What they said: Paul Goydos

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SONY OPEN AT HAWAII: Transcript archive

MARK WILLIAMS: Paul Goydos, thanks for joining us, a past champion of the Sony Open 2007. This is your eighth start, you had a couple of Top 10's.

PAUL GOYDOS: Eight here?

MARK WILLIAMS: Yes.

PAUL GOYDOS: I think it's probably my 15th. 18 years on TOUR, I don't think I ever missed it.

MARK WILLIAMS: Well, maybe there is more then. Obviously, you play well here, reveal some secrets as to why you play well here and what's good for you. What specifically do you need to do to win at this golf course?

PAUL GOYDOS: Yes, I think it's a golf course that everybody could play. It's not like there is one type. We've had Bubba Watson have a chance to win here. And we've had Paul Goydos too, and you can't be any different.

So, one, it's pretty even. Everyone is starting out on the first hole. It's a golf course where you got to keep the ball in front of you. It's a course I like to play, you keep the ball in front of you. Pars are good scores. You kind of have to just manage your way around your round of golf more so than anything else.

You actually have to shape your ball a little bit here.

You actually have doglegs. This course must be at least 30 years old. There are no new ones with doglegs, where you kind of have to hit the ball the right distance, not necessarily a long distance. I like that kind of golf.

MARK WILLIAMS: Questions?

Q. How much golf did you play in the off season? When did you get here?

PAUL GOYDOS: I got here on Sunday, played yesterday. I played Monday in the Pro Am. I play a lot of golf. To me a lot of golf means three or four times a week. It's fun golf. My little $5 (inaudible). It's not work golf per se. I'm playing, I'm not practicing that much. Practicing to me is something I do on site.

Now I did do more this year than in any other year because of the groove change with the wedges and stuff. But nothing else. I liked to play golf. I like to go home and play with my friends. I have a couple of different groups at a couple of different courses that I play and we have a good time.

Q. When you play in matches with the amateurs, what's the most strokes you give?

PAUL GOYDOS: Well, I actually have a handicap. I have an index. One of the courses that we play, Virginia Country Club, Long Beach, we play your trends. I've been as high as a plus 7, that's based on the scores that I shoot. I know that one of the guys who plays in the group is a 22. I think 28 shots is the most we've given but I think he was my partner that day. But you just throw balls up and that's who you get in your group.

Q. How are you playing now?

PAUL GOYDOS: Been playing poorly. I am back to scratch. I had a bad winter. I think I was plus 5. It's been moving steadily toward par.

Q. A lot of guys this week, obviously rookies, I think four of them have never played on TOUR before, do you get a sense that everybody is in the same boat in terms of their level of optimism, being the first full event of the year or are there differences do you suspect?

PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know. I can only answer as how I felt as a rookie. I was completely intimidated. This is my first event that I ever played on TOUR was the Hawaiian Open in 1993. Looking back at my attitude, my chances of winning that tournament were zero. They were not measurable.

Q. Why?

PAUL GOYDOS: Just from a different era, I guess. I never really competed. I never played a PGA TOUR event before. I had won a Hogan event. But one thing, I remember, I was walking through the locker room probably on Monday, and Davis Love is walking towards me and the guy looked about 12 feet tall. That's the only thing I remember. Who is this? Hitting balls next to Payne Stewart and just watching him hit the ball so good, it was silly. I was pretty intimidated in a sense, am i really this good? Am I any good enough to play out here?

Q. What did you shoot, do you remember?

PAUL GOYDOS: I shot 80 the first round. I started on 10. I always seem to start on 10 in the afternoon in this tournament, and I am again this year. They used to have a scoreboard, on the far elbow on the 18th fairway, and I drove my ball down there. The wind is blowing 2000 miles an hour it felt like.

Q. You're on 18 now?

PAUL GOYDOS: I'm on 10. The first hole, I get it in the fairway, it's like 370, and I am hitting driver, 6 iron because it's so windy. And I hit this wall in the middle of the green, and I am trying to stand over this putt, the wind is blowing me and I somehow make a 4, and I'm sitting there, and I kind of look and there is a leaderboard. I look over at the leaderboard and it's minus 9, minus 9, minus 8, minus 8, why am I even here? I can't even stand up and these guys are shooting 63. Are you kidding me? What course did they play? I end up shooting 80 that day. 80 and 75 and I end up missing the cut by about 15 shots. I'm thinking, wow, this place, this is brutal out here.

I played the next morning, the wind was five miles an hour. It wasn't so bad. But that day sitting on the 10th green and looking over at the leaderboard, kind of going, what, 9 under, are you kidding me? It was probably blowing 20 mile an hour trades.

But once you come out here a few times, I think the next year, I finished in the Top 10. I lost my card, got my card back, came over here and got my first Top 10 in my career was here in Hawaii, in the first event in '94.

Q. That was the era, were guys still hitting Persimmon in '93?

PAUL GOYDOS: I think some guys were. I wasn't. I was hitting metal woods. Very few though. I think some guys were really getting down to the nitty gritty with guys that were still hitting Persimmon at that point.

Q. Estes probably?

PAUL GOYDOS: Yes, maybe.

MARK WILLIAMS: Justin Leonard?

PAUL GOYDOS: Justin Leonard, he came in in about '92.

Q. '94?

PAUL GOYDOS: Davis maybe. But very few guys were playing Persimmon at that time. You would see Persimmon fairway woods at that time but not Persimmon drivers.

Q. You shot 80?

PAUL GOYDOS: Yes, shot 80 with the metal woods, and every possible positive piece of equipment you can have. It's a golf course though if you're not ready to play, with the trade winds and the cross winds it's a cross winds golf course which some people like. I happen to like cross winds now. We get a lot funky, you know, you got to play the wind a lot. Like I said, I've gotten use to it now, I like it. At first it's difficult.

Q. If anyone has ever asked you about the impact of the Tiger situation on TOUR, I will do it now. Can you answer that to the best of your ability?

PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know if we know it yet. Obviously, I do think you need to, respecting Jack Nicklaus, you got to respect the guy's privacy. I don't know the whole story. It's easy for me to read the newspaper or listen to TMZ, or whatever crazy stuff is going on and make an opinion. But the reality is, I don't think anybody really knows the total story here. At some point in time that needs to come out before we can start making any types of judgments.

Q. Beyond the judgments.

PAUL GOYDOS: I can make the argument that more people know about golf today than ever before. People who never would have watched golf, if you thought golf was worth watching, are going to watch the first event he comes back in. Maybe not the second or third event. But whatever event he decides to play in again, I got to think it's got to be the highest rated golf event in the history of sport.

Q. Without Tiger and without Phil, there is sort of a void waiting to be filled with superstars or future stars. I know you are a fan of the game and you pay attention of who is coming up, the young guys, who are you most excited about when you look at this group of young guys coming up?

PAUL GOYDOS: Well, I think it's pretty obvious it's Rickie Fowler. Here is a guy who got his card at TOUR school and he got a sponsor exemption in the Wednesday Pro Am. When is the last time that ever happened? He may be the first guy that ever happened to. Maybe Duval. I don't know if Duval got his card that way.

I kind of thought Fowler was a big deal. I was playing at Frys. I was on the back 9, I think I started on the back 9 on Sunday, and he might have been five or six shots back starting the day. I don't know, he was back. He starts out like birdie, birdie, par, birdie, hole in one. That's just something, that's Tiger would do.

Having that presence to be in that situation and to do that is something that hole in ones, there is a lot of luck involved, just the timing of it all. There is something to that.

I think there is going to be something to this kid, the way he walked out and the way he played. Not just that he finished second, but the way he did, he made a hole in one. He does all of these things that are in a sense Tiger esq. I think it bodes well for his career. I think he is going to be a very, very good player out here for a very long time. He looks about eight years old. I saw him in the locker room, whose kid is this?

Q. He didn't look 12 feet tall?

PAUL GOYDOS: No, nowhere near. He is going to intimidate me a much different way, youth.

Q. When you talked about Tiger, do you think it's just 100 percent positive when he comes back?

PAUL GOYDOS: In what sense? Positive for Tiger, I would say no. For golf, I think there is that old adage there is no such thing as bad publicity. I think time will have to tell. It depends on when he comes back and how he comes back and how he deals with it. I think he's got a tough road to hoe. Is that right? There is an axiom there, I'm not sure if that's the right one.

Q. The hoe part, yes.

PAUL GOYDOS: It's going to be tough. You're a bad man. See, I didn't say that. That's you. Don't even use my name with that. That's you. (Laughter). I think it's going to be difficult.

Q. I guess my question is, there were players last week that said, we want him back, we want to see him back, we want him back here, do you think it's a hundred percent positive that he does come back?

PAUL GOYDOS: Oh, yes. No question, he comes back. That's what he does. I couldn't imagine a situation like this, where he doesn't play golf. I can't imagine that would be the case. Just from my point of view, how I look at the game, you can't get to the level he is in the game without having it basically be part of who you are. Not playing golf would change his being to a level that I don't think he would want to deal with. I couldn't fathom a situation where he wouldn't come back and continue to compete.

Q. Can you imagine three to five years down the road a situation where he might look back or people might book back and say, this is actually a good thing that happened to him. It spurred a total reinvention? It took away the burden of having to be this standard of perfection that no one could sustain?

PAUL GOYDOS: It's hard to believe that's a nice thought. I don't know the circumstances. It seems like it may be an addiction problem, things like that, that needs to be treated.

The guy is going to get some help. It's just part of the learning process of being, you know, the day you die is the day you stop learning. It's going to be part of his learning process. It's all of our learning process.

I've got two kids, my daughter backed her car into her grandmother's car yesterday, not seriously, she called me immediately. Hey, dad. I was playing in the Pro Am, or practice round, and I didn't get a chance to answer the phone.

The process is, when she learned that the first thing I do is I call my dad, I don't care if I'm going to get in trouble. But it's a learning process. That's what we do. We learn.

And Tiger is going through a learning process right. Eventually everybody will come out of this if they do what they are supposed to do, and you want to learn, you come out of this better. That's what maturity is. Would all make mistakes.

Tiger is just on this stage that is unfathomable to anybody else. We're not on Tiger's stage so when he makes a mistake it's obviously going to be exacerbated to a level that we can't comprehend. That's part of the learning process he is going to go through.

In the long run will Tiger be a better person? Will everyone be a better person? If they are living their live correctly, you learn. You learn and you move forward, just like everything else, like with putting and driving and being a parent and eating dinner, just like everything else.

Q. A lot of the various articles you read now are saying that Tiger is going to face hecklers, especially during the Ryder Cup, and just a little bit different reaction from the crowd, do you agree with that?

PAUL GOYDOS: I would be shocked if that didn't happen. There is definitely going to be people who are going to use this situation to take advantage. Whether it be a fan heckling him. I don't really understand the whole concept behind heckling in certain situations. I understand why Duke fans heckle at Cameron indoor heckle the other team. I get that. Why you would heckle Tiger Woods? I don't get, maybe you want to hear your own voice. He is going to be heckled without question. That's good go to be part of the security issues with the PGA TOUR over the X number of months or years to deal with. I don't think there is any question that's going to be the case.

Q. If you are in a group with Tiger, and that's occurring, there is some unruly fans, do you participate in trying to stop that?

PAUL GOYDOS: I've been around where we had guys with cameras, absolutely. There is no place for that. In my opinion, in our sport if I'm rooting for Tiger to do well, a fellow competitor, I can't control there is no defense in golf. There is no place for that kind of stuff. You do hear things though every once in a while. If you are going to play in front of Phoenix has 100,000 people out there, and you expect all of them to be polite, you are asking an awful lot. They all don't share my view either. Just because I think it's the way it should be, doesn't mean that's the way it is, or anything else.

There is no need for that, but it's going to happen and if I see somebody doing something, whether it's Tiger, or I'm playing this week with Dean Wilson, there is no need for that.

Q. I was just wondering on the flip the side of that, do you think that Tiger's personality on the course might soften a little bit, maybe not be as abrasive to somebody that takes a picture in his swing, and not so likely to be swearing in front of the boom mic and that kind of thing?

PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know. I don't know. He is who he is. He is going to learn certain things about handling his life hopefully. But that's the competitor in him. He is not dropping F bombs for the fear joy of doing it. It's the competitor in him.

Again, if that mic or that camera was on me the same amount of time that it's on him, you might be asking me that question.

I have had my moments of hostility toward this game, too. This game will eventually get to everybody. This game drives everybody nuts at some point in time. You know, you talk about his temper. But the reality, I don't think his temper is really any different than most people. It's just on TV 24/7. Everyone out here is trying to win. This game frustrates everybody it's just that his frustration is shown on television. I think there is a level of unfairness to say he's got the worst temper when the reality is he is just like everybody else. You just get to see it.

Q. Do you think Goose has a temper?

PAUL GOYDOS: I've played with Goosen a few times. Not to the same level, no. But it doesn't mean he doesn't have one. He may hold it in better. I find it hard to believe he doesn't have a temper.

If you don't have a temper, you don't have happiness either. If you're not depressed, you don't know happiness. If you never know depression, how do you know happiness? You can't just be flat.

I guarantee he has temper, he just doesn't show it the same way that you and I might show it.

Q. What about Chip Beck?

PAUL GOYDOS: I had Chip Beck say once to me that this game is starting to get to me. He actually said it to me. Maybe it was me getting to him, I don't know. But again, you have our levels of frustration, and I think Chip worked very hard on not showing it, and I think there is some value to that.

But, again, if you work really hard to not show negative emotion, you're not going to feel much positive motion always.

MARK WILLIAMS: Paul, thanks for coming in and sharing your thoughts.