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AT&T PEBBLE BEACH NATIONAL PRO-AM

February 10, 2010

Sergio Garcia

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA

DOUG MILNE: We'll get started. Sergio, thanks for joining us here in the 2010 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Making your debut, just a couple comments, what you've done in the off-season, what you're working on and how you feel starting the '10 season.
SERGIO GARCIA: First of all happy to be back here at the AT&T Pro-Am, and it's been a while, I think since 2001. But yeah, I've enjoyed Monterey Peninsula Country Club today. It was beautiful. And looking forward to playing with Josh and hopefully have a good time here the next four days.

Q. What brings you back here, the Open?
SERGIO GARCIA: The plane brought me back. (Chuckling).
Yeah, that's one of the reasons, definitely. I think that, also, I didn't want to go -- I didn't want to just fly to play the Match Play. I wanted to come and maybe get a little bit of rhythm going into the Match Play.
So it was good to be here and take a good look at Pebble and then kind of get going for next week, too.

Q. How did you play in the desert over there?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, I mean, I guess under the conditions, it was okay. Obviously my off-season wasn't the off-season I dreamed of when I got injured in Dubai at the end of last year. I couldn't grab a club for pretty much almost seven weeks.
So I didn't get to practice very much going into Abu Dhabi and Qatar. I probably only practiced four or five days. And you know, I felt it a little bit there. But I feel like, you know, as I'm able to get more and more practice rounds on it, hit a bit more balls, play a little more golf, I feel like my game is improving slowly so hopefully I can keep getting better on that.

Q. They changed Pebble obviously since you've been here. Did the course come back to you and did you pick up the changes immediately, how they extended the 9th and etc., etc.?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, I think there's obviously some things that you notice, and there are some others that are more kind of subtle change and they feel like they have been there forever.
I mean, I haven't played Pebble since 2001, so it's been a while. But you know, like I said before, it's good to be back, get a feel for it. Obviously the course probably is not going to play like -- hopefully it's going to be playing like it is at the moment in June. I remember the Open in 2000, how it played there, and you know, it should be very interesting to see with the new grooves and everything, see how we get around it.

Q. Can you really learn anything from this experience?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, definitely. Like I said before, the course is probably not going to play the same way, I mean, unless we get one of those weeks when it rains a lot. But if we get decent weather, the course is going to play a little bit different.
But yeah, the looks and some of the shots are still the same. So you do get a feel. You get a feel of how the wind is playing and you've played it before and you know what the ball is doing and everything.
Without obviously taking apart -- it can be a lot firmer in June. There's definitely some things that you can take away from it.

Q. What specific memories do you have of playing this tournament in 2000 and 2001, why did you not play it the last eight years?
SERGIO GARCIA: I remember I played one of them with my sister and one of them with a good friend of mine, a member at Augusta. I remember with my sis, we were doing pretty well. I mean, she played awesome. She played much better than me, that's for sure. (Laughs). We were doing pretty good. We had a great time.
My dad was caddying for my sister, too. There's some good memories that come around. I'm just looking forward to get some of those memories back and enjoy some new ones with Josh and my playing partner, and I'm sure that hopefully we'll both play well and have a good time.

Q. Why did you say away for so many years?
SERGIO GARCIA: I think just unfortunately schedule-wise it just hasn't fitted. This year, it does fit nicely with the Match Play right after it. So unfortunately in the years past; it's been a little bit harder with the start in the Middle East. It just was almost impossible to come and play.

Q. Is there a favorite hole here?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, some of the ones I played today at Monterey Peninsula they definitely come to mind. I think that when you look at Pebble, there's no doubt that holes like 7,5, 18, maybe 8, they always come to mind. But you know, I saw a lot of good holes out there at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, and we really enjoyed some of the views. It was a pretty nice day, too. So it was very enjoyable.

Q. Do you know Josh? How did he end up being your playing partner? And also, can you talk about what you did during the rehab when you couldn't play golf?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, pretty much I had a couple options to come and play with, and unfortunately all of them couldn't make it. They had some other things that they had to do. I remember talking to my manager and he told me that Josh, he obviously asked about playing with us, and I said, sure.
He knows -- I don't know him personally, but he knows a good friend of mine in Barcelona when they went there for the Lawrence Trophy three or four years ago, I think it was. I heard he's -- I like him as an actor. He's in a good movie with Transformers and Las Vegas and stuff. He's got a great singer as a wife. Nothing wrong with that.

Q. (Inaudible.)
SERGIO GARCIA: I don't know. It's not my call.

Q. And what did you do rehab-wise when you were not able to pick up a club?
SERGIO GARCIA: Funny enough, when I came back from the World Cup, I was hurting quite a bit. I couldn't play the tournament we play in my home course at the beginning of December. So I took an MRI and a CAT scan and make sure that nothing was broken.
Obviously nothing was broken, and they said, you know, just kind of rest it out and within the next three or four weeks it should be fine. So we rest it out, as the weeks were going past, I felt like it was getting a little bit better, but it was very, very slow.
So decided to go to a specialist in Barcelona. You know, he said it was fine, just tendonitis. He said obviously if I would have quit playing after Dubai when I did it, it probably would have been fixed in ten or 15 days. Unfortunately we had the World Cup after, and we were there in China, OMEGA is one of my sponsors, a sponsor of the tournament, and representing your country is always great; so I tried to make an extra effort, and it didn't help very much.
So what was supposed to take two weeks; it took almost seven. So just kind of worked with my trainer in Spain and we were able to go to the Middle East, which is looked like it was going to be doubtful for a while.

Q. How did you injure yourself?
SERGIO GARCIA: Hitting a shot on the 17th hole on Saturday on the par 3. The club kind of got a little bit stuck in the ground and pulled my hand back, and I felt it right away. So it's obviously just a strained tendon in the back of my palm.

Q. This is your right hand?
SERGIO GARCIA: Yes.

Q. That was in December?
SERGIO GARCIA: That was end of November.

Q. Does that worry you more now than it would have when you were young?
SERGIO GARCIA: No, not at all. They worry you know matter what age you are, because you never like to be injured, and fortunately I've been very fortunate on that aspect. I haven't been injured very much. So this was pretty much the first serious injury I had as a professional where I couldn't really grab a club for six weeks.
So you just take care of it. I mean, it bothered me because I couldn't play golf. It bothered me because I couldn't play tennis. It bothered me because I couldn't do anything unrelated on sports and stuff. It was a different experience, but you know, one that you always learn from.

Q. Can you give us the details on how you celebrated your 30th birthday?
SERGIO GARCIA: Funny enough, not that much. We went to -- that was actually the second day I was able to play. We went to the Canary Islands. We played usually a charity event down there for a friend of mine that died. She was a golfer, too, student at Duke and she died when she was 24 from lung cancer, Maria Garcia-Estrada. And we had her event that came -- well, the day after the 10th of -- actually, no, the 9th of January.
So it was the same day. So we were at the dinner, and they gave me a nice surprise with a nice video and obviously a birthday cake and everything. But it wasn't, I mean, just one more, it's not that big a deal.

Q. When you came over here, did you have any thoughts of putting a PING Eye 2 in your bag?
SERGIO GARCIA: Not at all. I'm a TaylorMade guy, so I don't like PING clubs. (Laughter).
No, you know, my theory on that, since it started I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was going to change my whole bag and I wasn't going to grab a club from eight, ten, 20, 60 years ago, because I want to make sure that no one can say, you know, you have a club that might or might not be legal.
So you know, I start with the 2010 clubs, all of them -- well, actually I started playing with the irons in October last year, as the new clubs for this year. I wanted to make sure that they are all legal, and when I'm there on the golf course, I don't have to think, oohh, will this club, will I have any problems with this club or not. I know that they are all fine, and I can concentrate on playing. That's my way of going at it.

Q. How close are you to returning to your form last year when you were up there in the rankings?
SERGIO GARCIA: It's hard to say. Like I said before, I have not been able to do much work this off-season. So these first couple of months for me is kind of like my off-season, trying to get back into it.
I feel like I'm slowly getting better at it. I feel like I'm swinging the club better. I'm working hard on my chipping and putting, and it's going to take a little bit of time. Every time you're working on new things, they don't come easily. You know, it usually takes two or three, four months to settle in. But we are working on it. I know what I'm doing. It feels good. So it's just a matter of keep hard at it, and you know, hopefully get back to that level that we played middle to end of 2008.

Q. Where are you going after the Match Play?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, we play next week, Match Play, obviously. Then I think we are going to have a week off. Then I'm probably going to play the Florida stretch, which three in a row will be Honda, Doral and Tampa probably. Not 100 percent, but if everything goes according to plan, that's what it will be. And then we'll see what we do after that regarding as we get closer to the Masters.
DOUG MILNE: Sergio, as always we appreciate your time. Best of luck this week.

End of FastScripts

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