	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

MAYAKOBA GOLF CLASSIC AT RIVIERA MAYA - CANCUN

March 1, 2009

Mark Wilson

RIVIERA MAYA, MEXICO

NELSON SILVERIO: We welcome the 2009 Mayakoba Golf Classic champ Mark Wilson. Mark, thanks for spending a few minutes with us and congratulations on your win, second in two years. Talk about what's going through your mind right now.
MARK WILSON: I guess right now I'm overwhelmed with the warmth of the people here in Cancun. They've been so nice. It was hard to get off the putting green from the closing ceremonies, and just signing autographs. Everybody is really excited, and I vow to be a good champion for Mayakoba.
NELSON SILVERIO: Let's open it up to questions.

Q. Mark, both you and gave back a couple of strokes for par in those late holes. What do you attribute it to mainly? The darkness or wind picking up stronger or --
MARK WILSON: It was the wind, yeah. The golf course played different today. The rest of the week we had east-southeast winds. Today we had northwest winds. So some of the holes early where I was hitting driver 5-iron, I was hitting driver and a wedge or 3-wood and 9-iron, stuff like that.
So we knew coming in, once we got to 16, 17, 18 they were going to play super long and the left-to-right wind got me on 13 and 14, hit the water off the tee on 13 and then hit a bad second shot on 14. And then 16, I mean, it's driver 3-wood. Even for Bo, he's one of the longer hitters and he hit driver 3-wood. And then 18, same thing.
I'd like to hear anybody who didn't hit a club with a head cover on it on 18. So it picked up right where we made the turn, and the skies were pretty dark and I'm kind of happy we got it in.

Q. Did you take a drop?
MARK WILSON: I made a good -- yeah. 13. That's right. It was a short par-5. That was like almost playing a par-4, and if I hit a good driver, probably a 7-iron in, but I hit it right. Took a drop, hit a spin, nice 5-iron, just over the green, and then two-putted. So that was a nice par to save there.

Q. Congratulations, Mark. I'm taking it your phone call home was to your wife. Was your second call to your putting guru?
MARK WILSON: I'm going to call Kevin Weeks, certainly, and tell him I'll pay him in pecos. (Laughs). No. Because he deserves it. He helped me a lot.
And once again, the player to take that information from the teacher and go with it, and sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes it does, and this week I just kind of went with it. And it's going to be cool, he's going to be at the Honda, and I'll see what he thinks, and he better not change anything.

Q. Can you just talk about how that unlocks and opens up the rest of your game?
MARK WILSON: Yeah. And I was searching on the range on Tuesday afternoon trying a bunch of different things that have worked in the past. Nothing felt great.
Went out in the Pro Am with a couple different thoughts, and for some reason with five holes to go in the Pro Am, I just thought, why don't we take a thought of swinging at it 80 percent all week, not trying to hit it hard or anything, because my tempo felt really fast. I'm like, let's just pretend I'm going to hit 80 percent every shot, and all of a sudden the ball started curving a little less, which I like.
I think I play my best when I hit a little draw, and I played good at the end of the Pro Am, and I was like, hey, let's take that out tomorrow morning, and it just kind of went from there.
You still hit some loose shots with it, but for the most part it felt good. And in that wind coming in, I hit 6-iron from 130 on 17. Normally that's a 9-iron or wedge, and that was kind of that feeling. I almost hit like a nice chip underneath the wind, so I kind of had that shot all week.
And lo and behold I started hitting in the middle of the club face, so the ball went as far as my 100 percent swings, if you can understand.

Q. How unusual is that change for you, the 80 percent?
MARK WILSON: I've gone with that swing thought before, and I'm certainly going to use it for a few more weeks until it stops working again, which is the way us golfers operate.

Q. (Inaudible).
MARK WILSON: Yeah. You want to keep the ball down when you can. When you swing at lower speed, you don't put much spin on the ball, and therefore, the ball shouldn't get up that high.

Q. (Translated from Spanish). What did you feel like going up 18?
MARK WILSON: I felt still a bit nervous after the tee shot, and then but once I hit the 3-wood, it's just pure joy that, you know, you're so nervous and you somehow pull off one of the best shots I hit all week.
That 3-wood felt so good to get to the back of the green. Just pure joy and satisfaction that the hard work went in and that you didn't get overwhelmed by the situation and hit a good shot.

Q. (Translated from Spanish). How did you feel being a guest here and the people in Mexico, how they treated you?
MARK WILSON: Everyone treated us great. We had dinner down in Del Carmen quite a bit. And just around the golf course, everywhere we went, everyone made us feel very welcome, and I'm still feeling that, obviously, out there, all the fans that came and supported me. I heard a lot of "Go Wilson," so they made me feel really good.

Q. (Translated from Spanish). What was your reaction after making that great par on No. 8? How did you feel?
MARK WILSON: I gave a little fist pump. I was really excited because I hit good tee shots on that hole all week, and I was really disappointed I blew it right, but I got a drop where I had to stay on the cart path, but I hit just the prettiest 3-wood, maybe even better than 18, now that I think about it. And then there was something about that putt. I just felt like after hitting that good a shot, I was going to at least get a chance to go in, and I got it up there and it went right in.

Q. J.J. when he was here earlier was highly praising of the grass and the condition of the course, and his hope is that a whole lot more of the courses on the TOUR would switch over to that grass. The other thing he said was also the last three holes here are possibly the toughest three holes of most of the courses on the TOUR.
MARK WILSON: Yeah. I like the grass, too. It's easy to hit off in the fairways and in the greens. Obviously I liked them. They rolled good for me. There's other players that really struggled, but I read them good. And I agree with him, those finishing holes.
The thing about this course, there's a lot of holes there's no bailout. A lot of courses we play there's one side where you can miss it big, and okay, it's in the rough and it's no big deal, but this course there's so many holes where there's hazard on both sides and you just have to step up and hit a good shot or you're going to be dropping. I mean I did that twice today, in the hazards twice today. It's easy to do.

Q. (Inaudible).
MARK WILSON: You bet. It's weird, we're on a schedule where the Match Play, a tournament we all aspire to be in, the Top 64 players in the world. You play in that first, but this is where I'd love to be, there's no question. So it would be a welcome change to come back here, if for some reason I don't get in Match Play.
And obviously I'm not in Top 64 in the world right now, but I'm going to continue to work on my game and hopefully have more good finishes and be a top player where I'd play in that, but any other year that I'm not there, I'll be here. You can count on it.

Q. Earlier in the press conference with the governor and the big guy from OHL, they were talking about, particularly the fellow from OHL, was that he was hoping that perhaps a sponsor might drop out and an opening would come up, not from here, but from one of the other tournaments, so that this could be a stand-alone tournament for its own week.
MARK WILSON: Uh-huh. Yeah. They should. It's a great golf course, and it's an easy place for the guys to get to from the States.
The Texas Open has done that. They've been in the fall time of the year opposite, I think the President's Cup, Ryder Cup, stuff like that, and they've just kind of been patient and now they're in the Texas swing in May. So as long as we keep having this tournament, I could see that happening.

Q. You said in addition they'd do whatever they had to do to increase the purse and make that even more appealing.
MARK WILSON: Okay.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297