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COMMERCIAL BANK QATAR MASTERSJanuary 20, 2015Henrik StensonDOHA, QATAR NICK TOTTEN: Henrik, welcome to the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters. You played last week in Abu Dhabi. Talk us through, maybe not the best start, sort of a mixed bag. HENRIK STENSON: At least I played better the second day than the first day. Yeah, a little bit of a slow start. Of course I hope to improve on last week's performance this week here. It's early in the year and a work‑in‑progress but I felt like I played half decent at least 18 out there. It was slow and fairly hot. Not as bad as it was yesterday, still a bit of wind. I don't know what the forecast is, but normally we get our fair share of wind here, which is part of the course defence and makes it play better. Yeah, I feel okay. I certainly have played better than I am doing but I'm sure we can probably find a few times where we played worse, as well. NICK TOTTEN: The course in general, you've had a run of good results, a win, three runners‑up, a seventh; so must feel good. HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, it has been good hunting grounds, and like you say, the win and the three seconds. I guess I've figured out a decent way to play the course, and I've done some good scores over the years in windy condition, as well. So it sets up quite nicely in that way, and then of course it's down to how well I can play here this week. The day before the tournament, it's going to be some final practise and preparations and I'm going to head out there and see what we can do. Got a strong pairing with Ernie, second week now playing with Ernie, and Sergio is back in action, so we'll have good fun out there. It's a good group, so looking forward to it. Q. Inaudible. HENRIK STENSON: Well, I was just practising and working on technical stuff before the event and I couldn't really incorporate that and take that on to the course. Yeah, we're spending some time trying to make things simpler while still getting the important bits in there. So yeah, you've always got to do the work at some point in the season and normally that happens early on and yeah, I just didn't get it together quite. Yeah, it was nothing that was particularly good but I played a decent round, the second round, shot 4‑under in the afternoon which wasn't a bad score by any means. At least I kept the ball in the fairway and hit most of the greens, unlike what I did the first day. Q. (Considering how well Sergio played here last year‑‑ is he the player to beat this week)? HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, it would be hard not to put him in that situation, and that takes all the pressure away from me, so let's do that (laughs). Yeah, he's played really well around here and played this tournament a lot of times, as well. So, yeah, let's keep him the favourite. Sounds good to me. But as you know, it's always so hard to pick a winner. You can look among on‑form players and have a rough idea but it's really hard to pick one guy out of 152 or however big the field is. But, you normally would go in that direction, though. Q. Inaudible. HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, I feel like I'm part of the inventory on all these tournaments. I did ten out of ten in Abu Dhabi and I this is my 15th straight here, and I'm doing my 15th straight start in Dubai next week. So I've played them a lot, and in terms of the golf, of course golf has grown in this part of the world‑‑ if I understand it correctly, we have another course in the planning being built here in Doha, as well, which has just been the one here in Qatar. But the progress that's been made in terms of golf courses and tourism over the years has been quite a lot. We are also starting to see the juniors, the local junior programmes growing, as well. We had a fun little afternoon with some of the local Qatarian juniors yesterday. So we are going to see that grow as time goes on. Q. (What do you think accounts for your success in this region)? HENRIK STENSON: I don't know to be honest. I just like‑‑ I think it's really, really good golf courses that we play, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Dubai. They are three nice courses. I would say they promote good ball‑striking, which is normally a strong part of my game. So I think we can see some combinations there. I made Dubai my home for almost ten years. I feel very much at home in this part of the world, and it's always nice to be able to stay at home and sleep in your own bed for parts of these weeks. It's been a good way to start the season, and also I've had parts or big parts of my team for these weeks, we manage to always do some good work and make sure I'm in decent shape. So it's just a good way for me to start off the season and I enjoy playing these weeks. NICK TOTTEN: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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