Q. Your first look at the changes on the south, what are your thoughts on it?
BRAD FAXON: Oh, it's gorgeous. I can see from the back tees with a little bit of wind, a lot of rough, this would be a monster golf course. There's some pins that nobody will be able to hit a shot at. There's some holes, like 3 and 4, 7, you hit it over the green, it goes right into the hazard. We didn't used to have it that close or that severe.
But all the greens seem to be up. If you miss shots on the short side of the south course, you have to work pretty hard to get it up and down. I think Monday I might have seen a couple greens. I got in Monday night, looked around, the greens were rock hard and fast. It's a totally different golf course now.
I don't imagine that we can play the ball as alive tomorrow. I mean, it's very wet still. There's a lot of puddles in the fairways. I hope we do, but I don't think we can.
Q. How hard do you have to work at your putting to maintain it? Do you have a putting green at home?
BRAD FAXON: No. No, I don't. When I work hard is when I'm putting badly. When I make it more of a game or have more fun doing it, I take less time, I putt better.
I think last year I really had a streaky year putting last year. I didn't have a great putting here. I was doing all kinds of articles. People asked me to do books and tapes. I started thinking about what I do and it screwed me up so I'm not going to talk about it anymore (laughter).
Some pro wrote a book in 1940 something on how to play golf, Denny Shute after he won a US Open, wrote a book, never heard from him again.
Q. (Inaudible)?
BRAD FAXON: Well, I did on TV. You know, Mercedes Championship, that looks pretty bizarre. The wind was the opposite way. You know, there's such a combination of everything. To say there's one thing...
I would say that there has been a jump in the ball from last year to this year which surprised me. I thought we wouldn't see the leap. But I also think the combinations of the new drivers, the technology, the physics, science of the ball, the flight of the ball, optimizing distance by increasing arc angle and bringing spin down, I know that sounds awfully technical, but maybe the initial velocities of the ball hasn't changed, but the flight characteristics have.
If you had the side view of a ball in flight, watched the spin rate or the dispersion rate of the spins or the spin biography, whatever you want to call it, I mean, it's changed a lot. I know that sounds like weird science, but the balls now, they go higher, they fly further, then they roll when they hit. That's without changing how fast it went. Then you add a few more miles per hour because you have a titanium head.
Look at the size of guys now. Look at Ernie and Vijay and Davis, Tiger. Ben Hogan would be a shrimp out here. Tom Kite. It's changing. Guys are just smoking it. They're bigger. They're swinging from the heels.
Q. (Inaudible)?
BRAD FAXON: Like this new Pro V1x. The X ball, everybody is using it now because they say, "I can kill this thing, hit it a long way." I think a lot of guys will go back to the Pro V1 because they'll get a little more control around the greens. There's some trade-off. If you want that distance, you're going to lose some feel around the greens.
Faster playing balls, they don't have as much feel around the greens. I mean, there was a huge difference watching balls land at Pebble last week than last year.
Q. (Inaudible)?
BRAD FAXON: I thought last year we were going to see the end of the significant differences. I think it needs to be reined in. I don't think there's anything wrong with the game right now. I look at this golf course, it's 7700 yards. We were playing at 6700 yards 12 years ago. Percentage-wise they're going to be pretty close, the increase in distance the ball is going versus the increase in the length of holes.
But I hit two woods into par 3s yesterday. I hit two woods into par 4s yesterday. I didn't used to do that when I was 22 years old. That's pretty long.
TODD BUDNICK: Thank you, Brad.
BRAD FAXON: Thank you.
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