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MERCEDES-BENZ CHAMPIONSHIP

January 4, 2008

Mike Weir

KAPALUA, HAWAII

STEWART MOORE: We'd like to welcome the 2007 Fry's Electronics champion to the interview room of the Mercedes-Benz Championship, one-shot lead, tomorrow might be a battle of Canada with you and Stephen Ames. Are you prepared for the "fandemonium," so to speak?
MIKE WEIR: We have big crowds out there. It's been -- I guess the winters are pretty bad in Canada. There are more Canadians down here than normal. We should have a pretty good day tomorrow.
STEWART MOORE: As a side note, you made the first eagle of the 2008 FedExCup season.
MIKE WEIR: I'll take it. Any time you're making eagles it's a bonus.
STEWART MOORE: Talk about the difference in the course yesterday to today. Obviously a lot more birdies, completely different scoring average. What did you notice out there?
MIKE WEIR: I think it was that the wind was down a little more, the calmer conditions. You know, as an example, like No. 3, that hole straight into the wind yesterday was a driver and a 7-iron straight into the wind, and today it was a driver and a 9-iron, so almost the couple club difference it felt like out there today, and there wasn't as much real hard cross breeze when you're into the crosswind, so that made it easier. And it's easier to putt when it's not blowing so hard. So I think that's why there's more birdies out there.
STEWART MOORE: Let's go through your four birdies and your one eagle.
MIKE WEIR: No. 5, par 5, was on the green in two and two-putted that.
6, drive and a little wedge to 12 feet maybe.
And then 9, I got a nice break. I pulled my tee shot and it kind of rolled down the path a little bit and hit a 3-wood in there about 15 feet, made that one.
The back nine was uneventful until 15. I hit two shots in front of the green. I pitched it up to about a foot.
Made a nice up-and-down on 16 and 17 from the front of the greens, shortish putts, maybe about a four-footer and a three-footer on 16 and 17.
And then 18, rolled in a nice putt from probably 15 feet or so, 18 feet, so a good way to finish.

Q. Do you feel like you've been riding a wave since Montreal, just the good vibes you got there, still carrying over?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, I think so. I think in a way, thinking about that event was so important to me, and it really was in the back of my mind for the last couple of years. To finally have it come, The Presidents Cup, and play that well, it's kind of a relief. I look at it as -- probably in my career I'm not going to have a chance to play on a Presidents Cup team in Canada again, by the time it goes around to Asia sometime and probably Australia and South Africa before it gets back to Canada with the U.S. in there, I'll probably be well into the Senior Tour. I almost feel a sense of relief, to tell you the truth. The things I've done so far in my career, and then to have that was pretty special. I feel kind of, I would say relieved is the word, that the whole thing is behind me and I feel pretty relaxed.

Q. I can't imagine there's too many more people thrilled to be here than you given how late in the year you won?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, it's been a while since I've been here, obviously. Yeah, three and a half years was a long time to wait. Since my first year on Tour it's been the longest stretch without winning. It was a tough few years, but I feel like things are back on track. And yeah, it was great to win, play so well at the end of the year, get a win. It was real important for my confidence, so I feel good about this year.

Q. You were probably asked this in Arizona when you won, but was there any correlation to Montreal and winning, or had you been -- do you feel it building that way anyway?
MIKE WEIR: Well, it was building that way, but I think there was correlation there. I felt like I was on my way there. But to win after three and a half years, it's similar but almost in some ways harder than almost my first win, for a number of reasons. Tying Mr. Knutsen, and I think the -- with that, it just felt almost like the first win. It was a pretty special win, that one.

Q. I'm just curious what you did in Salt Lake over the last month and a half or so.
MIKE WEIR: Packed and unpacked boxes, that's what I did. We moved into a new place, so I was really just busy with that. I didn't have a chance to do much. I was down in Carlsbad at TaylorMade for about three days in early December, and other than that, I wasn't able to practice a whole lot.

Q. Full rounds of golf, can you give us the blow by blow? Did you play 18 holes before you got here?
MIKE WEIR: No.

Q. When was the last time you did that?
MIKE WEIR: I played one round in -- I did play one round in Carlsbad at La Costa. That was the first week of December. So the first round I played was -- I actually went to the Big Island on Saturday and played with a friend over there, a couple friends over there at Nanea, in Kona over there, played two days over there, Saturday and Sunday, before coming over here.

Q. But since Grayhawk to really play --
MIKE WEIR: Since then I played two events. I played the Hong Kong Open and I played the World Cup for Canada in China there. That was a couple tournaments right at the end of November.

Q. I've just got to ask, was La Costa dry?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, drier than normal, yeah.

Q. The Plummer and Bennett connection, obviously you're now pretty much the poster boy for them in a lot of ways out here because of the success you have. How does that work with them, because they're obviously growing with you at the same time. How does that affect where your game is right now?
MIKE WEIR: They helped me a lot. The way I look at it, yeah, I feel comfortable with the changes now, but I think you're always going to be -- I'm always a guy that's going to keep working on it. I've always worked on my swing. I think most guys are always working on it. Jack still works on his swing. But as far as kind of I guess the meat and potatoes of what I had to go through are kind of over, and I feel pretty comfortable with it now. I did a lot of work last year on it, and I feel like I can just kind of maintain now. I know what I have to do, and they've helped me a lot.

Q. When you say meat and potatoes, did you feel like you were past that point before Montreal or was it sometime afterwards?
MIKE WEIR: I don't think I was past that point. I hit the ball great, I just didn't score. I spent a lot of time in the fall really on my short game, chipping, putting, bunker play. I felt like I was just wasting so many shots last year, and a lot of the time, THE PLAYERS Championship in particular, I just felt like I played fantastic there and finished 20th. I couldn't get anything out of it.
There was times that it felt really good even earlier in the year, but probably by mid-summer I was feeling pretty comfortable.

Q. Is there any correlation to the relatively bad weather here and Canadians being on top of the leaderboard?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, that's odd. We're probably the least ready for it as far as practice round, Stephen in Calgary and me in Salt Lake. I asked Stephen earlier in the week and he said he hadn't done much at all, either. Maybe there's something to that. I look back at 2003, my best year on TOUR, that was the longest break I had taken. I was down in Vegas I think the second week of October, and I hardly did anything until the Bob Hope, so that was almost a good two and a half months. I finished 10th in Phoenix and won the next week at the Hope, so maybe there's something to that.

Q. It always seems like there's a lot of Canadians on this part of the island this time of year. There's Canadians everywhere really, but did you notice the first day there was a ton of them watching Stephen go off and then you were in the next group?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah.

Q. Are you always surprised to see that here or are you used to it by now? The dollar is good, I guess that explains it.
MIKE WEIR: That could be it. Well, there's more this year than in normal years. But yeah, I think just weather-wise I think people taking their vacation in the winter to get out of the cold. You see it in California. I think it's mostly West Coast people kind of out here and California, and then when we're on the east coast, the Ontarios and Quebeckers and Easterners are in Florida, so they make their way everywhere.

Q. This year obviously it's a Ryder Cup for the Americans, last year was your Cup year. Do you approach this year differently than you might have approached last year?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, I think obviously my focus is really always around majors. But that said, just more -- we've had the FedExCup one year now. I kind of know what to expect come the end of the summer in July and August, so in September we have to get ready for that big stretch. I might pace it a little more in the summer kind of leading up to that. It's a big stretch. I have the Canadian Open in that stretch, too, eight of nine weeks. I still haven't really got a handle on how I'm going to approach the schedule, but that's a lot of golf. I hadn't had any injuries all year until kind of the middle of that stretch and kind of reaggravated my neck. Playing that many weeks in a row is probably not good for me. I'm going to have to skip something in there, and I'm not sure which one it'll be. Outside of that, the focus is on majors, getting ready for them. Oakland Hills I've never played. I grew up so close to there, I'm looking forward to playing there, and obviously a few months at Augusta.

Q. You must have been thrilled to see that week off, done for the Ryder Cup, but that's got to help you, too?
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, that's right. That's kind of nice, right before the TOUR Championship, right?

Q. Yeah, you'll have two weeks off.
MIKE WEIR: Yeah, especially for the guys in the Ryder Cup, to have a little break there.

Q. What was your stretch last year, how many of how many?
MIKE WEIR: Well, I played eight of nine there, but yeah, I reaggravated that injury at Firestone, so I had to pull out there, and that kind of led into the next week at the PGA, unfortunately. But you'd hate to say you'd skip Firestone in the middle of all that, but I don't know, there's a lot of golf in there and a lot of tough golf courses. We'll see.

Q. Did the setup at Firestone leave you in such a frame of mind that you might consider dropping it?
MIKE WEIR: Dropping it?

Q. It was like the fourth U.S. Open in a row.
MIKE WEIR: It was, yeah. I would say yeah. It did make me think about it. When I was done that week and with the PGA, looking at that stretch of events, that might be one. When you're taking a full pitching wedge and you can't even -- you're just trying to get it back in the fairway and you can't do it, after a U.S. Open and before a PGA, that's pretty brutal.
STEWART MOORE: Mike, best of luck this weekend. Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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