There’s a number of articles on the wires about Mike Weir’s 8th career win. Chris Johnson’s piece at the Canadian Press goes into the interesting notion that Weir says some (and he didn’t name who) sort of gave up on him during his struggles.
“When you’re doing great everybody jumps on the bandwagon,” Weir said Tuesday on a conference call. “When you’re not doing so good you find out quickly who’s on your side and who’s not. You find out a lot about different people.”
The conference call has some interesting remarks from Weir. That isn’t always the case as Weir can be pretty reticent and careful with his comments. As a follow on Johnson’s story, Weir had this to say about his three years in the wild:
It was a good learning experience actually the past few years, because the game of golf has its ups and downs. It does for everybody. I don’t lose perspective of that, but other people do sometimes. There aren’t too many players that don’t have some down times. Pretty much every player does at some point and you’ve got to get back in it and be resiliant.
On the Presidents Cup:
There was added pressure. Obviously there were questions about whether Gary should have picked me. There were lots of questions. Obviously beating Tiger did a lot for my confidence. I took a lot away from that and there’s no question there’s a correlation.
I asked him about his penchant for playing well in tough conditions and on tough courses. His remarks were intriguing, especially his apparent put-down of the “bomb and gouge” crowd that simply blast it, but can’t finesse shots when they need to:
I think in the wind I hit the ball pretty low. I’ve never been a high ball hitter, so my adjustments aren’t as great as someone who hits the ball high in the air. I don’t feel I have to adjust as much. Plus I think a lot of tour golf, the younger guys coming out don’t have as much creativity as some of the veterans. I really like to curve the ball. I’ve always been a player that likes to move the ball and when the wind is really blowing like that for one you have to hit the ball solidly and two, you have to put the right curve on the ball. If you’ve got it going the wrong way in the wind or miss hit it, it’ll make a huge drastic shift in the flight of the ball. If you can just hit those little cuts into the wind that hold it straight, or draw it into the wind to hold it straight, or ride the wind when you need to….
I see a lot of the young guys that are maybe more one dimensional. They have their swing and they have their standard shot, and they are not comfortable deviating from that when the conditions get tough.
