U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 12, 2008

Lee Westwood

Q. Are you pleased to be under par, are you pleased with the round?

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, delighted. It's always nice to go to get off to a good start at the U.S. Open. It's not the kind of tournament that you want to feel like you're having to do any catching up. So it's nice to have a good start to the day.

Q. There was so much attention given to the pairing of the top three.

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, it was great. I want to thank the USGA for putting them together, because it was a lovely, nice, peaceful day out there. I think they should do it more often.

Q. What was it like, honestly?

LEE WESTWOOD: It was great. You could hear the cheers and you could see the sort of migration of people around the golf course and we were all just it was like wandering around on a Sunday morning. It was fabulous.

Q. How does this USGA setup, there was a lot of criticism at Shinnecock and Bethpage and I know Mike Davis is really working very hard to make this always the toughest test of golf but a fair test. Have they achieved that?

LEE WESTWOOD: He's got it right this week for sure. This is as good as I've ever seen a U.S. Open golf course set up. I think that it's well documented that the USGA held their hands up when they set the golf course up Sunday at Shinnecock. Last year for me was a little too tough as well, extreme when you missed the fairways.

But it's perfect. I think that if I was on the USGA committee the golf course would be exactly how I wanted it. They probably want the greens a little bit firmer, there were still a bit of moisture in them this morning, but I don't see any water going on them as the week goes on and with this wind and so on it's just going to dry them out and the golf course will be perfect.

Q. How is your game? How are you feeling right now that you're coming into here playing in top form?

LEE WESTWOOD: No, not really. My game was good today, but I didn't really have any expectations. I had a couple of weeks off before coming in here and missed the cut at the TPC and at Wentworth. Although I was ill at Wentworth. I had to pull out. And I've been pretty much ill enough for two weeks with tonsillitis, so I didn't really have any sort of goals for the day or anything like that it was just going out and trying not to make too many mistakes, see what happens at the end of the day.

Q. You were sick coming in just before the tournament?

LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. I kind of got, I was hoping to come out on Friday, but I was still sick. So I came out on Sunday, which was still early enough.

Q. What's the difference between fair and easy?

LEE WESTWOOD: Fair and easy? Well this is fair and it's not easy. You look at the scoreboard to see the scores. If you hit it slightly off line, the golf course gives you a chance to get it up and around the greens. And then if you get it up and around the greens in the right position you can get it up-and-down if you got the skill. Which is good.

If you hit it a long way off line you get penalized. You can't get it up by the green, you have to hack out and rely on getting up- and-down from a 120 yards, which is exactly how it should be, really.

Q. In the last 48 hours the fog has sort of stayed offshore and it's been a little bit dryer.

LEE WESTWOOD: Well, it's going to dry out. I played about as late as I could play yesterday afternoon with Ernie and it was starting to dry out then. It will dry out as the day goes on today. Obviously I think they have to put a bit of water on turnover night to keep it alive.

But with this kind of wind and the way it's set up and the pace of the greens, and the firmness of the greens it was almost a perfect test today.

Q. You said you didn't have any expectations coming in here you are under par today, quite content?

LEE WESTWOOD: Sometimes it's easier to play golf with no expectations. You sort of don't set a goal or you go out there with a blank canvas, really and that's a nice way to play golf every now and again.