	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

ABU DHABI GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

January 22, 2010

Sergio Garcia

ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

SCOTT CROCKETT: Thanks for joining us and well done today. Give us your thoughts on a good first couple of days at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship.
SERGIO GARCIA: Yes, very pleased with the beginning of the tournament. I think that after the break and the little practise that I've been able to do, that I would like to do, it wasn't the practise when I was back at home. The weather wasn't helping, and obviously I wasn't helping, either.
So it's good to see that I'm getting it around. I'm obviously not feeling in total control of my ball flight, but I feel like I more or less know how I'm hitting it and I'm scoring pretty well. Overall, it's been very positive and hopefully we can keep going on.
SCOTT CROCKETT: No trouble with the hand?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yesterday it hurt a little bit on my second shot on 3. I had a tough lie, my feet were in the bunker, and the ball was in the thickest part of the grass and the ball got kind of stuck in the grass and hurt a little bit. But fortunately it was only at that moment and I was able to keep playing without really feeling anything.
So that was very positive, and today it was pretty good. I didn't really have any problems with it.
SCOTT CROCKETT: Give us the details of your birdies, you started very well, birdied three of the first four.
SERGIO GARCIA: 10, hit a good tee shot, didn't hit the best of 3-woods, hit in the short bunker on the front and blasted out to about 50 feet behind the hole and made a nice putt to start with.
12, then I hit a very nice tee shot to about five feet with a 7-iron and made that.
13, I hit a good drive in the left rough. Hit a very nice wedge from there to about six feet or so.
Then on the fourth, I hit a very nice 9-iron on the par 3 to about seven feet or so and I made that.
Then the bogey on 5, I hit a bad tee shot to the right. Second shot from the rough, just short left of the green, didn't hit a very good chip to about ten or 11 feet and missed it.
Then 7 and 8, I hit a very nice tee shot on 7 with a 6-iron to about 12 feet and I made a nice putt there.
On 8, I hit a good tee shot just a little left in the rough. Hit a very nice 5-wood from there to the front of the green to about three feet and almost made it for eagle.

Q. Going back to the hand, are you practising sort of less and not hitting as many balls, just to protect it?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, mainly because I haven't been able to practise a lot at home. It will be nice to get my calluses nice and firm again. They are a little bit tender at the moment.
But unfortunately I don't -- I probably could if I wanted but I don't want to push it too hard early. A little bit of chipping and putting I might do, but I'm going to try to restrict that the balls I'm hitting on the range as much as possible.

Q. So you find yourself at the top of the leaderboard, given the background, it must be a bit beyond your expectations.
SERGIO GARCIA: Definitely. I'm not going to lie to you, like I said before, I didn't have the chance of practising much back at home. Maybe because of the hand, and the weather wasn't very good. One day was raining and cold and the next day it was howling 80-kilometer winds, and the next it was cold again.
It was a little bit tough, but we got a little bit of work done at least. The last couple practise days weren't great. But definitely found a little bit of consistency throughout this week.
I think there's no doubt that the warm weather is helping a little bit, too, and making sure that the hand warms up quicker. And you know, I'm just trying to keep getting better. Obviously I feel like I played nicely, but I haven't played great, and I feel like there's some shots here and there that I could be a lot more positive with and not have so many doubts.
Obviously when you haven't been able to do the practise you wanted to do, then some doubts are going to creep in here and there.

Q. Just wondered about the black rhythm?
SERGIO GARCIA: It's Haiti. They gave it to us on the 10th hole today. I think it's for that and I'm also wearing it for two colleagues of mine, Pablo Martin and Carlos Rodiles, they both lost their dads last Friday and last Sunday.

Q. You've come close in this tournamen previously, and haven't had time to check your other Desert Swing results, but do you put great store on adding The Desert Swing to what you've done elsewhere around the world?
SERGIO GARCIA: Definitely. Any win is great, and if you have the possibility of winning at a great tournament like any of the tournaments here in The Desert Swing are with very good fields, it's always a bonus.
So it would be great. Like you said, I've been close. I finished third here and eighth last year and I've had some good Top-10s and Dubai, I've been close, too. So it would be nice to hopefully do it this year.

Q. At the end of last year in Dubai, you seemed to be having problems with your chipping?
SERGIO GARCIA: I wouldn't say it was at the end of last year. Obviously I had some troubles with a little bit of my chipping, just trying to work a little bit with Pete Cowen trying to get it sorted.
It's getting better, but we just started. We just started the end of last year, so it's not -- I wish he had the magic stick and could fix it. I'm definitely seeing improvement but it's still going to take a while.

Q. Was it a relief to see the end of last year, just to say good-bye to last year, the end of it?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, I mean, after I hurt my hand, yes, it was. I had a tough time throughout the middle of last year, but towards the end I was feeling pretty good. I felt like I was back into it. I felt like my head was starting to be at the right place again. And unfortunately when I was starting to play the best -- I played nicely in Dubai and I played pretty good the week before. I finished 19th in the U.S. with a couple of top sixes. Unfortunately when things were starting to happen again for me, I hurt my hand and then I forced it by playing the World Cup and you know, we are where we are now.
Yeah, I think like I said, it was a good -- it was a very good learning year for me. Golf-wise it probably wasn't very good. But I think that it's one of those years that you learn a lot from and it helps you get better.

Q. What did you learn?
SERGIO GARCIA: I learned a lot of things, not only on the golf course -- there's things that I'm not going to ask about your life and I'm not going to tell you about mine.

Q. You find yourself on the leaderboard, you said yourself a little unexpected. So the next two days, are you ready --
SERGIO GARCIA: I wouldn't say it wasn't expected. When I came here, I was -- my expectations were to do withal and play nicely and have a chance of winning. How could I say it, like the confidence level maybe wasn't as high as it needed to be, but as I got a little bit of practise and started getting into it, obviously when you get into a tournament, your kind of body changes a little bit.
You get into that tournament vibe and those kind of feelings, and it's all about scoring. So you cannot play the previous, but still nicely score and at the end of the day, that's the important thing and that's what I'm going to try to do the weekend and see if I can finish on top where we are now.

Q. The suggestion at the start of the week was that this course would play tougher than in previous years. The scoring indicates that that is not necessarily the case. Is it down to the conditions out there that are bringing low scores, or is the course playing easier than it was supposed to be?
SERGIO GARCIA: No, I think that the weather has helped, there has not been much breeze and this morning it was pretty calm.
I think that everything is getting tested at the moment with the new grooves and everything. I think the greens, it's tough -- when you are playing on bermudagreens, it's tough to get them firm-firm. If the greens were firmer, definitely you could see that, you know, the grooves and everything coming out of the rough, it will be a lot tougher to stop it, because the greens are bermuda.
Sometimes you hit a shot into the grain and it stops even coming out of the rough. So that's something that there's no way to change it.
But I definitely feel like the course is probably playing a little bit tougher with everything put together.

Q. (Inaudible.)
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, the rough is not too high but it's fairly thick. And like I said before, with the new grooves, you get a lot of flyers out of the rough. So you're able to get to the green. It's just a matter of landing it at the right spot so you can hold the green.
If the greens were a little bit firmer, which apparently you could get with a different type of grass, but with the heat and everything, it's difficult to do; then definitely they would play a little bit tougher.
SCOTT CROCKETT: Sergio, thanks, as always. Good luck on the weekend.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297