Tiger’s Open Championship press conference: Friday
TIGER WOODS: It wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as hard as it may have looked. I was on the upslope. Because I was on the upslope I could take out that steepness coming off the bunker and land the ball on the flat. So just threw it up there, and I played about a cup outside the left and it landed on my spot and rolled to the right.
Q: How about your body language, coming from previous to that one? It totally changed in a hurry.
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, making a birdie at 16, which was nice. And then obviously I hit — man, I hit a good iron shot in there at 18. The wind was supposed to be off the right but it just switched and it came off the left, and I ended up just pushing it maybe a yard too far to the right and it ended up where I ended up.
Q: Overall assessment?
TIGER WOODS: Overall I’m very pleased at where I’m at. We’re at the halfway point and I’m right there in the mix. With the weather that’s forecasted on Sunday and tomorrow, it’s going to be a good weekend.
Q: You’ve been very patient the last two days. Today there were a lot of guys hitting more drivers and the course was softer. There were guys going low like Adam and Brandt. Did you ever think maybe I should be more aggressive off the tee?
TIGER WOODS: Well, there’s only a couple of holes where I could have hit driver, and those were the two par-5s. The problem is at 7 the wind was off the left, and I’d like to hit that low fade out there, but the problem is the gallery is right there on the tee box, and I can’t start it where I want to start it. Then I’ve got to hit up over the gallery’s head. But then I bring in to the right side. And I didn’t want to do that, so I figured I’ll just lay it up and go ahead and give myself an opportunity to make birdie a different way.
And then at 11 it was down off the right when we were teeing off. And I can carry the left bunker, but I can’t stop it short of the right. And that makes no sense to go for it if I can — if it was slightly in off the right, then I could go. I could carry the one on the left and stop it short of the ones on the right, then that’s fine. But there’s no guarantee I could stop it in time. So I didn’t do it and hit a bad shot off the tee.
Q: Do you feel in control of what you’re doing overall?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, you know, I figured I had — I figured I had a game plan that I thought would fit well on this golf course, and I figured I could execute it. And I’ve done that so far.
Q: The lack of par-5s, how much does that tell you about where your game is right now?
TIGER WOODS: Well, you know, it’s just patience on a golf course like this. I’m hitting the ball in the fairway, and that’s the thing around this golf course, you just have to do that. You can’t control it out of the rough here. And obviously the pot bunkers you can’t do anything but come out sideways.
So it’s demanding. You can take your chances but you’d better pull it off or be conservative and play to different spots. But it gives you a variety of different options to play, what you want to do. It’s about commitment because most of the holes are on angles and the bunkers are staggered. So yeah, you can hit drivers down there, and some guys did. Or you can be more conservative. It allows you to play whatever way you want.
Q: (Inaudible.)
TIGER WOODS: Well, I wasn’t very pleased that I had a 4-iron in my hand and I hit it in the rough.
Q: How many drivers did you hit today? Did you hit a driver on 2?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, that was it.
Q: Did you hit a 3-wood on No. 3?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, just a little softy.
Q: You obviously holed the bunker shot on 18, but trying to avoid them, how important is that around here?
TIGER WOODS: Well, the ones off the tee, you can’t advance it to the green. That’s — they’re true penalties, they’re true hazards. And, yeah, you can take some of them out of play by carrying them over the top and hitting driver or sometimes you can hit 3-woods over the top. But you’d better pull it off. And on top of that, the rough out here is just unbelievable. It’s so long that it doesn’t grab the hosel, it grabs shafts. So you’ve just got to make sure that whatever line you decide to go on, be committed and hit it good.
Q: You mentioned there was a lot of water out there.
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, there was a lot of water out there. We had a couple drops today.
Q: Do you appreciate what Sneds did today?
TIGER WOODS: It was very impressive considering where the pins were. I don’t know how many of you guys walked out there, but there were a lot of pins on knobs, and they were just really tough putts. You had a lot of putts going up and away from you, up and away from you, you just had so many of those today. It was hard to get a spot where you could get really that aggressive.
Q: You heard about Sunday’s forecast. What does that mean about what has to be done tomorrow because who knows what can happen?
TIGER WOODS: Well, you just don’t know. We’ve just got to go ahead and play it for what it is tomorrow and take it one day at a time. Granted, 70 percent chance of rain today, it didn’t really rain.
Q: 30-mile-an-hour winds on Sunday.
TIGER WOODS: Well, they haven’t got the forecast right yet, so we’ll see.
Q: Did you watch what Adam and Brandt are doing? Will that influence you at all in terms of anything out there you need to change?
TIGER WOODS: I just do what I do.
