MICHELOB CHAMPIONSHIP AT KINGSMILL

October 5, 2002

Geoff Ogilvy

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Geoff, for joining us. Great round today. I know you were probably a little disappointed with that last hole, but still a good day and you're in excellent position for Sunday.

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I played well. For the third time in the row I was three under after four this week. I played good all day. I actually got lucky on a couple par 5s and bogeying the last was a shame. But really on Saturday the goal is to try and get in good shape for Sunday and I did that.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Questions?

Q. Can you tell us what happened on 18?

GEOFF OGILVY: I hit it left. I mean, it's playing downwind for the first time this week so your line goes a little bit further left than it has the last two days. It doesn't go as high and it gets in the wind. I was pretty lucky to knock it over the water. It was disappointing, but you can't judge it on one hole. A pretty good day, I guess.

Q. How close to the hazard line was it?

GEOFF OGILVY: It was inside the hazard line and there were some rocks -- there's some rocks and some pretty long grass but I had a reasonable lie so I got a sand wedge on it and bent it to about 30 degrees, which is a shame, because it hit a rock on a follow-through. It actually landed two or three yards outside the hazard line about straight left of where it had gone. If it had bounced straight I would have had it just to hack out of the sand and onto the green, so lucky and unlucky.

Q. So is your caddie going to get the club fixed?

GEOFF OGILVY: Hopefully there's somewhere I can do some sort of fix-up job, if I can get it somewhere near 55 degrees. It's about the loft of my 5-iron at the moment.

Q. This was a wedge?

GEOFF OGILVY: A sand wedge, which is a pretty crucial club. If I can't I'm sure I'll be able to borrow something off somebody. The Tour usually travels with about 30 clubs each.

Q. Is this what you were hacking it out with?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah. I saw a rock and I thought, I probably won't hit it, I'll probably just miss it, and I hit it on the follow-through.

Q. Did it alter your club selection for the next shot? Would you have possibly hit that same club?

GEOFF OGILVY: Well, I could have hit that. I mean, it was that or my lob wedge. It was really a lob wedge shot. It could have been a sand, but it didn't worry me all the way.

Q. How often do you mangle a club?

GEOFF OGILVY: In that manner?

Q. Not against a tree, but how often do you mangle a club?

GEOFF OGILVY: Not often but pretty rarely, once a year, maybe twice a year. Some years are bad and you hit a root sometimes, slightly bend it. Probably two or three times you can be in the trees and you try to stop but you don't stop and you follow through and hit the tree, two or three times a year.

Q. Better the club than your wrist, right?

GEOFF OGILVY: Definitely. It's better that the club gives way and not your bones, yeah.

Q. A lot of guys are out there kind of back and forth, chasing it and then giving some back, and you didn't seem to do that much.

GEOFF OGILVY: It's that sort of course. If you're on the fairway it's probably one of the easier courses we play, but if you're off the fairway it's probably one of the harder courses we play because the rough is brutal with anything more than a wedge, and even with a wedge you haven't got much control. The guys who are hitting the fairways are making a few birdies and if they're missing fairways they're making a few bogies. I don't know if I missed a fairway. I might have missed 10. I missed three or four fairways but I was actually in a fairway bunker, which is a pretty good result.

I'm hitting my driver pretty decent, short irons in all day. The greens don't look that good but they roll really good. If you miss fairways it's pretty tough, though.

Q. It's pretty telling that you'd rather be in a bunker than the rough.

GEOFF OGILVY: Out here, definitely, because they're not too deep. It's always a better option than the rough definitely.

Q. A little bit better of an option here, though?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, the bunker is much better than the rough here. Some weeks you don't want them, in places like Sawgrass because the bunkers are six foot deep anyway, but the rough is six inches deep, so you don't know where you want to be. Out here the bunkers are kind of shallow and you can always get out a 5- or 6-iron, whereas the rough it's a lottery. You'll never get anything better than an 8-iron, and it could go anywhere.

Q. A lot of low rounds out here at this course every year. If you're the middle of the pack after two rounds does that help you think you can get back in after two days?

GEOFF OGILVY: This is my first time here, I didn't know the previous history, but it's nice when the leader is only nine under overnight after two rounds. Usually now it's pretty tough. It's not going to be much better than sort of 14 or 15 under that wins it so you know you can do pretty well. Some weeks you can be sitting at three or four under and you're doing well. Next week seven or eight under after two rounds you'll be despondent and you can be playing pretty decent. Here you can be three or four shots behind and feel pretty good about it. It's nice when the course is not so crazy. It's easier to shot a four or five under out here than it is to shoot ten under in Vegas.

Q. How are you feeling going into tomorrow? It looks like you're one out right now.

GEOFF OGILVY: Pretty good. As I said, my only real goal on Saturday is to try to give myself somewhat of a chance, and the better you get -- I haven't been in contention for a while. In Toronto I was hanging on the edge of contention and I ended up losing by two, but I really finished four behind until the last at Toronto. That wasn't really contention, that was just sort of playing for a good check, and it just ended up being really close the way Neal finished. It'll be nice to get up here in the last few groups and have a go at it, good way to finish the year.

Q. Is that a really cool thing for you guys to be, playing for a good check and kind of winding up early and being close but that it can come into your lap?

GEOFF OGILVY: It teaches you to never give up, I guess. I mean, I never really thought I could win and I thought I could get a good check, and in the end I could have easily had two shots better that day. I could have birdied a few more par 5s and gotten some shots there. You just don't know what's going to happen in the last. It's pretty rare, but it happens. It's weird.

Q. Was the last time you thought you were in serious contention was New Orleans?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, pretty much. I thought I had a big chance in New Orleans. I mean, I was making birdie after birdie and he kept making birdie after birdie. He started nailing sand irons and chipping in. I think it was four or five shots in the end, but I felt right in it, yeah.

Q. Geoff, could we go through your birdies and bogeys real quick?

GEOFF OGILVY: The first hole was -- I can't remember the first hole. It was a 3-wood and a sand iron from about 100 yards to eight feet, and then the third was a driver and a 7-iron to about 15 feet and I two-putted it.

The next hole was a driver and a wedge to 12 feet, made it.

Q. 11?

GEOFF OGILVY: What's 11?

Q. The par 4.

GEOFF OGILVY: 11, 3-wood, wedge to about eight feet, pretty good shot in there. It's a pretty shallow green.

Q. 12?

GEOFF OGILVY: 12, 2-iron, wedge to about 20 feet, 18 feet, something like that.

Next hole hit 5-iron sort of left but it caught the slope and came in about four feet, and then 18 you all know about.

Q. Were you driving the ball real well today other than 18?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I drove it good. I mean, I thought I got a bit stiff on the two par 5s, 7 and 15. 7 I hit a perfect drive, had 3-iron yardage into the wind and hit it over the back from an awful lie, didn't get up and down, straight over the pin.

And then 15 I hit a 3-iron over the pin farther than I can hit a 2-iron. I was in the fairway most of the day. I think I missed three maybe.

Q. That's pretty amazing, 66 and pars on those two holes.

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, it could have been anything. I mean, I played decent. Really, hindsight, give me a 4-iron into both of them, I could have had a couple shots better. It could have been anything, but that's the way it goes. If there weren't any if-onlys I'd shoot 15 under every day.

Q. Geoff, do you feel like you're overdue for a victory or is that something you try not to think about?

GEOFF OGILVY: I don't think about the win, I just feel like I'm overdue to play decent for more than one week in a row. I know if I -- when I'm in contention I haven't really done anything wrong any of the time, it's just things haven't gone my way. I just want to be there more often because I know I get the job some on Sundays, and the more you're there the better you'll get in that situation. I mean, a victory would be nice. It would make me sleep easier and I wouldn't worry as much, but really I just want to get my golf to the point where I can sort of get in this position most weeks because this is why we play. This is the most fun you can have when you're in contention, so that's the real goal is to get my golf to a stage where this is -- eight or nine times a year in this sort of shape.

Q. Why do you think you have been so inconsistent?

GEOFF OGILVY: I worked too hard on my golf swing when I probably really didn't need to, and that gets me thinking the wrong things on the golf course and that gets me off line off the tee quite often. Out here where the rough is you've got to be on the fairway because I putt okay and my irons are pretty good, it's just my driver is not very good. I think I've been working on my golf swing too much close to tournaments. I should really just concentrate on playing the game more than swinging the club.

Q. Does playing well on Saturday make it easier to get ready for Sunday or more difficult?

GEOFF OGILVY: Oh, easier, definitely. I mean, if you scrap around and just get the job done by only a few putts and getting up and down and saving it all day, then you don't know if you're going to be able to play good tomorrow. It's hard. You don't really feel that good. I mean, I'm playing close to as good as I have all year, I guess, pretty much. It doesn't feel that good but the ball keeps going straight, so it must be good. I'm putting pretty good. I'm not holing everything but I'm holing the ones I should.

It's much nicer to come off a decent round. It's hard to come off a really low one, come off a nine or a ten under, that's hard. I don't know why but it seems to be hard because putts don't go in the next day, but coming off of four or five under, that's ideal, I think.

Q. What brought you here this year? You said this is the first time you've played here. How come this time and not previous times?

GEOFF OGILVY: Well, there was only one previous time and last year was my first time out here. I guess it didn't fit. I can't really remember why I didn't play. Same day, probably -- I must have played the few weeks before it. I don't know, I live over in Phoenix, so this is a long trip to go Phoenix here and then Vegas and Disney. It's a lot of flying, so maybe that's why. No particular reason really.

Q. As a young pro you probably play a lot of these tour courses for the first time. Is it hard to convince yourself even though you don't know the layout and the property and the nuances that you can still play well and still win here?

GEOFF OGILVY: You don't really think about it. Some places take learning, but the pretty obvious ones, Colonial and Memorial and Sawgrass, they take some learning, and it's going to be a few years of playing tournaments there to get any good.

I don't mean to sell Kingsmill short, but most golf courses on this tour are pretty similar really, in the setup anyway. The sand is pretty similar, the rough is generally similar, the greens are all the same speed. It's really just the same yardage in a different state, not because of the course but the way they set it up.

Q. I know what you're talking about.

GEOFF OGILVY: They set the greens up with similar firmness most weeks. Out here there's some holes you really have to know where it would help to have a lot of experience, but most courses we play are pretty much a 450-yard par 4.

Q. See the fairway, see the green, make the putt?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah. Some courses take some learning, but worldwide not many the way golf is going down. It's longer, bigger, deeper rough, bigger greens it seems like.

Q. Just to get back to the club you mangled, did it bend at the hosel or did it bend in the shaft?

GEOFF OGILVY: I bent in the hosel but I think it's the shaft. I didn't really study it, but I think they're probably both bent to be honest with you. I think the shaft is bent in the hosel or right down at the bottom because usually if you hit a root -- I've never hit a rock before, but I guess the weakest point is just where the shaft is coming out. I'm not a physician, but that's --

Q. Physician?

GEOFF OGILVY: Physics major, whatever, but I guess that's its weakest point. The shaft bends but I believe the head is probably bent, too. Unless you can find a machine I'll be in trouble.

Q. What kind of wedge is it?

GEOFF OGILVY: It's a Titleist.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Geoff, for joining us.

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