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RENO-TAHOE OPENAugust 5, 2012Alexandre RochaRENO, NEVADA THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started. Like to welcome Alexandre Rocha to the interview room here at the Reno‑Tahoe Open. We were just talking, I know not the ultimate result you were hoping for, but still tons of positives to take out of this week. The birdie‑birdie finish career best ‑‑ or birdie‑birdie finish to the round, career‑best finish on the PGA TOUR. Maybe just talk a little bit about today and then the week as a whole and then we'll go ahead and go to questions. ALEXANDRE ROCHA: Sure enough. You're right. I mean I've never been in this position before. In fact, I've never been anywhere near this position before. So the No. 1 positive I take for the week is having been under the gun for three days now, playing in the last group for the last two days, which is also a first for me, I thought I did pretty good. I mean I was going up against a former TOUR winner and now a twice‑TOUR winner with 12 years of experience on the PGA TOUR. So that makes 10 years more than I do on the PGA TOUR. As I said before, it was advantage J.J. to start off the day, but I was playing ‑‑ I had a tournament within the tournament. That was my own. I thought ‑‑ I couldn't be any happier with the performance this week. I have shattered any previous record I might have had in terms of performing results, money earned, whatever. I've just ‑‑ this is a whole new level for me, and like I said in this room on the first day, you know, there are a bunch of players out here, each of them go about their business a certain way, and all I can do is I have my own road to follow, and this was ‑‑ on the first day that I got up in contention it was a big milestone for me. Well, this is a mountain for me, and I am very, very excited to have been able to pull through. THE MODERATOR: Great. Thanks. Questions. Q. Can you go through your shot process on 18? I mean never in the fairway you were able to birdie the hole and give yourself a chance to win at the end. ALEXANDRE ROCHA: Well, I was in the fairway once. But yes, I never looked at the scoreboard. This is a side note ‑‑ for four days I never looked at the scoreboard, I never asked anything until we got to the 18th tee today. The reason for that is because I severely under perform if I know what's at stake, so I just ‑‑ I deliberately don't know, and I can honestly tell you 100 percent guarantee that I had no idea what place I was until I got to the 18th tee today, 72nd hole. And then I asked my caddie. And the only reason I asked him is because the tee was forward, so it brought a lot of stuff into play. But he said, look, your only chance to win this tournament is if you make an eagle here, and second place is pretty much secured. So it was never a driver. There was just no room to hit driver with the tees being forward and being downwind, so it was going to be a 3‑wood. And I took a very, very aggressive line. I tried to hit it as far down the left side as I could to get a short club in my hand as I could stiff one in there and see what happened, you know. I just overworked it a little bit, and I got fortunate because it hit off the tree back into the fairway. But my intention was 100 percent to hit it down the left side as far as I could. The second shot ‑‑ now I'm left with a very, very long second shot. Mind you, I'm trying to hit a 3‑iron to get to pin high, and I'm hitting from 300‑plus yards. And the ideal shot would have been a slight cut. I couldn't do that because there was a tree that was going to come into play if I tried to hit that shot, so instead I had to hit a low draw that would then land on the fairway and chase up the green. But the problem is that shot is that it brought the water into play, and if I go in the water, I obviously can't make an eagle anymore. So I over cooked it again on the safe side, and then I got fortunate. I was expecting to be in a much worse position, and it just kind of ran down the cart path, I understand. I couldn't see from where I was, and ended up in a pretty ‑‑ actually a decent place, but at that point the tournament was all done because I needed to hole out and expect him to 3‑putt, and that just wasn't going to happen. He's got all kinds of experience. Q. I was just curious, you said you didn't look at the leaderboard, but obviously your playing partner had that quick run of three birdies there at the end of the Front 9. Did you know kind of how far behind you were, you know, that he was making a run? ALEXANDRE ROCHA: Well, I knew how far behind him I was because I was keeping a score card. I didn't know where I was in relation to the rest of the field. So you have to keep in mind that we're talking about somebody trying to win a tournament and I was trying to win the tournament but I'm also trying to finish in the best position I can. I'm sitting here 235th on the Money List. I would love to win. If I don't win, I better not finish worse than second, because for me that makes a massive difference in all sorts of different ways, and the money is the least of which. It's just what it does for me in terms of status for next year, in terms of a place ‑‑ I'm in a place now where I at least have a fighting chance to still keep my card with six events left to go. Before today I didn't. So as much as I'm trying to catch the leader, I'm also not ‑‑ I was trying not to fall behind from where I am, because every position for me means an incredible amount later. So that was my reasoning. So I knew how far I was behind him, and I thought I had a pretty good idea. It was playing very, very tricky today. It was swirling winds and hard winds, so I thought if I stay close to him it's going to be hard for me to be too far off at the end, and that's exactly what happened. Q. Can you talk a little bit about what the rest of your schedule looks like and how much confidence you're going to take from this week through the falls series? ALEXANDRE ROCHA: The rest of my schedule is as follows: I'm going to play ‑‑ I'm taking next week off. The RTO was my fifth week in a row, so I'm taking next week off, and the week after that I'm playing the Wyndham championship. And then well see. I'm either going to get into the PLAYOFFS if I have another one of these tournaments or I won't, in which case I will play the Web.com Tour for one week. Then I'm going to take another week off and get back out there to the Web.com Tour for two more weeks leading up to the Fall Series. And then all of the Fall Series. Q. And can you talk about the confidence you're going to take into that? ALEXANDRE ROCHA: Oh, absolutely. Imagine, I'm sitting here ‑‑ I made six cuts up until this week. I played as poorly as you can possibly play without losing my head in the process. I got pretty close to it.  And I've put in some good work at the beginning of this week. I mentioned before, I've changed the way I play golf, and this is the way I'm going to play golf for the rest of my life. And I have just seen ‑‑ you know, let me just put it to you this way. Once I qualified into the Honda tournament, I didn't have any status on the PGA TOUR yet, and I played a superb first round which evaluated me into top 3 at the end of the day, and it was completely unexpected by everybody, and it was a similar question, what I answered was you know that kid that lives inside you that thinks they can do it, that kid needed that that day, just like I needed this this week. I was pretty close to losing my mind, and now I've been able to turn it around to where I feel pretty good about things, so I'm looking very much forward to the rest of the year. THE MODERATOR: Alexandre, thanks so much. We really appreciate it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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