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PORTUGAL MASTERS

October 15, 2008

Lee Westwood

VILAMOURA, PORTUGAL

RODDY WILLIAMS: Lee, thanks very much for coming in and joining us and welcome to the Portugal Masters. Now after the Pro-Am, first of all, if you could give us your thoughts on the course.
LEE WESTWOOD: It's a lot tougher than last year. The rough is a lot thicker, which is good. If you miss the fairway, then you get penalised, that's great. It's fairly consistent, as well. It's thicker around the greens. The greens are good. Fairways are nice. So I would say that the course is pretty immaculate.
RODDY WILLIAMS: You've been quite busy with the new course opening and OceÃ¢nico.
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I went over there yesterday and played the course there. Today I played well, shot a 67 and looking forward to the next four days.
RODDY WILLIAMS: Obviously a big week in Order of Merit terms as end of the season comes to a climax, how are you feeling?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I'm not really thinking about it too much. It would be nice to win the Order of Merit, but my focus is on the Portuguese Masters and trying to win it.
I'm not playing next week in Valencia, and then I'm playing the Volvo Masters and I'll be focused on winning the Volvo Masters. And if at the end of the two tournaments I win the Order of Merit, that will be great, but if not, I won't worry about it. I'm trying to do a few swing changes between now and the end of the year, so I have other plans and my main focus is really to get ready for the Masters.

Q. You were originally in Valencia - when did you pull out?
LEE WESTWOOD: Quite quickly. Don't really know why I entered to be honest, just really because I was down here. It's a tiring part of the year and with the schedule, I figured I might as well stick to it. I'm more likely to play well in the Volvo Masters, having another week off before. And I am having my tonsils out after the Volvo Masters. I figured if I played three weeks in a row I would get run down with a cold or something like that and they would want to take my tonsils out. I've got a little cold but I think with kids, they pass them on to you when they come back from school.
Yeah, I've got a few things planned for the next few months, and then I'm trying to stick to them.

Q. What is the recovery period?
LEE WESTWOOD: It's up to the individual I think. People can take four or five days to three weeks, four weeks. I've got four weeks off after that. I'll just be at home just relaxing really and then the third and fourth week I'll probably start doing a bit of gym work and getting ready for the Million Dollar.

Q. You have had a couple of issues like that through the season?
LEE WESTWOOD: Before the U.S. Open, I was sick at Wentworth, which was tonsillitis, and then I had tonsillitis again at the last round at Gleneagles and had a good chance of winning but it completely ruined my chances. What I don't want to happen is hang on to my tonsils and then the Saturday night of the Masters with a two-shot lead -- best to have them out and be done with it I think. 35 years, they have stood me well.
RODDY WILLIAMS: You mentioned making some changes and focusing now on the Masters. Can you just elaborate on that?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, there are certain times on the golf course when I want to hit a shot and I don't get into position in the golf swing that enables me to do that, so I'm working won a few basic simple things.
I put my swing on camera over last sort of couple of months, and there's a few things and positions in the golf swing that I don't like the positions it's getting into, but I know what I need to work on. I worked on them today on the golf course and I worked on them more last week with my dad, and I worked on them today on the golf course and I shot 67, so I should be able to play with them.
But I'm going to concentrate on them and they will give me a couple more shots that I may need.

Q. You have had a good year - how much better are you now than 2000?
LEE WESTWOOD: I think it's been a great year, yeah. I think I played better in the bigger tournaments, and it's first time I could have won a major and did well in the World Golf Championships and four or five Top-10s and nine of them have been top threes. It's a fine line between winning a golf tournament and finishing second and third. So I could quite easily be sitting here with four, five, six, wins this year.
I'll look back and when I was winning in '98, '99, 2000, Padraig was having a lot of seconds and it's just one of those things you can't really quantify and put your finger on the difference between winning and finishing second.

Q. Are you more confident going to the first tee of a Major and Padraig's success - how much has that helped you?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, much more. Padraig has got a couple of years on me and I'm building up experience all the time, and I feel like sooner or later, I ought to win major championship.

Q. Is that something you looked at since Harrington won three Majors?
LEE WESTWOOD: No, contemporaries of mine have won majors for the last ten years while I've been playing them, so I just pointed out Padraig because he's had a load of seconds when I was winning in the late 90s and 2000, and now he's the one that is winning most majors recently. That's why I point Padraig out. That's not to say that I look to other people who are winning majors -- but that's not the way I look at it.

Q. Your reaction to Seve?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, very sad. Hopefully, I don't know if he had the operation already, but hopefully it's gone well. He's always been a battler and hopefully he can use those battling qualities in this fight if he's obviously going to have a fight to regain fitness and health.
I think everybody sends their best wishes. Everybody on The European Tour now makes a good living and owes nearly all of it to Seve. He was one of the first, if not the first person to go to the States and tackle them and he's been a driving force behind European golf and the European Ryder Cup Team and Ryder Cup golf, and we all wish him well and that he recovers quickly.

Q. Did he inspire you as a boy?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, he's one of the big five or big six, the way he played, yeah, I loved watching Seve. Seve and Greg Norman, two of the most flamboyant players and you never knew what was going to happen next normally.
He had a similar effect on me as I suppose Tiger Woods has on the kids nowadays.

Q. Any particular tournament you remember?
LEE WESTWOOD: Everybody remembers into it at the car park, that was just because in a big tournament, I think he probably did that week-in and week-out, hit it under a bus and made par or birdie.
I played under him as a captain in The Ryder Cup and got close to him there and played with him in the Seve trophy, yeah, we couldn't get rid of him, but he was a good influence, though. I learned a lot from him about Ryder Cup and I've had bunker lessons from him in years past. Once I was in there with a lob-wedge, and Martin Gray, my caddie at the time, Seve had had Martin caddying for him at some point and Seve said, "Come, give me a 5-iron: And holed it with a 5-iron, and I thought, "Show off." But that's just the talent that he's got.
His short game really is second to none. Just opened it way up and slid under it. He said, "You don't even need a lob-wedge or a sand iron." I think I took somebody out on the other side of the green when I tried it. (Laughter) That was years ago. I can't remember the last time I played at El Saler.

Q. When was that?
LEE WESTWOOD: It would be '96, '97, something like that. I've been around Seve for a long time. He would always give advice. When he was out here regular, and if you asked him, he would give advice.
Got some great stories, but I can't tell you all of them.
RODDY WILLIAMS: Lee, thanks very much.

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