LIV GOLF HONG KONG

March 6, 2024

Ian Poulter

Lee Westwood

Henrik Stenson

Sam Horsfield

Hong Kong Golf Club

Majesticks GC

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Good morning. Let's welcome the team from Majesticks GC. We have co-captains Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson and also Sam Horsfield. You've all competed here at the Hong Kong Golf Club in some capacity. Can you share your initial thoughts on Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Golf Club?

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I love Hong Kong. It's a great city, very vibrant city. Obviously a lot going on.

The golf course is, I guess, a little shorter than most weeks we play nowadays, which is nice. I like the variation of golf courses. It's tight, greens are quite small. It looks in excellent condition. I'm going to go out and have a look at it this afternoon.

I'm looking forward to this week. It's normally good crowds, as well. It's got a good feel about it, this tournament.

SAM HORSFIELD: Never been to Hong Kong, never played here, so no comment.

IAN POULTER: Lovely dinner last night, though.

SAM HORSFIELD: Yeah, that was nice.

IAN POULTER: I've played here quite a lot. For us, it was kind of a normal stop in the back end of the year schedule for us. It was the UBS Hong Kong for a number of years when I played quite nicely here through the years.

It's a course which sets up, I think, for us as some oldies that don't hit it 350 yards. It's quite refreshing to come to a course where for the most part we won't really be using driver. There's only a couple of holes probably on the course that lends itself to hitting driver. Accuracy is something hopefully Team Majesticks can lean on this week and Henrik wearing his 3-wood out and I'm not even sure if Sam is going to take driver this week.

The city is incredible. It's got some great night life spots. We had a wonderful dinner in the library last night. It's a fun city to be around. We're off to Happy Valley tonight for the horse racing, and it's a busy week for us in general.

We've got Aurora, our film crew here this week filming us with Team Majesticks, our Camp Confidential that we released a few weeks ago. We'll be doing episodes and filming quite a bit this week to kick off episode 4 at the back end of this year.

Then we've got a busy day Saturday. We've got 60 clients in town from OKX, which is great, so looking after them corporately and really kind of hosting one of our biggest sponsors. It's going to be a great week.

HENRIK STENSON: For me, it was a first appearance here in March last year, so great to be back. Like we touched on already, golf course is old style, tree lined, really nice layout, and yeah, had a great week here in March, so looking forward to another great week. A lot of friendly and familiar faces. Looking forward to it, and hopefully we can film a few birdies along the way, too.

Q. Ian, you just touched on the activation with your partners OKX this week. They've got a great presence here in Asia. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and sort of leading on from bringing LIV Golf to different parts of the world and how important that is, as well?

IAN POULTER: Yeah, I mean, OKX, as you say, very prominent here in Asia. Crypto platform, trading platform. We're proud to have them with Team Majesticks.

We've done a couple of things for them at the minute, but this year is probably going to be stepping it up another level, so I think we're all quite excited to entertain all of their guests this weekend. We had a great dinner with Haider in Jeddah last week, so discussing how we're going to activate the partnership, rolling out through 2024, 2025.

It's a big market for them in Asia and something that we're proud to have them on board with us.

Q. Lee, are you going to provide some pointers at the Jockey Club?

LEE WESTWOOD: I'm trying to do some research.

HENRIK STENSON: I went in March, so whatever I picked, go the opposite way.

LEE WESTWOOD: Whatever tip I give, probably back the other one. But it will be nice to go. I've never been to racing here, so it will be nice to experience Happy Valley. I've watched it on TV, obviously. Hoping to bump into Harry Bentley who rides over here, as well. He's ridden for me in the past. So have a chat with him. I'm really looking forward to it, actually.

IAN POULTER: I hope it's going to be Happy Valley, not sad valley tonight.

Q. How important is the Asian market for the Majesticks in general in terms of your business aspirations?

HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, I think Asia is a huge golfing market. It's a huge market for growth for the game. We obviously want to position ourselves well in that way. Having LIV come to Hong Kong in a couple of months or a month and a half to Singapore, it's a big market for golf in general and for LIV and for us as a team, as well. It's something we're happy to be a part of.

Q. Lee, do you have some thoughts about Asia?

LEE WESTWOOD: Look at my career. I've always come to Asia. I always have from the very start. It's a place I've always loved coming. It's a great market for us and for LIV, hence we play two or three events here, don't we.

I've always enjoyed coming here, and I've been successful here. Hopefully that'll continue. It's a great, great culture, nice people, hence we've kept coming back year after year after year.

It's nice to be in Hong Kong. I haven't played that much in Hong Kong, only once in the past. I've spent quite a bit of time here doing corporate stuff and things like that, but only played the tournament once, which is quite strange. But obviously played a lot in Thailand and Malaysia and Indonesia, places like that. It's nice to venture out this way and play a few tournaments here.

Q. This golf course seems to be set up for a team like you, which has been the best in fairways hit, which has been really good in greens in regulation. I think the only stat that I can see is the putting where you guys have really disappointed. How do you look at this week given the stats that you have got, the way you guys are playing?

HENRIK STENSON: You're not the only one that's been disappointed in that stat. I mean, for myself, yeah, I haven't been putting well, and I think as a team we haven't been putting particularly well, either.

I think as soon as we're done here, you'll see us on the other side of that tent working away on the putting. But obviously it's going to be an important week to hit fairways and greens. There are some narrow tee shots and small greens. If we can keep that up and roll a few in, hopefully we can be in with a better chance of a result than we have been in the first couple of goes.

LEE WESTWOOD: I don't think it really matters what kind of golf course it is; if you don't putt well in a tournament, you don't do any good. It's exaggerated in this format where it's only three rounds because you can't plod your way, an easy way into the tournament because you haven't got much time. You've got one less round. So you have to come out fast and almost be a streaky kind of player and get on a roll on greens.

There's no room for just plodding it around, like I said. You've got to come out all guns blazing, which makes an exciting format, but it also makes it a format where you've got to have 26 putts most days.

IAN POULTER: Yeah, look, I'm driving it nice and straight, and I'm not converting. We all know where we stand on statistics. I think we've done a deep dive into areas of our game which can help us. Putting has been highlighted as one of those.

It's disappointing for myself. It's an area of my game which normally I would say I've been pretty good through the years. I have a new putter in the bag. I've just change my grip from a new grip to a grip that I've always used for 20 years.

You know, the rest of my game has been pretty sharp, and I've just let myself down on the greens. If we can rekindle a little bit of form on the greens, then hopefully collectively -- I know Sam has been working very hard. He's been working with a coach on his putting and putted actually okay last week, which was great. But collectively I think we all need to putt better as a team, and I think if we do that, we're going to have some good results.

SAM HORSFIELD: I think putting on the putting green yesterday, obviously I haven't played, but they're quite grainy, which should help me, Ian and Henrik, obviously growing up in Florida for myself and those boys living there. I think we've got a good chance this week.

HENRIK STENSON: I hate grainy greens. I'm Swedish.

IAN POULTER: You love grainy greens.

Q. You just love this part of the world, don't you? You don't mind sweating it out on the golf course? Great success, as well.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, throughout my career I've played well in Asia, in the places that people don't like to come to, where it gets a bit sticky. I've never won around here like you, though, have I.

Like I said before, I've always enjoyed coming to Asia, and I think the first time I came here was 1994, Malaysian Open I think it was --

HENRIK STENSON: Did you win?

LEE WESTWOOD: No, I don't win as regularly.

SAM HORSFIELD: I wasn't born. Wasn't even a thought actually.

LEE WESTWOOD: Now that you've all taken the mickey out of me, let's move on.

Q. Apart from OKX, what you are doing this week, you've done a phenomenal job with Little Sticks throughout the last year. Can you talk to me about that and how important it is for you as a team?

IAN POULTER: Yeah, I mean, I think it's one area where all of the teams are tasked to do some charitable work. I think we've been one of the teams that have adopted it as early as anybody, and we're pretty proud. Little Sticks has been grown in house. We've got a great team. Jordan, who works back in the UK on this program for us, has built a curriculum. That curriculum has been rolled out through numerous schools now. Orlando, in the Newcastle area, Luton, it's been piloted now in -- I'm trying to remember now, 57 schools. We've had some incredible success in all of those schools from the feedback that we've had, varied disabilitied children have taken on our curriculum and taken some of the educational teachers really, really like it. We're very proud to have that in place, and I think as we grow over the next few years, it'll be really exciting for us to see where we can take it globally, roll it out into as many schools as we possibly can, and really start to have a deep dive in seeing how much it helps some of these children.

Q. Can you comment on the Hong Kong country experience? Ian said you had some local food last night. Did you taste some Chinese white wine, Moutai, last night? And also, do you have plans to do more sightseeing, and do you want to visit?

LEE WESTWOOD: I've had Moutai in the past. I can't remember what it tasted like.

IAN POULTER: Lee chose the wine last night. It wasn't that wine. But we were in the Library. I think it's the oldest private members club here in Hong Kong, so local Chinese cuisine. It's absolutely magnificent. Playing golf in this region for a very long time, getting to know members of Fanling that own certain restaurants in town. Peter Lam is one of them who has a number of restaurants, and again, it's one of the reasons why we love coming to Asia. The food is so good. We all love Asian food. It's been a good hub for us all, I think, through all the years. Lee has played a lot of golf over here in Asia. He's done a lot of corporate activities here. So have I.

I know this is Sam's first time, but already I think he quite enjoys being here.

Q. Aside from the horse racing tonight, where do you want to visit? Do you have any other relaxing time after the match?

IAN POULTER: By the time we get going, there's not a lot of time, by the time we get back to the hotel and relax, have dinner and obviously some of us are going on to play Macau next week. But I've been here a lot. I've seen quite a lot of Hong Kong, and we always love coming here to play golf.

Q. Sam, is there anything that's surprised you in Hong Kong?

SAM HORSFIELD: How busy the city is. It's honestly probably one of the coolest cities I've been to, to be honest with you. When I got here on Monday, we went out, and my girlfriend and I, we went into the city a little bit and saw a bit of the culture, saw what was going on.

But yeah, it's a really cool place so far. She's going to see one of the Buddhas today, I think, so I'm looking forward to seeing pictures and hearing what she has to say about that. I wish I could be there visiting it, honestly.

So all good so far, and looking forward to coming back.

Q. What's your personal comment about the Fanling Golf Course?

SAM HORSFIELD: Well, the chipping green and putting green is nice. That's as far as I've gotten so far. I'm going to go play nine this afternoon with Ian at some point. I'm sure he'll be able to guide me around. He's won here how many times, once? One time here, so yeah.