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DUBAI DESERT CLASSICFebruary 2, 2007Peter HansonDUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Q. Terrific round, hole a few putts and a good day? PETER HANSON: I was hitting the wedges really well on the back nine. We started off on the 10th, hitting some really good shots within ten feet and made good putts. So I was pretty much hitting wedge up-and-down on 10, 13, 17, 18, and then I made the long putt on 11. So 5-under on the way out, and then wedged it up pretty close on the second, and got it up-and-down from left of the green on 3 to make a birdie and then it was pretty much -- pretty solid round. Only one missed green and was about, I think, six, seven metres from the hole on the first, pretty easy chip. Felt like a pretty solid round of golf. Q. And birdie chances, you had seven in the first ten or 11 holes, just dried up on last coming in? PETER HANSON: You have to make a score on the front, 1, 2 and 3 pretty much and then from 4 all the way to 9, it's all very tough holes. You're pretty happy to get away with par on those. Of course if you make a birdie -- I had two good chances on 4 and 5. And then the rest of them were pretty long-range putts, maybe within -- from 20 feet to 40 feet, all of the rest of them. So not really makeable, you just have to get the pace right, and if they drop, they drop. Q. You're right in the mix going into the weekend, again. PETER HANSON: Yeah, good fun. Happy with the way I'm playing. So it feels very solid. I need to really be up for it for the weekend. I probably have to drive the ball a little bit better. I haven't hit enough fairways and that's also the reason why I probably end up a little bit too far away from the holes. To win it, I probably have to hit the long irons a little bit better and drivers a little bit better. Q. Good weekend in Abu Dhabi, as well? PETER HANSON: I got a good start. The way I played Saturday and Sunday I was really happy. Got off to a little bit of a low start, but grew into the tournament playing better day by day. Q. You obviously like playing if the Gulf in this neck of the woods. PETER HANSON: Like I told Mat, I played my first amateur event in '96. I won the Emirates Amateur Open, and ever since then, I've always dreamt about winning this event of course. I was down here watching and saw the guys play. So I've been around this track so many times, I've been down here practising quite a lot. Q. You're not one of these guys who bases yourself down here in the winter? PETER HANSON: My two best friends is Henrik and Haegge (Joakim Haeggman). They both have places, so I come quite a lot. We spend the week before Abu Dhabi coming down here to practise. It almost feels like home. Q. Just talk about that early experience again, the amateur championship was the week after the Dubai Desert Classic? PETER HANSON: I think it still is. Q. So you'd come down the week before? PETER HANSON: Yes. Q. And who won that year? PETER HANSON: 1996, could have been Colin maybe. Can't really remember. Q. Do you remember watching any of the guys? It's interesting because we had Ross Fisher sort of looking back to 1998 when he was watching Woods playing Woosie in the World Match Play. PETER HANSON: Yeah, I lost in a playoff 1997. But I got the winning plaque. Ben Mason has the runner-up plaque, so it's all mixed up. Q. So 1997 you finish runner-up but you got the trophy. PETER HANSON: Yeah, down here we have these pictures with the glass and then the silver knife, and they always have it as prize. So 1996, I got the winning prize and 1997, I lost, we played a two-hole playoff, Ben Mason and me, and he birdied the last to beat me on the second extra hole. But they wrapped all of the things up and I got the wrong one and he got the wrong one. He says we never got it right. We were talking about it, he said when I fly over to England, I was going to bring it. It's really his. It's a fun story. Q. Looking ahead to the weekend, you're playing well, you're in great shape, you like the course, you must be feeling pretty good about things. PETER HANSON: Yeah, it's a little bit like I said, this tournament is so special, I've been watching it on TV ever since I was a little kid. And it's always been a very special tournament with a lot of atmosphere, and especially now when the field is so good and you get all of the best players in the world playing here, of course, it's a huge boost. Q. And there's a prospect of possibly playing with Tiger over the course of the weekend? PETER HANSON: That would be fantastic. To play with Tiger it would be a little bit of a learning experience. It's all about -- doesn't matter who you're playing with, it's all about trying to play your own game. I was playing with Harrington and Jiménez in the leading group in Abu Dhabi, and I have to say, Harrington, the way he acts on the golf course and really is so professional, gives it 110 per cent every shot, every day, it's really interesting to see and maybe try to take after him and do everything as good as you can all the time. End of FastScripts |
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