Tom Hoge reaps reward of new putter in bag

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Tom Hoge - TheGolfingHub
Tom Hoge was quick off the blocks at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with a 9-under. Photo: twitter.com

A factor behind Tom Hoge’s prolific 9-under on the opening day of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was a change in putter. Excerpts from an interview:

Great round. Take us through it.

Tom Hoge: Started off on 10 and holed a 30, 35 foot putt right off the bat. So that was really nice to see one go in early. Then I didn’t do a whole lot during the middle of the round, middle of my first nine holes, and just kind of kept going. 3-putted the second hole for par, actually, missed an easy one. Got me a little fired up there going to the third hole. Hit a few nice shots there.

Related Content: Tom Hoge thrives on several firsts at Pebble Beach

And then four I was over the back of the green, pretty dead, just trying to get a chance for par and the chip went in somehow. So I got a few of those. Hole 8, I was on the front of the green and made a bomb there as well. So that gets to be a lot of fun especially when you’re here at Pebble Beach on a beautiful day.

Great conditions, wind down, sun’s out, not cold. Talk about how that plays into a good round.

Hoge: I mean, it’s hard to be in a bad mood out here. I mean, Pebble Beach and perfect weather is about as good as it gets. So it was a lot of fun. I feel like I’ve been playing well. I’ve been excited to get out here on the golf course and feel like at Pebble Beach is a golf course that suits me well, so I was excited to get out here this week.

9-under today, knowing you got to play two other golf courses, does that kind of put a couple strokes in the bank for you do you think as you go over to Monterey and Spyglass?

Hoge: A little bit, but I was kind of in the situation a couple weeks ago in Palm Springs, scores were a little bit better there, but you keep switching golf courses and you feel like you got to keep making birdies the whole way because there’s a lot of great players out here, conditions look pretty good for the weekend, so I know that I got to keep moving forward. And Monterey’s very scorable tomorrow, so I hope to keep it going.

Big bounce-back performance today after last week. What was going right for you? I mean it seems like today you came in ready to play. What was the mindset coming into this week?

Hoge: Yeah, I made some putts. I switched putters this week. To see one go in right off the bat today on the first hole was huge for me. I felt like I made a lot of good putts there today, but I felt like I was very close last week, just a very hard golf course out there. I drove it in the rough a few too many times and just didn’t make enough putts.

But the margins are so small between missing a cut and being in contention so you just try to keep a positive attitude and just keep plugging away.

Obviously fans back, amateurs back this year, seems like a great atmosphere out here. Did you have a good time, do you love this tournament?

Hoge: Yeah, I enjoy it. You know, the years that we have bad weather it’s still fun to be out here. And then you get weather like today and this week and it’s fantastic.

PGA Tour

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