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ABERDEEN STANDARD INVESTMENTS LADIES SCOTTISH OPENJuly 24, 2018Catriona MatthewKathryn ImrieSuzann PettersenGullane, East Lothian, Scotland BETHAN CUTLER: Welcome to the 2018 Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us this morning. I’m delighted to be joined by The 2019 European Solheim Cup Captain Catriona Matthew, a two-time winner of this championship, who will be making a special announcement. Before we begin, thank you to everyone concerned with this tournament for allowing us to make this announcement here at the start of a special week at Gullane. Without further ado, let us get underway. As you can see, there's a spare seat here beside us at the top table, and I'm delighted to ask Catriona to tell us who is going to fill that seat. CATRIONA MATTHEW: Well, it’s a great honour for me to announce my first vice captain, a truly great friend… Kathryn Imrie… I’m also delighted to announce that my second vice captain will be Suzann Pettersen, who has joined us here on the line from her home in Norway… BETHAN CUTLER: Kathryn, welcome and many congratulations. Can you give us your initial reaction to your appointment as Catriona’s vice captain for The 2019 Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland? KATHRYN IMRIE: Obviously a huge honour when Beany called me up and asked if I wanted to assist her or kind of being her assistant captain. I didn't quite expect it, but I have a huge respect and honour for Catriona, and we've played on most of these teams together, and hopefully I can bring some good experience to her and hopefully try and help her execute her plan. Last year we kind talked position so maybe I could give her some experience of kind of having an insight of how Annika kind of helped. So it was different from being on the playing side to definitely being more on the leadership side. So huge honour, and I can't wait for next year. Q. Catriona, what qualities will Suzann bring? CATRIONA MATTHEW: Yeah. Suzann is obviously a fantastic player. I think we've played on eight Solheim Cups together. I don't think we actually ever were partners, but yeah, just great to have Suzann. She's got such fire, such a competitor, and I think obviously fully expecting her to be playing on the team as well and then being a real leader to the other players, and obviously with Suzann still being out on tour playing, she knows all the players. She's playing with them. She'll be a great help in, you know, just pairings and helping with the picks, and I think being out there on tour and seeing them play, you get a great idea of how people are playing. Q. So obviously, Kathryn, you've played in one, been a traveling reserve, but you've been a help seven times. You must have a great idea of what the role of vice captain entails. KATHRYN IMRIE: Oh, yeah. It's a lot more than people think. It's a lot of planning, communication and enthusiasm involved if you're going to do it right. I'd like to think that come September next year, we'll have left no stone unturned and have left nothing to chance to pick the best team that's going to get this cup back. MODERATOR: And Catriona, it must be very important to have people you trust around you. Talk a little bit more about the relationship you've had with Kathryn over the years. CATRIONA MATTHEW: Yeah. Absolutely. As I said earlier, we've known each other for probably 30 years. Played a lot of golf together. I don't think we ever played in a Solheim. Didn't ever play in a Solheim together, but obviously been a lot together. And Kathryn again -- I mean anyone who plays at a top level is just a fierce competitor, but I think Kathryn, you know, such a bubbly personality and enthusiasm and just having seen her, she's been in the team room in the past, I think will be just a great -- you need to keep that kind of light atmosphere which I think is very important. MODERATOR: So question for Suzann on the line, obviously you are absent from the field this week, expecting your first child on the 28th of August. Can you tell us more about how you're feeling and your future plans? SUZANN PETTERSEN: I'll try and see how I feel. But obviously I can't wait. It will be a great factor in our life. But my plan is still to try and come back as soon as I can and start off next season from the get go. So hopefully I have a good solid year behind me before we get to Gleneagles and try and play our hearts out to win the Cup back. MODERATOR: Great. And Catriona, any advice for Suzann as a mother. CATRIONA MATTHEW: Well, the 25th is a great day to have a baby. That's my birthday. So we need to go for that one, a few days early, Suzann. Advice? God, having a child, I think you just -- you learn as you go. Get lots of sleep at the moment I would say. SUZANN PETTERSEN: Yeah. Thank you. MODERATOR: And this is a very important week for you, Catriona, going for hat trick of titles here at Gullane. How well do you know the course and what do you need to do well here? CATRIONA MATTHEW: Yeah. I mean obviously I live just down the road. I've been a member here probably since I was about 12 or 13. So obviously know the course well. It's a great field this week, so we'd obviously have to play well. Played yesterday, and the course is in great shape. It's not often you see it quite as firm and fast as it is. Even just for locals you wouldn't have said it was much breeze yesterday, but it was certainly challenging. But obviously we'd have to go out there and play well. I think the key probably is keeping -- as any links course, keeping it out of the bunkers. They're kind of stroke hand distance. So that's the key, I think, this week. MODERATOR: I'm going to hand it over to the floor for questions. Obviously it's a small room, but if you could use the microphone because Suzann is on the line and we have a transcription service. Q. Congratulations, Kathryn and Suzann. Can you recall the first time you met Catriona back in amateur days and can you tell some of the great stories you've had over the years? KATHRYN IMRIE: Not too many. Do you want the edited version or the real version? Q. Real version. KATHRYN IMRIE: I do remember people talking about this young whippersnapper from North Berwick that was supposed to be pretty handy, and I think it might have been at one of the Scottish schools, Beany. Would that be right? CATRIONA MATTHEW: Oh, it could have been, yeah. KATHRYN IMRIE: Certainly from the Match Play, Scottish Match Play. And obviously from very early on it was clear that Catriona was going to be a contender at any stage as she went forward. And one of my favorite stories about Catriona is her wedding when I was dancing with your dad, and you weren't quite through there, and you were saying, oh, Catriona is thinking about turning pro, and he said, I don't think she'll make it. And I said, oh, I think she'll be fine. So it's quite a funny story. But we played a lot of sports together, too, as young people. Badminton. Beany was a really good badminton player. Played squash, and I think I whacked her across the knee. CATRIONA MATTHEW: I had to give up on the squash after injuries. KATHRYN IMRIE: And I think Graham was the one that said, okay, no more squash after that. But we've really done a lot of things and just grew up together, and this is just such a proud moment for me and for Scotland really to have two people doing it. Q. And if I remember right, you helped at Des Moines. Will that be helpful for you next year in this role? KATHRYN IMRIE: Oh, yeah. I mean as I say, anytime sort of getting to know how the teams are run and what ticks and to make the teams play their best and obviously with the main goal to get that Cup back in European hands. It's a lot behind the scenes that goes into getting everything to tick. And it's definitely been helpful. Q. Were you surprised by the amount of what goes on behind the scenes and what was maybe one of the eye-brow raising jobs that you had to do? KATHRYN IMRIE: Well, I just think it's 24/7. I mean we get very little sleep during the time. That's probably the most eye-opening thing, what goes on all the time. I wouldn't say anything specific. I think in this role, graduating from a helper to an actual face captain is going to be a lot more. As I say, the planning and picking the teams, that's going to be the hard part. Pairing, I think that's going to be the interesting part of it. But it's like a Jack-of-all-trades really and that's going to be the fun part. Q. Is this kind of day when it becomes a bit more real in some respects that this is the first official announcement, get cracking now? CATRIONA MATTHEW: Yeah, definitely. I mean obviously announcing Kathryn and Suzann today just kind of gets the ball rolling, I think. It's really not that long away now, just over a year. I was up at Gleneagles just maybe last week having a look. So yeah, it's all becoming -- I think it will all come around very quickly now. Got a lot of kind of things coming up in the next few months. So looking forward to it. Q. Kathryn, you said you took nanosecond to decide. What were you thinking in that unanimous owe second? KATHRYN IMRIE: That this is just basically what I've always wanted to be doing. When Catriona was at the helm or selected I was like, well, I wonder if I was going to get the nod. I wasn't sure. So I was surprised, I suppose, just pleased, because that phone call could have been anything. Could have been saying, I'm actually going to play X, Y or Z for this and unfortunately you're not going to be one. But luckily it was what I was wanting to hear. Q. Catriona, I think you've got a Gullane story that we would like? CATRIONA MATTHEW: I do? Q. The one where you arrived up here with your dog. Amateur days. You had done something. I think you'd signed a wrong card or done something? CATRIONA MATTHEW: Oh, it was my last amateur event actually. That was a nice one to bring up (laughs). I think so it was the British stroke play, yeah. My brother was caddying for me, and it was what's the sixth hole this week. I drove into one of the bunkers off the tee and I would actually be okay next year, but under our great wisdom we decided to take a drop and just decided we'll take it out of the bunker to take our drop, and unfortunately no one told us until we had finish that we had obviously broken. We were just ahead of our time. That's going to be hard to do that now. Q. I've got a quick question for Suzann. The last event you became vice captain sort of last minute. What were the sort of surprises and interesting things you learned of being vice captain as opposed to the success you've had on the course in the tournament? SUZANN PETTERSEN: Well, it was obviously a very different experience, and obviously time consuming and all the stress that goes on behind the scenes that you don't realize as a player. I mean having played in seven of these, you don't quite realize how much stress the captains see as a team, kind of always under. Like I told Beany, if I am playable on the team, I don't know how much I can assist the actual week of the tournament because I don't think it's -- I don't think you can combine them. It's very energy draining. But at the end of the day you have to let the players go out and execute their own plan and trust that you've picked the right team and let them do the job. That's kind of the experience I drew from last time. Q. And a question for Catriona. You were talking about mother hood earlier. Do you think that's likely to give you any sort of insight into looking after sort of 12 children for the next 12 months? CATRIONA MATTHEW: Well, hopefully they're more grown up than that. You know, I'm really looking forward to it. Obviously still playing on tour I know all the players, just trying to get to know some of the younger ones a bit better these next two years. So yeah, I mean I think obviously when you're trying to pick pairings and different things, you know it's going to have its challenges, I'm sure. I'm sure I'll make some mistakes, but just going to give it our best and as long as we can go in there fully prepared, I mean I think obviously with Suzann, I think we talked about that when I asked her actually, because having both kind of the last one was a bit strange where I was the vice captain and ended up kind of switched roles. So obviously if Suzann is going to be playing she'll take a back-seat role once there and kind of be the leader on the golf course of the team. It's just getting everyone to gel together is the main thing. Q. Catriona, you shared at the start the first of appointments. Do you have an idea of how many you'll end up with and what the time frame will be for those appointments? CATRIONA MATTHEW: I think for the Solheim you have three vice captains and obviously the helpers. So the next one will probably be early next year I would think we'll do. Q. Do you have someone in mind or does it just depend how things work out? CATRIONA MATTHEW: I've got two or three people in mind and just maybe perhaps see who's playing well perhaps next year and play it by ear a little bit. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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