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DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC


March 3, 2005


Thomas Bjorn


DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

GORDON SIMPSON: Thomas, a very nice start, 69 today, not quite the 64 you had the year you won but a good way to come into the tournament.

THOMAS BJORN: Yeah, it was a good start for me. I don't think I've played a morning round here in a tournament and it's been this tricky. The scoring shows, we are not seeing the birdie blitz that we normally see on this golf course from the start. But the golf course is is fantastic, it's really nice and firm greens. It's rewarding good play. My game today, it was all right. It was nothing spectacular, but it was all right. I'm happy with the start.

GORDON SIMPSON: Are you one of the people that when you come back to a venue where you've won, do you get the competitive juices flowing again because of the memories?

THOMAS BJORN: I think it's always hard to come back to a venue where you've had great success because you always feel like you should play the same way, and that's very difficult to do and when you win golf tournaments that you play very well and it's very difficult to just kind of find that. You've just got to go out and grind it out and focus at a different moment in time.

In 2001, golf was so easy for me, and I've gone through a lot of changes in my golf swing over the last six months and those things still have to be worked at and golf just doesn't seem as easy now as it did then, but still good enough to do well.

GORDON SIMPSON: Do you feel it�s coming back?

THOMAS BJORN: Yes, it is. I mean, I've been in a few more press centres of late than I've been the last few years.

Q. You said your game is undergoing changes, what kind of changes?

THOMAS BJORN: Swing changes. I've got a couple of things that I'm working on and they are getting better all the time right now but it's still -- it's still very, very good on the driving range, and then the confidence getting on the golf course it is leaving me when I'm on the golf course. So I feel more and more comfortable with it. I feel like I'm hitting more and more good shots. I'm feeling more and more control of my game but still just a couple of times it just doesn't come out the way I want it to, but that's golf. It's a constant battle here to make things work, but I made the decision to get myself in a position where I feel just comfortable with my golf swing. I constantly work on it to make it better and it's certainly moving in the right direction all the time.

GORDON SIMPSON: Do you feel it's far too long between your last win and this week?

THOMAS BJORN: It's been a while there's no doubt about that. My last European Tour win was in 2002 and I won in Japan in 2003. So it's been a while. I feel that I'm capable of not winning one golf tournament a year, but multiple golf tournaments a year and I should be doing it more often. I got myself in position an awful lot the last two years and never really come out on top. You have to have very good golf form and sometimes these golf courses you play, you're not going to come out on top but that's something you live with. I've always said that I would much rather be competitive with good golf form than win with poor golf form. You want to be on the big stage, you want to be really on top when you're playing and that's what I thrive on. I've been out here long enough to know that's where I want to be.

Q. What do you think of Ian Woosnam as European Ryder Cup Captain?

THOMAS BJORN: You have a situation where you've got two wonderful players with wonderful Ryder Cup careers and you have to make a decision who is going to be Ryder Cup Captain.

I think we believe that Woosie has done a lot for the European Tour. He's been a vice captain and has an amazing Ryder Cup record and what he's done for the game of golf in Europe. So it was a difficult decision, but then how do you pick him as a captain without making a fool of himself with the other one because both are obvious choices. We made this decision, we think we made the right decision. We think Woosie will get a quiet time now and he can go and do his work and we thought that was the important thing, he could go and do his work without hassle and then there wouldn't be any questions about why is Nick Faldo not the Ryder Cup Captain; and the other way around.

So we believe that we had a unique situation where we could appoint both of them. We believe that both of them deserve it, and Woosie for 2006, he's a wonderful and there's so much interest in the Tour and the players on Tour and he'll be a great captain. But that doesn't take anything away from Nick not being a great captain because he will be a fantastic captain in 2008 and that's why it was so important to appoint both of them at this moment in time.

Q. Would you like to be captain?

THOMAS BJORN: Would I like to be captain? Oh, that's far out in the future. If you look at the age of Woosie and Nick are at at this moment in time, for Ryder Cup Captaincy, I'm looking at 2018, 2020. So there's a lot of golf to be played between now and then.

But I enjoy the Ryder Cup and I think the Ryder Cup Captaincy is something that's done a lot for the Tour, not only a wonderful career for themselves but done a lot for the Tour. I think that's over the last -- all of the captains we had since the Ryder Cup became interesting in 1983, they have all done a lot for the Tour, Jacklin, Gallagher and then all the way through, they have all been great captains but the common denominator is they have all been wonderful players for this tour. I think you need to be that type of player before you deserve to get a Ryder Cup Captaincy.

GORDON SIMPSON: What was the biggest difference from being on the team you played in and having to stand on the sidelines and watch last time?

THOMAS BJORN: A massive difference. You become -- you go over there as a person that just wants to -- I'm still in the middle of my own playing career. I went over there and wanted to make sure that all of the aspects that I would like to have right when I'm a player, I would make sure that I would do those things for the players that were there.

And I think throughout the whole week, we worked so hard behind the scenes to make everybody happy and to do all of the right things that you kind of forgot where you were. On Sunday, I keep saying this -- on Sunday there, it's probably one of the hardest days in my golfing life because you want to be there. You want to have a golf club in your hand and you want to be a part of it, and you don't ever really feel a part of it. You feel like you're doing the work to make those players feel comfortable. Now, I always said, when I'm there, I feel that all the top players were there, so I was never going to go there and feel like I was a big part of the whole thing. It was for the players that were there and make sure they felt like they could go and win this thing.

The difference is so big in what you do and how you look at it but I mean, it was a wonderful experience for me because I saw not only golf, but the other side of everything, setting up the venue, the people that work behind the scenes and how you get things to work. So it was a big insight for me through golf and what goes on if the golfing world.

End of FastScripts.

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