PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 15, 2001

Lee Westwood

LEE WESTWOOD: Thank you.

LEE WESTWOOD: The golf course is excellent. Set up very well, as usual. Quite long, especially with the rain that we've had, but scoreable. I think there will be some good scores this week. But things always change, depending on the setup, if people get going under par, you'll see the flags tucked away like on No. 8, so it could be a good week.

LEE WESTWOOD: I'm caring a 2-iron this week. I drove a 2-iron in there yesterday afternoon, but I've got no problem hitting woods into par 4s. I hit woods into par 5s all the time, so it's no different, really. The green is a par-5 green anyway. It's a par-5 cut down to a par-4, so it is pretty big, anyway. If you don't fancy it, you can always lay up and play it as a par 5. But it's a demanding hole, and it will certainly be exciting come Sunday afternoon.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I'm very confident. Looking forward to this week. Playing well. So, this is a case of being patient, putting well, getting off to a good start.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, could you still say that Nick has got it. You can see why he won six majors. I think we played yesterday and I don't think he missed a fairway. So, you know, the quality is there. You don't win six majors without being a great player.

LEE WESTWOOD: It's certainly much longer than anything we play in Europe. But, other than that, you know, golf courses around the world are much the same. If you hit it straight and you hit it on the green and you hole a few putts, then it's pretty much the rule around the world; you're going to have a good score. The heat, we don't contend with this kind of heat in Europe, but most of the top European players have traveled around the world and played Asia, South Africa, places like that, Dubai, so we play in this heat quite often. You know, other than that, you just have to treat it the same. I don't see any tricks to this course. It's right there in front of you. You can almost play it blind. You could almost walk around the course and just hit a few putts and chips around the greens. There's no tricks to tee-to-green. It's a great course in that way.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I think the driver is going to be used an awful lot this week. I think there's probably -- might be four, five holes where you can hit 3-wood. But it's nice to see a course where the driver is needed a lot. Courses tend to be overpowered nowadays and people don't need to hit driver that often, but this week there's a huge advantage to driving it long and straight.

LEE WESTWOOD: No. I don't think she needed to. She didn't feel like I needed any advice. It worked, I finished second.

LEE WESTWOOD: No. I didn't. I didn't realize it was his birthday until yesterday. So he keeps it very quiet. When you get to 43, you do keep things quiet like that. (Laughter.)

LEE WESTWOOD: No, because most of those guys that you are talking about are five, ten years older than me. A lot of people forget how young I am because I was on tour so young and relatively early in my career. I know a major would be missing if I got to the age of 36, 37 without winning one. I've got plenty of more years to go, hopefully. Majors are one of those things where if you put too much pressure on yourself, then they become harder and harder to win. You've just got to try and go out, although it is not just another tournament, you've got to treat it that way, as another tournament.

LEE WESTWOOD: It would not hurt me, but I would certainly feel like it was missing, yeah.

LEE WESTWOOD: No, not really. I wasn't so much changing my swing. I was trying to get back to swinging how I was in 1998 when I was playing well. I didn't feel like I was hitting the ball as well -- I felt like I had got complacent and not really worked on it enough. I had slipped into faults, just over a long period of time. You know, I've tried to get it back, get more width into my swing and I've got it back fairly quick. But it's just a case of analyzing it and focusing on it and finding out the real problem and just working on that and get back to how it was.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I've always said that, how hard it is to win one. It's a fantastic achievement to have won seven. Not so much -- more of a mental achievement than anything, I think. To actually keep working yourself up each year to hang onto your No. 1 spot, because it's very easy to sit back and just enjoy winning one. But, you know, Monty doesn't play that many tournaments. He has a very laid back schedule and he tends not to play too much at the start of the year and I think that's tended to help him win lots of Order of Merits, because he has a few months at the start of the year to enjoy what he did the previous year and get ready for the following year.

LEE WESTWOOD: My gremlins? I don't have any gremlins. I have two dogs and a cat. (Laughs).

LEE WESTWOOD: I'd like to keep playing how I'm at the moment. I think if I keep playing like this, then, you know, I've got a chance to win every tournament I enter. If I don't win a tournament from now until the end of the year, then, you know, I'll come out at the end of the year having learned a lot, because you learn a lot more when you are playing poorly than when you are playing well. So if I do win, it will be great. If I don't win, then, you know, I've got next year to work on things, or next year to look forward to, especially if I keep playing like this.

LEE WESTWOOD: What do you learn when you're playing poorly? How much you have to enjoy it when you're playing well. (Laughs). You learn a lot of things. But not ones I want to, you know, divulge, obviously. You like to try and stay a step ahead of everybody, so if you learn something, you don't tell anybody.

LEE WESTWOOD: Thanks.