BAY HILL INVITATIONAL

March 14, 2001

Lee Westwood

LEE WESTWOOD: Well, I have not played that much recently. This is only my third tournament this year . I played the Dubai Classic in Saudi Arabia in February. But I'm playing pretty well. Looking forward to getting going. The course is in very good condition. Very firm on Monday, and then obviously it rained a lot yesterday and that softened it up, but it's playing a little bit easier now. The scores are not going to be quite as low, I don't think, if the greens would have been as firm as they were on Monday.

LEE WESTWOOD: Thank you. No, but thank you. Bigger clothes.

LEE WESTWOOD: Just went home. Had six days off. Did a bit of practicing with Pete. Not much. Just a couple of days. Relaxed. Checked my wife was still in one bit.

LEE WESTWOOD: She's fine. Fortunately, she's still in one bit, I suppose, and she says she feels good.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, the Friday of the Masters. So not long now.

LEE WESTWOOD: Right. I don't go if the baby as not arrived. I may go if the baby arrives before. The first child, you don't know what to expect and you don't know how you're going to feel. So I'm going to take it as it comes and see how I feel when the baby arrives.

LEE WESTWOOD: Absolutely right. It's a little bit further back. Hopefully, the baby will be on time. Things are looking good at the moment.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, she's had a good pregnancy. No backache. No sickness, nothing like that. She's quite happy.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I may do. I don't know. I might be overwhelmed.

LEE WESTWOOD: She might say, look, I've covered it for nine months. Now it's your turn to feed. (Laughter.)

LEE WESTWOOD: No, I'm not thinking about it too much. It's not important as far as everything else is concerned.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, but at the end of last year, December time, I sat down with my manager and we decided the season would not really start until the Benson and Hedges in May, and I was almost -- even though I was playing a little bit up to May, about four tournaments, I was going to almost treat it like, you know, a relaxation period and a bit of time off to recharge the batteries and not take anything too seriously.

LEE WESTWOOD: No idea. It will be a surprise.

LEE WESTWOOD: I don't think so. I will treat the other three majors as I would do normally. It's just -- see, I don't know what I'm doing at Masters yet. So I don't know how I'm going to treat the three majors. So everything is up in the air.

LEE WESTWOOD: Lytham is the only one I've played. The other two, I've heard good reports. I've heard that, you know they are good courses -- spoke with Nick Price about Southern Hills. And not too much about Atlanta; what I have heard has been positive. So I'm looking forward to playing. I think it will be very hot, humid, as they normally are that time of year. So, see if I can get a little bit fitter for those, especially.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. (Laughs).

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I'm looking forward to these next two weeks. I've got a fairly care-free attitude at the moment. Both courses suit my game. I've played well next week a couple of times; finished fifth and sixth. I think. I've played well this week, three years ago. So, you know, the formula has been there, and hopefully I can keep playing the way I've played over the last couple days. I feel like I'm swinging it the best I've been swinging it for a while, and if I can get a few putts to drop, then I should have a chance. Unfortunately, the putting is the first thing to go and the last thing to come back, and, you know, I feel like I haven't really have enough tournaments to get my short game and putting game sharp enough to win a tournament, and that may be the only place that hold me back this week, I think.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, we've seen all the specialists and they all say everything looks fine.

LEE WESTWOOD: Maybe that's her on the phone now. It might be it. (Cell phone ringing). It's ringing. No. It's not. (Laughs). That would have been weird.

LEE WESTWOOD: I'm not disappointed at all. Not at all. I think where children and family are concerned, golf pales into insignificance.

LEE WESTWOOD: No. It would not matter what tournament it was.

LEE WESTWOOD: I probably will be. I'm playing with him. I'll probably have a chat with him.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, strange. Very strange.

LEE WESTWOOD: I didn't read that. I didn't see what he said.

LEE WESTWOOD: No, I've not read anything. As far as I'm concerned, that's all done, finished. We lost. They won. Last day was a good performance. They deserved to win.

LEE WESTWOOD: I don't know at moment. I think about six or seven. Maybe -- actually I haven't really looked at this that much. Golf has not really taken much of a priority over the last few months. So, you know, that's why I'm struggling to tell you what the venues are like for the majors. It's not something I've been thinking about too much.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, partly to do with that. Partly to do with the fact that European Tour events at that time are in Brazil, places like that. So it's a lot to do the fact that America is year nearer than Brazil so you might as well come and play here. But I think playing before is very advantageous. I spoke to Nick Price about it and he recommended that I come and play two or three before the majors over here, which would be nice, but it's probably not possible. But certainly, if I could play the week before the U.S. Open and the week before the PGA and things like that, I think that would help. But, you know, when you come from Europe, you just have to see how things go. Sometimes it's not possible to play. You know, I've won seven times last year. So I like to defend certain tournaments and sometimes it clashes with that, and that scenario happens. So, you know, in an ideal world it would be nice to play two or three tournaments before the majors, to prepare, because the greens are very similar and, you know, the pace of the greens is quicker than Europe and it helps you for the majors. And, of course, the temperatures; it helps to play in the hotter temperatures leading up to the majors and acclimatize, but sometimes, it's just not possible.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. Hopefully. I don't actually know the qualification for one of them, Bellerive.

LEE WESTWOOD: Is that the World Rankings?

LEE WESTWOOD: Is that the NEC one? I think I might come off that; I'm something like 120th or something like that.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. It's very awkward that time of year. I had chat with my caddy and my manager, Chubby over that time of the year. There's no easy way to play it, really. It's going to involve the two weeks, and I think it's two weeks off and then there's another World Golf Championship event, which makes it very awkward. So I think it's going to be a case of just coming over for one week for the World Golf Championship event, which is not ideal, but sometimes schedules don't work out how you quite like. I'm not prepared to be over here for five weeks, which really would be ideal. But as I said earlier on, it would be nice to play a couple of tournaments before the U.S. PGA. So that would involve maybe being over here for seven weeks, possibly not playing one of the two in the middle those World Golf Championship events.

LEE WESTWOOD: Well, that would be ideal, but I won't do that. I'll have to go home.

LEE WESTWOOD: It affects freshness, and, you know, everything. It screws up your body clock. You know, it's not ideal to have the big time changes in such a short period of time. It's just very difficult, to schedule the tournaments like that, as far as I'm concerned. But what can you do? You have to putt them on a date and that's the dates they have chosen.

LEE WESTWOOD: Made it awkward this year, but I think everybody got a crack at them. I think the one down in Australia was successful. So, one of those things.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I don't really know, to be honest. With it being the first baby, I don't know how I'm going to feel and how I'm going to react. But I can imagine come May, I'll be knuckling down. I'll need to go away and play some tournaments to get some night's sleep. Come away and play and have some time off (laughs).

LEE WESTWOOD: No. Just playing it all by ear at the moment.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. I'm booked on a few different flights. So it's pretty much covered.

LEE WESTWOOD: No, I don't think so. No. I think Chubby will keep his phone on.