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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 27, 2009

Geoff Ogilvy

MARANA, ARIZONA

MARK WILLIAMS: Geoff Ogilvy, we'd like to welcome you into the interview room at the Accenture Match Play Championship. Good win over Camilo Villegas today, and just talk about your match today and your expectations looking forward to playing Rory McIlroy tomorrow.
GEOFF OGILVY: Match today was obviously pretty good for me. I played quite well. I was up after a few holes and stayed up most of the day. Felt quite in control of it all. Had a bit of a -- it got closer than I wanted toward the end. I lost 15 and 16, which is -- or 14 and 15, which is not what you want to do. But I hit a really good shot on 16. 16's a 250-yard par-3, so hit it about 15 feet there, and he missed the green, which was expected from that far, and I won the hole and went 2-up with two to play and finished on 17. So lots of good stuff. A bit loose on 14 and 15 there, but all in all really happy because he's obviously playing well at the moment.
MARK WILLIAMS: As far as McIlroy tomorrow, have you ever played with him, seen him play?
GEOFF OGILVY: Never played with him. He's obviously a great player. I've been hearing all the stories, so seen him hit it. He obviously hits it great. Obviously makes a lot of putts if he does as well as he does. So I'm sure I'm going to have my work cut out, and it will be fun to play with him, I'm sure.

Q. What kind of stories have you heard?
GEOFF OGILVY: That he's a really good player. I just read what you write.
(Laughter.)
I hear somebody said he was as good as Tiger at the age or has the tools that Tiger had at the age. He showed his face at the Open at Carnoustie and he played really well. And he smashes the ball for -- I mean, for a young guy, he swings it with really sound technique and just reading what -- honestly, just reading what you guys write. He's getting talked up all around the world of golf. So that's what I'm hearing.

Q. You've got quite an incredible record in match play. What's the secret? I know you were saying yesterday sometimes not everyone's going to play great every day, and like Camilo yesterday was great, the first two days, today not so good. Is that sort of -- how do you negotiate your way through these tournaments where you've got to win six matches?
GEOFF OGILVY: Well I just try to win the first hole, and if I don't, I try to win the second hole. I mean, that's simplistic, but I don't know why I've done especially well in match play. I enjoy the format. I've gone into matches not playing very well and just the kind of head-to-head, hole-by-hole format has played me into form sometimes during a match.
I enjoy that kind of every hole is like an end point. You get quite a lot of putts that are must-make putts and must-make up-and-downs, and we never get those on TOUR, really, until the last nine holes on Sunday. And if you're in contention 10 times a year, you've had an unbelievable year. Here you might have six or seven must-make putts a day.
It's an enjoyable kind of situation now. I enjoy that aspect of it. And a guy hits in close before you and you're forced to really try to hit one in close, and it's just, I enjoy that. I'm sure everyone else enjoys the format too, everyone who wins a few matches do. So I think when you enjoy something, you do it well, I guess.

Q. Paul Casey was saying yesterday that you guys played two weeks ago here?
GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, about two weeks ago.

Q. Would you have thought that -- it looks like he's going to win, if he hasn't already -- that you two are in the kind of the final eight after driving around together at the course two weeks out?
GEOFF OGILVY: I guess that it's nice that it shows that it was probably worth coming down checking it out. Most courses we play on TOUR, each round you play is probably a big advantage over everyone else who has played one less. It's a big local knowledge kind of golf course. There's some real horrible spots and some pretty good spots to hit it around the greens.
So I think the extra round we had is holding us in good stead. Yeah, I'm sure it's a little bit of a coincidence that we're both still in the tournament. We both live in Arizona so we're used to the desert and the ball going a long way and the grass and stuff. But it's a small coincidence but a nice one.

Q. He said it was three hours, you hopped in a cart and played real quick?
GEOFF OGILVY: We weren't doing the hour on every green, 50 chip shots on every hole thing. We were just playing. We hit a few shots off each tee and kind of got a feel for it. We discussed the greens a little bit and had a good game and went home.

Q. You won at La Costa; I think you're 14-2 in matches in this event. How much of an advantage do you think that kind of experience will be against a young player like Rory tomorrow?
GEOFF OGILVY: It probably helps. I'm sure it helps. I've been in quite a lot of extra holes and down-the-stretch kind of situations in this tournament. And he obviously hasn't been in many. But he's obviously -- as I said, he's a great player. He's already ranked Top-20 in the world or Top-15 in the world. I'm sure he's not going to be too afraid of me on the first tee. Whoever plays best wins. Experience sometimes could hold you in good stead, but if you play well, experience probably doesn't matter that much. So probably a little bit, but if he plays well that could negate any experience I have.

Q. You obviously had a couple of extra-hole matches to start, as you did in 2006, and you've been behind in parts of your matches early on. How much of having to be tight like that for the first two days is going to carry you forward? How does that help compared to just breezing along like, for example, Paul I don't think has trailed in the week?
GEOFF OGILVY: I think it helps. At La Costa it really helped. I went four extra holes the first four days my first four matches, and you definitely feel stuff, getting a feeling like I'm going to win in any situation here because I keep hitting shots when I need to hit them, making putts that I need to make.
You start feeling really good about it. You get so much out of just one putt, one 6-footer or one 10-footer or one 4-footer that you have to make that when you make it, you get such a boost out of that. When you do that a lot, I think it helps later in the week. But again, he's not going a long way in his matches and he's up all the time, so he's obviously playing very well. So that's probably negates -- that probably beats the going extra holes and that sort of stuff. But it is nice going deep into matches and hitting good shots. You get quite a lot out of that.

Q. In your approach to match play, do you play the man or the course or a bit of both?
GEOFF OGILVY: It's a bit of both. There's a reasonably correct way to play most holes, which is obviously fairly adjustable. If a guy hits it in the water or desert or somewhere bad, you might take slightly less of a risk.
And there's some obviously some times when you've got short game shots around the green and he's already chipped it close and you need to get up-and-down, you might take more of a risk on a bunker shot to get it really close because you need to get up-and-down. It's a little bit of both. You try not to look what he's doing, but you kind of have to, because you have to beat him on each hole. So you're playing the course the way it should be played with a little eye on him, I think.

Q. You touched on the local knowledge angle, the whole thing with the desert. A lot of guys have struggled with the wind and the how far the ball travels out here. Do you feel like you have a little bit of a home desert edge advantage here because you've been out here for a while?
GEOFF OGILVY: I think, although a lot of the TOUR has played in Tucson a lot, and although here the ball goes incredible distances. It's a small advantage. And as silly as it sounds, we get a little bit of an advantage when we hit it in the desert because we're used to hitting it out of the desert. The grasses are the same and that the wind in the desert does weird things, especially when you're up against that mountain kind of stuff. And it can spin on you real quick, and it does that in Scottsdale too, so a small advantage for sure.
MARK WILLIAMS: Geoff, we appreciate you coming in. Thanks for your time.
GEOFF OGILVY: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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