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WACHOVIA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 5, 2005

Richard S. Johnson

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

CHRIS REIMER: Richard, 4-under, right at the top of the leaderboard after the morning round. Just talk a little bit about your day today.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I had a really nice day going. Of course I'm really happy with 4-under coming in, as well. I really kept myself out of trouble a lot, holed a couple of nice par putts in the beginning and just kept my round going. You know, it's too bad with the finish, but you can't do -- the last three holes are really tough holes. I did my best and I came in at 2-over.

CHRIS REIMER: 18 and 9 have gotten a lot of people.

RICHARD JOHNSON: It's really tricky around that lake there because it feels like it's downwind and then all of a sudden it switches into you. We switched clubs right before I hit because we thought it was into the wind, and apparently it wasn't. It is really tricky how the wind is swirling.

Q. Basically if you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, I'm from Sweden, I'm 28, played on the European Tour for three full years before I came over here. This is my third year over here. I'm not fully exempt over here right now. I'm in the top 126 to 150 category. I lost my card last year.

Q. I guess why would you stay over here with this exemption?

RICHARD JOHNSON: When I finished school in Sweden, I came over and lived overseas. I lived in Australia for three or four years and I lived in Scottsdale for about four years. I always liked it over here, and I got really tired of playing in rain gear all the time in Europe (laughter), even though this year looks like they've got better weather than we do.

But I just got very tired of playing in rain gear all the time. I just wanted to go where the best golfers are and the best courses.

Q. But do you have an exemption? Are you still fully exempt?

RICHARD JOHNSON: No, I had a full exemption ending '04, so last year was my full exemption out there. I won '02, which gave me two and a half years, but I don't have anything over there right now. The only tournament I might go home and play is Scandinavian, but I'm not sure about it.

Q. I understand that you are also into some other sports besides golf, some sort of X-Game type things?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, I was a lot when I was younger. I tried to compete a little bit in skateboarding, and I'm trying to pick up surfing now again. I shouldn't say I surfed in Australia, I paddled a lot (laughter), but I was trying at least. We've been trying in Florida to surf a little bit, but there's been a lot of sharks lately. It's not good.

It's just good fun. I try to skateboard maybe twice a year just to keep it going. It's still fun, but the older you get, you're not as flexible as you once were when you were 15.

Q. There seems to be a good many Swedish golfers but yet Sweden doesn't seem like a country that would be conducive to golf, or am I wrong on that?

RICHARD JOHNSON: We're a small country with very bad weather. We're only 9 million people with a short golf season, but they've got a really good junior program over there. Every course pretty much is semi-private, so an 18-hole course probably has 1,400, 1,500 members, and they have a certain percentage which has to be juniors in the clubs. Juniors usually in every club gets like Tuesdays and Wednesdays, they do like groups, different kind of groups for handicaps, and the best groups usually practice with the local PGA professional. They try to get them into tournaments early, and also I think it's just -- golf is not that expensive in Sweden as it is over here. If you live in certain areas you've got to have a wealthy background to be playing golf.

Q. Isn't there a country government-run program? Don't they put a lot of money into junior golf programs?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Our national team program is very big. They've got junior tours all the way up from probably five, six years old up to the year 21 for amateurs, and then they have a Scandinavian Tour, which a lot of us start on when you get out there. You can play as an amateur and you start competing at early ages, but it's not super-serious, but at least it gets you in the spirit of competing from an early age, and I think that really helps to bring golfers to stick with golf and not go to hockey and soccer and tennis.

Q. So were you good enough to be part of that national team program?

RICHARD JOHNSON: I really started playing really late. I did every other sport, and I really thought golf was kind of weird. I went up early in the morning and played. But at 15 I started playing and I got hooked like everybody else.

For me, I wasn't really -- my amateur career was very short because my handicap dropped very fast. Even though I won probably four or five national junior titles, they wouldn't let me in the national team, so I turned pro.

Q. Following up that on that skateboarding, if your attitude towards golf was golfers are weird, how do you make that jump? How did you end up trying golf in the first place?

RICHARD JOHNSON: I was dating a girl whose family was into golf, and they were going away for a vacation to France, I think, and we sort of had a bet, oh, you can't get -- in Sweden it's called a Green Card to play golf. You have to go through certain tests with a PGA professional and also etiquette rules tests, so you can't just like here, pay your money and go. In Sweden you have to get a certain handicap before you can step on the golf course. They go, oh, you can't do that before two weeks, so I was on the golf course for ten days, ten hours a day.

Q. Did you do it?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, I did.

Q. What did your handicap have to be?

RICHARD JOHNSON: It's actually 54. You don't have to be a real good player, but at least you learn the rules and etiquette, how you behave on the golf course. Swedes are really much into that. You shouldn't be too loud, and we're very quiet people that way.

Q. Doesn't it go against conventional wisdom for skateboarders to think golfers are weird?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, it did, but when you grow up and you do extreme sports, you get a different kind of mentality. I wished that I had more of that mentality going, but the more you play golf, you more you get grooved into the golfers' world. But I'm trying to get back to it.

Q. Are you at all worried that -- it sounds like you just have kind of a wild hair. Are you worried that you may eventually get injured, surfing or something?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, the few times I skateboarded, it comes back to me pretty fast, but the problem is when you fall now, you fall like a log (laughter). Before it was more like a cat. It really hurts when you fall now, and it's the same with everything. If I go snowboard, it's the same thing. When you fall, you fall hard. When you get scared in everything, it doesn't matter if you play golf or what you do, you tense up, and the minute you get scared you hurt yourself.

Q. Do the Swedish men pros feel overshadowed by Sorenstam?

RICHARD JOHNSON: No, I'm trying to get a game with her actually because I want to learn something. She must be doing a lot of things right. We've got a few really good players. We've got Freddie Jacobson and Parnevik, who's been high up in the World Rankings for a while, but other than that we haven't been that successful on the men's side as the women have been. Whatever the women are doing, they're doing something right.

Q. Do you know her?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Not at all. I haven't met her.

CHRIS REIMER: Do you have to get your handicap at a certain level to play with her?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, probably (laughing).

Q. You talk about competing in skateboarding. Talk a little bit about what kind of competition.

RICHARD JOHNSON: I was trying to enter a couple like Swedish National Championship and stuff like that, smaller events around where I lived, but usually I ended up falling and breaking bones instead of taking home any prizes. I wasn't very successful. But my best finish was probably in the 30s sometimes. I really tried, but it was more for a fun thing than anyone else. It wasn't like I was going to turn pro.

Q. You haven't had any moves named for you?

RICHARD JOHNSON: No, nothing like that.

Q. How many bones did you break?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Well, fractured, I haven't completely broken them off, but I've fractured about seven or eight ribs and a hand. It wasn't good.

Q. Pretty extreme.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, it's nothing you want to do right now because I guess when you're younger you can probably recuperate a little better than you do nowadays.

Q. Are there any thrills in golf that are similar to what skateboarding is?

RICHARD JOHNSON: I mean, everything has adrenaline to it. If you pull off a really good shot or if you hole something, whatever, just the adrenaline flow is really probably what keeps me going. That's what I'm trying to get back to a little bit more, to get the adrenaline flowing. I think you're a certain person as you're brought up, and I think for me that kind of person, to bring out that again, is very important for me.

Q. Part of what I've seen in the Swedish mentality, quote-unquote, is nobody is supposed to be better than anyone else?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yes.

Q. How does that match with being competitive and trying to be better than everybody else as far as growing up?

RICHARD JOHNSON: I think that's what our big problem is on the men's side. I mean, I think why we've done good lately is because they've been going over to college here to get competitive. But Sweden is a socialistic country, so you shouldn't be a lot better than anybody else, especially if you start making money on it. It's not very good at all. That's why it's not too many golfers that lives in Sweden anymore unfortunately, but I think that has a lot to do with it where from an early age we learn that we shouldn't stand out or anything like that. Everybody who stands out in school doesn't get picked on, but the teachers try and quiet them down a little bit.

Q. How about a reaction when you go home from people who follow sports? Are they glad that you're successful, that Swedish golfers are successful, or does that same mentality come into play?

RICHARD JOHNSON: It sort of goes to a certain limit when you sort of go -- when you start being successful, what you're doing is sort of more accepted than others. It's just a weird thing that they look over their shoulder a lot probably and say, "Why should he have a nice car when I don't have it?" They don't really think about the extra step, how much time you actually put into it sometimes.

Q. Do some of your old skateboard friends think you're weird?

RICHARD JOHNSON: I actually don't know too many of them anymore.

Q. Would they think you're weird?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Probably. I mean, I'd be very surprised if a lot of them still -- it was a thing when we were young that you did, and I think a lot of them quit like I did. I don't think a lot of people still do it, even though it's getting quite popular again. I think it's easier -- if you're really good you might stick with it, but it wasn't like we were sponsored by somebody or anything. We were out there having fun and skateboarded a lot.

Q. You said you started golf late. At what age?

RICHARD JOHNSON: 15.

Q. Was there any period there where you were actually pretty good at both and it was a decision to make?

RICHARD JOHNSON: No, I was playing -- I was actually more into European handball like we play in the Olympics with six players and a goalie. I was really trying to get good at that at around 14 to 18, and golf was sort of competing with that a little bit. But then I realized I sucked at that, as well (laughter).

Q. The way you were talking before, it sounds like you were somewhat of an outcast of the national program.

RICHARD JOHNSON: No, not outcast at all. I mean, I had my differences with the coach. I called him up and asked him why I wasn't on the team because I beat his guys every week, and he told me to play this and this event, and I ended up winning them, and he said -- there's the socialistic thing, as well. Even though a guy has a bad year he's going to be a good player so we'll keep him on the team. It's hard to get into the team but it's harder to get thrown out. I said, "You told me what to do and I did what you told me to do and I succeeded," and I still should wait another year.

Q. How many players did you say were on that?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Nowadays it's different because they make it a broader thing, but when I was there I think it was like eight.

Q. You said you won a number of junior titles?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, I won two the last year. I played in two and won both of them.

Q. They were big national tournaments?

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, they were big national tournaments.

CHRIS REIMER: We'll go through your birdies and bogeys here. Club selection on 5.

RICHARD JOHNSON: Yeah, actually I pulled my drive left and hit 5-iron down the fairway, then I hit a sand iron over the green and chipped in.

Next par 5, the 7th hole, hit a good drive but just snuck out in the left semi there, hit a 5-wood up to the front edge and two-putted.

Birdie on 8, I hit 5-wood off the tee, sand iron up to about four feet maybe, made it.

10, I hit a good drive on 10 and a 3-wood on the green and two-putted.

11, I hit a driver in the fairway, lob wedge up to about ten feet maybe.

Bogey on 14, I hit a perfect 5-wood off the tee, just in between clubs and I chose lob wedge, and I just sucked it back to 50 yards and three-putted.

Next one, I hit driver, 3-wood in the left green bunker and hit it up to about a foot.

Birdie at 16, hit my driver short right of the bunker up there, the fairway bunker, so just right of the tee, out of the rough, and hit a 6-iron up to about 18 feet maybe.

And then 17, hit 5-iron long right and chipped it up to probably 25 feet, two-putted.

18, drove it in the fairway, 4-iron straight over the green, chipped it up to about a foot.

CHRIS REIMER: Thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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