Tiger's Post Final Round Q&A

After the round, a few good questions and answers:

Q. Can you talk about the genesis of your strategy to not hit driver this week? You had said that you didn't know much about this course. Did you read about it on the flight over?

TIGER WOODS: Nope.

Q. It was just when you first got here. Was there a moment when it happened?

TIGER WOODS: No. As I was playing the golf course, I would hit a couple of drives, and the driver would go 350, 370 yards. How can you control that out here? You can't control that. The fairways become they're hard enough to hit as it is, and you add driver and they go that far, now how hard is it to hit? So I just felt in the end if you stayed out of the bunkers this entire week and had just a decent week on the greens, I felt that I would be in contention on the back nine.

And I hit the ball well the entire week and I felt like I had wonderful touch on the greens, except for the last nine holes yesterday. Other than that, I felt that my strategy was sound. It was going to keep me out of trouble.

Guys who were trying to hit the ball over the bunkers, they're going to have shorter clubs on the greens, no doubt about that, but a lot of these flags you can't attack with wedges. On 4, I had I'm aiming 30 feet left of the hole, and I couldn't keep it on the greens. That's the nature of the golf course and the way it was playing this week.

I felt the conservative approach was the way to go. And it lent itself to that this week, especially with four par 5s. And you figure if you just handle the par 5s, that's 16 under par right there. You sprinkle in a few more here and there around the golf course and you're looking pretty good.

Q. Has Hoylake stood the test of time and should The Open come back here, and if so, why?

TIGER WOODS: I think it's a fantastic test. With the golf course being this fast, it lent itself to just amazing creativity. Granted, if you would have had easier pins I'm sure it would have gone lower. These are the most difficult pins I've ever seen at an Open Championship. And a couple of times you feel like if you hit a putt too hard you'll actually putt it right off the green, and you never have that feeling at an Open. But this week it certainly was the case.

And I think because the yardage played short, in some cases, because it was so fast, you hit 3 wood, driver, hitting it 380 yards down there, you're going to have a lot of short irons in there. The only defense they had was pin locations and hard, dry conditions. And we couldn't really go all that low.

Q. Should it come back here?

TIGER WOODS: Yes.

And here he talks about controlling spin into the greens:

Q. Your strategy off the tee and having to hit all the long irons sort of takes for granted the fact that you have to be hitting your long irons really well. How well were you hitting them? How tough might it have been if you weren't, especially your approaches?

TIGER WOODS: As far as my control, probably one of the best ball striking weeks I've ever had, as far as control. That's shaping the ball, moving my traj and different heights and really controlling my spin going into the greens. It wasn't getting away from me. Yeah, probably one of the best ball striking weeks I've ever had.

If I wasn't hitting it well, as you alluded to, it would have been pretty difficult around here. This golf course you had to really control your ball in order to have a chance. And I was able to do that the entire week.

Also you have to remember that if you're with the flags the way we they were, you're going to have a bunch of 40 and 50 footers, and my pace was good all week. A bunch of tap ins, my pace was really, I felt, sound all week, especially today when I really needed it. I had a lot of kick ins and putts that I thought I made just kind of skirt off on the edge.