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FBR OPEN

January 30, 2008

Geoff Ogilvy

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA

JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Geoff Ogilvy into the interview room here at the FBR Open. Thanks for spending a few minutes with us. A resident of Scottsdale now for six years, so obviously this tournament holds a special place for you.
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I mean, what do you say? It's a home event, I guess, now. I get two of them, I get one in Australia and one here, so I get two home events a year.
Yeah, it's nice. I've never actually torn the course up here, so it's definitely one that's higher on the priority list than maybe others. I'd like to play well here.
JOHN BUSH: You played your first start last week at the Buick. Talk about your game as we head into the week.
GEOFF OGILVY: Last week was horrible, but I just put that down to getting a bit of rust off. We had a baby about three weeks ago, so there hasn't been a whole lot of practice going on and less sleep than three weeks ago, so just getting a bit of rust off last week. Again, I've never really torn up Torrey Pines, so I just wanted to play a bit. Yeah, it seems all right. The last couple of days have been pretty good. Back in the desert, I'm happier here than I am in winter, so it's good.

Q. What's this week like for you, especially living here, Super Bowl is going on, you're playing here? Is this a busier week maybe than usual just because of everything going on?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, it's fun playing at home, but there's definitely more going on. It's nice sleeping in your own bed, but you've got people over at your house every day and every night and lots of ticket requests and your phone seems to ring off the hook a little bit with things to do for people, which is fun. It's great fun to play in front of the people from your hometown. It's enjoyable. There's something nice about being away from home, too, sometimes, and just locking yourself away in your hotel room and not having anything else to do in an away week. Home weeks are nice once or twice a year, but you wouldn't want to do it every week because it's a busier week.

Q. What is your impression of this golf course right now?
GEOFF OGILVY: It's pretty good. It's probably tougher than we've seen it for a while. They've narrowed some of the fairways. I've hit a couple of drivers off the tee and I thought they were fine and they've actually cut the fluff on about three or four holes than they used to, so it's getting a bit narrower. The ball goes short when it's cold like this, so it's playing quite long especially after all that rain on Sunday. It's usually quite firm here. It's actually quite soft off the tee which makes it play long, so it's tougher than it has been previously. I think the forecast is going to get a bit warmer on the weekend and it dries out pretty quickly because we're in the desert. Could be back to normal by the weekend, but today it was longer and a little bit tougher than it has been, very easily.

Q. How much of an American football fan are you or have you become over the last few years?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I guess I don't have a -- I'm an interested observer, I really am. I started to really enjoy weekends in the fall especially because we're not playing as much golf in the fall maybe as we were before. I'm watching quite a lot more of it. Yeah, I'm getting quite into it.

Q. Have you taken a favorite team at all? Are you a Cardinals fan because you live here?
GEOFF OGILVY: I guess my NFL team would have to be the Cardinals because I live here and that's the only game I've ever been to, is a Cardinals game. They're fun to watch. I watch a lot of college football. My wife is from Texas and she went to school at Texas Tech so Big 12 football is on the TV every Saturday. I just enjoy watching it, it's a fun game. I'm looking for this to be a fun Super Bowl.

Q. Are you going to the Super Bowl?
GEOFF OGILVY: Not at the moment I'm not, no.

Q. But you might go?
GEOFF OGILVY: I may if I can procure a ticket. They're hard to come by. It's a tough ticket. Normally you can find tickets for some things, but it's an expensive ticket, this Super Bowl ticket.

Q. Is your wife a Wes Welker fan?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, Wes Welker, so I guess I have to be a Patriots fan on the weekend. He didn't even get drafted and he was kind of like picked right at the end. He's a star now.

Q. This is usually a pretty rowdy tournament, especially the 16th hole. With the Super Bowl here and they're expecting larger crowds, do you think this is going to be one of the craziest that it's been out here in a long time or does that not really phase you, that type of stuff?
GEOFF OGILVY: It is crazy. It's bigger than it has been. 16 is bigger than it's ever been, and there seems to be some more stuff going on here than there's ever been, probably because of the Super Bowl. It's crazy. It's easy -- it's fun when you're on the holes that are crazy. It's hard when you're next to the holes that are crazy.
The 11th hole is always quite a tough tee shot because everyone is trying to sneak past to get to 16 and it's usually the toughest tee shot on the course because there's water up the left, there's always a bit of chaos, and it's always chaos for something else and you're kind of in the way of all your stuff when you're hitting your tee shot at the 11th hole. I always find that one quite awkward.
But when you're on 16, it's great fun. 16 and 17, that area, it's some of the funnest couple of holes on TOUR.

Q. You mentioned this one and an Australian tournament. Do you put any more pressure on yourself in those because you have more people watching, or do those things really not come into play?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, as I said, you really want to play well in your hometown. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself most weeks, so whether I put more on myself here, maybe I do put more on myself here. A little bit more, not a lot. A little bit. You do want to play well when you get people a lot of tickets and you have a lot of people coming to watch you. You don't feel obliged to play well, but you really want to. I guess that's putting pressure on yourself.

Q. Why do you think you haven't played well here at this course? You don't live too far away, you could come out and play whenever you want.
GEOFF OGILVY: I've played well here outside of the tournament. It's not lack of course knowledge. I've never torn up the West Coast early. I've had some good results at the end of -- come the end of March, but I'm not great in cold weather. That's not really an excuse. Maybe I just haven't ever played -- I just haven't played well this week. I don't know that there's a reason for it. I think I can play well around here. Maybe this week.

Q. What's it like on 15 green there, too? And then that walk over? Do you have a good time on that hole at 16?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, 16 is fun, mostly, if you hit a good shot. It's not that much fun if you hit a bad shot. But it's part of the fun, I guess, listening to them all get -- they're getting quite inventive in what they yell out, so it's quite fun to hear what they're going to yell out. Every year it's something different.
15 is all right. 15 is such a big stand and stuff, you can hear it all on 15, and then you get that line of people who are standing at the top and look over the back to watch on 15, but you're just an interested listener when you're playing 15 to see what the group in front is doing on 16. Not much of a distraction, but it's anticipation, I guess, when you play 15, what's going to happen on 16.

Q. Can you think of the most inventive thing that you've heard?
GEOFF OGILVY: Not that I can say (laughter) in a roomful of journalists. No, not really. They always find something -- they do some research, especially the student section. They do some research. They find some stuff out about you that you didn't think they might have known.

Q. Obviously this tournament has the 16th hole. Would you want to see that replicated at other TOUR stops, or is one tournament out of the year enough? Obviously Buick Open has a little bit of a loud --
GEOFF OGILVY: That's fun, too, the 17th there. That's fun there. That's a different fun. That's just -- they're just crazy by the end of the day there.
I don't know, it would be hard to replicate this. It's just the perfect hole and the perfect amphitheater. It was a great amphitheater even before they started putting all the stuff there. Tiger added to the history with making it in '97 or whatever it was. Every week it would get a bit old probably, but it's great fun.
I mean, 16 at Augusta is that way in some respects. I mean, it's not quite -- during the practice rounds they yell and scream and carry on like that here in an amphitheater like this. It doesn't happen very often. Every week it might be a bit old. 17 at Sawgrass, that's a fair rowdy atmosphere around there. Every week it might get a bit old, but it's fun when we do it.

Q. What's the weirdest fact they found out about you?
GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know. I'll come back to you with it. I don't know. Ask me on Sunday. I'm sure they'll come up with something.
JOHN BUSH: Geoff, thanks for coming by. Play well this week.

End of FastScripts

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