	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

WGC BARBADOS WORLD CUP

December 10, 2006

ST. JAMES, BARBADOS: Final Round

GORDON SIMPSON: Well, many congratulations to Germany, the 2006 winners of the WGC Barbados World Cup. You've experienced winning the World Cup before with Torsten Giedeon, but we'll start with you, the young man, how does it feel at this moment to have triumphed?
MARCEL SIEM: It's just unbelievable. I won already a tournament in sudden death as well with three players, actually in South Africa, but this is just another world. It's so much bigger and on this side of Bernhard Langer, winning a trophy this big, in Barbados, on Barbados, actually, so far away, with was just so much fun. I can't believe it right now, actually.
It's just unbelievable. I love it. It's such a great feeling.
BERNHARD LANGER: It's early Christmas.
MARCEL SIEM: That's right.
GORDON SIMPSON: It's no surprise probably that the playoff was involving two of the best foursomes players in Ryder Cup that we've seen in many years. Do you feel that contributed to you to being so high up?
MARCEL SIEM: Yeah, I said it to John Paramor and Marc Warren on the tee box on 18. I said it's unbelievable to be there on Sunday with Montgomerie and Langer, this is the best that could happen actually.
Sure, it's two legends in sudden death with Marc Warren and Marcel Siem, it was incredible. I was pretty nervous before the chip, and the lob shot is actually my special shot as well and it was so tough to judge it. I knew Monty has a tough putt there and I wanted to get it closer than Mark and did a little jump and run put, chip, and it was just unbelievable.
GORDON SIMPSON: A trophy again for you, you've won one or two in the past, how does this one compare at the age of -- well, we won't say.
BERNHARD LANGER: You can say my age, it's okay. (Laughter).
Every trophy is special as you can guess. The last few years I didn't win a lot of trophies to be honest. It was nice to be on a roll. I won with my son last week. We talked about that earlier and to win two weekends in a row, two tournaments is pretty neat. To have him on the bag as well, was a great experience.
But I truly enjoyed playing with Marcel because we actually never really played much golf together even though we're from the same country, he's a totally different generation than I am. You know, he comes from up north more so and I'm from down south. When I played in Germany he was too young, and I played in the U.S. the last six or whatever, ten years, and that's when he really came on the scene. We never really played much golf together and that was pretty neat.
We just felt there was something, it was a spark, we had chemistry, we enjoyed eve other's company and we just said let's have fun, no matter what the outcome will be. Let's just enjoy the game, enjoy the resort and enjoy Barbados. And I must admit, yesterday was a little less fun, the way we played yesterday, but the other three days were pretty special.

Q. What I'd like to know, if you have one or two things that you've learned from the world's greatest, I mean, what an opportunity to play in this tournament; what has he kind of shown you or what have you learned from him?
MARCEL SIEM: I think that's one thing I learned this week, just to stay calm. You can't change what happened before. I'm a pretty aggressive player. I always try when I make a bogey, just to get a birdie on the next hole straightaway. He always took me a little back; no, just centre of the fairway, hit greens, I learned in the past. But this week I saw especially with the result at the end. Stay calm, wait for your chances and if the ball drops in, it drops. If not, you can't do anything against it. This is the main thing I learned.
And actually, I learned a lot out of the golf course, as well. He's such a nice guy. He's so famous, he's a legend and he's so nice to everybody. He respects everybody and this is the main thing actually I learned this week. This means a lot to me to play with Bernhard Langer and just know who he is, actually. He's a great guy.
BERNHARD LANGER: I paid him to say all that. (Laughter).
MARCEL SIEM: Honest.

Q. When you walked off 18 the first time, how confident were you that 16 would hold up with the others, I think still having four and five holes to play at that point?
BERNHARD LANGER: Well I knew that 17 and 18 are very tough holes. But 15, it was reachable today for some of the teams. So I figured, you know, Scotland or Sweden might birdie 15, but then 16 was not -- you know, not real easy but not real hard. But 17, 18 were.
At first I had a feeling, well, one of them might squeeze in 17, but we knew it wasn't going to be easy for them, and, you know, as it progressed, we obviously knew the worst we could do was finish second.
You know, when you're in a playoff, everybody wants to win. I feel bad for Scotland because they deserved win as well. They played good enough to do that, but there can only be one winner. If you're in a lot of playoffs, you're going to win some and you're going to lose some. Today we were the fortunate ones.

Q. You've won this before, can you quite believe that you sit here now winning it again with another partner?
BERNHARD LANGER: No, it's not easy to believe, to tell you the truth, 16 years later or whatever it is, to still be in the winner's circle with another young man.
But it just shows the golf ball doesn't know how old you are, and just keep hitting it, try to stay fit and have fun with it.
You know, I wish I had played the last few years now, looking back, but there's so many other things in my life that are going on. I've got four kids, I've got a wife, I need to be at home, too, and it was difficult for my wife to let me go this week because there's so many -- you know, before Christmas, there's functions and plays with the kids that I usually try to attend, and I missed one or two again this week. I'm not proud of that, but I made the commitment to play this tournament, and, you know, in the end, I guess it was the right decision.
MARCEL SIEM: Oohh, I got lucky!
GORDON SIMPSON: I think your kids will make an exception for this one.

Q. You started today five strokes off the pace, what were your thoughts about what was ahead of you today?
BERNHARD LANGER: What we talked about even last night and this morning, foursomes is the hardest play you can have, especially foursome medal play. In the Ryder Cup, you have match play, so you can mess up and lose one hole; so, what, can you win another hole.
But in medal play, you mess up, you make a triple-bogey somewhere, you're gone.
So our strategy was to hit fairways, hit greens, give ourselves opportunities for birdies and we almost did it perfectly. We hit 17 greens. The only green we didn't hit was the 17th hole and he missed his drive by about three feet and that was a horrible lie in the rough and I couldn't reach the green from there. Otherwise it was incredibly well played golf from the very beginning to the very end. You know, I missed about, I don't know exactly how long, maybe an 8-foot putt on 17, and he might have had a 12-foot putt on 18. If we made those two, which is possible, we would have shot 7-under today. In foursomes in wind in difficult conditions, that is really fantastic golf.

Q. I think it's fair to say, Marcel was struggling a little bit earlier on this week; how impressed were you with the way he came back and played today?
BERNHARD LANGER: Very much. I was extremely impressed today. He played like a guy who has been out here for 20 years. Nothing fazed him. He hit great drives, long and straight, he hit fantastic irons. He made putts from all over the place. You know, the chip on 18 was like nobody could play better. You know, you could put Phil Mickelson and Seve there and they could not have done it any better. To leave me a two-foot putt uphill, that's about as easy as it gets.
So my hat is off to him. I could tell he might have been a little nervous on Thursday, but understandably so. You know, he has not been part of many of these international events and team events. But he got it together real quick and the way he played today was -- he probably played the best golf of all the participants today.

Q. Great confidence from one of the great players; what do you think this will do for your career in terms of confidence and moving on from here?
MARCEL SIEM: I hope so, yeah. These compliments are unbelievable for me. I'm really happy and it's just awesome.
But I think so. I learned a lot this week. I think it's pretty important for my career because the confidence comes -- the new season starts in January already and I have a win in my pocket now and can go out to Abu Dhabi and to The European Tour and just hit my balls with a lot of confidence. It's pretty important for every player, doesn't matter what age he is. If he comes new on Tour or he's long on Tour, doesn't matter. It's always important to get all the confidence. It's all a mind thing and especially in golf, doesn't matter the other sports, sometimes you can do things with your strengths or something, but golf is only a mind sport. It means a lot to me, I think my confidence will go up and up now hopefully.

Q. You were saying earlier that your wife did not necessarily love this schedule with things being so close to the holidays, how did you convince the family that this was the right move for you this week?
BERNHARD LANGER: Well, we always talk about my schedule, what we do as a family, what our goals are and what we are trying to achieve. It's always compromising back and forth, because there's so many great events nowadays, that, you know, you could play 50 weeks; not that I wanted to play 50, but you could. So you have to pick and choose and see what's good and what's going on.
I told her, I've had some weeks off before the father son and I'm going to play those two, and I'm going to be off for another six weeks or something like that, five, and that we were going to spend some real quality, family time together tomorrow. That will be wonderful for our family.

Q. You're going to look like the teacher of the year, you have a son coming up and all we're talking about is he's going to be a world-class player, and then this young man here, you seem to be an amazing teacher. Is it your love for the game?
MARCEL SIEM: I think he is.

Q. That's a special skill. That's different just from the game. What is there that's done that in?
BERNHARD LANGER: I don't know, I never consider myself as a teacher. I never looked as myself as a teacher. I'm teaching my children hopefully to be good human beings but everything else, I don't consider myself a teacher. I just try to treat everybody well and honour God with all of the gifts that He's given me and that's really all what I'm trying to do.
GORDON SIMPSON: Well, from this Scotsman here, well done Germany.

End of FastScripts…

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297