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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 24, 2009

Sergio Garcia

MARANA, ARIZONA

CHRIS REIMER: We want to welcome Sergio Garcia here to the interview room at the Accenture Match Play Championship. Sergio, it's your first tournament out here on the PGA TOUR this year. You come in the No. 2 ranked player in the field. Just talk about maybe what it's like to come and start your season here at this tournament.
SERGIO GARCIA: No, it's great. I'm looking forward to it. I played, as you probably all know, three in the Middle East, European Tour, and I'm excited. I'm looking forward to playing here, and we know how match play is, but hopefully I can get on some good momentum and see if I can get as far as possible into the weekend.

Q. Could you give your impressions about the golf course, please?
SERGIO GARCIA: The golf course is good. I think it's a good driving golf course, typical obviously desert course.
I think it's in very good shape. I think they've probably gone a little bit overboard on the greens, maybe a little bit too much slope in some of the greens. But other than that, it looks great. I'm looking forward to it, new venue. We all start fresh, so let's see how we get on with it.

Q. Is it a good match play golf course, if there is such a thing?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah. Yeah, I'll say so. I think that it's the kind of course that you have to be very focused all the time around the greens more than anything, because you might hit a good shot, and you might end up 40 feet away, and then it's a hard two-putt or something like that.
It can be a lot of changes going into a match. Somebody might be on the green and be 20 feet, and somebody might be 20 feet on the other side, and the guy that is off the green has got a better chance of winning the hole. You've just got to play smart around this course.

Q. I know it's been a couple weeks since you've played, but you got off to a solid start, 11th or better, right around there, in your three starts? Does that sound right?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah.

Q. How have you felt you have played so far this year, and has it kind of carried over that great momentum you had at the end of last year?
SERGIO GARCIA: I'll say so, yeah. I felt like I played very solid in the Middle East. I was only not happy with my first two rounds in Abu Dhabi. I didn't play good at all there, but after that I felt like I hit the ball nicely.
Unfortunately, I had probably a couple not great putting rounds that probably put me off from winning one of the tournaments. But other than that, I felt like it was a fairly solid start, yeah.

Q. I think perhaps had you won one of those tournaments along the way, you might have been able to knock Tiger Woods out of the No. 1 spot in the World Ranking. Was that something that you were thinking about at all in the back of your head?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, not while I was playing. After the tournament you might think about it, but I don't think that one tournament was enough. I think that I probably needed to probably win two or maybe win one and then get two probably Top-3s or 4s or something like that. I needed to do something very, very extraordinary, and unfortunately I didn't, and now he's back, so we're all looking forward to seeing how he's feeling and seeing how his game is going. We'll see what happens.

Q. Yesterday you committed to playing Houston. No course is ever going to be able to replicate Augusta, but what do you think of Redstone and the changes that they've made as that being a setup for Augusta the next week?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, I've heard about it. Unfortunately I've never played it. I'm looking forward to it. I've heard very, very good things about it.
I haven't had great success at the Masters lately, so I'm just kind of trying to go in a different way. I usually take one or two weeks off before the Masters. I decided to play the week before this year, and with everything that I heard about Redstone and the Houston Open, I think that it can definitely help me build up some momentum for Augusta, so we'll see how it works.

Q. The word of mouth, is that a thing that the players have been talking about? Hearing from other players talking about it, it's been good reviews and they say it's as good of a setup as you can get leading up to Augusta?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, that's what I heard, yeah. That is definitely one of the reasons why I wanted to go there. So I just hope that it works good for me. I hope that I enjoy the course and feel good on it, and I can play well, too.

Q. Maybe you could talk as almost a segue to that, a follow-up to that, about word of mouth. You're designing a course now or helping to design a course in San Antonio. Can you talk about the progress of that course down there, and also, do you find yourself when you play on a course like this one that you're not real familiar with, looking at it with the eye of a designer more than you did before since you've been working more in that regard?
SERGIO GARCIA: A little bit, I guess. We've done a lot of good work. I'm not the designer. I want to clear that up. I helped a little bit. Greg Norman designed the course, and it looked great.
We checked it the week of TOUR Championship last year. There were probably about four or five holes that had grass and everything on it already, and it looked great. It looked like things were coming along very nicely.
I talked to some of the guys from the Valero Texas Open, and they told me that it looks great. It's coming along very, very nicely, so I'm really looking forward to see it, to have a chance to play it, and see how everything has kind of settled down.
I guess once you play it then you can get a bit of feel for the course, but on paper it looked awesome, so we'll see.

Q. I imagine nobody is really too overwhelmed anymore by all the attention that Tiger gets wherever he is. That said, this has turned into a really big deal, that this is his return. Were you surprised by the attention paid it?
SERGIO GARCIA: No, not at all. I think that we all know how good he is. We all know what he means to the game. So no, I wouldn't say so.
I think, not only you guys, we've been looking forward to his comeback, and seeing how he's handled it, everything that went on with his knee. So it's going to be exciting to see him back, back on TOUR, and we'll see what happens.

Q. I'm not sure if you've played in a match play event coming off of a losing Ryder Cup. If you have, it's been a long time --
SERGIO GARCIA: No, I have not.

Q. So first time, so I'm just wondering are you a little more eager to get back into the match play coming off maybe a little bit of a bad taste at Valhalla?
SERGIO GARCIA: Not at all. Not like any other year. No, not really. Just normal.

Q. You probably don't pay much attention to this, but of course this is the stuff we look at late at night thinking of things to write about. There's only 17 Americans in the field.
SERGIO GARCIA: Really?

Q. What do you make of that? Has the balance of power shifted that abruptly? I know the World Rankings with so many ranked players in Europe now, if you play well over there your number goes up that much faster. Maybe it's just that simple; I don't know.
SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, I think that shows the strength of golf worldwide. A lot of Europeans obviously have played here and moved up the rankings, and they still support their Tour, the European Tour. When you go back there, the guys that used to be 60th in the world, now they're 25th or 30th, and that's making the tournaments, the fields of the tournaments, greater.
The points that you can get at a European Tour event these days because of the level of play of the European Tour players and the Australians and the South Africans that play there, it's much greater than it ever was. I guess that's probably why now, even though you can still play in Europe, not full-time, but throughout most of the year, and still move up the World Rankings fairly well.

Q. I guess as a follow-up to a couple of questions ago, I suppose you guys are used to the attention that Tiger gets on the TOUR. Do you ever feel over shadowed, especially at an event like this, especially when he's coming back?
SERGIO GARCIA: Attention-wise?

Q. Yeah.
SERGIO GARCIA: Maybe, but it doesn't matter. Like I said before, we know who we're up against, so it's probably the greatest player to ever play the game, and it's supposed to be like that. I think we all get our moments, and we've just got to enjoy them.

Q. Did Danny Lee break your record last weekend for youngest guy to win a European Tour event? Did I not read that?
SERGIO GARCIA: Did he?

Q. I think he did. How old were you, 19?
SERGIO GARCIA: I was 19.

Q. And he's 18.
SERGIO GARCIA: I was 19 and two months.

Q. We've had two teenagers win in the last month or two. What do you think of that? They're fearless.
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, it just shows nowadays how well prepared some of the youngsters are. They come out, they know what they're doing on the course. They have a better game plan. They're very prepared, not only swing-wise but physically and mentally. I think it's great. Things like that for the game of golf are great, to see youngsters coming out and playing well, because they are the future of the game.
We're going to be here hopefully for some years, but we need as many of those 18, 19, 17 year olds coming out and doing well, because they're going to carry the game.

Q. With this being a new golf course, you talked about the severity of the greens, but does it favor any one kind of player? I know you're a particularly good driver of the golf ball. Is this course good for a good driver, long driver, straight driver?
SERGIO GARCIA: No, I think in comparison to probably last years where we played up the road, I think that the desert here is probably a little bit rougher than it was on that course, so probably you need to get a lot luckier when you hit a bad shot to get a decent lie in this desert. There's a lot of little bushes and rocks and stuff like that.
I think obviously driving the ball is going to be important, but wherever you put the ball on these greens is going to be huge. Like I said before, you've got to be very patient this week because you're going to hit some good shots that are going to end up 40 feet away, and you feel like you're getting robbed. But there's nothing you can do about it.

Q. Just a follow-up, is there any holes out there that might be kind of turning points, something that may be some decision-making holes?
SERGIO GARCIA: In match play you never know. I think there's a couple par-4s that might be drivable throughout the week. But you know, like I said before, the way -- as severe as these greens are, you might hit a good drive and miss the green just right and have almost an impossible chip, and somebody else lays up and hits a good shot, and then when you were thinking you have the upper hand, now you're up against the ropes.
I think you've got to be very patient this week because some weird things are going to happen. So you've just got to expect it, I guess.
CHRIS REIMER: Sergio, thanks for joining us. Good luck this week.

End of FastScripts

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