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DUNHILL LINKS CHAMPIONSHIP

October 6, 2004

Lee Westwood

ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND

Q. Comments on last year?

LEE WESTWOOD: Yes it was a great win and one I obviously enjoyed personally. To win round the home of golf and Carnoustie which is probably my favourite links course and Kingsbarns which is one of the best new courses in the country and probably the world, it meant a lot. To win from the front on the last day as well showed that the BMW three weeks previously might not have been the flash in the pan that some people were thinking. I hit good shots coming down the stretch and hit the ball well all week and only made one bogey so there was a lot of positives to take out of it.

Q. Thoughts for this week?

LEE WESTWOOD: I am playing pretty good, happy to be back here and have good feelings from last year. I played well last week without holing any putts at the weekend, just confident.

Q. Talk us through your shot at the 17th in the last round?

LEE WESTWOOD:. One of my best shots ever, definitely. Because it is not good if you leave it short and not good if you go long and right and left are not great either so it is fairly fraught with danger. It has never been a shot I have been completely confident holding it up into a left to right wind and the circumstances too, leading by one. 17th hole, Road Hole, St Andrews, so it was good to pull it off. Five iron, yes.

Q. Is it still as good a year on?

LEE WESTWOOD: Yes although the six iron I hit into the 17th at the Ryder Cup in my singles was pretty good, a similar kind of shot, the wind off the right and trying to hold it up so it was nice to have that shot a year on. But the five iron meant a lot because of the timing, hitting it under pressure, and executing it exactly the way I had planned it in my mind.

Q. Did you think of that shot when you were at the Ryder Cup?

LEE WESTWOOD: No I was just thinking back now.

Q. Did the way you played here have any bearing on the way you played in the Open this year?

LEE WESTWOOD: Yes, it is both links golf and here last year was the last time before then that I had played links golf and I was playing well coming in to it, I had played well at the European Open the week before and that was played in strong winds. I played well at the Scottish Open and I was building nicely up to the Open. So the more links golf we can play, the better the performances in the Open will be. It would be good to play a links course in the week before the Open too which would help with the preparation because I like to play the week before a Major but it is a completely different course Loch Lomond, but that might change in the future.

Q. Do you see the Open as your best chance of a Major?

LEE WESTWOOD: I have always felt that I have had a fairly rounded game for any golf really. I hit the ball fairly straight which you need to do anyway these days so US Open and US PGA are similar type of courses, hit the ball high and stop it on the greens. The Masters you need a fair bit of imagination on the greens and then my wind game is improving all the time but I feel like if I keep playing the way I am and keep making progress then when the Majors come round next year, if I am playing well going in to them, then I will have a chance of contending.

Q. When did you start to appreciate the Old Course?

LEE WESTWOOD: A couple of years back. Dave Musgrove, who caddies for Sandy Lyle, caddied for me in this tournament and really changed my mind about links golf and the Old Course really. He showed me the subtleties about it, showed me where I could be aggressive and where to hit it if I was, sometimes you are better off going in with three clubs more here if you are going in on a better line to the flags. I owe a lot of my fondness now for the Old Course to Dave.

Q. How do you compare as a player to five years ago?

LEE WESTWOOD: I think I am a better player now than I was five years ago. Certainly 2000 my short game and putting stats was good, I led almost all the putting categories and you are going to have a successful season if you do that. So the difference now is that I am not getting up and down as much as I have been. I committed a lot of time over the last couple of years to working on my long game and now I will concentrate on my short game to bring it up to winning standard.

Q. Will the size of the European victory at Oakland Hills carry over?

LEE WESTWOOD: I am sure everyone on the team is carrying through confidence from the Ryder Cup because there were no poor performances there from the Europeans, everybody pulled their weight and everybody played well under pressure but at some point you have to concentrate on the job in hand and I suppose it ends now.

Q. In terms of the US Open for you then?

LEE WESTWOOD: I have always thought I was fairly well suited to US Open courses, I didn't need a Ryder Cup to tell me that. I finished fifth at Pebble Beach and you don't get much more US Open than there, seventh at Olympic so I have always felt I might have a chance at a US Open. It was just great for the Tour as a whole, wasn't it, the fact that we won by so many. Just showed how strong in depth the Tour has become and how good the young players coming through are and the fact that they are world class. If anybody needed any proof of that they just needed to look at the likes of Paul Casey and David Howell who hadn't played in the Ryder Cup and then stepped into some fairly big shoes and played the last two holes great on the Saturday morning when they needed to. David backed it up last week with a third place finish too.

End of FastScripts.

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