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DUBAI DESERT CLASSIC

February 1, 2007

Ross Fisher

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

SCOTT CROCKETT: Ross, thanks very much for joining us. An excellent start to your tournament. Just give us your thoughts on a fine first day.
ROSS FISHER: Yeah, obviously got off to such a good start was really, really pleasing. From the, I would say from the moment I got here, I just felt really comfortable. The golf course is obviously in fantastic condition, the weather is perfect. I'd almost say having the week off last week has done me a world of good. I got to go home and spent some time with my fiancee at home and got to see my coach up at Wentworth, Christian.
Played four times in what was quite awful weather, but just managed to get a lot of things done and a lot of positives from last week. And then even on the Monday, playing with Adam, he commented, you seemed like a totally different player to the other week, hitting it absolutely fantastic, flushing it; and he said that it made his job so much easier because I'm hitting it so well. In Abu Dhabi, I was slightly off my game. So had really good vibes coming into the week at the start, and to carry that forward today was absolutely fantastic.

Q. Ross, how much of a thrill is it to be a leader in a competition that Tiger Woods is playing?
ROSS FISHER: Yeah, obviously it's a tremendous thrill. Obviously Graeme has come in with the same score as me, so he's obviously played very, very well. I think, what, Tiger is 3-under at the moment; I'm not sure how many he's got left to play. Obviously seeing the world No. 1 here can get your attention, and spectators will jump through the roof, you hardly ever see him because he doesn't play too often; and when he does, you want to see him, everyone wants to see him, everyone wants a piece of him. So keep going for the rest of the week.

Q. Were you thinking about that at all coming in?
ROSS FISHER: No, not really. I'm just like any other guy out here. You turn up, you want to do your best and you turn up to win because that's what we're here to do. It's our job no matter who is playing in the tournament. I just try to almost in a sense block him out because I know that the media attention is going to be far superior for him than it is for me. And I just go about doing my own thing, try and forget what he's doing, just concentrate on what I'm doing, and hopefully come the end of the week I'll have done a little bit better than he has.

Q. If you can if you continue and he does what we expect him to do, as he so often does, you could actually find yourself playing with him. How do you think you would cope can the with the circus then?
ROSS FISHER: Yeah, I've played with some big names so far, obviously Darren Clarke in Ireland was probably the biggest thing I've ever had in my professional career so far. Also Goosen in South Africa, sort of playing with the hometown boys.
But even though it's not in America, I'm sure playing with someone like Tiger Woods who has been world No. 1, it just seems like an like an eternity and that he's that much better than everyone else. And I along with, Ernie Els, am trying to strive to get to where he is and I don't know, it is proving very, very difficult, because every time he turns up, normally would I say nine tine times out of ten he wins; but it's ten out of ten, he always wins.
So to be paired with him, it's still early days, but it would be a real thrill to see what he's like up close and in person. So, yeah, hopefully it will happen.

Q. Have you ever met Tiger or have you come close to meeting him?
ROSS FISHER: Probably the closest I've got has been picking up balls at the World Match Play when I used to work up there. Obviously walking past him picking up his balls, so I've never met him or spoke to him.

Q. You said that you didn't play too well at Abu Dhabi and then you went back, was there a click moment when it really changed, was there a moment when you felt your game changed or was it those four rounds of playing golf? What changed actually in these ten days or seven days?
ROSS FISHER: I think obviously I went away from Abu Dhabi really disappointed because it was my first tournament of the '06-'07 season as it were, and to play as poorly as I did was really disappointing, because I had just come off two really good results before Christmas in South Africa. I had a really good break, some work with my coach, and then to come out and to miss the cut was obviously very disappointing. Just didn't feel like myself and Adam really gelled very well together which is very rare. We normally gelled really well on the golf course but just found that to be really tricky with the weather and how far the ball was going.
And obviously to turn up to Abu Dhabi knowing that nine times out of ten that I wasn't going to play the week after was a little bit disappointing, because you think, oh, I'm going away for three weeks; whereas, you get there and I think I was 14th reserve when I got there. So I thought, oh, well, so that might have played with my mind knowing that I needed to do extra well that week, so probably put a bit more pressure on me.
But then like I say, it's obviously had a knock-on effect and has almost helped me because I went home, relaxed, spent time at home, saw my coach four times out of five days during the week. Did some really good work, looked at the B1 system from swings that he took of me on Monday, and swings that he's taken of me like over like the course of 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, looking at things and seeing where I was swinging it good.
And then just basically said to me a couple of pointers just to focus on really, didn't want to make too many changes obviously because knew that I was playing well. It's just subtle things. Obviously I played really well last week with friends and then like I say, just coming here didn't really know too much about the golf course. I've seen it on TV obviously and it looked very good from TV and seeing it up close, it was really well manicured. The greens are perfect. You know, the tees, the fairways, it just has a nice feeling about the whole tournament, the whole place. I just felt at home felt really comfortable with where I was in my swing, and Adam's been checking it for me on the range and he said: "You know, your setup is very good, posture is great, you're swinging it really good, hitting fantastic."
So when you're hearing those things it obviously gives you confidence knowing that you've got the perfect club, good yardage and know you're swinging good. So just have really good vibes about this tournament this week.

Q. How many layers of clothing were you wearing back in England compared to today?
ROSS FISHER: A few more. I mean, fortunately I've got one of these Canterbury tops which are absolutely fantastic when it's cold. It's just like an extra layer of skin.
So I was wearing a long-sleeved Canterbury top with a shirt over the top and then sometimes a jumper, short-sleeve jumper or short-sleeve waterproof. And always wore waterproof bottoms because it was obviously quite cold, but at the same time it's quite wet at home.
So it's a little bit different out here than it is back home, that's for sure.

Q. Would you mind just reminding us of your circumstances on where you were in your career when you were picking up practise balls for Tiger Woods?
ROSS FISHER: I was there, '97 I think he was there, '97, '98. So I would have been sort of like probably been playing amateur golf, top-class amateur golf for maybe a year. So I'm still very early in my sort of progression really. I was I think maybe plus one, plus two back then.

Q. How old were you then?
ROSS FISHER: '98 when he was there, I would have been -- I would have been coming up to 18.

Q. Did you get a chance to watch him up close?
ROSS FISHER: I think I remember actually sneaking out and watching him play his first playoff with Woosie and obviously working on the range, just basically while they hit balls, you just sit at the table and give them out balls. So really get too close but I could see obviously this guy like looked pretty good, pretty impressive.

Q. What was your job for the week on the range?
ROSS FISHER: Yeah, basically just to get up there and I think it was about half an hour to an hour before the players arrived, just dish out the balls to them, pick them up and as soon as they had gone out to the golf course, just basically had nothing to do really. So could sneak off and try to watch a bit on the TV or, you know, a couple of times, might hit a few chip shots and stuff and could not really go in there and hit balls obviously.
But there was a few guys I've seen that live on the he skate state, live local and they are allowed to practise. So it gave us a bit to do and chatted a bit with the guys.

Q. Did you get paid for it?
ROSS FISHER: Yeah, I got paid.

Q. Do you remember how much?
ROSS FISHER: Off the top of my head, I think it was something like five just over 5£ an hour. We were getting there some days from half five and not leaving until half six, seven. So I myself, quite a nice paycheck at the end of the week, that's for sure.

Q. Did you have to stay late for Tiger any night; did you go out in the dusk and practise after you arrived at four in the morning?
ROSS FISHER: He didn't really practise too late. Fair enough I picked up a at this point when I was in South Africa from Johann Rupert, he said obviously Tiger tries to model himself on Jack Nicklaus and said he's met Jack a few times. He said that at a tournament, he doesn't really treat it as practise; it's just a warm up. He does his practise away from home, which I'm sure is what Tiger does. I'm sure he wasn't probably hit too many balls. He'll have done all his work back at home in America. So I thought that was quite an interesting at this point that I got.
SCOTT CROCKETT: Ross, thank you very much for your time.

End of FastScripts

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