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BMW PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 21, 2008

Anders Hansen

VIRGINIA WATER, ENGLAND

RODDY WILLIAMS: Okay, Anders, thanks very much for coming in and joining us, and welcome to the BMW PGA Championship. This tournament and this course has got some pretty special memories for you, hasn't it. Can you just tell us about how it feels to be turning up this week?
ANDERS HANSEN: I just got in yesterday, and obviously it's a great feeling to be back from last year, and yeah, I have some great memories here. I seem to have been playing pretty good golf around this golf course for, I don't know, I think I've been here seven times and I've had pretty good results almost every time. I think I had a period where I missed a couple of cuts, but other than that, it's been pretty solid.
RODDY WILLIAMS: Tell us about last year, it was a pretty dramatic finish. What's your recollection from 12 months ago?
ANDERS HANSEN: Sort of a funny way I won last year. The first round wasn't that great and I sort of, nice and easy, just sort of scooped my way in there. I didn't really think much about winning until we came to about the 12th hole.
My caddie and I could see that everybody behind us were sort of -- or in front of us, I guess the guy who was ahead of us before we started was dropping a lot of shots, which sort of gave me a belief that it could happen.
I think I remember birdieing the 14th, and standing on the 15th tee, we found out that Cabrera made a mess on 15, and all of a sudden, it looked a lot better; though it was pretty cold.
I still thought that I had to shoot 1-under on the last four holes which is not an easy task, playing under those conditions. It was very cold, very wet and 15 and 17 were playing very difficult.
So, yeah, parred 15, 16, 17, so had 18 to birdie that. I don't know, I just had in the back of my mind playing 18, I had to birdie that to have a chance and I think I had like a 6-footer for the birdie and I thought, you know, when I made that, and I thought, you know, this is pretty good. Vijay was in the house at -- what did I shoot to win? Was it 8-under? I don't remember. Anyway, to beat him to take the clubhouse lead and just wait for the rest. It was a good feeling.
RODDY WILLIAMS: And now you're one of eight multiple winners now. Can you win it for a third time this week?
ANDERS HANSEN: I don't think the odds will be on my side. I think winning it two years in a row hasn't happened many times.
But you know, things I guess were on my side last year coming here and winning it, so same situation, you never know.

Q. There's a great expression about horses for courses; are you that sort of player where you come to a course and feel comfortable on it?
ANDERS HANSEN: Normally not, no. For some reason I always felt good here, or always played good here.

Q. Was there a reason for that?
ANDERS HANSEN: I don't know. I wouldn't be able to tell you, because there's other courses where I've played well where I just like never really felt I could play well on that golf course. And there's courses where I played well where the previous year I played not so good.
So I know the expression, and I know a lot of guys have it like that. But I don't really feel I have that feeling, no.

Q. How has your year been so far?
ANDERS HANSEN: I've been going through a transition where I haven't played a lot of golf. I haven't played many tournaments. I've been working a lot on trying to improve my technique, and trying to improve my fitness level; and doing that, I've been trying to play less tournaments in the start of the first six months of the year, you know, the first six months of the year.
So I've been playing okay, but results-wise, I had a couple 12th place finishes, and I played well at Doral. Here and there, it's been pretty good. I feel that I'm in better shape fitness-wise and I feel like I swing the club better than I ever have. So game-wise, I feel better than I have at any time in my career. I just need the results to come together. You know how golf is; it's more than just hitting the ball.

Q. What prompted this?
ANDERS HANSEN: What prompted this? Just something I wanted to do, and now I have the chance to do it. I'm getting to the age where, you know, I'm not 20 any longer. I've got to do something to prolong my career in the end, and if I've got to do it at some stage, I thought that was the right time to do it because I won last year and felt like I could take my time to do it this year.

Q. So you felt like you've been fit enough but you just want to prolong your career?
ANDERS HANSEN: Exactly. Well, I needed to be stronger. I'm fit enough but I just needed to be stronger.
That was part of where I had to improve my technique as well, and to improve my technique, I had to get stronger. So been seeing a lot of the fitness.

Q. What have you done? What's your regime consisted of?
ANDERS HANSEN: A lot of weight-lifting. Pretty boring.

Q. Have you put on any weight?
ANDERS HANSEN: Well, there was a stage where in three months time, I put a lot on. I probably put on about five kilos. I don't know what that in is in stone. I put on about five kilos. That's pretty good.

Q. Mainly muscle?
ANDERS HANSEN: Yeah.

Q. Is the inconsistency very frustrating? You've won this tournament, a very prestigious tournament, twice, but you haven't won anything else; do you look at it half-full or half-empty, the glass?
ANDERS HANSEN: Well, I'd like to be the sort of person, you know, I won this tournament twice, and that's half-full, isn't it. It's not half-empty.

Q. But you must play so many other weeks where you think, why can't I reproduce what I did at Wentworth?
ANDERS HANSEN: That's funny, my manager and I, we talked about it last night. We thought, it would be kind of fun to win a small tournament just to see what that would be like. (Laughter).
You know, if I had to pick two tournaments to win, this is the right one to do it twice in. But, you know, still got a long way to go, still have a lot of tournaments to play and still have a lot of chances to win other tournaments.
At this point of my career, I'm quite happy where I am.

Q. What goals have you set for yourself this season?
ANDERS HANSEN: My main goals has been improving my fitness and my technique, and sort of getting to the stage where I've come a long, long way. Have I reached that goal, yes, but you know, if it's coming down to whether my results has been there, we'll see. There's still a long way to go.

Q. You mentioned the cold weather last year; are you praying for the same sort of conditions this year?
ANDERS HANSEN: I like those conditions. For some reason when I play well here, it's almost always been in bad weather. I think the greens are better here when the weather has been raining and it's been damp. I putt the greens better than I do when it's warm and crusty like it is now.

Q. You're hoping it starts raining?
ANDERS HANSEN: Yeah, I wouldn't mind. (Laughing) I know it's a bad thing to say but you're in England so, what do you expect.

Q. This year, and obviously there's huge prize money, that would put you right in Ryder Cup reckoning; how important would it be for you to do that?
ANDERS HANSEN: To make The Ryder Cup Team, how important would it be? Of course it would be a great thing to achieve, but I think I put myself a long way back in the standings for that.
There's still a lot of big tournaments coming up. If you go ahead and win one, all of a sudden you're right there and everything changes, so you never put yourself out of it.
How important it is; yeah, it's important, but you know, as I've said earlier, I put my focus on something different to prolong my career. And maybe I should have thought differently and just play every tournament and try and make The Ryder Cup Team, but there's another Ryder Cup in two years.

Q. You've been going to the same coach in a number of years or have you changed recently?
ANDERS HANSEN: I have the same coach and I am still working with him, and I've added another one, Jamie Gough, South African guy, works for David Howell, as well.
It maybe sounds strange that you have two coaches, but it seems to work very well. Jamie is mostly at every tournament I play, and the other coach is helping out when I'm at home. He knows my swing very well. He knows my technique and we discuss what we need to do.
So yeah, Jamie has been helping me a long way in these changes that I've made, and he's the main, what do you call it -- you know, he's the guy who has changed it to what it is now, yeah.

Q. Are you longer now than you were already?
ANDERS HANSEN: Am I longer?

Q. Hitting-wise?
ANDERS HANSEN: Okay. I don't know if I hit the ball longer, but I'm hitting far more solid than I did one year ago or two years ago or three years ago.

Q. I wanted to ask you if you think that your best golf is, therefore, ahead of you.
ANDERS HANSEN: Oh, absolutely. I'd like to think so. Never give up.
RODDY WILLIAMS: Anders, thanks very much for joining us and good luck this week.

End of FastScripts

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