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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 27, 2009

Justin Leonard

MARANA, ARIZONA

MARK WILLIAMS: Justin Leonard, thanks for joining us in the interview room at the Accenture Match Play Championship. Your match against Oliver Wilson today, just run us through some of the highlights and talk about your day.
JUSTIN LEONARD: We traded birdies at 2 and then we both just kind of made a bunch of pars. And then my lowlight was missing a two-foot putt on nine to make the turn at 1-down and came around and birdied 10 and 11.
Oliver birdied 11 and 12. I birdied 13. Missed a birdie at 14.
We both birdied 15.
17, I chipped in for birdie to go one up, and then 18 I hit a great drive and a wedge up there eight feet and made that for birdie.
And then the 19th hole I hit it just short of the green and he hit his a little long, I chipped up to three feet, his chip looked like it jumped a little bit and it went 12 feet by, and he missed and I made. So it was a very -- there was some really good golf played on the back nine today.
MARK WILLIAMS: Is this the first time you had seen him play?
JUSTIN LEONARD: Yes.

Q. How much more comfortable are you getting with the golf course?
JUSTIN LEONARD: More and more. The lines off the tees and -- because the wind switches around, although today it was pretty consistent. But at some point usually during the day it's switched.
So getting used to the different angles off the tees and everything, I think most of the guys are feeling pretty comfortable with it after one or two practice rounds, and now we're into the fourth round, so I would say everybody is pretty familiar with the course at this point.

Q. That includes the greens?
JUSTIN LEONARD: Yeah, I would say so. There's still, you know, you can still hit it to some bad spots as well as knowing the greens as we do. If a ball gets funneling the wrong direction, you can leave yourself with some tough options. But I would say most everybody knows where to hit it and where not to.

Q. Kind of talk about your three matches in general, and you've been playing really well all week. Were you playing well when you got here, did you know you had it, did you find something when you got here?
JUSTIN LEONARD: It's hard to say if I was playing well, because I had just missed the cut in L.A. and got here on Sunday morning and felt pretty good about my game. And then Monday morning actually I hit a new Nike driver, the Dymo STR8-FIT, and it's been really good. I shortened, I went three quarters of an inch shorter. I've been playing 47 inches and I went to 46 and a quarter. And the numbers on the launch monitor were the same or better. And so I have felt very comfortable with that this week. I hit a lot of fairways. That's probably the biggest -- that's made a big difference in my game this week.

Q. Which of the two courses favors a longer game, a bigger hitter? Because this one's supposed to be at 7,700, 7,800 yards but I'm curious if it plays any differently.
JUSTIN LEONARD: I thought that -- well, there's, I mean, certainly there's a couple holes where it's a huge advantage.
18, I hit as good a tee shot as I can, and I'm hitting an 8-iron in. Ollie's able to take it over the right bunker, which Davis was able to yesterday, as well, and those guys are hitting wedge or sand wedge.
So there's certain holes where -- and that's true with most golf courses. There are going to be holes where if you can carry a ball 290 or 300 yards you're going to have an advantage, and you probably should. But I think that with the greens the way they are, the ball's going farther. They have done a good job kind of mixing up tee boxes. If we had it playing 7,800 yards, and if we did, it would be playing that long. The air's very dry, we're at almost so many feet, it's been almost 80 degrees, the ball's moving out pretty good.
When I heard that it was 7,800 yards before I got here, I thought, oh, boy, this could be a short week. But after getting here, playing a couple days, realizing how far the ball is going, I didn't feel like I was at too big a disadvantage. Still didn't answer your question, did I?

Q. As close as you're going to get, though.
JUSTIN LEONARD: Okay. Thank you.

Q. One thing about TV this week is they're just running your commercial time after time?
JUSTIN LEONARD: Yeah, sorry about that.

Q. No, it's fun. Are you getting any feedback on that, and is the party back on now that Tiger's gone for the week?
JUSTIN LEONARD: You know, I have got some feedback from it. E-mails here and there, "nice playing, great commercial." You know. I played nicely, but it's an unbelievable commercial.
(Laughter.)
So it's fun. I saw the first cut about six weeks ago, and I thought, this is going to be really good. It's hard to tell when you're piecing it all together; you're shooting scenes and what it's going to look like. And as far as I've heard it's been very well received. And it's funny.
As far as the party back on? I don't know. I don't know about that. Because maybe a little bit, because he's pretty hard in this format.

Q. I think the theme song kind of makes it.
JUSTIN LEONARD: Well they mentioned the theme song when we were shooting it. I couldn't get that image in my head, but I think that that song makes the commercial, other than our superior acting ability.
(Laughter.)

Q. To go back to the power issue, does match play mitigate some guys' power in this particular format, just because Tim Clark won yesterday against a very long hitter obviously; Oliver Wilson is a pretty long hitter. Is it a little bit different now than maybe it would be in a stroke play situation?
JUSTIN LEONARD: I don't think it's necessarily match play that mitigates it, I think that a little bit of it is the golf course. It's important to hit the ball from the fairway here. The rough's not -- it's not real deep by any means, but it's hard to control the ball. And that's what you have to be doing going into these greens is controlling the ball.
I think it's more, if I could hit it, fly it 30 yards further, I would, and I would really enjoy it. This is how I play the game, and it's how Tim Clark plays the game, and I kind of feel like when I'm on my game it's good enough to win golf tournaments.

Q. What do you know about Ross Fisher, and any chance he'll have an English accent after tomorrow morning?
JUSTIN LEONARD: It's quite possible (said with an English accent.) That was more Irish, wasn't it?

Q. No, it's not.
(Laughter.)
JUSTIN LEONARD: I don't know Ross Fisher. He's obviously playing well, and, I mean, to beat Jim pretty soundly, and I don't know anything about how their match went, but to make it to the quarters here is obviously -- he's obviously playing well. But I didn't know Oliver Wilson outside the locker room. I talked to him a few times and a very nice guy, but I never played with him before. So I guess I'll just go with the same kind of that same attitude, just go out and play my game and then make adjustments as I need to.

Q. I was going to ask you if you knew Ollie before the match, but were you aware at all, he had eight or nine birdies yesterday, probably had the low round of any guy. Do you even pay attention to that kind of thing in match play?
JUSTIN LEONARD: Not really. I knew he made a bunch of birdies yesterday and he made four birdies on the back nine today.
So it was -- today was very well played, especially the back nine. We made nine birdies between us, and that's not real easy to do on this golf course.
MARK WILLIAMS: We appreciate you coming in. Thanks for your time.
JUSTIN LEONARD: Okay. Thanks.

End of FastScripts

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