|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIPFebruary 20, 2007Geoff OgilvyTUCSON, ARIZONA JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Geoff, for joining us for a few minutes here in the media center at the World Golf Championship Accenture Match Play, defending champion. It's a tough event to win, and it looks like the first round here you're going to play Steve Stricker, who won this event in Australia several years ago. Just talk about your game and coming into the week as a defending champion, and we'll go into questions. GEOFF OGILVY: My game is okay. I played -- I haven't played great yet this year, but it's getting there. It's a funny game. I'm in about the same place this time last this as I was last year. My game was not quite this -- in the first round of this tournament last year, and by the end of the week I was playing really well. It's that sort of tournament. Nice to be defending in Tucson because I never really got to defend in Tucson last year because I went to La Costa instead of coming here. So I'm kind of defending two tournaments in one, which is nice. Yeah, Steve Stricker in the first round is quite -- I don't know if that's ironic. I don't know what ironic is, but another guy who's won the golf tournament. He actually won it in Australia. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Q. What do you make of the course from what you've seen so far? GEOFF OGILVY: I haven't actually seen it yet. Well, I've seen it but I haven't actually played it yet. I'm heading out there now. We played the one up the hill in the Tucson Open five or six years ago, and I had a little bit of a look. I did the media day here about two weeks ago, went and had a little bit of a look but I didn't play. It all looks pretty good. I mean, I live in the desert so I like playing in the desert. I've heard it's pretty good. I've heard it's going to be fun, reachable par 5s and a drivable par 4, so it's going to be fun for match play. Q. Do you feel more at home on desert courses versus, say, like La Costa, or doesn't it matter? GEOFF OGILVY: Not really anymore. I do practice on a desert golf course obviously because I live in Scottsdale, but I've only been doing that for four or five years. I grew up on non-desert golf courses and I did that for 20 years. It's nice being in the desert. I mean, I'm used to being in the dry conditions, and it's similar -- same temperature as home and same sort of grasses, so that's nice. We play so many different sorts of courses every week that I guess you just get used to playing all of them. Q. I know you had won before the Match Play last year, but the way you won the tournament last year, the idea of learning how to win, was that kind of an accelerated learning course for you? GEOFF OGILVY: Well, I mean, I guess this tournament -- it doesn't have to be. I mean, you could blow everybody away and never really have any stress on you at all in this tournament, or you could do it like I did it last year. I had extra holes the first four matches, like four little Playoffs in a row. It's not often in a year you get -- well, there's a few times, you get must-make putts or must-make shots. But match play, I mean, I had 15 in three days last year. I mean, could you go all year without having 15. In a stroke-play event you very rarely get a must-make putt. Maybe right at the end of a golf tournament. Match play you can have it 15, 16, 17, 18 of every match. So I got a lot of experience out of one week, if you like, really, of just hitting shots I needed to hit and hitting putts I needed to hit, and every time I came up with mine. Someone was on my side last year because people were missing putts to put me out of the tournament. I don't know how many it was, but it was a lot. I had opponents had 10 or 12 putts probably to put me completely out of the tournament, so I got lucky, as well. I was definitely a lot better golfer at the end of the tournament than I was at the start, for sure. Q. And then in that context, the experience last year help at all with the Open? GEOFF OGILVY: I'm sure it did. I'd like to think I would have won the U.S. Open if I didn't win here, but maybe I wouldn't have. I don't know. That's the unanswerable. I'm sure it did. There's no question. I mean, as I said, you get so much out of a tournament like this, winning it the way I did, that it can't help but make you a better player. I guess it made me a better player, and that may or may not have helped me win the U.S. Open. I'm sure it did, though. Q. Given all those considerations and your close matches, does that make this tournament easier to win than a 72-hole stroke play or harder to win, or how would you compare that? GEOFF OGILVY: Easier because I've won more match play tournaments than stroke play tournaments relative to how many I've played (laughter). No, it all depends. You could play your best and be done after 15 holes tomorrow. I mean, or you can play terribly and still be here on Saturday. Probably not terribly, but it could happen. There's probably a bit of luck in the draw because, I mean, from 1 through 64 everyone here can play, especially over 18 holes. I mean, anyone can win an 18-hole match. Well, I don't know. All golf tournaments are hard to win. I don't know. I mean, this is a long week. There's ways to make this harder and there's reasons for this to be easier, as well. You've only got to beat one guy a day, not 156. I don't know. Q. Geoff, is it more physically and emotionally draining, a tournament like this, the extra day, and then if you survive 36 on Sunday? GEOFF OGILVY: The physical part is not so bad because I mean, we play golf -- it's not that much more, but mentally -- again, it's in the way you do it. If you were playing unbelievably and you were winning 5 and 4 every day, then the stress level would be pretty low. Match play the stress level is very low when you're leading a match. It's very high when you're not leading a match. If you're playing great, you can cruise through this and you wouldn't think anything of it. Last year it was like playing three golf tournaments in one for me, the way I did it. It is a long week. It's a draining week, for sure. But again, it probably depends on how your matches go. If you keep going extra holes it's going to be a long week. But if you get done on the 15th green every day then it's pretty easy. We'll see. It's a bit like the last question; it could be either, I think. Q. How many times have you played in Tucson? GEOFF OGILVY: In Tucson? Q. Yeah, I mean, I know you won here. GEOFF OGILVY: Five or six -- four or five. I might have played here four times maybe. Q. Given the difficulty of match play, how can you relate that to -- Tiger's streak is on the line this week going for eight in a row. GEOFF OGILVY: Eight U.S. tournaments in a row (laughter)? Q. However you want to define it, yeah, eight PGA TOUR in a row. GEOFF OGILVY: Because this is actually co-sanctioned by the European Tour, so I don't think he's on a streak at all. This is a really hard one if he's going to -- this is a hard one because he's been done in the first round before. If the best golfer in the world doesn't win this tournament every year -- he's played this tournament every year and hasn't won it every year. He's a great match player, but over 18 holes it doesn't take much for someone to come up with something good. It's a tough run, it really is. I'm sure when he's playing well he's going to be tough to beat anywhere, especially head to head, because there's an intimidation factor, too. So much about match play is feeling like you're a better player than the person you're playing, whether you are or not, so much of it is. If you feel like that guy is that much better than you, it's almost impossible to beat him. It's very hard to play against Tiger and not feel like he's that much better than you. So he's got -- history is on his side if you're Tiger Woods because you're going into every match knowing you're a better player than the guy you're playing, so it makes every match easier. He's probably more likely to win a four-round stroke play tournament than this tournament. It doesn't mean he's not going to win here, but it would be easier for him to win a stroke play. Q. As far as a streak, is it too convoluted, too broken up, over too many seasons? GEOFF OGILVY: It's not the seasons and stuff, but it's four times he's played golf tournaments since the streak started that he hasn't won. Don't get me wrong, it's a U.S. PGA TOUR streak, and the record he's had is absolutely ridiculous since July with the British Open. It's spooky. It's one of the best runs anyone has ever had. It is a PGA TOUR streak. He's won the last eight PGA Tour events he's played. He just hasn't won the last 12 tournaments he's entered, that's all. Q. He said the same thing, he kind of doesn't count it. The closer you get to Nelson's record which we have talked about for years, it's kind of hard not to count it. GEOFF OGILVY: Look, I don't know -- if the streak is PGA TOUR events, it's a streak. If the streak is tournaments entered, it's not a streak. Maybe he's not good enough to win in Europe (laughter). Q. Was that tongue in cheek? GEOFF OGILVY: A little bit, yeah (laughing). Q. Not to kill Gary's rally here, but I want to go back to your point about three weeks in a row, this tournament last year being like three weeks because of all the stress, all the putts you had to make, is there a recovery period from that that you need? Did that take a lot out of you, winning here? GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I would have been no good -- I mean, I didn't play the week after, but I would have been no good. I don't know, I might have played all right but it would have had an effect later on. I played the next week and I went to Honda, and I played really quite well at Honda actually. Yeah, you've definitely got to take -- I definitely had to take it easy a couple, few weeks later. The way I did it, and I drove home that night, too, from La Costa to Scottsdale, and that was a six-hour drive in the car -- that was a long day, 36 holes and then six hours in the car, so it was lots of sleep the next few days. Q. Which took more out of you, this one here last year or the U.S. Open, this one that way? GEOFF OGILVY: The golf tournament I think this took more out of me, but the aftermath, the U.S. Open aftermath is more tiring than the golf tournament, really. That's a busy few days, those few days after the U.S. Open. Look, whether you win the U.S. Open or you finish 70th after four rounds, you've had enough. I mean, you're stressed out. Playing 72 holes of trying to get it up-and-down and fight for pars and stuff, you're tired anyway. Equally tired probably but in different ways, I think. Q. You have the 64 best players in the world here. Do you still get gamesmanship because it's match play? GEOFF OGILVY: I don't think there was any last year. I don't think -- I think most guys here are past that sort of stuff. I mean, guys have their little things that they do in match play, like they might not talk to the guy they're playing with, but that's just their deal. That's how they play it better. But I don't think there's any gamesmanship like you find at your clubs on Saturdays or Sundays. I think it's all pretty above board. Q. When was the last time anything like that happened to you, match play or stroke play? GEOFF OGILVY: It would have been back when I was an amateur golfer sometime I would have thought. I can't remember. It hasn't happened for a long time anyway. Q. How did you celebrate when you got your first win down here? What did you do? GEOFF OGILVY: Drove home again. That's a recurrent theme (laughter). It's not too far, only an hour half back to Scottsdale. We had a few people around the house and we had a couple of drinks. Q. Had a few what around the house? GEOFF OGILVY: Drinks. Q. But before that. GEOFF OGILVY: A few friends. Q. Like an Australian few? GEOFF OGILVY: An Australian few, yeah (laughter). JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you very much. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|