FIRST ROUND NOTES AND INTERVIEWS
Navistar LPGA Classic Presented by Maxxorce
RTJ Golf Trail, Capitol Hill, The Senator
Prattville, Ala.
September 25, 2008
First-round interviews: Jill McGill
First -round notes
Q. Can you take us through your year, how you feel you’ve been playing and anything you’ve been working on specifically?
JILL McGILL: Well, my year started off in Hawaii. It was just okay. I had come from Australia, which was okay. I had a good finish in Mexico City, which was nice to put on the board. I think I was either third or tied for third. I hit a lull but feel like I’ve been working hard on my game, not only physically but mentally. I just haven’t been able to relax out there all year. It seems like I just keep on trying too hard. And I’ve been working with a guy at home, Dr. George Pratt, on the mental side of the game and mostly helping to relax. Nothing about really visualizing the shots or anything golf specific. It’s just an overall feeling of being able to control your emotions and being in a really good place. And today, a lot of people have said my swing came together, my putting came together. Today I was calm, cool, collected and having a good time and enjoying myself. I know that’s how I want to play.
Q. Just talk about your final hole, you just left that birdie putt a few inches short. How sweet would that have been to finish on that one?
JILL McGILL: Well, it would have been great to finish with that. Unfortunately I didn’t hit as good of a wedge in there as I would liked to have. These greens are really fast, and if you get above the hole, you always hear in the Pro Am, “Oh, never up, never in”. But with those downhills, dead in the jar, short, I’ll take it. It’s much better than coming back from six feet.
Q. Who is Dr. Pratt?
JILL McGILL: Actually you can look him up online. He has a couple of books out. He plays at one of the clubs I play in San Diego, and he’s just a really, really nice man. He’s a psychologist but he’s not sports specific. He’s helped people in sports, baseball, football, golf. I guess a lot of members go to him. But he has some pretty interesting things, and his stuff makes sense.
Q. What type of stuff is it?
JILL McGILL: It’s a lot of positive thinking. It’s a lot of not visualizing golf specific, but maybe visualizing things that are bothering you and using a visual to get rid of that sort of thing. Sometimes I picture blowing it up with TNT and other times putting it in a balloon and having it float away. Depends on where you are and what you’re feeling inside. But you know, I wish everybody could feel the way that I felt today because it’s just a good way to be. Just happy, you’re trying to do what you do and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out and you just move on to the next thing; where I just get caught up in so many of the minutia details, and it’s just not worth the time or effort.
Q. What’s the key to a bogey-free round?
JILL McGILL: Well, you know, you always try to plot your way around the golf course, and I think the more you think about the positives and what you’re trying to achieve, rather than you don’t want to make a bogey, like today, it just happens. Like I said, making that 12 footer on the first hole definitely was huge for my momentum. But at the same time, I don’t feel like I would have crumbled if had it not have gone in. Just, okay, what happened on the drive; I wasn’t as aggressive and it was one of the few of them today that I wasn’t thinking really positively about what I wanted to happen and lo and behold, ended up near the bunkers. So that just proves the fact of positive thinking.