Welcome. The conditions were tough. The wind is a key component here, mixed with tumultuous greens. That is the saving grace, I guess. Scores would be a lot lower if pin positions were changed even par is a good score or even par is not a good score or even par looks fantastic. There are opportunities out there but at other times you just wonder where you can leave your second shot to position yourself. There are key holes like that where you are trying to leave it under the hole. I don&apost know what it looks like on TV but it is tough to read greens and tough to make putts. Some putts don&apost move more than a couple of cups… Where is your game now? I&aposm hitting it better. I hit it really well yesterday. I feel like I am coming back. I&aposd love to have made more progress a while back. You have to be patient. That is the beauty of this game. You have no real time period. You can have a good career for a couple of decades. Look at Peter Senior. He has well and truly more than a couple of decades of top professional golf. My game is definitely on the uptake. Mentally I have really struggled for the last year or more, nearly two years, to believe in myself and believe all the great things I have done, that I was that person. If you struggle with your self belief, you are going to struggle with your scorecard. I have been working very hard on that. It is progress in the making. I was talking to Kyle (Stanley) today about what he did at the start of the year. He had a decent lead coming down the last and all of a sudden he loses the play-off. Emotionally that hit him hard. Then the next week he bounced back. I told him never to forget that bounce back. The game is going to kick you in the ghoolies more times than it is going to pat you on the back. You need to think about that Sunday night, about what was going on there. Today I was trying to get really comfortable. I have not made a lot of cuts. You&aposd think a guy with my experience and wins would not find making the cut a nice thing. You just take it for granted to play on the weekend. Being up there now is something new. I feel that I am relearning. You never forget how to ride a bike. I&aposm on the seat and got my foot on the pedal but I&aposm trying to remember which gear to get into. It is a learning process. That is what I love about the game. It is always teaching you lessons. The game rewards good thinkers. Adam has been playing well. You don&apost play good golf with only half your cylinders firing or doubt. You hear his interviews and he is confident. That is exactly what you&aposve got to be. Talk about your loss of confidence. We create our own stories in our minds. We make our own videos in our mind. Some of them are pretty ordinary movies but we tend to keep watching them. None of us have gone to a shitty movie the second time but you all know what I am talking about. You play golf. It would be great to have an Ian Poulter style confident ego on the golf course. That is an awesome asset. You paint an ordinary picture at times and if you paint it enough and see it, you start to be it. I don&apost know why. I spoke to Jonas Blixc a few months before he won and he asked me for advice. I&aposd seen him hit balls. I said, Your swing is pretty good. You are an athletic guy. I would not worry about your swing. My only advice would be to police your thoughts for the rest of your career. If you can caddie for yourself emotionally and keep an eye on your train of thought, you will have a long and healthy career…Tom Watson is a great example of a guy who has been through every emotion. Here he is at 63 and I would dream to play like that. What are you doing to get out of this? Developing some confidence. Trying to be a little less tense. I struggle with my putting at times. At times I felt I was never going to hit the hole. It is just sitting there. It has not changed shape in the last couple of hundred years. Those cancerous thoughts creep through your game. I would love to just flick a switch. I&aposd like to make big inroads real quick and be greedy but I understand that patience is a part of this game. I have to keep that in front of myself. You were in a slump when you won Greenbrier in 2010. Does that motivate you? That was the last year of my first money list exemption. That gave me a two-year exemption. I don&apost know. Life has changed. I have a real belief I can win again. I know that, but at times this year I have been tested. The gap is closing. That is the secret of the game. Greenbrier has gone by very quick. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. It was a unique event and a unique part of history for me. Man, was I a relaxed, focused guy that week. You have to find those windows. All of us are trying to find them. Only one guy wins at the end of the week. He is not winning with his B game. Tiger used to be able to. It has been a tough road for me. I don&apost know where two years have gone. I have four kids. You tie a lot of personal and professional things in and my life is very different to when I was a 20-something just starting my career. Up to this point is is a challenge. You never really remember the great things in your life. It is always the hurdles and obstacles. I have had some great things in the sense of my family. Wins are nice. I saw Greg Norman win the 1995 Australian Open at Kingston Heath. I was running down the board and I finished fourth. I don&apost remember that. You&aposd think you would. It is a good effort for a young kid. It is a work in progress and a challenge for me that I&aposm up for. I&aposd love to have a career where you win once a year and retire with 20 or 30 wins under your belt. Ask someone like Tom Watson the same question. He&aposs been through it all. How are you physically? Have you lost weight? My swing started to deteriorate. My coach started noticing some things in early 2011 that we could not get rid of. I think I was my protecting my back. My swing started to get flat. It did not cause any pain but late last year in Australia it went. Mentally I was just toast. I was frustrated. It felt like a wasted year. Early this year I decided I had to turn it around. I found my energy levels were worn out. I was playing crappy and my back was not right. I decided to do a lot of working out. I walked every day for a minimum of an hour. I did a lot of self-help style correspondence. Then I did a bit of running and walking to get some energy back. I am a dad of four, I have to play golf, I have to practise. For someone who was in pretty good shape, I was struggling to tick all the boxes. I did lose some weight. I was not planning on it. I probably lost about four kilos. I have 10 years of golf left in me. I am going out to create something. Have you thought of walking away? At the deepest period, yes. But at the same time a voice in my head says, You love this game. That thought pattern lasts a minute. There is so much more out there. This is just a test. At the worst you shake you head and wonder if you want to do it any more. Luckily that did not last for long but it popped into my head more than once or twice. I know I have the talent and resources and will power and I can&apost wait for my next victory. No, I can wait and very willing to do it. Inaudible question. One shot at a time. You have heard it before. But one shot at a time is the most important thing I need to focus on. Not focus on the past or the future. Focus on now and enjoy it. There are fantastic crowds. It is nice to see everybody. I need to go out and see how cool it is to watch a ball roll and fall into the cup. It be more grateful and have more graciousness. The game will come to you. Question about the final day. I believe forecast is similar. I like the wind. I always have. We saw this week the most of the Asian guys did not know what to do here. It is not quite like that in most parts of Asia. The flip side of that is the Australian players are used to the conditions. It is tricky with the yardages and you are reaching for the bag and almost selecting a club by Braille. You might grab the seven iron and try to make it work.
Author: Golf Australia