|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
JOHNNIE WALKER CLASSICMarch 2, 2008Mark BrownNEW DELHI, INDIA CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: Welcome, Johnnie Walker Classic Champion for 2008. How do you feel? MARK BROWN: A little bit of a blur at the moment but absolutely delighted that I could come through again and win this week. CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: Certainly made it exciting with a great round on the back nine. But can you just tell us, what were your thoughts when the ball was in the air going into the 18th? MARK BROWN: I initially thought that's the worst shot I've hit since I was about 14 years old. It was out of the heel and really I thought it was in the water. But luckily I had quite a lot of club in my hands; I had 6-iron when 7-iron was probably enough, and luckily it went over, I don't know by how much, but enough. CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: Two weeks in a row an the Asian Tour, did you ever dream about this? MARK BROWN: I wasn't sure it was going to happen. I've worked extremely hard the last three years, or year and a half. I didn't expect to win a tournament of this size so early, but I'll take it. CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: It's still all early days, but have you thought about your future? You have exemptions to Europe and got your Asian Tour card, as well. MARK BROWN: Really haven't thought about that too much. Got to get home at some stage. This is my fourth event now, so I'll get home, talk to family and my coach and we'll decide what direction we're going to take. I'm sure that I'll be playing in Europe; I'd love to, it's a great tour. But also I'd like to support the Asian Tour as much as possible, as well. Q. Anything different in your mind-set on the back nine? MARK BROWN: Yeah, I played really poorly tee-to-green on the front side. I hardly hit a fairway, I hardly hit a green it felt like, and stood on the 10th tee and said to myself: Let's play nine solid holes. Let's try to hit some fairways and greens and get some birdies. At that stage I think I was three behind, possibly four, so I needed a bit of luck, as well. I needed Kiyota to drop a shot or two and for myself to make a few birdies and I did that. I think I had three or four in a row, I'm not sure, four in a row, and kind of got on a roll. Q. And your approach shots, you were just very accurate on your approaches. On the birdie holes, which club did you use with your approach shots? MARK BROWN: On No. 12, I hit a 9-iron to about 12 feet. 13, I had a wedge to about 14 feet. No. 14, I had a 54-degree sand wedge to about four feet. And then on No. 15, a lob-wedge to about a foot I guess. You know, playing that back side, my mind-set was hit the fairways, because you can actually control your second shots with spin out of the fairway, and I wasn't able to do that on the front side. Q. Besides two trophies, have you thought of anything else you should take here from India? MARK BROWN: I probably should move here; it seems to work well for me. No, I've had a great time. I was here last year for the Indian Open and back for the Indian Masters and came back for those two, and I've just really enjoyed my time here, enjoyed the food. The weather has been great, a; real lack of humidity the times we're here and I feel comfortable. And the golf courses run out much like New Zealand and Australian courses where you get 20 or 30 yards of run on your drives and sometimes the greens are a little bouncy; I kind of like that. Q. Two different courses in two different weeks; what kind of difference did you see from what you did last week and here? MARK BROWN: Last week was kind of wide open where you could hit driver pretty much every hole and have a fair amount of room for error. Because of that, I got a little bit of confidence with my driving. And this week, it's a much tighter golf course. I found I was still driving the ball pretty well pretty straight. So this week it was important to hit the fairway. The rough was up and you didn't want to sort of be hacking your second shots out of the rough. Q. Fantastic win, back-to-back wins, which win is more closer to your heart? MARK BROWN: Actually I would have to say a draw. Last week was pretty emotional for me as you might have seen last week. I finished on the 18th green, and I was really thinking about my dad who passed away four years ago and I've got that out of my system. This week to win a tournament of this magnitude is incredible and kind of life-changing, so this one is very special, also. Q. There were a number of big name players here this week, but at the end it was an Asian Tour player would won. Do you think Asian players are closing the gap on rest of the world? MARK BROWN: I'm not sure about closing the gap. I think the Asian Tour is a very strong tour, and people who have not spent a lot of time in this area would not know that. There's a lot of good tournaments and the courses we play are tough. So in that respect, I don't think it's a total surprise that you'll have Asian Tour winners. Having said that, it's a huge advantage for us to be playing here pretty much in our home. And myself coming from New Zealand to play all of my golf here, it's like a second home for me and it's a definite advantage. You saw that with SSP three weeks ago winning, and now myself, it's a home advantage. Q. Besides being physically exacting, it must be mentally exacting; what do you do for your mind to keep it always on course? MARK BROWN: It's been a little bit tiring. Luckily the last two weeks we have been here in Delhi, so we haven't had the travel to worry about. I haven't done a lot of practise after my round the last few weeks. I've just tried to maintain the energy and take it easy and get a lot of sleep. Not feeling too bad. We have two more big tournaments coming you, the Malaysian Open and the Ballantines in Korea, so at this stage, I'm playing both, so next week I'll need a bit of a rest. Q. On 15, did you think it was going in, the second shot? MARK BROWN: Yeah, I thought it was. I couldn't see, I was sort of behind the light post, and I hit it up there and I thought it was going to be pretty close. And by the sound of the crowd, I knew it was pretty good and I so I managed to tap that one in, it was a lob-wedge. Q. Did you see any leaderboards what your lead was? MARK BROWN: I kind of knew walking off 15, I saw the leaderboard and saw that I could have possibly just gone one ahead. But I was aware that Scott Strange had the 18th to play, which is a definite birdie hole. And I saw walking onto 17th green that I had a one-shot lead over my playing partner, Kiyota, and he 3-putted. So I knew I had a two-shot lead playing the last. Q. Winning this tournament would mean that you're now top of the Asian Tour Order of Merit. How would that play on your season knowing that you could top the Order of Merit? And it would open a lot of doors for you right now. MARK BROWN: I haven't really thought about it too much. Obviously aware that being in the top one, two or three on any tour's Order of Merit can open a few doors. I really have to have a sit down and have a think about that sort of stuff. It's all a little bit over my head at moment. Q. When did it occur to you that you were going to win, and was there a lot of pressure? MARK BROWN: When I stood on the 18th tee, I knew that it would be pretty hard to mess up, but still had to hit a good drive and take the water out of play and get on in two. Hit a great drive, probably my best one all week on that hole. At that stage I knew that I was pretty comfortable. But had that second shot that was like a 20-handicapper, and I thought, wow, might have to drop back to four, it's going to hold the whole tournament wide open again. Q. You've got quite an unusual story in that you started playing golf and you gave up for a number of years. Can you explain why you gave up and what happened in the interim and why you came back to the game? MARK BROWN: Yeah, I played for eight or nine years on the Australasian Tour and Canadian Tour, one year in Asia, but I really wasn't good enough. I was at that age where -- mentally I wasn't there, and tee-to-green I wasn't there and my short game wasn't good enough. In every respect, I really wasn't good enough. I thought, well, let's take a break from it and take stock. At the time my father was sick, so I thought, well, probably a good time to stay home, get a job. Bought a house with my partner at the time and we did that up and sold it. And actually the three years away was quite a good learning curve. I really did nothing golf-wise apart from coaching. I didn't play myself very much. Then my coach back home, Mal Tongue, was always in my ear, anyway, that I was good enough to make it. I didn't always quite have the same belief. But I came back to it and we worked hard and last year playing on the Asian Tour was huge for me because I played well, got my confidence up and realised that maybe I can compete. Q. What year did you stop playing? MARK BROWN: 2003. Q. Can you speak about last week your father and the emotional win last week? MARK BROWN: Well, mom and dad have been fantastic, but dad was a good rugby player, as well as a good sportsman. He was always so supportive of my golf in a quiet sort of way. He didn't come and watch me play, but when I told him that I was going to give it up, you could tell he was pretty disappointed in that because he always believed in me and believed that if you tried long and hard enough, you'll succeed, and I didn't quite hear what he was saying at the time. But that was part of the reason in coming back, also, that I would like to do something half-decent for him. Q. New Zealand already has Michael Campbell, major winner, do you think this will do anything to boost kiwi golf back home? MARK BROWN: I hope so. New Zealand golf has really been struggling. We have Jason Snell (ph) just inside the Top-100. Michael has not been playing his best the last year, so hopefully this is some inspiration for some of the younger guys coming through. We have some decent players that are playing locally on the New Zealand Pro-Am circuit, and they could make money and could play well on these tours if they had the opportunity. Let's hope that they look at me and realise I'm not that much better than they are, so they can do it, as well. Q. Last week I remember you telling us that between 2003 and 2006, you worked on a junior programme. Now when you get back home to Wellington, will you see some of those kids and how they inspired you back to the game? MARK BROWN: Yeah, I do see some of them from time to time and I'm sure they will be delighted. I get e-mails from them occasionally and text messages. So it's great to have that support from back home and people that I had a pretty close relationship with. Q. You spoke earlier in the week about the possibility of going back-to-back and how hard it was to continue the form under all the pressure. If you could talk us through that again, a few people here would like to hear thought processes of going back-to-back. MARK BROWN: Yeah, it was difficult, but we had a few beers after the last round last week and I woke up the next day and thought, well, you know, it's time to start work again, because we had three big tournaments coming up and I really wanted to play well in these tournaments. I joined The European Tour last year as an affiliate member, and I thought if I can play well enough and get enough money, I night sneak into the top 150. I got paired with Colin Montgomerie and Liang the first two days, and that was a real confidence booster for me because I had not played with a player of that quality for a long time, talking about both, but especially Colin. Actually played -- a little bit nervous the first day and got around 1-under and played a lot better the second day and shot 4-under and made the cut at 5-under. And I thought, well, you've played well with one of the game's great players. Let's try and finish it off and have a really good weekend. Q. What are your observations of the Indian players? MARK BROWN: I'm not sure, it's golf. It's a difficult game and it's difficult coming down the stretch and if you're in with a chance, it's a matter of holding your nerve and making putts along the way and making birdies when they count. And so I see Jyoti played well, I saw he was up at one stage close to the lead, and he's contended the last few weeks, he's a great player. But you know, any week, someone's got to win and someone doesn't win, and luckily this is my week. Q. How has your caddie? MARK BROWN: He's been brilliant. He's read the putts all week, and I've had four tournaments -- hope he's still got my golf clubs outside. He's been great. I'm sure he's pleased. He doesn't say a huge amount, pretty quiet, but I think he's pretty happy tonight. Q. The Johnnie Walker Classic has a philosophy; do you have a Mark Brown philosophy that you follow? MARK BROWN: Not really. My golfing career has been mostly down, sometimes up, but not the last two weeks. Like I approached this week, it's important to get your feet back to earth and play well in the upcoming tournaments. Really looking forward to a rest, to go home, spend some time with family. I got engaged in January, so it will be nice to go back and see everyone back home and celebrate with them. CHUAH CHOO CHIANG: Okay, Mark, thanks very much, we hope you keep playing well, and many congratulations once again. 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
|