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BUICK INVITATIONAL

January 26, 2006

Thomas Levet

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA

JOHN BUSH: We've got our co leader at 7 under par Thomas Levet. Thanks for coming in for a few minutes. Nice playing out there today, a bogey free round. If we can get some comments from you.

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, I played solid from the start and didn't miss too many shots. That was the key on that little course, if you can call it little, compared to the other one, which is a monster. I just didn't drive the ball that good today. I just spent my time being like a yard or two in the rough. But that course, you can hit it on the green from there, and I putted solid all day long. Every little putt I had, I made it. From inside eight feet I was pretty good today. I just hit it a few times to eight feet, and that was the key for today.

JOHN BUSH: Take us through the birdies real quick starting at No. 10.

THOMAS LEVET: Driver I don't remember. It was too long ago. I made like a 12 foot putt for birdie.

No. 13, the par 5, I hit a drive in the rough and a 3 wood sorry, par 4. The next par 5 I know I made birdie. That was a two putt from 18 feet. The one before, I don't remember that birdie.

On the par 3 I hit a really bad 6 iron to a long way from the hole, about 35 feet, 33 feet, something like that, and made the putt.

On 18, I hit a bad drive again but down the middle. Then I hit a good 3 wood in the bunker. From the trap I hit it to three, four feet maybe.

Short par 4, No. 2, I hit exactly the drive I wanted, just short of the green left, short on the fairway, and I chipped it to inches. I made the birdie on that one.

No. 9, I hit it in the rough again. Then I like curled a 3 wood around next to the green on the left side, and I chipped it to eight, nine feet and made the putt.

Q. You came here through the Ryder Cup. I remember a couple years ago in Tampa you were trying to get in the Top 125. Why did you want to come back?

THOMAS LEVET: Because I did almost what I wanted in Europe, played the Ryder Cup, won tournaments, won big ones, small ones, been in the Top 5 or 6 on the Money List. Almost all my goals were fulfilled. The only thing missing was a major. I think that you need to come over here to improve your game and to be able to compete in the majors. If you're looking at it, you have three majors here in America and you have only one in Europe. So to have more chances and to improve as a player, my goals were to, first of all, keep my card, I've never done it here. The second one, I know I can win a tournament if I play well. So that's another goal. And finish as high as I can on the Money List, which is I hope in the Top 50. And maybe with my knowing the courses a little bit better, even closer to the lead.

My philosophy in golf is not to stay at my level and play with the guys you play with every day. It's to play with the best players in the world. When you look at who's at the top of the world, it's Tiger Woods, so you have to come and compete against him and improve. That's the joy of golf. On any given day any pro can beat anyone, and that's probably why so many people are playing the game.

Q. Justin Rose decided to come over here to get Ryder Cup points for Europe over here.

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, but if you start playing solid here and start winning and have rounds like I did today more often and often and often and see your name on top of the leaderboards, there is a guy who's going to give you a call around July and say can you play around here a little bit and put yourself on the team. That's what happened to Jesper Parnevik. He'd been playing here since '94. If you rack up enough points they might need you on the team. I need a lot more rounds like this one.

Q. Was it difficult last year playing new courses?

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, the problem is that when you don't play the Tour or it's your first year or first time on the course, scheduling is so tight now, you finish Sunday, you arrive Monday at the tournament and you have only Tuesdays and most of the time to practice on the course and get to know it, and during a round sometimes you don't see everything on a course. Most of the courses here, they're so precise, again, low scoring, that you have to really be careful where you go. You can miss your drive as long as you miss it on the right spot. With an angle to the green it's okay.

The day you don't know the course like an example here, No. 2 of the North Course. You can drive the ball as far as you want left and you have an easy chip. That guy that doesn't know the course, he looks at the pin, yeah, I can play straight at it, you go right of the pin and you're dead, you don't make birdie and you're struggling to make par, and the hole is only 110 yards.

Last year I know I made a lot of mistakes this way you would call stupid. Like Houston, I remember Houston No. 9 last year, I hit a super drive down the middle and asked my caddie, what do you think the play is here because I know that the green is too small, I can't stop the ball on the green, so you think I have to play short or long, and we look at what we have on the yardage books from only one day of practice, and you go, all right, short is okay. So I hit my ball a yard short of the green, which is exactly where I wanted to finish, around where I wanted to finish, and I faced just an impossible chip, put it 20 yards away. So you lose a stroke like that. It's course management, and the more you know the courses, the less mistakes you do like that.

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, I played '94, if you can call that play. I didn't play that good here. I played 2003, and I played very little here last year. This is my third year.

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, it's been difficult. You know, you

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: No, just to get some experience, just to see what it is. In 2003 I wanted to play here but I had some things to do in Europe, as well, and played over there, as well. So I did last year, I played I didn't want to say to the European Tour, look, I'm playing on the PGA TOUR only. I have a chance of playing both Tours, and when you look at the schedule, sometimes it's very, very nice, like you can play around the British Open in Scotland, you can play after the British Open so you spend all of July in Europe, which is the good time of the year, and then you avoid like the heat here.

But what I found this year that's why I moved to America the middle of last year. I moved all the family here because that kills you. After like four or five trips back and forth, basically it's June, and you feel like, oh, when is December, and it's in six months. So that's the problem. That was most of the problem last year.

Q. Where are you living?

THOMAS LEVET: I'm in Palm Beach now.

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, I think that's not very nice. At the end of the day, there are rules you need to follow, but sometimes the rules are I think they're a little stupid on that case. It's like we are golfers, you're good enough like he is and a U.S. Open champion, you should be able to play anywhere in the world without any problems, I think. It's a pity that he's got, what, a few starts only, right?

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, you make the commitments, it's the rules of the Tour. We try to follow them as much as possible. Last year I tried to follow the rules of both Tours, and at one stage on a Monday morning I didn't know if I was going to play the Seve Trophy or the tournament that was here somewhere in God knows where here. You're home, you're like in England, and you think, like, okay, where do I go now? In three hours' time I have to fly, is it to Germany or to America? It's a little difference. It's a bit difficult on that point.

Sometimes with the sponsors and all that, you get stuck. It could be a car company sponsoring the tournament in Europe and a car company here, and both Tours just say, look, we can't have you playing over there when another sponsor is over here. We try to follow the rules. Usually the Tours are okay with us. It's okay, it's pretty fair, I think. But sometimes it's tough on Michael Campbell.

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Actually today I had my best score at Torrey Pines from '94. I played in '94 and 2000, and did I play 2003 here? I think I played 2004 here, and this year.

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, I've shot 66 once here, '94, I think.

Q. Unrelated to you, what makes Sergio Garcia such a good Ryder Cup player?

THOMAS LEVET: I think it's because he's a fighter. He doesn't let go. He's like a boxer basically, and he likes the one on one. That's what makes him such a difficult guy to play in match play. I think that the team we had last time was a lot of guys that are good one on one. It makes it very difficult. He's got that mix together pretty well. That's why we want that cat.

Q. Is he pretty wound up, fired up and excited?

THOMAS LEVET: Oh, yeah, kind of. He's kind of like that, yes. But he's not he's trying to pull all the team with him, you know. In Europe that's how we do it. One guy feels something, you just tell him, you don't keep it for yourself only. It could be good, could be bad.

Q. When do you play in Europe?

THOMAS LEVET: Not until the BMW Championship in Wentworth, and then my second one will be the French Open. When you look at my position, I want to play here most of the year, and I just want to say thank you to the European Tour for putting me here by playing the Ryder Cup. So I'm going to play the minimum I can in Europe just to make my 11.

If you look at my schedule last year and the way things went, I just played here from August until the start of December, and I spent my time three weeks in China just to make three tournaments on the European Tour because I want to make my 11 and keep my card over there, as well.

In July or August, things are not going the way I want, I might favor one Tour over the other. I want to play 100 percent here and that's why my family is living in Palm Beach and not in London.

Q. (Inaudible).

THOMAS LEVET: Four weeks. But I played like four weeks most weeks in July. At the World Cup we called in another player at the World Cup on Tuesday night and said I can't hold a club, I couldn't swing. Can you come here in case. So he said okay, give me by tomorrow 2:00 o'clock and give me a decision tomorrow at 2:00 o'clock because I've got a flight at 3:00. The next day I went on the range, hit 20 balls and said, okay, I can hold up today. I don't know about tomorrow, but I went on like this from August until the middle of December, not knowing what the next day would be because I was injured. If I go back to that, I think it's the last time I'm going to be injured in my life because it's not very funny missing cuts. You don't enjoy it, you just and then after that it's not only your game that goes bad because you're hurt, it's your mind because you're hitting bad shots. It takes you like weeks to come back to good mindset. So that's why next time I'm injured, see you in a month. It's okay to miss three tournaments. It's not that big a deal.

End of FastScripts.

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