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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 22, 2011

Lee Westwood

MARANA, ARIZONA

PAUL SYMES: Welcome to Lee. After a nice week at home, and it's back to business this week.
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I finished in Dubai and had a few days off last week. Did quite a bit of gym work and hit a few balls, came out here on Sunday to LA and did a photo thing with Ping in LA, and came here yesterday and hit a few balls. I haven't seen the golf course yet but I'm going to go out for a practice round after this. I don't think it's changed much. Good conditions, and I'm looking forward to the week. It's a nice week, different from your usual stroke play. It's exciting, you don't know what to expect, throws up some surprises. And the first day is probably one of the most exciting days of the year as far as golf spectators are concerned, watching all the different matches going on.
PAUL SYMES: As a top seed, you might have expected an easier first round than Henrik Stenson.
LEE WESTWOOD: There are no easy games. You have the Top 64 players in the world. Everybody expects the top 64 is capable of shooting 65, 64, but, you get lucky in this format, but you also know you have to play well.
PAUL SYMES: You've had not much luck in the past because of your record here compared to others.
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I'm wondering what Friday looks like in this tournament. I played pretty well here, and, you know, had one of those hot days against me. That's the kind of look I'm talking about. You occasionally run up against people that are playing well.

Q. There's no guarantee that you'll be here very long, what is there to look forward about this week?
LEE WESTWOOD: Just that it's a different format. It's match play. I grew up playing match play in England. And most of club golf in England is match play, and it's nice to get back to that.

Q. This will be the first time that the best players really have seen each other in big numbers this year. Do you think the best players need to get together more often, less often, is it about right?
LEE WESTWOOD: I think it's a pretty good balance at the moment. We get together, what, 14, 15 times a year, I guess with certain events and world championships and Majors. Yeah, it's pretty good. Obviously from a fan's point of view, you'd like to see everybody playing every week, but that's just not logistically possible, I don't think.

Q. How many swing changes have you gone through in your career, and how difficult is it for you to sort of buy into changing something that either worked or didn't work at that time?
LEE WESTWOOD: Well, I think you have to have faith. If you're going to make swing changes, you have to have faith in the thing that you're trying to change. You have to be committed in your mind to that. There's no point in sort of doing it wishy-washy and, yeah, I think that might be right, you have to be fully focused and clear in your own mind. And I think that's maybe part of my problem eight, nine years ago, when I went through the slump. I didn't get it all straightened out in my mind what I was going to do. I fluttered between different people's ideas rather than going with what I thought was right.
As for swing changes, I think you tinker around with it all the time. I probably feel like I've made more swing changes than it might look to you. I go out on the range and feel I've made a dramatic change and can't really see the difference, but obviously it feels big to me when I'm swinging.
So, you know, if you're going to make changes, you have to be committed to them, there's no doubt about that, yeah. I couldn't put a number on it. It could be hundreds.

Q. Are you getting used to the mantle No. 1 player in the world yet? Are you feeling pressured to defend that?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I'm not feeling any pressure to defend it, you know. You guys are probably talking about it more than I am. I'm fairly used to it. I'm used to not so much the tag of world No. 1, but the demands that come with it. You know, I've been obviously 4th quite a bit and 3rd and 2nd, but I didn't realize the massive jump to going to world No. 1, the demands on your time and doing interviews and things like that would be, and, you know, profile elevation, I guess. So that's the main thing you have to get your head around, time management, saying no a lot.

Q. I don't know if you're going to answer this, but a lot of guys have a clause in their contract for world No. 1, reaching world No. 1, was this a fairly lucrative jump for you to No. 1?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yes (laughter).

Q. Care to elaborate on that?
LEE WESTWOOD: No. I did answer your question, though, didn't I?

Q. Yes, you did.
LEE WESTWOOD: Some contracts have that clause and others don't. It depends how smart a manager you've got.

Q. Do you see kind of the shake-up in the rankings as a good thing? They've kind of looked -- they've looked the same for a few years, do you think it's been a good thing to kind of give a fresher look to the tournaments and who's in the spotlight?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I think so. I think time moves on, doesn't it? The World Rankings aren't going to be the same forever. You've got lots of great young players coming through and I like the volatility of the World Rankings. You tend to see that now that if you put a good run together, you move up. If you stay in that run, you obviously stay very high. And it's great you look down the world rank action, you've got lots of good young players that tend to come out here now as pretty polished professionals and get straight into it, and get straight into the top 50 World Rankings.
You've got to look at the field this week, somebody like Martin, I guess he's something like 25, something like that. And you've got five, six, seven players younger than him making him look like an old man. Rory, Matteo, Ryo, all those guys in the Top 64 in the world cueing up and pretty fierce and wanting more. So I think the World Rankings are very good and they'll make the game of golf look healthy.

Q. You mentioned the volatility of the World Rankings. Lately there's been a lot of talk about the pros and cons. Do you think that's more of a media-driven thing, and the players don't really talk about it too much themselves?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, we don't really talk about it too much. I was playing with Mark Wilson down from LA yesterday, and he said how he thought they were very reflective and a good way to do it. People have different opinions, but I suppose that's what makes life interesting, isn't it, opinions? They're like part of the body, everybody has one.

Q. You're playing for an individual title this week, but given the landscape of global golf right now, do you have any kind of sense that there's a pride of the Tour at stake different from four or five years ago?
LEE WESTWOOD: No, not at all, I don't know who's driving that along. We're all out there as individuals, trying to win golf tournaments. And European golf is very strong, but it goes in cycles. You talk about -- yeah, it is, but you look back at the Ryder Cup last year, and we only just won that, the Ryder Cup, so often American golf is very strong, as well, and so is the rest of the world. You've got lots of good young players coming from all over. I think it's great. It's a world game.

Q. Could you talk about just desert golf in general. How do you like it? Was it a big adjustment for you? Obviously you play a lot more, but now the world has expanded out here and in the Middle East. How did your game adjust to that?
LEE WESTWOOD: Well, slightly different here from the Middle East, because you've got the altitude to factor in, that's the main difference. The ball tends to go a little bit farther with the thinner air. As the day goes on, it warms up so you have adjustments to make. If you're out early in the morning it's cold and it's going to go significantly farther four hours later towards the end of your round. I like playing desert golf. The golf course is generally in pristine condition, because it's a bit of a controlled environment. The greens are normally fantastic, quite dramatic land escapes out there. So it's nice to play.
And then you move into sort of the Florida Swing and things like that, and then the middle of the year playing more traditional golf courses, so it's a good mix.

Q. It's usually drier than home?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, you could say that. I think most places are drier than England at the moment.

Q. Everybody seems to have a different approach to match play. Can you say a little bit about your mindset going into match play, particularly as a given match progresses and gets tight down towards the end. Where is your mind? What are you thinking? How are you approaching how you're playing?
LEE WESTWOOD: It's just a case of how you feel it works best for you. I try not to give too many holes away, but at the same time if you've made 18 pars, you're not going to win a match, you have to throw some birdies in there. You just take one shot at a time and try to hit it in the fairway, hit it close and make the putt.
No difference from stroke play, obviously. You're going head-to-head against another person. They can affect the way the match is going. But, you know, it's a pretty straight forward format. You just have to make changes as the round progresses.

Q. Do you prefer one format over the other, having grown up playing match play?
LEE WESTWOOD: I prefer stroke play, I think. But I like the change to match play every now and again, yeah. It mixes it up a bit. If given the choice, it would be a stroke play event for me.

Q. I've got a couple of tactical questions for you, as far as two holes. First, the par-3, 6th hole, being wedged in between a couple of tough par-4s, how does the 6th hole -- how do you approach that particular hole, strategically?
LEE WESTWOOD: I can't remember the golf course.

Q. About 185 yard par-3?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, that's quite a nice par-3. It's a bit of a blind green, but they change the tees around a little bit. You don't want to miss it right, and there's a bit of a runoff on the left. It's a nice little par-3.

Q. And then the 12th hole, with its elevation?
LEE WESTWOOD: Par-3?

Q. The par-3, downhill par-3?
LEE WESTWOOD: The toughest part there is pulling the right club because of the elevations and gauging the wind as well, because it tends not to blow that strong around here. It's a pretty big green, but depending on the flag, I know they put the flag on the left there some days, and missing it long is obviously not great?

Q. Are you happy with the way this falls on the schedule? In other words, if this tournament were to -- if there was a change, do you think it's more important the location of where this is played or the date on the calendar? Some people think it's too early in the year for the format.
LEE WESTWOOD: No, I think it's fine. I think if you're going to have a World Golf Championships you should have more around the world. I think there's a bit too much -- too much in the United States. We're trying to push the game around the world and it's part of having it in the Olympics coming up. Trying to create enthusiasm in places like China and around Asia, I guess South America, you ought to take these big tournaments to those places. That would be my only change. I think the formats are great.
PAUL SYMES: Thanks a lot.

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