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THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 13, 2010

Ryo Ishikawa

ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND

MARTIN PARK: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today we have Ryo Ishikawa in the interview room with us. We're going to start the interview with a few questions in English and then after that we'll carry on to Japanese. Ryo, welcome to St. Andrews.
RYO ISHIKAWA: Thank you.

MARTIN PARK: It's your first experience at the Old Course. What did you think?
RYO ISHIKAWA: Yeah, course is very good, beautiful, I thought. I will play with Tom Watson and PÃ¡draig Harrington on Thursday. I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to try my best.

MARTIN PARK: You're in very, very good company for your first time.
RYO ISHIKAWA: Yeah, it's going to be a very big day for me and a good experience here.

MARTIN PARK: One of the most exciting moments in your career so far?
RYO ISHIKAWA: Yeah, I think so.

Q. How different does it feel to last year? Last year you played in the Open for the first time at Turnberry and didn't make the cut. Was that a learning experience? How different does it feel this year? Are you more confident?
RYO ISHIKAWA: The difference from last year is the wide fairway and the large greens, and the only thing that I'm going to have to watch out for is the bunkers. The bunkers are so small and so difficult, so I'm going to be watching out for that.

Q. At the U.S. Open Championship you had four days to play the mental and the physical.
RYO ISHIKAWA: I'm going to focus on being stable, and I'm not going to be afraid of playing great golf. First of all, at the U.S. Open I had the goal to play the U.S. Open and then to be competitive, and I was competitive at the moment, and I had a little bit awkward feeling about that. So for this tournament I'm going to play more aggressively and focus on playing my golf.

Q. You have been using 0-irons from a couple days ago and the setting of the sand wedge.
RYO ISHIKAWA: I haven't changed the club settings for all those clubs, and since this St. Andrews course has the firm ground, so if I hit the low ball, it's going to run like 50 or 60 yards, and I'm going to make sure that there won't be any bunkers with that run.
It is important to have a great image to play the St. Andrews course, and whenever I hit the wrong irons or 0-irons, I'm going to make sure that there won't be any traps.

Q. You're attending the press conference two years in a row at the Open Championship, what is your feeling about that?
RYO ISHIKAWA: I am nervous at the press conference. Hopefully in the future it's only before the press conference but also during the round or after the final round, I want to attend a press conference. I'm going to do my best to do that. In the future I want to answer some questions in English in my own words.

Q. This tournament is in its 50 year anniversary, what is your feeling about that?
RYO ISHIKAWA: Out of the four majors, the Open Championship has the longest history, and I feel the history of the course as well as watching the building around the course. I feel the history. I also feel the home of golf playing here, so that makes me feel that I'm so glad that I get to become a professional golfer.

Q. What lessons have you taken from majors that you've played previously, and how can you apply them to this one?
RYO ISHIKAWA: Whenever I play a major tournament, I always see the good points and the bad points about my play. Whenever I play a major tournament, I feel the progress as well as the stimulation. I played the U.S. Open this year; I felt I needed the physical stress to play the four days. So for this tournament I want to play the four days in a stable condition and with physical strength for four days.

Q. At the U.S. Open Championship, you were losing physical strength after the second round, what was your feeling about that?
RYO ISHIKAWA: My pulse was moving a little bit fast, and it was kind of hard to breathe. It's like playing golf while running. And when that happens, my mind is a little bit hard to understand, like everything that's going around. So if I gave 100 per cent for all four days, I used 80 per cent of the physical strength after the second round, and I was only able to use 20 per cent of my physical strength after those two, third and final round.

Q. Was it the pressure?
RYO ISHIKAWA: I felt the pressure a little bit more than I expected after that second round.

Q. When you were at the U.S. Open Championship you had a little bit of a tough time controlling your physical strength. Is it closer to the major championship or is it farther to win the major championship after the U.S. Open championship?
RYO ISHIKAWA: It's always tough to win the major championships, and it goes for everyone that's in the tournament. I finished the second round the second time, and after the first round I finished around 40 strength, and that's for all the four days. I was shooting around 80 around the final day, and that's also my strength right now. But I gave it my best for all four days. If winning a major championship is 100 metres away, after the U.S. Open Championship I'm a little bit closer, like five or six metres, to winning a major championship.

Q. You were playing with Tiger at last year's Open Championship, and now you're back here again, and the technical level in your opinion, what's your feeling about that?
RYO ISHIKAWA: My feeling is that the technical level is much faster speed than I had anticipated, and the reason for that is I have been playing the major tournaments for quite some time, and playing there, playing the major tournaments, has given me the technical progress. But right now the mental is more important -- more important focusing on the physical strength than the mental. My physical strength is not catching up to my technical speed, so I'm working on the training more often.

Q. Are you satisfied with your technical skill right now?
RYO ISHIKAWA: I will never satisfy my golf playing, the practise and the game. I shot 58 at The Crowns in Japan, and it would be a lie if I said that I'm not satisfied with that score. But if I'm satisfied with playing golf so much, then there is no progress for me.

Q. What about the U.S. Open was different that caused you to feel that pressure? And how do you make sure or how do you prevent that from happening here or in the future?
RYO ISHIKAWA: The experience that I had at the U.S. Open Championship was the physical strength, and I have felt for the first time that I have been playing all four days, and during my play I had some kind of fatigue to play the golf. So that's something that I faced at the U.S. Open Championship. And hopefully in the future if I finish in the top finishers after the first and second round, I would like to have the physical strength to play all four days in all those top categories. So I'm going to work harder and do the training.
MARTIN PARK: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Ryo, thank you for coming in.

End of FastScripts

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