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HSBC WORLD MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

October 12, 2004

Thomas Levet

SURREY, ENGLAND

GORDON SIMPSON: Thomas, very nice to see you here at the HSBC World Match Play, and another chance to see what you can do in match-play. What's your feelings about your first round?

THOMAS LEVET: You know, I like the course. I've played good in the past year in Wentworth, so I'm pretty confident over the week because I know I can compete with guys that like the course, too, like Ernie and Vijay, too. I know I can hit the ball quite long and straight over at Wentworth and you need to know it because there are some really tricky shots around here. I think I've played here, I don't know, since 1990 or something every year almost.

GORDON SIMPSON: Have you played at this time of year?

THOMAS LEVET: I've played a few times, but you know when you play in May, the weather is around the same, you know. Here is could be a lot wetter than it is in May, but you need to know the course and to like it. So I've got two things for me.

GORDON SIMPSON: Pretty fantastic season so far.

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, pretty good and even the weeks I don't play well, like last week for example, I was still under par which is not that bad for tough courses like they are. I hate St. Andrews. (Laughter.) It's just not that I hate the course, but I can't score on it. I seem to shoot between 72 and 75, whatever the weather, with no wind and sunshine or snow and wind; I'm between those two points, you know, I just can't score on it. I don't see the scoring and I see it better at Wentworth. I hit it on the range and it's already better than St. Andrews. I like Kingsbarns and Carnoustie, no problems. St. Andrews is my weak point. Let's hope they change the course, they put like two rounds on the other courses next year.

MODERATOR: Graeme McDowell seems to like it.

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, he does.

Q. (Inaudible.)

THOMAS LEVET: Don't speak about that. I slept on Saturday; oh, is it finished already? Oh, okay. I've got to practice over there. I don't know what's going on.

Q. I know you love the game of golf and you've obviously watched this tournament from home in the past, is it something that you've wanted to be a part of?

THOMAS LEVET: It's a pretty big one. You know, you feel like if you come to this tournament, you've somehow played very good on one part of the year, either in majors or through the year or through some special tournaments and you qualify through a system that is pretty tough, actually. It's always been, you know, like a little gift for the players this week because there are only 16 players and the prize money and the location is pretty good.

For me I live only ten minutes down the road here, so it's like, wow, it's a nice one, you know, a nice one to win. Lots of people are jealous about this one, actually, because it's so enormous that some players would like to play in it so much. That's how I've felt the years before, watching the championship on TV, it's always frustrating, you wish you could take part in it, especially in match-play, it's a funner way of playing golf than medal play. Doesn't matter if you make 12 on the first hole, you can still win the championship.

For us, it's a tough week because 36 holes a day is not easy and never much fun, but it's nice to play match-play and to play for an enormous prize money. The sponsors here are just, there is nothing we can say to thank them enough, you know. It's what a job, you know.

Q. Do you come and practice here at all? I'm not sure if I've ever asked you how you've come to be living in England.

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, I don't come here enough. I just come here sometimes to go to the PGA office and drop some papers, but during the year, we don't have much time to come and practice here. We just have tournaments. Usually I practice at the two courses next to my home that are like five minutes away.

My kind of practice is more on the practice range, so I've got a practice range next to my home and then I go to the gym quite a lot. So I just -- I don't need to play 18 holes, you know. If I really needed to play 18 holes, I would come over here and play. But during the year, I don't have enough time for it, especially that I'm French and I live in England and all of my sponsors are French, or most of them; so I go to France maybe ten, 15 times a year during the weeks off for like two days or three days just to do my company days.

Why I came to England is because of tax reasons. In France, the tax is enormous. When you look at all of the sportsmen that are French sportsmen that are a little bit successful, none of them is living in France. I don't live in France, Jacquelin lives in Switzerland, Van de Velde lives over -- he was living in Switzerland, I think he moved away over here now. All of the football players, why do they play in English championship? It's because the prize money is bigger, but the taxes is out of France, as well; so you get better paid and half of the tax. That's why. And then after that, you get lots of guys like Jardin playing Madrid, you've got the tennis players, they all live between Florida, Switzerland and England is because taxes in France is enormous. They don't understand that if you have money, if they don't tax you as much, you might employ like one nanny, one cook and somebody else to do the garden, instead of that they kept all of your taxes so you can't afford to pay anyone. So I'd rather spend my money here in England than in France. In France I couldn't afford to spend some, anyway.

Q. Do you actually enjoy living here?

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, it's very niece. Every day I live -- I've been living here for four years now and every day I see my kids speak English I say to myself that's a pretty good point, because they have both learned English after maybe -- after three months they both started speaking it and you could understand what they say in English. Now you can't find out that they were French because they are completely fluent. When they reach the time that they need a job and the guy says, you speak English, it's not going to be, like "oh, yeah, I speak a little bit English," you know (speaking slowly). "But yeah, my mom is French." It's not going to be like that at all. The guy will be like, all right, your English is pretty high. So from the first opinion, the guy, the people will have from them is like okay we can give them a bigger job than what they deserve just because of that. My son is already a translator. He can translate anything from English to French and backward. So it's just a big gift, you know.

The life we have here, we are in the countryside just 15 minutes away from here. It's much better than being glued to Paris in the traffic. You speak about traffic here, just go to Paris for one day and you'd never come back, you know. Just the other day I want from Charles de Gaulle to Paris, took us two hours and 25 minutes just to reach Paris, thank you very much.

So here, even London, Heathrow to London is never too tight, never, ever. It's just a change of life, change of style. And just for the English point of view, for the English part for my kids, it's a big -- it's nice, very nice and they are going to nice schools as well and they have got lots of friends, so everybody is happy here.

GORDON SIMPSON: Have you ever been stuck on the M25?

THOMAS LEVET: I don't go on these times, you know. I wake up late, I go around 11:00 and there are no traffic there. There is in Paris at 11:00, it's horrendous.

Q. You've got a third child on the way very soon. Is he or she going to speak French?

THOMAS LEVET: Probably, yeah, because the other two are speaking French. My daughter was not speaking at all when she arrived in England and she picked up French then English. Now she speaks a bit of everything. She doesn't know the word push in French, so she uses them in French sentences, so sometimes it's a bit strange but we kind of figure out. So she speaks a bit of a mixture.

The next one will be probably speaking more English than French, but we keep French at home so that it comes quicker. And they spend like a month and a half in France every year, so make sure they don't forget it.

Q. It's fairly soon, isn't it?

THOMAS LEVET: Next month during the World Cup week, just before hopefully, the 14th.

GORDON SIMPSON: You and RaphaÃƒÂ«l.

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, same team, we finished third last year so we hope to do a little bit better this year. I've been playing better this year and RaphaÃƒÂ«l hasn't, but overall, I think we have a good chance, as well.

Q. It's obviously a very good field this week, the 16 players, but is it a shame in some way that not everybody accepts the chance to play such a big event?

THOMAS LEVET: It's a strange one, I would say. You know I would say it's a very strange one because I would say the prize giving is enormous. You can't do any better. Is there a tournament in the world with more money than that for the first prize? None.

So I just don't know. Maybe it's because they have better things to do at home, I don't know. It's just for me I wouldn't refuse to come and play a tournament like that, that's for sure, whatever my level, whatever my -- where I come from, whatever travel I have to do, I would come here and play it.

Q. What we said earlier about having seen this tournament, as you said you have to have done something special to play in it, when you look at the list of the past winners going from Arnold Palmer and Gary Player and Greg Norman, Seve and now Ernie, is that something that you'd love to be there?

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, just put your name once on the trophy would be enormous. The winners of the tournament is probably the most prestigious guys you can find in the game of golf. I think Jack never won it maybe; Nicklaus, did he win? Once? It's not many people missing. Faldo won it probably. Who else? You know, Monty won it. Tiger never played it; he lost in the final to Mark O'Meara, okay. So it just needs like Tiger Woods to put his name on it, and then if anybody like, you know, putts his name on there, it's like a big one. You know, it's like an enormous achievement, I would say. Plus it's not an easy one; you get to go through big guys, you know, especially the big two, Ernie and Vijay.

Q. Are you an underdog against Mike Weir?

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, of course. Like the Ryder Cup. (Laughter.)

No, I don't mind. I know that I can beat anyone on any day. The day you wake up you shoot 63, there are not too many people that can resist that, and the day you wake up you shoot 77, not too many people will lose against that. So you know it's a question of what happens on the day. I'm playing okay this year. Mike hasn't played his best of the year so far, so it's just I've got a pretty good chance, and I know the course better than he does. So I just have to put the right-handed set of clubs in his bag on the first tee and that's it. (Laughing).

I don't know, we'll see. It's going to be a pretty close match, I would say. It will be just an enormous 12 & 10, you know and it could be a 12 over ten holes or something, nobody knows about that, you know. But it could happen.

So things happen in the past and on paper, you know, who said that actually in the Ryder Cup? Did you read that from the Irish people there? They said, "Oh, like every year at the Ryder Cup, the American team is a favorite on paper. Unfortunately for them, golf is played on grass." I like that. It's exactly that, you know. It's just on paper it's a little bit better than me because he has a better ranking, more experience, more tournaments. But in the other way, I live right here, I don't have any jet-lag, I know the course, I've played good on that course before, and I've got a better season than he has at the moment.

So, you know it's pretty even money at the moment.

Q. As you mentioned you have had a pretty good year, Ryder Cup probably stands out as a particular achievement of yours; a, have you stopped celebrating and calmed down to normal yet, and where do you go from here in looking forward to next year and possibly a major?

THOMAS LEVET: Yeah, you know, the Ryder Cup is always nice. It puts smiles on people's face and on our faces. You know it's tough to come down from it because everybody is reminding you about the Ryder Cup. I don't know, maybe today I signed five or six things coming from the Ryder Cup, most people telling you well done at the Ryder Cup, every at the airports, at the bakery, at the book shop, everywhere. So it's just a nice feeling to have.

And now, you know, it's the end of the year. I'll play only maybe three to four tournaments this year again to finish the year, and just have to think about next year. I've got a big fitness program starting next week for 2005, and then on the technical part, I'll work on a few things like the putting. But I won't change too many things because they work pretty good. And after that, I get to look at my schedule for next year, probably play a little bit in America at the start of the year and then come in Europe, start in Dubai probably and play over the big tournaments in May, like Volvo PGA here in Wentworth and Deutsche Bank and French Open, Paris, you know, British, all of these big tournaments over the summer.

I think next year, I won't play as much as this year or last year. Last year I played so much, it's still -- I'm still feeling the effect of last year, because I played 38 tournaments last year, which was way too much. This year even though I played only 26, it's still a pretty big year and as I made every cut, it looks like you have tension every day, so it's very difficult.

Q. Do people recognize you at the supermarket?

THOMAS LEVET: Every day. Around here everybody plays golf so they just no. That's cool. I just came back from the Ryder Cup, I go pick my kids from school on Tuesday, I spend 15 minutes at the school signing for kids, I didn't even know who they are. They say: "I say you on TV yesterday, can you sign!" And all of the sudden one is signing, and then the other guy says, oh, who is that, golf player at the Ryder Cup. They don't even probably know who I am, but just the name "Ryder Cup" is enough to bring the people along.

And it doesn't matter who it is, you know, it's just here there are too many people playing golf, every one is playing golf. In my street every one is playing golf, and I think it looks like we are on the golf course basically. All of that part of the London area is golf, you know. So it's kind of -- it's a strange feeling, you know. Ask them. Don't ask me. Ask them if they recognize me. Maybe not. Put me next to Monty, they won't recognize me, that's for sure.

GORDON SIMPSON: Well, thanks very much Thomas.

End of FastScripts.

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