


Editor's note: Stewart Cink, who played his way into THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola last week, finds himself tied for eighth at the midway point of the tournament in his adopted hometown of Atlanta. He shot 66 Friday at East Lake and is 7 under, six strokes behind the leader, Tiger Woods.
ATLANTA -- I've scored okay this week, but I haven't played all that well. I know I'm 7 under, but I feel like I can do better than this.

So I'm a little disappointed because I haven't really taken advantage of things, but maybe I can this weekend. I'll just go down to the range this afternoon and try to work things out a little bit.
It's me, not the weather or the greens. We've got very little wind, and we've got soft fairways and greens. If you don't hit the fairways, it's definitely because you're just not swinging it very good or not thinking good, and that's where I am. I have driven the ball in play most of the time, but I've had some crooked drives, too, that are just not really necessary.
I was pleased with the way I played last week overall, but at the same time, I was inconsistent. That's what I know I need to work on.
When you play against a field like this, the top 30 players of the year, the areas where you need to improve are magnified -- not just because of the guys you're playing with in your group, but the scoring.
You get a sense of, okay, I've got to get better at this. I've got to keep my driver in play more consistently. I had stretches this year for a couple weeks in a row where I really drove it awesome, the best I've ever hit it in my life. But then I've also had stretches where I couldn't find it for a few weeks.
| Multimedia |
Ready to Play: Stewart Cink
|
I really feel like I need to put in a little more time working with Butch Harmon on my swing, as well as getting a little stronger and maybe losing a few pounds. Just basically getting a little more serious about being a golfer, I think. Not that I'm not already, but guys are really putting in a lot of time into this thing.
I think it all boils down to just prioritizing things a little bit. It's like an epiphany day.
I've been working with Butch for about five years. I don't see him that often, but I think maybe it's time to change that. I go back and forth between being mechanical and then going and just being completely natural and just letting myself react.
It seems like as soon as I'm one way and I do well, then I start to fall off the wagon a little bit, and I start to resort back to the other way. I just keep on going back and forth, so I think I need to be a little more consistent in the way I approach things.

This is a home game for me. You know, it's funny. I used to love playing tournaments on courses that I played all the time, but now it seems like it's more difficult. I have high expectations, and expectations aren't very good for golfers.
It kind of gets your mind twisted up into the wrong goals. I've had a good experience the last couple days, though, just sort of playing to play and not really worrying about whether I'm at home or not. So I want to keep that going. I think also, in the past, I've kind of been satisfied just by getting into the field here, and then over the tournament my play has been sort of haphazard and average.
So this year I made it a point to come into this tournament and really grind away, really trying to make something of it instead of just being here. I just moved into the top 30 this week, and now I really want to try and to see what I can do.
This is the final tournament of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, and it's been an interesting process. We've had 95, 96 percent participation, which is good.
In the corporate world, the way they compare their performance is year over year. So how you did it in September doesn't compare to how you did it in February, it compares to how you did last September.
I think what we can do is look at the tournaments that started two weeks after the PGA Championship last year and go on those four in a row and look at the fields in those tournaments versus these four events.
| RELATED |
• VIDEO: Shot of the Day
• VIDEO: Friday highlights
• PODCAST: Rd. 2 analysis
• STATS: East Lake numbers
• FEDEXCUP: Who needs what to win?
|
We've got better television. The fields don't compare. We've got big purses. We've got big-time golf, and all we did was move the tournaments that are in the FedExCup now from their current dates.
I think if you look at it like that, the FedExCup has been an overwhelming success. Now, we've got little nitpickers here and there, and I've got some issues of my own that I'd like to see changed, but overall I think it's been very successful. Every week you hear fewer and fewer cynical comments.
Overall, I think the guys that framed this whole thing out did a very good job, and looking back, hindsight is really easy to use, but it would have been tough to make it any better on the first try.