DAVE SENKO: Davis, thanks for joining us, and as we did before, maybe you could just get us started by maybe looking back on your year and looking ahead to 2007 and we'll get some questions.

DAVIS LOVE III: I'm excited about the way I finished the year, now excited about starting the year in Hawaii, the first two, which is just around the corner, seems like.

I'm excited to be here, glad that the (Tiger Woods) Foundation and Tiger invited me back, so I'm looking forward to this week and hopefully it'll get me jump started for the start of the year.

DAVE SENKO: This tournament has actually turned golfers forward to the next year. I think you and I want to say in '05 and Lehman and even Luke last year. Is there something to it?

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't think so. I think it shows guys are playing more in the winter and then you get some confidence playing well in a tournament like this. It certainly gets you going when it's right around the corner to the start of the year. Any time you win a tournament, it gives you confidence. Any time you win against a good field like this and on a hard golf course, you certainly feel like you're playing well, and it gives you a boost. I think momentum is a great thing. Certainly a couple times winning here got me going to start the next year.

DAVE SENKO: If you would talk a little bit about Phil (Mickelson) and what happened at the U.S. Open, and how much does that weigh on a player from your point of view?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, when you're obviously like I did the last couple years, when you're not successful, whether it's Thursday or Sunday, you continue to not play well. It wears you down a little bit. You start losing confidence and losing momentum. Certainly I think Phil is a little bit different situation. He had a lot of chances in the majors, and he played awfully well. He didn't play well all that day, you know, and I think he didn't ever really give himself a chance. He fought hard to stay in it. When you look at it from a player's perspective, he probably thinks he was lucky to have a chance coming down the stretch the way he was driving it.

I know the year before when he won the PGA, I missed so many fairways that there was no way I could beat him. That's just the way it goes sometimes. I think he's in a pretty good place confidence wise right now. Just about every week he seems like he's ready to go.

DAVE SENKO: So it's not like this is going to have any lasting effects?

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't know. He hasn't played for so long, but that never seemed to bother him, either. I saw him Monday in Mexico, and he looked in good shape and looked like he was ready to go whenever he decided to start.

DAVE SENKO: Was there an In-and-Out Burger down there?

DAVIS LOVE III: There was a rumor of an In and Out Burger down there and a Krispy Kreme. He came to check it out. No, we were working on a golf course project that we're both working on down there.

I've got one under construction and he's going to do the second course with our we're going to be the construction company, so we've got a big project going down there, part of a private club, which is very exciting down there. It's in Cabo. We're in the big sand dunes just north of well, it'll be just over the hill from town, over the mountains. Ireland with good weather.

DAVE SENKO: From the time you joined the TOUR a few years ago until right now, there have been obviously a ton of Australians and Europeans on the U.S. Tour. How does a guy of your stature and you might say years on the Tour look at it? Is it anything bad or is it good? I don't know if it affects our Ryder Cup performance at all. But I was just talking to Geoff Ogilvy, and the Aussies seemed to have a very good year in the U.S.

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, they're getting better and better. I said if you want to make the Ryder Cup where the U.S. wins, we play them one country at a time but wait to play Australia last because they're awfully good. They've got a lot of good players. You know, certainly Greg Norman was a big influence on that.

But you know, the TOUR decided really right after I came out, we don't want to restrict the foreign players from coming here. We want them to play here. We want the best players in the world to play our Tour. We've certainly promoted that and done a good job of that.

But anybody who wants to play baseball, they come to the U.S. to play baseball. You want to play professional football, you come to the U.S. to play professional football. Obviously in golf, it's a different game; we get more people. Hockey is another good example. The NBA now is a worldwide league in a worldwide sport.

Certainly this is where the TV money is and this is where the big game is, so certainly it's understandable. It used to be it wasn't worth it to move your family from Europe or from South America or Australia to the U.S. to play because there really wasn't that much money and opportunity. Now there's tons of money and opportunity, plus it's cool to play golf, so that's bringing more and more good athletes into it.

I don't see it stopping. I don't think they affect the Ryder Cup, except the points. They take five spots out of the Top 10 every week, and guys don't get points. That's where I think next year's points for American players, you might not even give points because Geoff Ogilvy wins the U.S. Open and Ernie Els finishes second and Sergio Garcia finishes third you might as well not give any points because it doesn't do that much good.

I'm glad the PGA is willing to tweak their system, but we've got to look at it more because there are more and more it's not that the Top 10 is always Americans, and the points are kind of getting harder and harder to get.

DAVE SENKO: (Inaudible)

DAVIS LOVE III: No, I don't see any jealousy. I heard one steady, very good foreign player getting interviewed at the Match Play this year saying that the Tour ought to do this and the Tour ought to do that and makes it hard on the foreign players and this and this and this, and it wasn't really a complaint, it was just answering question, and in the end the journalist said, "So how's everything is Scottsdale?" I'm like, that pretty much sums up the whole interview. He lives in the United States and plays our Tour, just like a Steve Elkington or Greg Norman or Nick Price or right on down the list.

When I look at Nick Price, he's a guy that's lived here my whole career on Tour and Bernhard Langer and right on down the list. They still go play at home, but no at least for me there's no jealousy. I'm not willing to move over to Europe and play. You know, I don't want to have to do that. I think it's a big effort, and they ought to get a lot of credit because it's harder for them to be successful moving over here than it is for us.

DAVE SENKO: I wanted to follow up on that Phil thing, the Phil sighting. None of us have seen him for a while. I'm remembering I want to say it was '98 or '99 when David Duval came out and I think it was a tournament down in Arizona and he had basically reshaped his body and everyone looked at him and went, "Wow, what a change." Are we going to see a markedly different looking Phil Mickelson when he shows up? I guess it's going to be at the Bob Hope in January.

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't know, he's got a long time between now and then.

DAVE SENKO: So he's not there yet?

DAVIS LOVE III: No, he looks good. I thought that he looked like I've seen him a lot in the gym this year, and I think it's a shock to everybody to see Davis and Phil in the gym. But he certainly looks good. He doesn't look like he's been sitting around for sure. He looks like he's been working.

DAVE SENKO: You talked about confidence at the beginning. What did Greensboro do for you and what do you think would have happened given your year and frankly given your age had you gone through this year without anything to point at?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, I'd have I've been scrambling to get in the TOUR Championship and I would have come here trying to get something going for next year rather than being in Mercedes and Hawaii. I'm excited about the start of the year, but I think it was a big boost. It was a long time coming.

Certainly getting healthy helped and getting the Ryder Cup behind us helped, and I learned a big lesson from that. So now I'm excited about going back out and playing.
It's a big difference than the feeling of, you know, at the PGA, struggling to get the ball in the hole to having some confidence and going out and playing. But I played with confidence that week. I took a long stretch off and kind of got my head back in the game and started just playing golf.
I think it meant a lot, and as I told Tom Lehman, it was coming, it just took longer than it should have.

DAVE SENKO: If you could take a mulligan this year, what would it be?

DAVIS LOVE III: That I was playing for a record rather than playing for to win golf tournaments. I was trying to make the Ryder Cup team to keep my streak alive. You know, I'm not going out to hit the drives in a crucial situation, I was trying to keep the consecutive streak going, and that doesn't really help the team. I wasn't playing for what I should have been playing for. It's the temptation. It doesn't matter if it's thinking about your stroke or trying to make the cut or trying to make the TOUR Championship or whatever, it's results, and I fell into the trap of playing for Ryder Cup points rather than just playing to win and letting them come.

DAVE SENKO: (Inaudible.)

DAVIS LOVE III: No, but it's typical of a golfer. You know, you always fall back into aiming to the right no matter how many times somebody tells you to aim to the left. It just feels good to aim to the right. You know, doing the little things is what's hard, being consistent. That's why the Jack Nicklauses and the Tiger Woodses are so impressive, they do the little things better than everyone else, and it's the mental day to day things that you have to do to be consistently successful. It's easy while you've got it going good, and then you just relax and it goes back to the other way really quick.

DAVE SENKO: Can you talk about your feelings on the recent change in the FedEx Cup Playoff format and perhaps the role that the policy board played in that change?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, we've played a big role for the last two years in all of it, but we had a lot of input from the tournaments. When it was getting down to the last little details it's taken everybody a long time to catch up with what we've been looking at for two years. We had to keep it quiet for almost a year and a half.

So we've been behind the scenes working on this and playing with the models and all that, so we kind of knew 90 percent where we had it, so we started throwing it out to the players and you guys started getting a hold of it. Everybody started getting ideas, and the tournament has finally figured out how it affects the Memorial, how it affects Memphis, how it affects Canadian Open. Then everybody starts throwing their opinions in, and then you announce the schedule. Everything is going along, and when you come down to the last month before you have to finalize everything, you get a lot of opinions.

So I think the process went very, very well. It came out exactly where I think the player directors, the majority of the staff wanted it a year ago. But we had a lot of discussion that led us in a whole bunch of different directions. Unfortunately it gets out in the public where it really doesn't it confuses people a little bit. I think we let it get confusing to people.

I think we did a great job. It's exciting. The great thing is we've been talking about this for a long time and it's going to be something new and different, and hopefully we'll have a better situation at the end of the year than we did this year.
We'll have an exciting finish with the majority of the players playing four tournaments in a row. I haven't heard since the last board meeting, I really haven't heard anything but positives from players and tournaments.

DAVE SENKO: Just going back to the Ryder Cup for a moment, where did you actually watch the Matches?

DAVIS LOVE III: I didn't.

DAVE SENKO: You didn't watch them?

DAVIS LOVE III: I was at a horse show watching my daughter. I didn't have much chance to watch it.

DAVE SENKO: Because you're fairly friendly with Darren Clarke, you didn't see anything of his performance?

DAVIS LOVE III: I saw a few highlights of Darren, but unfortunately when we got up in the morning we already knew we were behind, and it kind of took the fun out of going and watching it. If we would have been winning when I got up and looked at my Blackberry and we would have been ahead, I'd have probably watched some of it. But being behind, it was kind of not being there and then being behind, it was kind of depressing.

DAVE SENKO: (Inaudible.)

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't know. I'm a good armchair quarterback. My daughter was getting concerned. I didn't know she cared about football that much.

DAVE SENKO: You can't go to Alabama and not care about football.

DAVIS LOVE III: She texted me right when we were talking about it. That's got to be a hard place to be a football coach.

DAVE SENKO: Except for Tiger, only Larry Mize has won Augusta in his 20s. Any explanation for that?

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't have one. Experience is really good there, but other than that, I don't know. Tiger had a lot of experience in his 20s. He played from a very young age. I think experience would be the only answer I would have.

DAVE SENKO: Different than other majors in terms of players in their 20s?

DAVIS LOVE III: Yeah, I think it's you know, it's not a typical golf course. It's a place you have to get comfortable with and you have to have obviously an incredibly good short game no matter what, but you have to learn your way around there a little bit, and I think certainly Tiger had enough experience at a young age and obviously the power to go with it.

DAVE SENKO: I'm not going to ask you if you think Tiger would be a good golf course designer because I'm going to assume that your answer would be yes, but what I am interested in is what kinds of characteristics do you think we will see on the golf courses that he designs?

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't know. That's a good question. I'm real interested to see what kind the course that Phil did in Scottsdale got really good reviews, Whisper Rock. I'm interested because I'm the contractor basically for the developer to build his course, so it's going to be a lot of fun. I get to kind of sit back and we're going to do a land plan for him and we're going to do kind of, ‘Here's where you can go, what do you want to do?’ We're not going to design it for him. He and his partner and architect it's going to be fun to see.

We almost had one of the deals with Tiger, too. It's going to be interesting to see where Tiger goes and what he likes. I think when I build a course, when Phil builds a course we built a course for Fred (Couples), it's interesting to see what players we see what Jack (Nicklaus) likes and we see what Arnie (Palmer) likes and what (Tom) Weiskopf likes, so it's going to be interesting to see what actually it is Tiger likes and see if some of these tournaments get him to build them a golf course like that and see who will come play it.

My wife and I went to the Phillips Art Gallery in Washington and we walked around, and I keep using this analogy, and we all can go to an art gallery and we're all going to like something different, but if it's a classic, it's a classic no matter what. I might like Ross and Raynor, someone else might like Tillinghast. That doesn't make any of them wrong. If you don't like Jack's courses or Arnie's courses or Pete Dye's courses, it doesn't make them wrong.

It's going to be interesting to see what Tiger likes and what Phil likes, and we know what Crenshaw likes. I followed him around like a puppy dog. I want to learn what he's figured out because he's got it figured out. We'll basically see what those guys do.

The opportunity for us is they're looking for marketing. Phil Mickelson is going to be a huge name, Tiger Woods is going to be a huge name wherever he goes. I think that gives a guy like Jack Nicklaus an opportunity to go out and be creative. Obviously Jack and Arnie have been very successful. Their courses don't look anything alike.

DAVE SENKO: On the subject of architecture, right now a lot of TPC golf courses are being renovated and changed. Do you think this is a product of changes in the game or perhaps a statement about the quality of the architecture that a lot of these TPCs have had and is it a new direction for the Tour?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, it's obvious that some of them weren't successful financially and we're trying to sell them. And some of them weren't popular with the players, like Boston. I talked to Brad Faxon about Boston a couple nights ago, and they're just beside themselves how nice it is.
Unfortunately, you get a little aggressive and you just let a guy go and you don't get what you want, just like building a house. Sometimes you build a house and the kitchen doesn't work and you've got to fix it. Boston just didn't work for the tournament, and they're making it very, very nice.

TPC Jacksonville, it was just like the stuff that Augusta does all the time; we finally went and did it. We got excellent drainage, we got sub air systems under the greens. We can play if there's a flood. We can play. And then we re-did the mounds. But there are a lot of courses built with the stadium concept that it hurt the architecture trying to build the stadium concept, so we learned. We're evolving. I think David Pillsbury is doing a great job of while we need to rebuild a 20 year old set of greens, let's fix the rest of it and make it work.

I mean, Scottsdale and Jacksonville have made the Tour a lot of money, the players a lot of money. We've just got to get the rest of them to where they carry their weight. We've got a lot of good golf courses but we don't have a lot of great golf courses, and that's where we're trying to get. Our level of service, running clubs, every facet of our business except for our architecture is at the top of its class, so we're just trying to update that.

DAVE SENKO: What are the things about the FedEx Cup that you think is going to make it work and take off to another level?

DAVIS LOVE III: I think just continuity throughout the year, something that people can really understand, that we actually are playing for a prize rather than Tiger winning the money title by $2 million or Vijay winning the money title by $2 million. It's kind of boring at the end of the year. I'll give you an example: Today if the Dallas Cowboys win every regular season game and say, ‘Hey, we won them all, we're not playing the playoffs’, everybody would be like, ‘Wait a minute!’ It's like Tiger and Phil feeling like the TOUR Championship at the end of the year doesn't mean that much because they've already won their majors and their tournaments and their money title or their scoring title and they don't have to play because it really doesn't cap off their season if they win. There's nothing riding on it.

So we figured out a way to make it where the last four weeks there's a lot riding on it. You know, if you're 60th on the money list with four weeks to go, you can win the FedEx Cup or you can get sent home in two weeks.

You know, that's the interesting part about it. You can win $10 million or you can have two weeks off. You miss the first two cuts and you're done for the year. I think it adds a little excitement and a lot more pressure.

I've heard some players say, ‘Well, I'm going to play three of the four no matter what.’ Well, you might not be able to win. You've got a lot of tournaments to play at the end of the year, but so do the NFL players or the NBA players. If you win the NBA Championship, you've played a lot of basketball the last month. Or if you win the Super Bowl you've played a lot of football that other guys didn't play.

I think with the "chase for your card" season, it gives you a chance to relax. If you want to play a couple times, fine. If you need to play for your card, it gives you a lot of great opportunities and people get to still watch golf and have golf on TV, but it won't be tournaments struggling to see if they can get Tiger to show up in October or Phil to show up in October.

DAVE SENKO: It's going to add some entertainment value and some interest, et cetera, et cetera, but when you look at how you're going to measure yourself by it, what does winning the FedEx Cup mean and how does that differ from winning the money list because we're still talking about a season long effort?

DAVIS LOVE III: It's different just because it resets and then you have to play the last four. You can't get ahead. You can't just coast the last two or three and win because you had a big lead. It makes the whole season more important rather than just winning four or five tournaments, and it gives you an exciting finish rather than a boring finish is the big thing.

It's just another prize. Like Tim says about THE PLAYERS Championship, if the players say it's not important, then it won't be. But I think because of the way it finishes, because of the prize, because of everybody wanting to be No. 1, it really is. The best thing about cutting it every week is guys don't feel like, well, I'm 100 percent, I've got to play every week and I don't have a chance, and that's a lot to ask of a guy. Well, you don't have to play the last one or the last two. A lot of guys don't get to play the fourth week anyway; there's only 30. I think it's exciting. We've got to do it, though.

It's like NASCAR. I hated the idea of NASCAR changing what I was used to watching since I was 10 or 12 years old. I hated the idea of it. And then I hated it even when guys got left out that I wanted in the Top 10. But the more I watch it, now I like it. I wish they'd tweak it a little bit, sure, but I wish they'd tweak the baseball playoffs, too. I still love watching it.

DAVE SENKO: How often do you think the FedEx Cup champion will be Player of the Year?

DAVIS LOVE III: I don't know, 50/50 maybe. I think Player of the Year is still you don't have to win the money title to get Player of the Year. They handed me a sheet of Tiger's accomplishments, Golf Channel, and they said what's the best one? Four majors in a row. If you win all four majors, you're player of the year, no matter what happens with the FedEx Cup. You win THE PLAYERS Championship and the U.S. Open and a World Golf Championship and Atlanta, you're probably going to be Player of the Year. The guy that wins the FedEx Cup, he won the you can still win the batting title or the Cy Young and not win the World Series. It's another level.

Sure, the money title is going to be hidden, but it's still going to be there. Player of the Year is still going to be voted on by your peers.

I think we're pretty smart. We can factor in, well, just because Zach Johnson won two of the last four and he won the FedEx Cup but he didn't win a major, Tiger won two and two World Golf Championships and three other tournaments, he's Player of the Year.

DAVE SENKO: Luke, thanks for joining us. As we've done with a couple of the other players we've had in, just maybe take a look back at your 2006 season and look ahead to next, the upcoming season, 2007.

LUKE DONALD: Yeah, well, I felt 2006 was a very positive year for me, certainly helped by my win last year, got me off to a good start, gave me some confidence going into this year. And any time you win, it's always a good feeling, gives you even more confidence and propelled me to the Top 10 in the World Rankings with my win at the Honda.

It's been very consistent. I had a lot of Top 10s this year, felt like I could have won more events. I even gave myself a chance to win at the PGA Championship this year.

You know, there's still room for improvement, and looking forward to '07, slightly different PGA TOUR schedule with the FedEx Cup, looking forward to having seeing how that pans out with the new points system, but looking forward to trying to win more events and compete in majors.

DAVE SENKO: Last week didn't go quite the way you and David Howell would have hoped despite a good first round. What's your form and your mental confidence going into this week?

LUKE DONALD: My form hasn't been as good as I would have liked it to be. I've been struggling a little bit with my ball striking from tee to green, which is usually a strong aspect. But I've been working with my coach and I feel like it's getting back to where it should be, and hopefully it's only a matter of hitting a few good shots to really get my confidence going.

But obviously when you hit some loose shots and a few wayward ones, it does affect your confidence a little bit, and again, I think I need a run of some good shots, good strikes, to get the confidence back and the mental side up a little bit.

DAVE SENKO: You’ve had better weather here than in Barbados last week.

LUKE DONALD: Yeah, it was strange weather last week, a mixture of sunshine and heavy showers and quite a lot of wind. So when you're not quite on your game and there's a lot of wind out there, it's very tough to find it because it takes you out of your rhythm quite a lot. It wasn't ideal for practicing and spending a lot of time on the range because it's just not very beneficial when it's that windy.

The weather has obviously been beautiful the last two days. I've heard there could be some weather coming on the weekend, but hopefully it stays away.

DAVE SENKO: Obviously the British papers cover you as a home country guy, and yet you play the U.S. tour and of course you went to school here. Do you sort of look at yourself as a man of two worlds?

LUKE DONALD: In a way, yes. I've lived here now for nine, going on ten years. I've made my home here for the last nine or ten years. I feel comfortable playing over here. I enjoy playing on the PGA TOUR, but I also love going back to the European Tour and supporting that Tour and going home and seeing my family.

I still consider myself British through and through, but I think the American people have definitely accepted me as almost one of their own in a way, they see me so much, which is very nice.

DAVE SENKO: I was talking to Geoff Ogilvy, and of course there are 25 Australians or something like that. But in effect it's become a World Tour. Do you find that the American public accepts basically everybody on Tour and they really don't care the nationality except maybe Tiger Woods?

LUKE DONALD: Well, Tiger has a huge following obviously. You know, I'm sure with any nation they're always going to be slightly more impartial towards their own people. You know, they've been very welcoming to me at every event, and I think when it comes down to it, they just want to see good golf. If you hit good shots, they're going to appreciate it.

DAVE SENKO: Adam Scott was in here earlier, and he talked about how the expectations for younger players have gone up because of Tiger. Do you feel that more is expected of you, either here or in England?

LUKE DONALD: Because of Tiger?

DAVE SENKO: Yeah.

LUKE DONALD: I expect a lot out of myself. I think obviously Tiger raises the bar. You know, he's set it very high, and it's going to take a lot of great play and a lot of hard work to get where he is right now. You know, I've got to a point in my career where I really feel like I should be competing and winning tournaments regularly, having chances, competing in majors, having good chances to win, and that's where I feel like I am right now.

I think anytime you don't set yourself high goals, you're not going to succeed very well. I think I've got to a point where I can set them as high as I really want, and I'd rather be a little bit disappointed rather than being satisfied with something like just finishing Top 10 every week.

DAVE SENKO: How difficult is it to stay patient when you're trying to win a major?

LUKE DONALD: Again, Tiger is only a couple years older than me, and he's won, what, 11 majors, I think? I've got a lot of catching up to do. Obviously winning 11 majors would be unbelievable for me. I've got to get my first win first.
The point I was trying to make is Tiger, as good as he is, he's way ahead of the game, and he's only a couple years older than me. But it is very tough to be patient, especially in majors. I think it's a double edged sword. You want it so much that you try a little bit harder. Sometimes that doesn't work. You've got to let it happen. You have to be patient.

DAVE SENKO: How big a step was the PGA at Medinah? Of course you played very well, and I'm sure you're disappointed a little bit that you didn't win, but they always say you have to sort of step up the ladder. That was your first big move in a major. I just wondered where that pushed you.

LUKE DONALD: It gave me a good insight to what it's like to be competing and having a chance to win. The more I can get myself into those kind of situations the better I'll cope with it down the road. I thought I played quite nicely Saturday, just nothing happened. I had no momentum, I couldn't get something going.

Tiger on the other hand was making the putts. He's been there so many times before, it comes second nature to him. He felt comfortable. Obviously I've got a little ways to go before I feel comfortable. That was a good step for me to get towards that comfort zone, and the more I can get in those situations I think it will become easier.

DAVE SENKO: Talking about Medinah, a lot was made of the fact that you wore red on the last day, as did Tiger, but I seem to recall you wear red a great deal in the final round of tournaments.

LUKE DONALD: I have worn red before. I don't always wear red. I've worn a lot of white trousers on the last day. I won at Honda wearing white trousers, I've won in Sweden, and maybe it's just a good luck charm. At the beginning of the week I decided especially in majors when you don't want to be thinking about stuff like ‘What am I going to wear?’ I decided at the beginning of the week it was going to be red.

Obviously Saturday night I knew I was playing with Tiger. I think if I changed my outfit it was almost like giving in to him already on the first hole. It was nothing against Tiger. I wasn't trying to make a statement or anything, it was just what I decided to do. I thought if I changed it, I'd have already lost; I was giving in to him already. No, I just decided to go with it.

DAVE SENKO: I don't know if it surprised you or not, but the only player to outscore Tiger Woods on average, anybody who's played more than five rounds with him is Padraig Harrington. Does that surprise you at all? What do you think of Padraig's chances of getting over the line in one of these major championships anytime soon?

LUKE DONALD: I think Padraig is very single minded. I think he has a lot of confidence that he can be as good as he wants and be as good as he can be. He has played against Tiger a few times on Sunday and come out on top.

I don't know what characteristics that takes, but you have to be very strong willed and not watch Tiger and just do your own thing. It's a credit to Padraig's game that he's been able to do that. Yeah, I think he has all the talent in the world and he's come very close to winning majors. I think it's only a matter of time. I hope at least one European breaks through and finally gets past the drought we've been experiencing.

DAVE SENKO: If one European does manage to win one soon 

LUKE DONALD: I hope so. Winning majors has a lot to do with having a strong mental side, and I think you get one guy who wins it, it kind of opens up the mental side for everyone else. They think, well, Padraig just won, I can win now. I'm hoping that one will win and it will open the floodgates.

DAVE SENKO: Did you watch Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros, or some of the other European players a lot when you were younger?

LUKE DONALD: I'm not sure about the other guys, but growing up, I watched Faldo a lot. He was in his prime when I was kind of just starting my game. I started playing golf around '86, '87 is when I started, and he was pretty good at that time and for the next almost decade. He was an inspiration to me, how dedicated, how single minded he was and how determined he was to be successful.

DAVE SENKO: And Ballesteros?

LUKE DONALD: Seve, again, yeah, he was one of the first guys, too, that I remember watching a lot, and I've often said that those are the two guys that stand out for me when I was growing up. Seve for different reasons obviously. He was very flamboyant, came out with miraculous shots, had a great short game. The television coverage loved to follow him because of that, so I watched him a lot.

I guess both were equally I don't think I've ever tried to emulate any golfer, but watching them and seeing their success has made me want to practice harder.

DAVE SENKO: Would you like to have the game those guys have?

LUKE DONALD: I guess Seve's game would be a little bit more interesting. It would maybe cause a little more heartache and worrying, and Faldo's would be a little bit easier to take. I don't know, it's always nice to have those miraculous shots in your bag, but it's nice to have a steady game that Faldo had throughout his career. I guess steady, he was able to maybe have a little bit more of a longer career because of that, so I'll probably go with Faldo.

DAVE SENKO: I think you've won over $9 million on the PGA TOUR in a very short space of time, four or five years. Is there a temptation to get at all complacent with the rewards that are available here? Is that something that bothers you or something that you work on?

LUKE DONALD: No, there was definitely a period, I'm not sure if it was last year or the beginning of this year, where I was racking up Top 10s and I felt good about my game. But when I really sat down and thought about it, it wasn't really that satisfying to be Top 10. I think when you get the taste of winning, that's what you really want to do. Ultimately I'm playing out here to win.

I've been very lucky to get into the game at this point when, thanks to Tiger, the purses are huge. You can get into the mindset that, oh, finishing Top 10, I'm making my hundred grand or whatever it is every week, and just carry on going. To be honest, you feel a lot more satisfied as a player when you win. That's the kind of golf I'm trying to set for myself, nice high goals.

DAVE SENKO: Adam, thank you for joining us. Maybe before we get started with some questions, as the year winds down maybe you could just give us a quick maybe recap on your season and how you felt 2006 went for you.

ADAM SCOTT: Yeah, overall 2006 was I think a pretty successful year for me. It was a lot of good golf I played, and it was important to me to finish the year off with a win there in Atlanta. I think I played well enough to win some events but didn't get it done, so it was good to get across the line there.

You know, it's a nice way for me to start next year at Mercedes and hopefully in some good form.

DAVE SENKO: How much closer are you to winning a major after this year?

ADAM SCOTT: Well, I don't know, it's kind of hard to answer that question. I feel like I'm a good enough player to win a major if I'm on my game that week. I really feel in the past it's been a case of I've not played well at majors.

The Open last year and the PGA were really the first two weeks I played nicely at a major. You know, that's a positive thing at least because that's part of the battle is trying to get your game in good shape for them. But I think I'm playing good enough that I can win a major if I'm in position.

Obviously it's about closing the deal. When that happens it's kind of unpredictable. But I feel my game is at a point where I can win a major.

DAVE SENKO: It's kind of a time of the year where people are testing equipment. Are you playing with anything, playing around with anything?

ADAM SCOTT: Titleist has a new driver and new golf ball coming, so I'm using the new golf ball this week for the first time, and the driver is going to remain testing for a little while longer yet.

DAVE SENKO: What's the difference?

ADAM SCOTT: There are quite of lot of differences in the driver. Really it's based around the driver I'm using now, other than I think they played around with the moment of inertia.

So apparently I'm going to hit it straighter, which is a good thing. But I drove it so well this year, it's hard to just put my driver down and pick up a new one and go right out with it.

DAVE SENKO: What do you have now?

ADAM SCOTT: I have the Titleist 905R, and I started using it in Hawaii at the start of this year.

DAVE SENKO: And what about the ball?

ADAM SCOTT: The ball is the same name but I believe it's got a different cover, and I believe that's the only difference with the ball. They don't really tell me that kind of stuff. They just ask if I like it or not.

DAVE SENKO: Getting back to the finishes at the PGA and the Open, in terms of did you find something that maybe you were not doing that allowed you to play better at those two events than you had previously, or is it?

ADAM SCOTT: I mean, I actually played better at all the majors this year. I didn't finish great at The Masters or the U.S. Open, although the U.S. Open I had 3 over my last three to finish 20th or something. I was going quite well.

I think just believing in myself a little more was really all it was, staying aggressive and playing golf how I normally play golf. For some reason I kind of tightened up a little and played too sensitive in majors I thought, and that led to poor results, whereas this year I treated it just as any other tournament and I went out and played and tried to hit the shots that I saw and stayed aggressive and tried to make birdies.

Even though the winning scores aren't low, you're still going to have to make birdies to win.

DAVE SENKO: The FedEx Cup, is that going to alter the way you play your schedule? Will you play less at the start of the year gearing towards the end of the year, or have you thought about that?

ADAM SCOTT: The schedule is a bit different. I think I'll probably play a little less at the start. There's a lot of events to play in the last two months of the FedEx Cup, so I'm probably going to look quiet at the start and come home stronger.

DAVE SENKO: You were talking a little bit about the majors and feeling what it's like to maybe possibly be in contention. What is it that last four holes on the last day what kind of attributes does it take for a golfer to either shrug off the pressure or overcome the pressure, and are those kind of situations that can define careers?

ADAM SCOTT: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's mostly a mental test at that point with four holes to go in a major. If you can just compose yourself and keep yourself under control, then you've got a big advantage because I think most everyone would be feeling the pressure at that point.

You know, it's just really up to you how you can deal with it and how you respond to it and how you play. Some guys play their best when they feel most nervous. Even though they feel nervous, they know how to control their emotions and get the job done, and it's definitely career defining.

The last four holes, I mean, I hate to bring it up, but you look at a guy like Greg Norman or Colin Montgomerie, and they could be multiple, multiple major winners, and they just weren't for whatever reason. Some were bad breaks and some were bad shots, but it's definitely career defining, a major.

DAVE SENKO: Is that something you're born with or something that you can learn?

ADAM SCOTT: I think it's a bit of both. I think you can be born with it, which is a nice gift to have, but I think you've got to work on it and learn about yourself. You can only figure it out once you're in that position, and the more you're in that position, the easier it gets, I believe.

DAVE SENKO: You had a lot of success early in your career. Was that overwhelming at all, and how much did it raise your expectations?

ADAM SCOTT: Early in my career as in like when?

DAVE SENKO: I believe your first win was at 23 and then the past couple years obviously you've done well. Has this been how much did it raise your expectations?

ADAM SCOTT: Well, it didn't really raise them any. When I won in Boston, that was a great breakthrough win for me to get on the PGA TOUR, but I had won three or four tournaments in Europe previous to that, so I believed that I was a winner out here. It was just a matter of time for me to get my game right to come to America and play over here.

It didn't really raise my expectations. Maybe after winning THE PLAYERS in '04, I thought this could be a really great point to keep going and go win majors right away, but it didn't happen like that. I try and stay really realistic, have goals and expectations so I don't become disappointed. Yeah, maybe I was a little disappointed at the end of 2004 to look back after playing so well to win THE PLAYERS to not play that well in the majors.

DAVE SENKO: How do you keep yourself hungry? Is it easy to get complacent playing on the PGA TOUR with the rewards that are there for finishing in the top 10, top 15? Do you have to do something to keep yourself
 
ADAM SCOTT: I think it depends on the person, but winning is I think the most important thing to me. This year I proved to myself that it was, even though I had a great year and played really consistent, I pushed myself hard the last three, four months of the season to get a win because I wouldn't have been happy finishing Top 10 on the Money List and having 11 Top 10s and not winning. I mean, that's not a successful year as far as I'm concerned.

A Top 10 ranked player in the world should be winning golf tournaments, so I was really happy to win in Atlanta.

But you've got to keep pushing yourself, and that was the attitude I had, keep staying intense and keep pushing yourself, don't be happy with finishing second and playing well week in, week out. You've got to win, and that's what we're all out here to do, I think.

DAVE SENKO: Who do you consider to be the best player in the world without a major championship to his name?

ADAM SCOTT: Without a major? Probably Sergio, I think. I say that because I think he's had some good chances in majors. You know, he could have had one or two or three maybe by now, but he hasn't. You know, and he may not have played that well this year, but I'm kind of overlooking that in saying I think he's probably the best player without a major.

DAVE SENKO: Just curious, since you guys were born in the same year and what not, when did you first meet Sergio and what kind of history, if any, did you guys have through the amateur ranks, both having turned pro so early?

ADAM SCOTT: I never actually met him as an amateur. Well, I was an amateur when I met him in Australia in a tournament, probably the year 2000, I think, and he was already a pro. I played a practice round with him down there. Yeah, we had no real history of amateur or junior.

I think it was all set up by the management company, IMG. They ran the tournament and obviously managed Sergio, so they set it up, which was good. So yeah, those seven years have gone by pretty quick actually.

DAVE SENKO: Maybe it's some sort of race, so, you know, the first guy to win a major is going to be the biggest young star. Do you see it that way at all?

ADAM SCOTT: Well, it could be seen that way, sure. I think we both feel like we should be winning majors, absolutely. I don't think we're viewing it as a race to see who wins the first one because I hope to win more than one. Getting one is great, but I'm hoping to win more than one.

Yeah, he's definitely got a better record in majors than me, but I think it's just taken me a little bit more time to get comfortable in that position.

Q.I was just talking to Geoff Ogilvy about the great year for Australians, you winning and he winning and going back there. He said he's still an Australian football fan but he's learned that if you don't talk American football in the fall here, there's nothing to say. As a guy who briefly went to school here, and I just wonder what your response is to that.

ADAM SCOTT: Well, you know, our football team wasn't very inspirational. I don't know that we won a game while I was there. I haven't learned American football that good, but I certainly am following it a little bit more now. I know what's going on. I know what's happening in the football world.

Yeah, UNLV, going there didn't help me much. I should have gone to Florida or somewhere else.

DAVE SENKO: Talking about the majors a little bit, except for Tiger, nobody since Larry Mize has won Augusta in their 20s. Any reason for that? Any theories on that?

ADAM SCOTT: Interesting. Yeah, I think it's a place that experience counts a lot for. I think just knowing the place backwards is important, especially the greens and pitching around the greens. You might find little spots that are just safe havens around the green. If you get in trouble you can get over there and have a good chance of getting it up and down. I guess it could be the course is a little intimidating, I guess, and when you're not that experienced there it can catch up with you.

You know, I think the expectations on younger guys certainly skyrocketed after Tiger came out and performed as well as he did, and I think also when Sergio was the next kind of young guy to come out and perform well. I mean, he performed fantastically his first year as a pro. So all expectations went up on the younger players and everyone kind of thought, well, these 20 year olds are going to take over the TOUR.

I think the game catches up with everyone and experience counts for a lot more than most people think, I believe.

DAVE SENKO: Tiger was in here yesterday talking about the golf swing is kind of a continuing work in progress. Do you ever foresee yourself going through the kind of major overhaul on your golf swing that he did within the last couple years?

ADAM SCOTT: I hope not. I mean, that sounds like hard work (laughter). That sounds like hard work to me. It is I agree, it evolves. My swing is different now than it was five years ago and it was different when I was 15. The swing just kind of evolves.

I guess as your body changes and you get older, you can't go at it as hard, and at some point you've got to make a few adjustments. I really I don't know, I kind of see my swing being along the same lines hopefully. Partly you've got to learn it and then it just becomes instinct.

DAVE SENKO: As we all know it's been a great year on the PGA TOUR for Australian golf with you winning the TOUR Championship, Geoff winning the U.S. Open and a WGC event. Do you feel there's increased expectation by fans Down Under for you guys to kick on even more in 2007?

ADAM SCOTT: It's tough to say. I mean, I've been at home for the last month and played two events down there but didn't really get that feeling of expectation from them. I think probably from the players' point of view there's expectation that we're going to have another year like that and someone is going to win another major and do well. We've got some young guys coming off the Nationwide Tour that are great players and I expect them one of them to have a real impact here next year.

I think there's probably more expectation over this side of the pond rather than in Australia. I mean, it's kind of a little far away down there.

DAVE SENKO: (Inaudible.)

ADAM SCOTT: I think so. I think this year especially it's been reported a lot on the dominance of Australia, the fact that there are 25 of us out here every week, which is a considerable amount, and I don't think that really gets reported that much in Australia. I think us winning does get reported quite a lot down there, but expectations, well, yeah, maybe there are some expectations, but I think there's more expectation over here than back home.

DAVE SENKO: Thank you, Adam.