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ABU DHABI GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

January 19, 2010

Sergio Garcia

ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

SCOTT CROCKETT: Many thanks for coming in and joining us, as always. Happy new year to you and welcome to the Abu Dhabi Championship. Let's start with the hand. Just let us know how it is and where you are with any treatment you are doing, and how you are looking forward to this week with it.
SERGIO GARCIA: Fortunately it's much better. We obviously strained it a little bit in due by in Saturday on in the third round on the 17th hole. Apparently playing the World Cup didn't help much.
We talked to the doctors and they said that if we would have stopped right after we did it in Dubai, it probably would have been fixed in ten or 15 days, but unfortunately we played the World Cup, and it kind of re-strained it and, you know, it took six weeks.
Though it's been long, it's been quite slow, but fortunately now it's better. I mean, for five or six weeks, I couldn't even get the clubs out, so it was quite bad. Still a little bit of a bump in there but it kind of turned into a little tendonitis, and been treating it for the past two weeks, morning and afternoon, with the physio, and just fortunately it's much better.
Started practising last week, and I'm obviously quite rusty, but at least I'm able to hit the ball and don't feel much pain, so it's good.
SCOTT CROCKETT: You're okay with pain; you're not suffering?
SERGIO GARCIA: A little bit when I started warming up. Obviously when it's a little cold and you start to warm up, I feel it a little bit, but as it goes on, it gets better. If there's a shot where I have to use a bit more force, I feel it a little bit. The more my hand goes back at impact, the more I feel it. But fortunately it seems like it's responding quite well.
SCOTT CROCKETT: Did you give consideration to not playing at Mission Hills; is that in the back of your mind?
SERGIO GARCIA: I did, but it was a hard decision for many reasons. Obviously Gonzalo and I were there already. We knew that if I pulled out that obviously they couldn't get another Spanish guy to come and play. It was World Cup, when you're playing for your country, it's always special, so I wanted to play, too. And also, you know, OMEGA is the main sponsor, and it's one of my sponsors, so I was trying to please everyone, and it just took a little bit out of me.
SCOTT CROCKETT: Well, it's good to see you back here and hope your hand stays up this week. We'll move to questions.

Q. You said shots where you would have to use a bit more force -- have you seen the rough -- will it hold you back?
SERGIO GARCIA: Not at all. I played nine holes this morning and it is -- you could say it's thick-ish. You get lies, kind of lie down a little bit but it's not very long. So it's about this long. You can get it out. I hit probably four or five balls out of the rough and it was pretty good.
So you know, it's fine. I mean, I'll be more worried if I'm behind a tree and I have to kind of hit the tree with a shaft on the way through or something like that, something that kind of -- like an abrupt stop of the club or something like that would bother me a little bit more than the rough this week.

Q. How was it doing nothing, when your hand wouldn't allow you to play tennis?
SERGIO GARCIA: I was trying to be good. I did play a little bit of football. But I couldn't really do much. Like you know, I couldn't really work out, because I couldn't lift any weights. I obviously couldn't play golf. I couldn't play tennis. Anything that had to do with the hands, I couldn't do.
So it was hard, because you know, I consider myself quite active and it seemed like I wasn't quite healed for a while. Obviously Christmas didn't come down very good, a little bit of weight, but we'll get rid of it.

Q. How close were you to surgery?
SERGIO GARCIA: No, never because -- it was never -- we did an MRI, we did a couple of different things, and there was never anything broken. Like no bones broken, no tendons broken, so that was good.
We knew it was just a healing process, and it just look a little longer than I thought it was going to take. Yeah, we all thought that three or four weeks would be good to go, and it's taken quite a bit longer. That's the way it is.

Q. Do you practise a lot over Christmas and New Year's --
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, no. I think certainly at the end of the season, you try to take a little break from the game, maybe a couple of weeks where you don't play at all. And then you start getting back into it, you start practising short game and start hitting some balls slowly and kind of getting into the rhythm.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to do that this year, and in my -- since the World Cup, the first ball I hit was on Thursday, not last week, the week before. I hit one shot and went straight back in, it was still hurting too much. And then I tried playing on Saturday, we played on a charity event in Tenerife in the Canary Islands and I played there, and it felt pretty good, a little bit of pain, but it felt fairly good. I started practising as the week went on.
It's not the perfect scenario, I must say, to start my year, but I think as the week goes on and as the weeks -- next weeks go on, I think I'll be getting a bit more rhythm and I'll be able to do some proper practising.

Q. You are, however, a month away from the WGC and two months away from the Masters, and one certain opponent may not be at those and you want to be as fit as you can for them -- inaudible.
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, it depends. If it hurts to a point where I can't play, I obviously will have to do something about it. The doctor did say that if I feel a little bit of pain, it's fine. You can go from pain to absolutely nothing, but the most important thing is that it's not the kind of pain that doesn't allow you to swing. I think it's going to get better slowly and like I said, there's some big tournaments coming up.
But like I said, it feels good. It feels like there's pretty much -- I wouldn't say nothing on it, but throughout my round today, it felt good. I didn't feel anything. Just a little bit when I warm up. But you know, we'll just be taking care of it and we should be fine.
On the other hand, who knows when he's going to come back. I don't think it's going to be too long.

Q. General question, this tournament is five years old, where do you put it in terms of the enjoyment factor and on the world floor? And we mentioned the roughly briefly before, do you think it's going to be a tougher course compared to the others you've played in the region?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, I think it's a great event. I think they have done very good. They work really hard every year to get a good field, a nice, strong field to start the year here. There's no doubt that the weather helps and everything. The course is in great shape.
So everything together I think The European Tour and IMG and everybody who are working at the tournament, they have done a good job at it.
So they should be very proud of it. I think it's growing every year, and it's not the toughest, of course, we know that, but it's still a nice course, challenging course. You get some good, decent holes and then some other ones that are a little bit easier that you can attack. So overall, I think it's very good.
I would probably say that next week's course is a little tougher than this, but it's a different kind of tournament.

Q. How important is it for you to win in the Gulf?
SERGIO GARCIA: It is important, but that's one of the reasons why we practise is try to get better and to win events, win tournaments, win majors, anything you can think of.
So it would be nice to do it. It would be a great way to start the year, but I want to make sure that I get slowly into this. If we win this week, it would be great, but if we don't, it's fine. I know where I'm coming from after the injury we had, and I'm just trying to play nicely and get some positive thinking, some positive rhythm on myself, and if we manage to do that, it will be good.

Q. What are your thoughts, feelings, goals for the year in general?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, like I said, we are looking forward to it. We hope to keep improving, to keep getting better, and hopefully do some really nice things.
But the most important thing at the moment is to make sure that the hand responds well; that we leave the injury behind us, and if we manage to do that, if you can play golf without thinking about the hand or any other thing that is bothering you, then it's easier to play better.

Q. We have got some strong fields across the Gulf, and especially here in Abu Dhabi and we are seeing a lot of players make their base here, what do you think that signals about golf in the region as a whole?
SERGIO GARCIA: Like we were talking about before, I think it shows that this tournament is well-run. Not only, and even more now in Europe with the weather we have been having lately, you have good weather here, the courses are in good shape. You get nice, strong fields on it. So it's a great mixture to start the year, get it going.
You know that thanks to the decent weather that we have here, you can do a little bit more practise than maybe when you're at home and it's a little cold, it's always a little tougher to do some good, positive practising.
So I think that if you mix all of that together, that's why you see a lot of good players coming and playing this desert swing.

Q. Just single a little bit further ahead down the season, will you play at Wentworth this week, or will The Open be your only appearance in Britain because of the tax situation?
SERGIO GARCIA: We don't know yet but at the moment it looks like The Open will be the only one.
Yeah, I let my lawyers and other people that work for me take care of that, but yeah, at the moment it doesn't look very good.

Q. You said you didn't know when Tiger was coming back, but you thought it might be fairly soon. How different would the year be without him?
SERGIO GARCIA: It would be very different, but I think -- I don't know, I mean, only he knows when he's going to come back. I've got the feeling that it's going to be earlier than what everybody thinks. Because mainly I think he's very strong mentally, and it's not the kind of injury like it was a couple of years back when he had the knee. If you can't walk, you can't swing; it's different.
So I think that as soon as everything kind of gets sort of fixed, he'll be able to concentrate and probably the best thing for him at the moment is to get on the course and do what he knows to do best. So we will just wait and see.

Q. I was really asking as an opponent -- how would the year be different without him?
SERGIO GARCIA: There's no doubt it would be different. Like we always said, there's nothing better than playing against the best, and he is the best in our game. There's always an upside and a downside. The downside when he's playing, you know that your chances of winning are a little lower.
At the same time, the upside is when, you know, you're playing against him and you manage to beat him, it's always that much sweeter and you have beaten the best.
So for the game, it's not good that he's out, so we hope that he gets back as soon as possible.

Q. It has been a good spell for Spanish fans in the Gulf recently with Barcelona winning the Club Championship and Nadal winning the tennis - are you looking forward to trying to complete a Spanish hat-trick?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, that will be nice. I don't know, we will see on Sunday I guess. Yeah, it's been good. Barcelona did well and Rafa obviously played very nicely a couple of weeks back. So I'm looking forward to it. Looking forward to the challenge.
But like I said before, you know, for me, this week I'm here to try to win, there's no doubt about it. I'm going to try to put myself in a winning position. But at the same time, what I want to do is build up on this week, make sure that my feelings on the course are good; that everything on my body responds well, and I get some good momentum to get me through the beginning of the year and get started.

End of FastScripts

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