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UBS HONG KONG OPENNovember 20, 2008Richard SterneFANLING, HONG KONG RODDY WILLIAMS: Richard, thanks very much for coming in and joining us, terrific opening round, and understand it's your very first round here at Fanling, so you must be delighted with that. RICHARD STERNE: Yeah, and I got in late Tuesday. I had to do a golf day in Bangkok on Monday, so didn't have a practice round, wasn't in the Pro-Am. So, yeah, I've done it a few times before, so I'm not really too fazed about it. It went pretty well. Sometimes it helps, you don't know where all of the trouble is. As I said, a pretty good start and I just kept on going. RODDY WILLIAMS: You obviously won earlier in the year in Johannesburg, and we are now at the tail end of the year, not an awful lot in between; how would you sum up your year now? RICHARD STERNE: Well, I'll try not to use any bad words. Yeah, the start was pretty good, but from the Masters on, really struggled. Still working on a few things. I'm not all that comfortable. A couple good things here and there, but just been very erratic to be honest. Yeah, I'm hopefully getting better, and hopefully by time we get towards the end of the year and finish off the year well, which will always make Christmas feel a bit better. Q. That shot you played on the last, the second shot, you seemed to take the pin on, whereas a lot of players seemed to be going left and taking the bunker out. RICHARD STERNE: Yeah, it was in the middle of the green, so it didn't look like there was much trouble. Obviously just the front trap. I had a good shot, and I actually was quite surprised. I thought it would have gone a little further up. That's a tricky green, and a lot of the greens here are raised, so there's a lot of trouble around the greens if you miss them. Q. You have eight birdies; if you had not had two dropped shots, you could have finished at 8-under, how do you feel about that? RICHARD STERNE: Well, if I birdied all of the other holes, would I have shot a lot better, too. (Laughter). As I said, a lot of the holes are quite tricky. If you miss the green in the wrong place, you can't even get close to the hole. That happened a couple of times, and I had to take bogey. I had a good back nine which was nice. Lately I got off to a lot of good rounds, but seemed to finish badly. So I needed a bit of confidence today. Q. It doesn't seem like the sort of course that you necessarily shoot low on blind; it seems like a course you kind of need to know. RICHARD STERNE: Yeah, when I was here yesterday, I sort of looked at one or two holes, and I thought, you know, it looks like that type of course that you've got to know. So I wasn't all that comfortable. But it worked out, what can I say? I hit the right shots at the right time, hit a couple bad ones and made bogeys. If you don't hit the precise iron shot, you're going to make bogey. It's going to be quite interesting if the wind blows. I think the scoring can be fairly high around here. Q. Being in the position you're in at the moment, will you maintain this approach tomorrow? RICHARD STERNE: Well, this game changes day-to-day, hole-by-hole, actually. So hopefully just put on a couple of good rounds and get myself into position on Sunday to give myself a chance, and that's all that one can do. Q. You came from an athlete's family, so your family member doesn't play golf; why did you choose to play golf as a profession? RICHARD STERNE: My grandmother actually taught me at the age of four. My grandmother did play golf and my sister is a squash player and my dad was into racing. So fairly sporty. Yeah, I just enjoy golf, and I played a lot of sport, as well, up until about the age of 14 when I stopped everything and just concentrated on golf. Q. Why golf? RICHARD STERNE: It's just something I've done my whole life, and I've always dreamt of playing golf. I suppose it chose me, really. Q. Just wondering, were you able to put a finger on why you were so inconsistent this year? RICHARD STERNE: Yeah, I hit ten greens a round on average. That's not quite ideal for scoring. So I just made it tough. Yeah, I've been driving the ball all right, but as I said, just can't compete when you're not hitting more than 13, 14 greens a round. Q. Is that technical, mental or both? RICHARD STERNE: I think it started off technical and then it becomes mental and then it becomes I don't know. But right now, I don't get too fazed anymore. I think I found the right things here and there. It's the first week I'm trying it, so we'll see what happens. RODDY WILLIAMS: Thanks very much and very well played. End of FastScripts |
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