What they said: Davis Love III

text size

SONY OPEN AT HAWAII: Transcript archive

JOHN BUSH: We would like to welcome Davis Love into the interview room at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

After a 5 under par 65, Davis, no bogeys on the card. That's always nice, just get your comments on a great opening round.

DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, no bogeys is great, in this wind, on this course. And then no fives it was pointed out to me in the scoring trailer. That was very nice.

I birdied the first two holes right out of box at 8 o'clock in the morning on the first day of the year and that's a great way to start any tournament. But to start the first one of the year, and especially those holes weren't playing very easy this morning.

Off to a good start and excited. I got here Saturday night and I've been saying all week that I was excited to play and ready to play and just needed to get on the golf course a little bit.

So four days of that, I felt like I was prepared but I was nervous and excited to get going, so I didn't really know what was going to happen.

So I just tried to get out and be patient and it worked. So hopefully build on that. I know I'm not going to shoot 5 under every day the rest of the year but build on just going out and trying to enjoy playing and being patient and enjoying myself.

Q. Zach credited his round with being able to control his ball trajectory, did you concentrate on that a lot?

DAVIS LOVE, III: Zach controls it real well. I control mine, it's real high. He said on 18, when I hit my driver, he said, I never hit one that high in my life. And his caddy said, and you never will.

(Laughter).

I have to work at it a lot harder than Zach. But having Zach around St. Simons, Sea Island, and Jonathan Byrd practicing at Sea Island, watching how hard they work, and what they work on, has really helped me.

I am hoping it helps my son to see that I can still learn how hard these young guys are working, and what they are working on.

But Zach has really influenced me a lot on working on my wedge game. I played a practice round with him on Tuesday, and we dropped balls, worked on hitting low wedge shots into the greens and stuff like that.

I am inspired by the way he driver the ball. Obviously, I can, most of the time, hit it farther than him, but it's putting it in the right position.

I did a pretty good job with some 4 and 5 irons, knocking them in there close to the hole. I hit a beautiful 5 iron on the first hole out of bunker up there close and hit a lot of good controlled shots. I have always been pretty good at slowing down and knocking it down low. But I haven't played in a month, so I wasn't expecting quite I didn't want this much wind to start off early in the day, but I survived it. That's what you have to do here. You have to control it and keep it in the fairway.

Q. When did you decide to come over here and play, and what prompted it?

DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, you know, I played here every year I think that I played Kapalua. I just felt like this was a good place to start. I was on the West Coast almost most of December and early January anyway, so it was easy to get over here.

But I enjoyed it last year. I didn't play well. I played with Zach the first two rounds, and he and I were playing very similar and all of a sudden he had a little burst right at the end of the second round, and I didn't, and I missed the cut just barely, and he got two or three inside the cut maybe, and then went on and won it. And I felt like I left something on the table last year.

But, you know, Ray and his whole group are always super nice to me and the fans are always nice. And the people in Mamala Bay are always nice to let me come over there. So I enjoy coming there. This is one that everybody loves to be in at Kapalua, but I also like coming here.

Q. What about the course that you like? What do you like about it, what suits your game?

DAVIS LOVE, III: I like putting on Bermuda greens. It's what I grew up on. We always joke about Andy Bean winning all of his tournaments in Florida on Bermuda grass. I've done a lot of that too. People say, why are you so successful at Hilton Head? Because I grew up on an island two islands down, you know. I'm used to that kind of condition.

I would rather not play in the wind being tall and a long hitter, it's a little trickier. But I like the style of the golf course and I like the grass. I just like playing I like playing here. I've always enjoyed it. It's a classic course. It's had its tweaks and fives have changed to fours. But it's still got a lot of style to it.

We were talking even today about the routing, how interesting the routing is. You never are playing like four shots the same downwind or into the wind. You are always going back and forth. No matter what the wind is doing it's always an interesting sign of a great layout.

Q. And it has doglegs?

DAVIS LOVE, III: It has a lot of doglegs. That's what I told my amateurs. I played in both pro ams. You struggle when you get to 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. It's just a lot of doglegs. You got to be really precise. It is tough. It's tricky and that's what make it interesting. It doesn't have to be big and long and 8,000 yards to be hard.

Q. When is the last time you started your season with such a fine round?

DAVIS LOVE, III: Maybe last year at Kapalua. I played well. I don't know what my round were at Kapalua, but I started off almost winning last year at Kapalua. I thought I was going to come over here and play good.

Q. So you often start out pretty fast?

DAVIS LOVE, III: That's a good question, I don't know. But, yes, I have had a lot of success on the West Coast. I have won at San Diego, I've won at Pebble a couple of times. I had close, near misses a lot of places. I won the Tournament of Champions one year at LaCosta. So, yes, I've tended to start pretty good and maybe it's just a clear head and a fresh start.

Q. You had some near misses here, does that bother you, or does that give you confidence?

DAVIS LOVE, III: No, it gives me confidence. That's what I kept saying to myself the last few days. Even though you haven't played in 6 tournaments in the last two months, you played well at this golf course a lot. You played a lot of great rounds here, and you know how to play it and just go out and enjoy playing and be patient. I've shot 60 here. I've shot pretty much all of the numbers you shoot on this golf course, 60 to 80. So I know my way around it. And as Rich Lerner pointed out, I played here in 1986, so I've been around it a long time. It's got a lot of good memories.

Q. Did you have any groove issues today?

DAVIS LOVE, III: No, I started with the wedges back in September, and I played although not well. I played, I guess, three tournaments, four tournaments with them at the end of the year.

Not to get into the groove thing, but I was using close to what spin rate we're using now because I didn't have vokie spin mill and square groove super sharp wedges because I don't do real well with them.

I was actually surprised today on a few wedge shots that they actually stopped as well as they did. So I'm not in the category as the guys that are in shock a little bit. I'm figuring it out.

I grew up with V grooves, so it's normal. I only had to change two clubs. So it was a pretty easy transition.

Q. Do you try to bounce more shots in, like up the neck of the hole there, rather than flying them right at the pin on this course then?

DAVIS LOVE, III: Yes, you have to, especially when you miss the fairways. That's what I worked on in the Pro Am. I didn't work on missing fairways, but I worked on bouncing it up because I was in the rough a lot.

The first thing somebody said to me, I didn't get to play Sunday, they had a full golf course, they were just practicing around, the people that did play said it was really firm out there. Some guys played Saturday, too. They said it was firm.

It is that style of course where you got a lot of greens that slope from front to back, and you have to keep it underneath the hole.

So you got to play a little bit of that. It's not really Scottish golf, but it's similar, that you have to land it in the fairway. And I left a couple short of the green today that was better than being past the hole and having to putt downhill or chip downhill. So it worked out. But you have to think your way around this course, for sure, especially with the flier rough.

JOHN BUSH: Let's go through a couple good ones right out of the gate, a birdie No. 1.

DAVIS LOVE, III: 5 iron out of the bunker was a great shot to about 14 feet.

Then a fairway wood off the tee at 2. And then a 6 iron which is a long club in for that hole to about 30 feet.

9, a real good drive and a 6 iron to about 30 feet again and 2 putted.

10, hit a great drive right down there in front of the green, had 47 yards and pitched it up there close and tapped it in.

And made a nice par save at the next one, hit it in the bunker and got up and down.

And then 18, a driver and a hybrid fairway wood to about 15 feet. Missed it.