Q. When you hear the talk about the lengthening of Augusta and playing a U.S. Open course that might be 75 or 76 hundred yards, what -- how do you react to that?
COREY PAVIN: Well, I think lengthening golf courses isn't the answer to bringing the scores down or handling guys that hit the ball long. I think -- if you look at what they've done to golf courses by lengthening them, I think basically that feeds into the long hitters' hands. You can look and see who's won on golf courses that have been lengthened dramatically, and you'll see long, strong hitters that win there.
If you want to try to even the field, even the playing field out, the answer may be to narrow the fairways, not that much, grow a little rough, and make the fairways firm and you'll see a lot of fairways missed by a lot of people. It will be a lot harder to hit the fairways. And that's going to be -- I think that's the key to it, for me.
And if you look at a U.S. Open set up, it's set up to an extreme - thin fairways, long rough, and pretty much everybody has a chance to win there. So it's like a no-brainer to me to even the playing field, if that's what you want to do. You don't have to even the playing field if you don't want to, so it's whatever tournament wants to do or Tour, it's up to them.
Q. Corey, you played well in LA last year, and you had gotten back together with your coach, were you disappointed that you didn't get more out of the rest of the year? Did you feel like you would improve quicker than you did?
COREY PAVIN: Well, yeah, after May, I played well at Colonial, and I didn't finish the year the way I wanted to. That's one reason I wanted to do a lot of work off-season, and kind of get my thinking a little bit better, get a little more confident with my swing. I still wasn't as comfortable as I wanted to be with my swing as the year went on, and that's what I worked hard on on the off-season - was to get more comfortable with my swing. As I said, it's shown up here a couple of rounds already this year. Hopefully a few more this week.
Q. With the lengthening of the golf courses, do you still feel like you can compete consistently?
COREY PAVIN: Oh, sure, yeah. I think -- right now, as I say, I'm hitting the ball a lot further than I used to anyway, now, and that's what Bruce and I are working on a lot - to get a lot more out of my swing, to be more efficient, and hit the ball stronger and further. But I don't want to lose my accuracy either, so I'm trying to balance that out.
I don't think the courses are too long for me to play. I remember when I won at Shinnecock, I read about the course being too long for me and no chance, and I won. But I don't feel like there's any golf course I cannot win on.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Corey, for joining us for a few minutes, and play well the rest of the week.
End of FastScripts....
