a birdie putt. If the weather keeps up this weekend, you'll see guys hitting the fairway. Missing a fairway, you can't hit the green with a sand wedge. That's the tough part about this golf course, if you miss it 5 feet into the rough, it's tough to get anywhere near the pin, especially the way they hide them around here.

The guys talk about think a couple of times before you bring the driver out. If you're confident, you can hit driver on most of the holes. But like I said, when it starts getting tough, you better put it in the fairway. The good thing about this golf course, you can't survive with one shot. You have to shape it because you have pretty extreme dog-legs left and extreme dog-legs right. You're not going to see one dimensional players win here too often.

Q. Where is your confidence level compared to where it was when you were at the top of your game?

JESPER PARNEVIK: I mean, it's not way up there, of course. It's not at the top level where I was when I felt every time I would step up on the first tee I had a chance to win, but it's a lot higher when I almost tried to hide from playing, because golf is a very, very frustrating game where you beat yourself pretty badly when you're playing bad. I would say 7 out of 10, maybe. It's going in the right direction.

Q. When you were really struggling, you played a lot. Last year you played a lot. How do you keep dragging yourself out there?

JESPER PARNEVIK: It wasn't that I wanted to, but I was forced to. I turned pro 18 years ago, I guess, and last year was the first time I actually struggled to keep my card on any Tour. It was a new situation for me where I just had to play pretty much every week until the end of the year to make sure I was in the top 125, which I managed to do in the end.

I have to admit it's a lot tougher playing events like that when you're playing badly and all you're trying to do is trying to make the cut and you're on the cut line. That's a lot of pressure. Winning a golf tournament is like a piece of cake after that. If you have a chance to win a golf tournament, you're playing well and your confidence is high. But standing on the last tee and you have to make par and you have no idea where the ball is going, that's pressure to me.

Q. Schlotsky's has a slogan: Funny name serious sandwich. You were known for your colorful outfits. When did that start and why has that been a trademark of yours?

JESPER PARNEVIK: It started about six, seven years ago now. It was a guy named Johan Lindeberg who started a clothing company called J. Lindeberg, and he was the guy that brought Diesel along many years ago and he wanted to started his own brand. And he's been a golf fan for the last 25 years and he wanted to bring back fashion into golf again, because he thought -- golf was very stylish back in the 50s and 60s. If you look at Arnie and Hogan and those guys, they really looked good on the golf course. And then something happened in the 80s where everything got triple oversized, triple XLs, everything was just baggy & comfy and everybody wore the same colors. I don't know why, it just happened. It kind of stuck through the '90s. He wanted to bring back the fashion and style to the golf course again, which golf was actually known for, for a long time.

Q. Keeping in that same fashion mode, that commercial that you did, were those your actual clothes?

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yes, and Duffy fit into the jacket too.

Q. How did you like the way Duffy looked in those? Did you think he filled those out as well as you did?

JESPER PARNEVIK: The commercial came out great. Duffy was great to work with. He was a lot of fun. His reaction or his work in front of the mirror at the end is fantastic, it's really funny. These are the ones I gave away, but I took them back afterwards.

Q. Did you take them back or buy them back?

JESPER PARNEVIK: I stole them back.

Q. So we could write that you get your clothes at the Goodwill?

JESPER PARNEVIK: Well, you could in a sense.

Q. In your position, how is it important now to build on today's round and possibly win this golf tournament this week?

JESPER PARNEVIK: It's important, but it's not something I'm going to go out tomorrow and be really tense and pressured about. Right now I feel well I can play well again, which is key. Even last year if I had a good starting round I knew the next day could be completely different. I knew I could shoot 80 in a heartbeat. This season is a different feeling. If I keep playing the way I'm playing, I should have a chance to win on Sunday. If I have a chance, I feel like I'm in the spirit now where I'm just going to let it go and I will win if I have a chance. I'm not really scared of it like I was -- when your confidence is bad, you really don't want to put yourself in situations where you could mess up big time.

The last Ryder Cup, I was really nervous, I have to admit, because I was playing so badly going into it, and playing Tiger in the last match, which looked like it could be the deciding match, I could hardly breath on the first tee, because I really didn't know where the ball was going and now I have to beat Tiger in the Ryder Cup. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to draw a tie in the end, which was probably one of my biggest feats career-wise.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Let's go through your round and we'll take one or two last questions. You started on the front side with a birdie on the first hole.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Driver, 5-iron, just up on the fringe behind the pin. I had about a 25-footer. 2-putted that one.

I hit driver, sand wedge, on the next hole to about 5 feet, holed it

Then I hit a good drive and good 6-iron on No. 5, holed it from probably 25, 30 feet there. That's such a good hole, it's amazing.

13, I hit a 7-iron to about 10 feet, holed that one.

14, I hit driver, a really long drive, 9-iron into there, and knocked that about 15 feet right of the hole and 2-putted.

I hit driver, wedge, on No. 15 to 20 feet.

3-iron, wedge, on 17 to about 15 feet.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Talk about your start. Birdied three of the first five holes with a really tough stretch, 3, 4 and 5, it was nice to get off to a good start there.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Those are birdie holes and then you don't really look at a birdie until 6 again. The third hole is very, very tough. The fourth hole, I don't know how to hit the green. I knocked it close today, but I don't really have a club for that one. When you have 235 to the front downwind, I don't know what to do really. I hit a great 4-iron today that trickled up there to about 15 feet from the hole.

The next hole is a very intimidating hole. You have to bomb a semi slice drive into a left-to-right wind and I still had a 6-iron in there. If you can get past those a couple of under, you feel really good about yourself.

Q. You're not the only person high on the leaderboard who is in your shape in their career. Craig perks, maybe one or two other guys up there, Maggert, people who have won before and now they're searching for it. Is there any explanation for this? Is it something unique for today?

JESPER PARNEVIK: Maggert has shown good signs of playing well again the last few years. Perks, he won and he's been struggling, of course, but I wouldn't say it's something because of this week, especially for these guys to show up here. It's good for them. There's nothing worse than struggling with your game on the PGA TOUR, I can tell you that. You beat yourself up pretty bad.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Jesper, thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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