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HSBC WOMEN'S WORLD MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

July 5, 2006

Lorena Ochoa

VIRGINIA WATERS, ENGLAND

DANA GROSS-RHODE: Currently Lorena is leading the Money List, definitely having a stellar season. Talk about coming into the only match-play event of the season right now.

LORENA OCHOA: Yes, hello to everybody. This has been a really good year for me, a fun year. You know, a couple of wins and I've been trying to get -- some weeks being in good position on Sunday and trying to win tournaments. It's just been a lot of fun and I'm very excited to be here.

I worked really hard in the off-season and now to come and start playing and see some good results, you know, right now, we are pretty much in the middle of the season. We still have some really big tournaments coming. I feel that I'm playing good, I'm confident with my game. And this is going to be a different week that we're playing match play, which I like. I think it's kind of more relaxed and more fun for us and also for the spectators and just the tournament in general.

So I'm really looking forward to the tournament tomorrow and giving a good try to win that trophy.

Q. Obviously it would be very difficult to maintain the pace you were on earlier in the season. But it seemed like you've hit a little bit of a lull. Are you still playing as well as you did early on through the Sybase?

LORENA OCHOA: Yes, I think you know what I have a lot of Top-10 finishes. For me that's the main thing to do. At the beginning of the season, I set some goals and I wanted to be more consistent throughout the year. You know, have more Top-10s and that would be so much better by the end of the year to have better results and be closer to my goal to being the No. 1 player. You know, it's working so far. I'm not going to change anything. Golf is a long career, and also the year, we play so many tournaments and sometimes you have up and downs. I understand that.

I've been in the Top-10 a couple weeks. I finished 20th in the Open. I don't consider that being a bad week. I actually played pretty good, pretty solid with my tee shots and my irons. I just struggled with my putts on Sunday. But I feel good and I'm going to keep working hard. You know, motivating myself to finish strong the rest of the season.

Q. When you come to an event like this and you've been playing so well, is this a good thing in the middle of the schedule or a bad thing in the middle of the schedule because you could come here and play one match and leave; that's a possibility, so you don't get the four rounds of golf in. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

LORENA OCHOA: If it's a good thing or a bad thing to be playing well at this time of the season?

If you're playing good, doesn't matter which part of the season. The summer is very important for us, for the professionals. We have a lot of very big tournaments in this part of the summer and it's very important to be in the highest -- in the peak in all of these tournaments. In match-play, yes, anything can happen, but I just play like any other tournament. You know, we have same conditions for everybody and I'm just going to concentrate on each of them, just one day by one day.

Q. Talk just a little in general about this course and what you like about it?

LORENA OCHOA: I think it's a good golf course to be aggressive. I think you can really make a lot of birdies out there, especially if you take advantage of the opportunities on the greens, they are going to be very soft. You can go for it.

I'm the type of player that makes a lot of birdies and in a match-play, just a little easier for me because you can read more and you don't need to be afraid of making decisions, okay, I'm going to go for it.

If you're doing good in your match, you can kind of like risk a little bit more and instead of playing more conservative, so I like that. I think it should be good for us and for the fans. We're making more spectacular shots and making more birdies, so that should be good for the match.

Q. Coming off a week where you had to play conservative and pars were good, this must be a lot more fun where you can just turn everything loose?

LORENA OCHOA: Yes, this is more like, just a more relaxed week, you know. It will be easier to enjoy, but mentally tough. I'm just really looking forward to enjoying the week and have a lot of fun on the golf course and try to make a lot of birdies out there and we should be in good shape.

Q. You mentioned you had some problems with the putter in the final round of the U.S. Open, was it a technical thing or a pace thing?

LORENA OCHOA: Speed. I had trouble with my speed. I kept leaving myself like tough putts to make coming back or just short of the hole. The greens were a little bit slower on Sunday than usual. Maybe in the U.S. Open, always you're trying to touch the hole and you needed speed it time. I had a little hard time with the speed. The greens were huge, and with the wind, made things harder just to get a good speed on the greens.

So I'm going to work on that this week and just kind of work right now on long putts. I feel more comfortable with what I'm doing and what we have this week and go from there.

Q. Did you play yesterday?

LORENA OCHOA: No. I took the day off. I was feeling very tired so I decided to relax.

Q. So have you been out on the course yet since you arrived here?

LORENA OCHOA: No.

Q. So you'll tee it up tomorrow pretty much going on what you remember from last year?

LORENA OCHOA: Yes.

Q. How can you maintain your good condition to play golf, your great feeling to play golf through the year?

LORENA OCHOA: Yes, I think it's very important to be in good shape. And you know, to be able to do exercise traveling, that makes you feel a lot more just healthy and have energy and be able to maintain your physical condition.

And also, I think you need to understand, when you need to listen to your body, when you need to rest, when you need to take a week off and don't go too hard, you're going to be much better at the end of the season so you have good energy and good conditions to finish the year good playing good.

Q. Everybody knows that Seve was a big match-play guy, when it came to match-play, he was big on gamesmanship, climbing inside the opponent's head and stuff like that. Do you do any of that stuff?

LORENA OCHOA: Say again? What was that?

Q. When it comes to match-play, Seve was a big match-play guy, but he was a guy who liked to play head games with his opponents. Do you do any of that stuff when you get out in match-play as far as your opponent goes?

LORENA OCHOA: I like to play some games when I do the practice rounds, we usually play some kind of competition just to get focused on the practice round. But I've never done that in a match-play or in a tournament.

DANA GROSS-RHODE: Thank you so much for coming in.

End of FastScripts.

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