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FRYS.COM OPENOctober 8, 2014Lee WestwoodNAPA, CALIFORNIA JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Lee Westwood to the interview room here at the Frys.com Open. Lee, just a comment on the golf course. LEE WESTWOOD: Amazed by the beauty of the place, really. It's a spectacular spot, reminds me of the Crans‑sur‑Sierre in Switzerland or something like that. It's magnificent. The golf course is very good, too. JOHN BUSH: The state of your game was very good a couple weeks ago. How was it coming into the week? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, pretty good. I didn't do a lot last week, but yeah, seems to be pretty good, and it's a challenging golf course. You know, there's a lot of tricky holes out there. It's quite trying in places and there's a decent bit of rough and the greens are very quick and severe in places. Tough to figure out what kind of scoring to expect this week. I think it's a difficult test. I don't really know what to make of it, but I think it'll be a good week. Q. Could you talk about the state of the European Ryder Cup team, just how talented and deep and great that team was this year? What made that team click in that Ryder Cup? LEE WESTWOOD: Well, starting from the top we had a great captain. Paul did a fantastic job. I couldn't really pick a fault with his captaincy. And then you look at the players involved, we had four of the top five in the world, something like that when it was announced, and a lot of other strong players, as well. And rookies, which didn't play like rookies, played like people who played in it before. And we gelled well together. We put our pairings together well with players that complemented each other. Obviously to a man we pretty much played well, as well. We were considerably more under par on Sunday than the U.S. side, so that's the reason we won, really. Q. As a member of the winning team, what do you think of this chaos among the Americans all of a sudden, people name calling and people blaming each other? Can you stand back and laugh at it or do you feel sorry for them or what? I know you play here, of course, but you're British, and I just wondered, are you part of two worlds, and do you figure it's just a mess‑up? LEE WESTWOOD: It was such a long question I've forgotten exactly what it was. Sorry about that. From my point of view, I think it's a little bit disappointing to see the dirty laundry being out in public first and foremost. It's very difficult to pinpoint in a team environment whose fault it specifically is. It's a combination of a lot of different things. Yeah, maybe Tom got a few things wrong. Maybe the U.S. Team just didn't quite play well enough in general. You know, if the other team plays well, you're going to lose. I'm just pleased that I don't have to sort it all out because I don't like to see people with great reputations, their great reputations being brought down by something that shouldn't really happen in public. It should all be done behind closed doors and sorted out there, and the analysis should start there, really, and not be done in the press, in the media. Q. Following up on that, do you feel like the dirty laundry is detracting from the performance by the Europeans? LEE WESTWOOD: No, not at all, no. Q. There would have seemed to have been some strife, we hear anyway, in '08, and yet you never heard anything in the press conference or since then. LEE WESTWOOD: No, not at all. I think there were a lot of people disappointed in '08, but we tried to come together and basically not say anything in public. You know, whenever you lose, you're going to be disappointed and you're going to think things could have been done better. It's just a case of managing it and handling it and improving it for the next time professionally. Certainly for the future Ryder Cups, the Europeans will remember how it's all been handled. The European team will remember the fallout from this one. It can't do anything but build confidence for the European team going into the next one, that it's been handled so publicly this time. If you understand what I'm saying. The fact that the fallout from the Ryder Cup on the U.S. side is being handled publicly and there's stuff being thrown backwards and forwards and stuff like that, we will remember that going into the next Ryder Cup. I guess we'll see how easy it is to get the U.S. Team rattled by putting a bit of pressure on them. I don't think anything good can come of all this. Q. What do you have left this year, and how much do you have left in the energy department? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I feel like I've got quite a lot of energy left. I didn't play particularly well this year and hence didn't play in three of the FedExCup events, so I had three weeks off there. And then I played Wales and the Ryder Cup and then I had another week off. So I wouldn't say I'm over golf. I'm playing this week, and then I'm going to have two weeks off, and then I've got quite a run until the end of the year with the CIMB, the HSBC, Turkish Airlines, Dubai World Championship, and then a week off and then hopefully the Nedbank in Sun City and the Thailand Masters. I'm sort of ready to play again and play in a run of tournaments and hopefully finish the year off strong because I don't feel like I've had a very good year. Q. In terms of how you've played your entire life, there's a lot of talk about starting a new season so quickly after the old one ended, but you've been playing year‑round for quite some time. LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. Q. How soon did you figure out when to take your, quote‑unquote, off‑season, which could be any month of the year, couldn't it? LEE WESTWOOD: You can take chunks off whenever you wanted. I felt like my season finished really at the Barclays, and then that three‑week break was good for me right there, and I got a chance to go in the gym and lose a bit of weight and get fit again and sort of kick that into gear, and then obviously with the Ryder Cup coming up, I needed to get a bit of competitive golf, so the Wales Open was my warm‑up for the Ryder Cup, and now I feel like it's just a case of keeping that up and getting going again. I'll have a break over Christmas, obviously. Everybody seems to. But I'll pick it up quite quickly after Christmas and get going again there. I don't want to start late certainly on the PGA TOUR and be behind in the FedExCup thousands and thousands of points. There's a lot of points to win at the end of this year to give yourself a platform to build on at the beginning of next year. Q. I thought I recall you telling us a story a couple years ago about your younger days playing I want to say 22 weeks in a row‑‑ LEE WESTWOOD: 17 in a row, yeah, and the 17th one I won. Then took a week off and missed the next cut. Q. People talk all the time about how you can possibly play that many weeks in a row or needing breaks. How did you do it? Why did you do it? LEE WESTWOOD: I think it was my first year on Tour and I was excited and keen, and every week was an adventure, and I just wanted to play golf. 19 years old, playing on the European Tour, it's a dream world, really, so I just figured keep going. I think sometimes I see why the young kids come out now and they play a very structured and short year. You look at people like Tiger and Adam Scott. Not so much Rory. I still think Rory plays a lot. I think he loves getting out there and being competitive, but you see some guys that certainly try and make a schedule where they're very fresh the week they play. But I've always felt for me that I needed to play into form, as well, so that's the reason why I've done it. I sometimes think it's a shame that kids don't come out here with the same vigor to play 17 in a row. Q. I recall a press conference before we were asking you about how you've moved out here and you're excited to be living here and playing year‑round in great weather in the Florida area and looking into the future. I wanted to see how it's played out for you having moved here, and now you've been through a whole season, what has it been like? Do you feel like you've achieved what you wanted to? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. I wouldn't say we moved here purely for my golf game. We fancied a change, sort of pace of life and change of environment to live in, better weather to live in, and that was obviously going to help my practice and preparation for playing on TOUR, and I was playing more on the PGA TOUR, so it made more sense to come and live over here, and it's been a lot better for me with regard to jet lag and stuff like that. But I feel like it's gone well. Me and my family are very settled in and we've got friends. They're enjoying school, the kids, and my wife enjoys being over here. It's been successful in the prime areas where it needed to be successful. I feel like it's very difficult for me to do it, with regards to my game; I'm getting older now, and I don't know what's going to happen with my game, but I certainly have enjoyed the last two years living over here. Q. I think a little bit overlooked just because it was won a little bit earlier was your match with Jimmy, which was a pretty high standard of golf. LEE WESTWOOD: It might have been the best match out there on the golf course. Q. Six birdies I think you made, Jimmy made eight. LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I was 5‑under when I lost. Jimmy was 8‑under after 16. Q. I was curious what you thought of Jimmy and did you know much about him other than his record? LEE WESTWOOD: No, I've played with Jimmy and knew he was a very good player. Whenever he's played with me, unfortunately he's played well. I wasn't surprised at all to see him play well. He plays well in the big occasions, which is something the Ryder Cup is, and he came out very fast. He was 3‑under through 3, I was 2‑under through 3 and 1‑down. I missed a couple of putts which maybe would have brought me back into it, but Jimmy didn't really give me a chance to get back into it, either. He hit good shots close at the right time, made some good putts at the right time, and I would imagine it was a really sort of entertaining match to watch. I don't really mind losing a game when‑‑ you're more upset when you lose a game if you've not played well, but I don't really mind the fact that I lost a game to somebody that shot 8‑under par through 16 holes on Sunday of a Ryder Cup. That's pretty impressive stuff. Q. You said you were trying to figure out sort of what the winning score would be. Any resolution? LEE WESTWOOD: I'd say if it stays like this, the weather, somewhere around 12, 10 to 12 maybe. I might be wrong, but it's a tricky golf course. There's four par‑5s, not really any of them are gimmes. There's some tricky par‑4s out there with severe slopes and undulations on the greens. The greens are fast. They can tuck flags away. And the par‑3s are really strong. There's a couple of really good mid‑iron par‑3s out there, and then the second is like a rescue for me. It's 245 yards long. There's not much let‑up out there on the golf course. Q. (Inaudible.) LEE WESTWOOD: I think it's important to hit it in the fairway because of the type of grasses and the rough. It's going to be difficult to control your ball out of the rough. The greens are I imagine only going to get firmer, and they're very quick. Like I said, there's some severe undulations. Q. The Westwood Golf Academy, can you talk about your involvement and also what your vision is? And how much do you enjoy that back in the UK? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I do enjoy that. Chubby and I sat down three or four years ago now and discussed what I wanted to do going forward, and I've always been interested in junior golf. A question I was always asked was what would I do if I hadn't been a golfer, and I never had an answer, and I left school at 16 so that would have left me in a tricky position. We decided to open a couple schools in England for kids age 16 to 18 where they could carry on playing golf, see if they improved during that period but also have an education, as well, so when they got to 18 if they weren't as successful as a golfer as they would have liked, then they could still be involved, and that two years wouldn't have been wasted. That was the real drive behind that. And then obviously that's the golf schools, and then around the UK through the summer when the schools are out and the kids are on holiday, there's academies that we run where they can go and get instruction and stuff like that and play tournaments. We have a finals, Close House, which is in Newcastle and it happened to be the Monday after the Ryder Cup this year, and I went along and presented the prizes. We had a good turnout, had about 100 kids there and some good golfers, and it's given them another opportunity to have a scorecard in their back pocket and play competitive golf, which at their age they need to do. It's one thing going on the range and hitting balls and hitting it well and playing with your friends, but it's about doing it when you've got a scorecard in your hand, and it just gives them another opportunity to all come together, make friends and play competitively. Q. This is not a brand new golf course. It was built back in the '50s. But in your opinion the characteristics of this golf course, is it more of an old‑style traditional golf course? And with that said, are the green complexes the challenge here? In other words, if you have a par‑5 and you're going to go for that par‑5 in two, when you talk about a winning score of 12‑under par, does this golf course put up that kind of a defense even though it's an old golf course? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I definitely think this golf course seems to be sort of standing the test of time. I would say that the main defense is going to be the greens, yeah. There's some good undulation on them, and when you start‑‑ maybe back in the '60s and '70s when the greens were running a bit slower it may not have been, but certainly nowadays, the speeds they're talking about nowadays, it's probably going to be the main defense of the golf course. I'm impressed with the design. I go out there and I see a lot of sort of characteristics of other golf courses in California; there's a touch of sort of Riviera about the place in certain areas, and Sherwood, where we played Tiger Woods' tournament. There's a look of that in certain places. It's a nice golf course to play and very challenging. I was pleasantly surprised how good it was. I was surprised that a tournament hadn't been played here for so long because it just seems like an ideal venue. It seems like a place with so much red wine involved in this area the players would love to come to, and the facilities are great. The range is great, and the golf course is excellent. Q. How old is Sam? Is he about 12 now, 13? LEE WESTWOOD: 13. Q. What has been your philosophy on raising kids being on TOUR, and do you find it getting tougher to be away as he's reaching an age where, I don't know if he plays golf or what his interests are, but not wanting to miss out on that? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, it's a fine balance, really, between being a professional golfer and being a dad. You do miss out on a lot, obviously, but they understand what I do for a living, and when you analyze it, I spend half the year at home, which is more than most dads would do. He's gradually getting into golf, but I'm not trying to force him down that road. Golf is a game that you need to love. It's frustrating at times if you don't. When I go out and play golf with him like we were on Sunday, he surprises me how good he is. He's never had a lesson in his life. He says I'm his coach, but when I try and tell him something, he never listens to me, it's one of those typical father‑son relationships, and it surprises me how well he swings it. I think if he gave it a bit of time, he'd be a very good golfer. To give golf time, you have to be dedicated and you have to love it, and I'm not sure whether he loves it. Q. How often do your kids travel? LEE WESTWOOD: Not very often. They're in school. We like to give them that ground and that base, and I don't think being out on TOUR with kids is a good environment for them. I think they should grow up the way I grew up; be at home and build relationships at that age with school friends. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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