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PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 9, 2005

Jose Maria Olazabal

SPRINGFIELD, NEW JERSEY

JULIUS MASON: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Jose Maria Olazabal joins us at the 87th PGA Championship. This will be his 17th PGA Championship he's participated in. Welcome to Baltusrol.

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: Thank you very much.

JULIUS MASON: Have you played the golf course?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: I played yesterday, yes, I did.

JULIUS MASON: What does it feel like; what does it look like?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: It was in great shape. It was a little soft. I don't know if they've had any rain lately or not, but the golf course, there was no run at all off the tee and the greens were holding extremely well for the PGA, I think. Usually we don't get such soft greens. I don't know if that has been intended or not. It's playing really long, very, very long.

I played all the par 3s from the back tees, and I played three 3 irons and a 4 iron, and then you have obviously holes like No. 1, 6, 7. There's a bunch of holes that are extremely long. I heard they even lengthened 17. I think they thought it was too short before (laughter). It's playing extremely long.

Q. Given that it is extremely low, long, does that give you a better chance, given that you're one of the better short game players?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: I don't think it gives me a better chance. I think it gives a better chance to the long hitters to be honest.

Q. Surely everybody is going to miss a green?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: Yes, but probably the long hitters will miss less greens because they are hitting shorter irons into the greens.

At the end of the day I think that it's a huge advantage, especially playing this golf course, as long as it is. Obviously the short game is going to be crucial this week because of what you said. We're going to be hitting a lot of long shots, and we're going to be missing a lot of greens, and if the short game is working well and you can manage to save pars, I think that's going to be great.

Q. You mentioned 17. There's a debate obviously; does anybody bother to go for it in two. Is there an advantage to going for it in two, or is there too much trouble up there to even give it a try?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: First of all, you have to be in range to reach it. Once you are in range to reach it, I think if anybody has a chance, he will go for it. There's a few bunkers just short of the green, but if you are in range of reaching, you know at the worst it's going to be a bunker shot from maybe 20 yards at the most, or 30 if you have a chance to go for it.

I think the true long hitters, if they hit a good tee shot and then they have a chance to go for the green, they will do that.

Q. Can you just talk about what St. Andrews did for your own confidence, and also your assessment of Tiger on that last day?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: My confidence, obviously it was a lovely week. It was a great week. I had a lot of fun. I played solid all week long, maybe except Sunday where I missed a couple of crucial shots. But this is a different week. I mean, that was like a month ago, and we're going to have to start from scratch.

Regarding Tiger, I played not just the last round, but the first two, and he played solid. He didn't except on Friday where he hit it in a bunker a couple of times. The rest of the three days, he played really solid. He avoided the bunkers most of the time. He played aggressive when he thought he had to, and I think the distance control with his irons was very good, and his putting stroke was also very good during the week. He played really well.

Q. Yesterday during the practice round you were playing the 4th hole, the par 3, probably in front of two people, and Tiger was playing the 18th in front of thousands. Does that sit well with you. Is that okay with you? Are you used to that?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: That's all right with me. More oxygen for me. Less people, more oxygen to breathe, that's okay. I have no problem with that.

Q. This golf course, the length, almost 7,400 yards, par 70, are we almost reaching the limit? I mean, can they go much longer than where we're at right now?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: They can. Sure, they can. Next thing we might see, I don't know, 550 yard par 4s.

They cannot go much longer than this, anyways. This is, I think the way it's playing, also, because of all the fairways being so soft, it's playing really long.

The par 3s are very long. The par 5s, 18 is reachable, but 17 won't be reachable for 98 percent of the players. And then you have holes like No. 1, as I said, 6, 7. What else? I mean, you have, like, eight or nine extremely long holes. I mean, that's almost 50 percent of the whole golf course;

I mean, there's always a chance you can make all par 4s, like No. 1 or 6 or 7, but what is the point for that?

Q. On 17 with that length, does it almost make it easier to know that you're not going to go for it, that you can play two good shots and try to make a birdie that way?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: That's how you see it from that side (laughter). When you're standing on the tee (laughter), you don't see it like that.

You know, it's a par 5 that you're going to see a lot of 6s. It's so long, that you cannot miss a single shot. If you miss the tee shot by a little bit, you're going to struggle to reach the green in three. So you're going to see a lot of bogeys on that hole.

Q. We've all got our theories as to why you're playing so much better now, but could you put into your words what you think the single most important difference is between you now and, say, a year ago?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: I cannot put it as a single thing. I think it's been a combination of a few things, and that translated to playing more solid golf, making less mistakes, hitting more fairways and more greens, compared to the last two years. That is the key.

Nowadays with the golf courses that we play, the rough being quite severe most of the times, you need to play solid golf; you need to hit a lot of fairways and a lot of greens. If you do that, you're able to score well; otherwise it's going to be a struggle.

Q. Why are you able to do that?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: Why? Well, I exercised hard this winter trying to gain a little bit of distance; I did so. And then a couple of changes on the swing. I tried to change the path a little bit of the swing, and I think that that has been it. I mean, it's not much new to be honest.

Q. Just a little bit about Tiger and Vijay, we don't often think of golfers as being physical the way, say, maybe a soccer player might be more physical than his opponent. It seems to me these two guys are just more physical than the rest of the players, and that they wear people down the way, say, an American football team or soccer team might wear down an opponent. I wonder if you buy into that at all or have any thoughts about just how physical those two are?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: I mean, nature has given them great bodies, too. I mean, you can be extremely well prepared physically, but if you are five feet tall, I don't think you're going to see that much of a difference compared to other players. Those guys are tall guys, they are quick, they have long arms. Ernie is another example. Look at the physiques of those guys. Even Davis Love; they are quite big guys.

Even though you might think they're more physical, I don't think they're more physical. Obviously Tiger is extremely well prepared physically, but I see other players physically as strong as Tiger and still can hit the ball as far as Tiger does, but I think Tiger has the whole package, a better package; short game, very strong mentally, and I think that is what makes him just a little bit apart from the others.

Q. What do you see the winning score being on this golf course if the conditions stay the same?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: Well, that's going to be a hard question to answer because I've seen the weather forecast for the whole week, and we might get a bit of rain pretty much every day, and that can change the whole result.

If we're playing in the rain here, it's going to be very, very hard.

Q. It's the 75th anniversary of Bobby Jones' Grand Slam. How familiar are you with his achievements, and do you think the things that he's done, that he did

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: I cannot hear you.

Q. It's the 75th anniversary of Bobby Jones' Grand Slam. How familiar are you with his achievements, and do you think the things that he did in his career can ever be matched in this day and age?

JOSE MARIA OLAZABAL: We are living different times. It's very hard to compare. How can you compare even Jack Nicklaus' career with what might Tiger do. At different times, they used to use different balls, different equipment.

I don't think it's fair to compare. They're completely different generations.

I think we have to see what everyone has done in their own generation and say if it's good or bad, simple as that.

JULIUS MASON: Thanks for coming in, Jose.

End of FastScripts.

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