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COMMERCIALBANK QATAR MASTERS PRESENTED BY DOLPHIN ENERGYJanuary 28, 2010Lee WestwoodDOHA, QATAR SCOTT CROCKETT: A very good finish Lee withy birdies on the 16th and 18th. Give us your thoughts on an opening 68. LEE WESTWOOD: I played very solidly. I 3-putted the 5th, my only bogey of the day. I think I missed two greens and two fairways, so it was sort of picking up from last year's golf, really. SCOTT CROCKETT: We talked to you a lot in Abu Dhabi and you were going to be working on your clubs, and you've done quite a bit of that here and it's obviously paid off. Talk about the changes you've made. LEE WESTWOOD: I've got Steve out here, obviously, and Pete here, so I almost look at the start of the season as a preseason. After last year, obviously pretty drained and I needed to recharge the batteries, so didn't do any work on my game. Didn't hit any balls in six weeks. So coming out to Abu Dhabi I, even though I did come out sort of three or four days early, still very have rusty and doing a lot of gym work, as well, which is obviously slightly fatiguing. You know, I paid the consequences last week. I had a new set of clubs; so that's one variable. Not hit any balls for six weeks, that's another one, really. I didn't know what it was, so once I started swinging half-decent on Friday and hitting a few fairways with the driver and hitting a few shots with 3-wood and 5-wood, the irons didn't quite felt right. It's nothing to do with PING. It's not their fault. I just haven't had a chance to work with them. The manufacturers are not sure about the testing and the parameters and stuff like that, so it's a semi-ridiculous situation I think. You have the fact that people have to almost check their own clubs to see if they are legal. You know, I think it should be like Formula I: You get the three guys at the top of the leaderboard and test their clubs after they played so you know who is playing within the rules and who is not. We are all sort of in the dark at the start of the year, really, and I've got them sorted out and had them tested. I had them flown out, as well, because I had been trying them at the end of last year but PING said they were not sure whether they were legal because they changed some sort of ruling on the graphs, so I had to put them away. And they gave me a new set which I didn't have a chance to test and obviously paid the price for that; and flew out another set, put them through the test and they passed. And so far the three rounds, I've shot 63-64, 68. Feels very similar to the ones I've used last year. Q. Give us a sense of conditions out there? LEE WESTWOOD: No, it's probably the hardest I've seen it -- well, I don't recall previous years I've played it. But I like it like this. I think people can play in it -- because it's difficult, but you look at scores in the past, most of these desert courses have been torn up, really. They are a lot harder than we would make them out to be. So I like the way the golf course is set up. It's almost like a major championship setup, a U.S. Open, with the firm greens and the thick rough. Q. When you hear other players moaning about conditions, do you think, 'Yes, I'm already one up here'? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, it gives you a warm feeling when you hear people moaning about setup. But to penalise inaccurate play, you've got to reward accurate play for people who hit the fairway, and one of the ways to do that is to get the greens firm. Q. You talked about shooting a 63 and 64 earlier - are those scores possible here? LEE WESTWOOD: It's achievable but you'll have to play really well. The wind will have to drop a little bit, because you should be playing in a lot of crosswinds on this golf course and the wind today, that generally was the prevailing wind. Q. Did you score those scores in the Pro-Am? LEE WESTWOOD: No, no, in the Pro-Am, it was in practice and in the Al Naboodah Pro-Am on Monday. Q. Can you remind us how you met Oliver Wilson? LEE WESTWOOD: Did he want me to talk about this - did he mention it? He caddied for me, yeah. I probably met him before. Having said that, he's about three rows behind you, but it's the kind of thing you do when you're amateurs, you caddie for your mates. I think it was the Notts boys against the Notts police. We used to call -- no, this is Oliver, and he turned up, I guess I'd be 16 or 17 and he'd have been about -- how old is he, 31? 29? He would have been 11. That was the first time I had ever met him. Obviously I had heard a few things about him, he was a young junior and he pops up a few years later, a Ryder Cup player. Q. Still close friends nowadays? LEE WESTWOOD: We're not really close. We're friends obviously. He's gone to college in the States. Yeah, if Ollie ever needed any advice, of course, he would feel free to ask me, like most of the guys out here would. Q. Was there a certain nervousness for you going out today after what happened in Abu Dhabi? LEE WESTWOOD: No, not really. The proof is in the pudding on Friday with my driving. I missed two fairways and shot 78. Not really Lee Westwood like golf, that. So you just knock that one down to experience and won't make that mistake again. Yeah, shafts next year, or something like that, is it? Going to go back to hickory. (Laughter). Q. Is there something about Ping Eye grooves? LEE WESTWOOD: The same I used last year and the year before. Yeah, pre-1990 golf clubs grooves are illegal or something. I've got a set of them but you know, if you're going to win, you win fairly. It would almost feel like bending the rules, not bending rules but certainly bending them a long way. Q. Should we be driver heads as well? LEE WESTWOOD: I think golf clubfaces may get thinner with time. You know, I think the problem for everybody is the ball goes so far. Even if you get a strong wind like this, you can hold it straight quite easily. There's pluses and minuses, obviously because if you want to shape it, it's hard to shape it now, the ball is so finally tuned that it's very difficult to put any shape at all on it. It's meant to go straight. I know a lot of people in here might not think that but -- (laughter). Q. Are the clubs given a certificate or something? LEE WESTWOOD: I think they were sending -- the R&A guys had code numbers on them and everything and took the numbers down on them and said they were legal. Q. Surely if all the clubs are tested then that would preclude the Formula 1 scenario? LEE WESTWOOD: Well, it would if everybody took them in but it's not like we are being made to take them in. We are not saying, this is your -- it wouldn't take a lot, would it. I would imagine in the space of the next three or four weeks, pretty much everybody, I guess, needs to be tested in America. But they should say, by, say, Doral or the Match Play, first World Golf Championships of the year, everybody has to have had their clubs tested. But if they are not going to test them after you play, what's the point of having the rule anyway? Some people could be playing with clubs that just by mistake are illegal. SCOTT CROCKETT: If that's the case, are we then in danger of players whispering in the locker room that so and so player is playing with non-conforming clubs? LEE WESTWOOD: I just don't see the point of bringing that rule in, why leave it up to the individual? SCOTT CROCKETT: Thanks very much, Lee. Good luck tomorrow. End of FastScripts |
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