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JOHNNIE WALKER CLASSIC

February 28, 2007

Mike Weir

PHUKET, THAILAND

GORDON SIMPSON: Mike, your first trip over to this part of Asia. Looking forward to the experience?
MIKE WEIR: It is my First trip to here to Thailand and I've been excited about it for a long time. I made the commitment to come, and you know, I really enjoyed the golf course today and the guys I played with and looking forward to starting the week tomorrow.
GORDON SIMPSON: And how has your game been coming into this week?
MIKE WEIR: I'm feeling really good. This is the first time in really two years that I've felt really, really healthy and nothing holding me back injury-wise and feel like I can step back to where I should be.
GORDON SIMPSON: A few years since your great day at Augusta, so maybe we will see the real Mike Weir this year, will we?
MIKE WEIR: I'll be surprised if you don't. Like I said I'm feeling very good and my practise time has been the key. I've been able to put in a lot of time because I haven't been hurting and injured. And for a guy with my type of game, I need to get the maximum out of what I have, and you know, it's been a bit of a struggle the past couple of years. Now I've been able to put the work in. I've always been a hard worker and been the type of player that has to work hard at his game and I've been able to do that the last six months and I'm finally starting to see some good results.
GORDON SIMPSON: Is there a specific reason why you came to Asia this week, because we have seen more players from the PGA Tour like Chris DiMarco spent a couple of weeks in the Middle East, and so did Vijay and Tiger and so on and so forth.
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, I think I'm following the lead a little bit. I think it's just easier to travel now. Another reason, I feel like I'm playing good right now and I want to keep playing. The good people at Johnnie Walker invited me to come play so I thought it would be a great opportunity to come over here.
GORDON SIMPSON: Especially if you like whisky.
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, I had some last night, it was good, very good!

Q. Adam just mentioned the greens have got quicker at this tournament, how is that going to affect you; are things going okay at the moment?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, I think the greens are the difficult part of the golf course. They have a lot of undulations. They are fast, when you're putting downgrain and downhill. I think that's the key, just putting yourself in the right spot to leave yourself an uphill putt. I think if you get above the hole a lot out here, you're going to be struggling maybe a little bit. That makes iron play that much more of a key to keep it on the right side of the hole. So yeah, the greens are very definitely out here.

Q. Do you feel that sort of playing events like this and coming to a completely different part of the world in a sense can help make you a more complete golfer?
MIKE WEIR: I think so. The last couple of years I've played in China, or three years ago, and Korea a couple of years ago. And then last year like I said, I wasn't feeling up to travel. I had these couple compressed disks in my neck and long flights would kill me, two- or three-hour flights would kill me.
As I've gotten older, my plan was to play more worldwide as my kids got a little bit older, and when they were in the early stages I wanted to be around a little more. Now they are kind of used to me traveling a little bit more and they know what dad is doing and more comfortable with me traveling more. So that's kind of the plan going forward is to play more worldwide. Yeah, this is kind of starting it.

Q. But in terms of what it gives to your golf, dealing with different conditions?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, I think it does -- yeah, dealing with that different element, different grass, different winds. Maybe we get so spoiled sometimes, we get these perfect conditions on the PGA Tour and then when we're thrown a loophole with maybe some tougher conditions, sometimes we're not as used to it. So I think it is important to play in some tougher conditions sometimes. Grass like this with a lot of grain, we play some of that in Florida, but it's not as quite as heavy grain as this and I think it only helps your game.

Q. Sorry, just one more. Culturally does it feel completely different to life on the PGA Tour being like in terms of the way the players travel around and just the way the tournaments are set up.
MIKE WEIR: Oh, sure. No question. It kind of brings me back to, I took seven years before I got on the PGA Tour. I played a lot in Australia, Canadian Tour where are I could play. I played a couple of events in Indonesia back in the early 90s. So it kind of brings me back to those traveling days and toughing it out. But yeah, I mean, it's a little different scenario. You everybody here, we're talking about this last night at dinner, The European Tour, the guys are much closer knit because there's only a couple hotels, Monty was talking about it last night, guys are seeing each other each and every day. Well, sometimes at the PGA Tour, guys are at 30 different hotels spread out all over the place and you never see anybody. So it's a little different atmosphere. You get a chance to see everybody a little bit more off the golf course than maybe what you do on the PGA Tour. I think that's a good thing. It's good to kind of get to know who you're playing against.

Q. Have you managed to formed some friendships with some European Tour players?
MIKE WEIR: Absolutely, over the last few years, there has not been a guy that I don't like. Being Canadian, we're really pretty easy-going people, and all of these European guys I've played with, I've had a great time playing with and always enjoyed playing with them. I played with Paul Casey in World Match Play, didn't like losing to him, but he's a great young player and I really enjoyed the match that I had against him.

Q. When you talk about the local golf and the tours coming closer together, if sort of a few years ago you played over in Indonesia and Australia and etc., you must have seen a huge difference in the standard of golf in this part of the world?
MIKE WEIR: Yes, no question. I think as you said, the standard of golf worldwide is much greater. The gap between the top players to middle of the pack is much tighter. You know, a couple of shots here and there used to make the difference between first and fifth place. Now it's the difference between first and 15th, maybe three or four shots. It's that much more compacted in. And you see that worldwide, just looking at the scores; scores are always lower. The golf courses are not getting any easier; they are getting harder and scores are still getting lower. That's a testament to players getting better and equipment being better as well. I think just the players much are better and have taken it up a notch as far as how they handle it.
I think golf was never treated really as a sport, I don't think, and now you train for golf, not just hitting balls but you see all of the top players in the world really train for golf like an athlete should and that's a big difference.

Q. Is that down to Tiger mostly or partly down to Tiger?
MIKE WEIR: Partly down to, no question. I think some guys were doing it before him as well, but I think, you know, with his image and his popularity, I think that's brought it to the forefront obviously. He changed from a skinny college kid to a pretty, obviously well-conditioned athlete. You watch coverage, you can really see that happen and how much it helped his game.
GORDON SIMPSON: Thank you very much for that discourse, thanks for coming in and have a good week.

End of FastScripts

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