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JOHNNIE WALKER CLASSIC


February 9, 2006


Nick O'Hern


PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: Nick, nice start to the tournament, 67. You must be extremely pleased with the way you played. No bogeys I believe.

NICK O'HERN: No bogeys. It was great. I played really well. I think I missed one green and 16 good chances of birdie. So in that respect, it was well scored because I played a lot better than what I shot. It was tough out there, the wind was blowing, and I had a lot of birdie chances but I couldn't hole many putts. But if someone said 67 at start of the day, I would have taken it, so it's all right.

Q. How many putts from inside 12 feet that you missed?

NICK O'HERN: A lot. A good half dozen, I reckon, something like that. I missed one green, got that up-and-down for par. I had one birdie putt at 40 feet, and then the longest birdie putt I would have had would be eight. I had two tap-ins for birdie from six inches. I made three putts and I don't know how long they were but they weren't very long.

I'm putting well, so I must admit, I've always struggled to read the greens here. There's a lot of putts at 10, 15 feet that they have two breaks, and it's pretty rare to have that.

I felt as though I putted okay, but I obviously was not picking the right lines. So I'll go practice this afternoon. The good news is I'm hitting the ball great.

Q. After your near misses in the past 12 months, is the frustration building up?

NICK O'HERN: No, it doesn't bother me at all. That's just, I keep saying, you know, it's very encouraging to me. I'm playing really well to give myself a chance every week. It's really pleasing. I don't think too many guys can say that, where they can give themselves a chance week-in and week-out.

End of last year I played some really good golf. I finished with a chance at the HSBC Champions; I had a chance to win there, no doubt. You just keep moving on, plugging away and keep doing the things that I'm doing. I'm playing well and just got to figure it out. I'm learning every time I get into position, I learn something new on how to handle certain situations and that when I finally get through it, it's going to be good.

Q. What does it take for you to win ?

NICK O'HERN: Not really. As I say, I've had the chances to win but haven't quite figured it out. And I've gone back through those days where I've had the chances and worked out where I didn't quite do what I should have done, so I'm learning every time, which is good. If I basically came away thinking I'm not quite sure what I did wrong there, then maybe I would think that's not quite right but I am learning each time how to go about it.

Q. Will you change anything to the lead up to the Match play and Masters?

NICK O'HERN: No, I have next week off and then the Match-Play. Circumstances have sort of changed for me this year. We were going to head across to the U.S. after this week for about seven months, but I'm going to basically from now on be going back and forth. My wife, she's pregnant and she's basically bedridden for the pregnancy, so she's down here unfortunately. So I'll be racking up the frequent flyer miles going back and forth. It's going to be an interesting year.

But I'm basically playing mostly in the U.S. I'm kind of doing the schedule around what's best for me travel-wise and coming home to make sure Alana's okay, as opposed to the golf tournaments. I'm actually going to miss out probably on some big events but there are more important things in life.

Q. When is she due?

NICK O'HERN: U.S. Open week. So I could be missing that one.

Q. Inaudible?

NICK O'HERN: Yeah, the same thing happened in the first pregnancy. They wanted her to go full-time in the hospital but she's not going. She's going to stay at home and her folks just look after her.

Q. You look the most relax I've seen you with things going well with the family. Has it reflected positively on your golf?

NICK O'HERN: You know, every year I've basically just tried to get better as a golfer every year, and sometimes you go through periods where you think, oh, you're actually not cut out for this, you're not good enough to play this game.

The last couple of years, I've come to realize I'm actually pretty good, so it's nice to have that confidence. I think that comes -- from that comes from just a relaxed attitude when you're out there playing. You know, today it's a home tournament, so I'm sure people are hoping that I get up there and there will be plenty of -- if I have the chance on Sunday, there will be plenty of pressure and all that sort of stuff. You know, I'm just really relaxed today, and I hope that continues for the rest of the week.

CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: Thank you.

End of FastScripts.
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