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THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPJuly 12, 2011Luke DonaldSANDWICH, ENGLAND LYNN WALLACE: Ladies and gentlemen, we're joined by world No. 1 Luke Donald. Thanks for joining us. Congratulations on your win at the Scottish Open, and I take it preparations are going well? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, so far so good. Obviously winning last week was the best preparation, you know, being in good form to be able to close out a tournament like I did was good news for this week hopefully. Yeah, I played a practice round today, obviously very testing conditions in this wind, but looking forward to the challenges ahead. LYNN WALLACE: It's your first Open as world No. 1. Does that feel any different? LUKE DONALD: I think being No. 1 obviously makes everything a little bit different, a little bit more expectation, a little bit more media, more attention, yes. But I think this is my sixth or seventh week as No. 1, so I'm starting to get used to it slowly and surely. Q. What was the most extreme hole with the wind direction today? LUKE DONALD: 7 probably was today. I couldn't reach the fairway from the back tee, so that hole would need to be put up if the wind was as strong as it was today and in the same direction. 11 and 13 were also very tough. 11 was a driver to the par-3, and it was two good shots to get to the front on 13. Those were playing the longest and most challenging. Q. It's been a long time since we've had an English winner. Do you think it could be this week with you and Lee the two forerunners? LUKE DONALD: Certainly European golf and English golf is very strong right now. Obviously in the World Rankings myself and Lee heading that list. We've both been having good years so far, and there's a bunch of other English guys that probably haven't played as well as us but certainly have the potential to win. I guess now is as good a time as any. Q. Lee, do you think you're in the best form of your life at the moment? And if so, what do you put it down to? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, I mean, this is the best I've played. I had a solid year in 2006, won over in the U.S. and ranked up a bunch of Top 10s, but this is the most consistent I've been, I think, throughout my whole game, not just around the greens but tee to green it's getting more and more solid, and I think that's been a key to me playing well and notching up some victories. I think the win at the Match Play was a big key for me. I hadn't won other than a smaller event in Madrid. I hadn't really won for a number of years, and it was becoming tougher and tougher to win. But as soon as you get that one win, it kind of opened up the door, gave me a lot of confidence, and I've been playing very well since then. Q. For links golf and especially this course, what part of your game is most critical this week? LUKE DONALD: Today it really tested everything. It was hard to say what part of the game on a day like today -- if conditions are a little bit milder, then I think getting the ball in the hole, putting well, getting up and down from missed greens is extremely important. Today you needed everything. Well, thinking about it, even in tough conditions, I still think the guy that can scrap it around and make pars from off the green, hole some long putts and kind of keep the momentum going, especially when it's very tough like it was today, then that's the key to playing well. Q. You're going to play with Ryo Ishikawa this year. What do you think about him? And what do you think about his chances to win a major tournament? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, I've been asked this before, and I think Ryo is a great young talent. Obviously he's proven himself, especially in his home country of Japan. He's won many times. For being so young, to win that many times early in his career is very special, and he obviously has the ability and a great amount of talent. Obviously he needs to bring that game to the rest of the world and these big tournaments like the majors, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Winning really breeds a lot of confidence, and I'm sure he's feeling good about his game. Q. Obviously you went to Scotland in the hopes that you would have sort of a perfect tuneup. Obviously it played out that way with a victory, but was it sort of a culture shock to be faced with the nature of the golf you faced today given that you were supposed to be playing links golf last week? LUKE DONALD: Certainly it was different today, and I think that's part of what you get when you come to links golf. You don't really know what you're going to get. Yesterday was sunny and not too windy; today was a little chillier and pretty stiff breeze. That's the nature of links. The preparation I did before Scottish, we had good weather, too, so I haven't really done a lot of preparation in this kind of a wind. But again, you can't really control that, and I still think going and playing last week was good preparation for me. It obviously wasn't exactly like it is this week, but there are certain similarities, even dependent on the weather conditions and the course, that always stays the same in links golf, the chip and runs, the texture of the grass, those kind of things that stay pretty constant, and you certainly learn from that. Q. You were obviously here in 2003. How many times had you played here before that? LUKE DONALD: That was my first time. Q. And you haven't played in between, so this is really the second time you've played here? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, I played the week before the Scottish. I played here Thursday and Friday. Q. The second thing is would you mind explaining what particular challenges and rewards are here compared with the other Open courses, most of which you've obviously played? LUKE DONALD: I think every Open course offers different challenges. This one, some of the greens are a little bit more severe than other Open Championships I've played in parts. I feel like some of the hardest holes have some of the hardest greens, and I feel like some of the easier holes have some of the flatter greens, which is a little counterintuitive and sort of a different way of doing it. But other than that, every course has its own strategy, and I'm not sure if one is very similar to another. They're all quite different. Q. With hole No. 4 being made now a par-4, where do you think the par overall will be at the end of the week? Do you think par will be very close to being a winning score? LUKE DONALD: In conditions like today, yeah. I think it was playing very tough. Even par would be good. Today would be a good day to grind out pars. If you could shoot 70 out there today, I think you would be doing well. Obviously they put the pins on some slopes today, and it wasn't that realistic on the greens. But tee to green it was a challenge. Q. How much can you learn from the practice round today? You played in a wind which is opposite to the prevailing wind and the wind that we're likely to get for the rest of the week. Is it just the way that you have to play it through the air, which is very thick? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, certainly you're still working on shots. You're working on holding the ball in left-to-right winds and kind of having a feeling of how far you can hit your irons into winds. I hit a 7-iron from 119 yards today on one hole just because you hit anything hard, it gets up in the wind and it gets blown away. So it's more of just a control, just to feel how far the ball is flying. Obviously if the wind switches around to its usual position, yeah, it will be a little bit different. But you can certainly learn stuff from the practice rounds. Q. To get to world No. 1 and stay there, has it meant your passion for art has had to take more of a backseat? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, the art is something I obviously did in college. I haven't done it a lot lately. Golf has always been my No. 1 passion, and having a young family now has taken up a lot of my time. Hopefully one day I'll pick up the art again. Q. Really you have not done any artwork for a long time? LUKE DONALD: Not since I injured my wrist in 2008. Q. Under normal circumstances, with world No. 1 and No. 2 coming to an Open in England, you could expect a bit of a frenzy, and yet the whole golfing world is talking about Rory. Do you feel like you're under the radar as world No. 1? Do you like that? Or would you rather it was all about you? LUKE DONALD: I don't think I'm under the radar because I did win last week, but obviously Rory is on the forefront of a lot of people's minds, and rightly so. He was impressive in the U.S. Open, and winning majors is a big deal, and he did it and he did it in great fashion. I'm sure a lot of the attention is on him and maybe a little bit more of the pressure, as well. Q. Saying that, though, there were some pretty significant figures mentioning your name as a likely winner this week. What effect does that have on you, if any? LUKE DONALD: Just very gratifying that some of my peers think that highly of me. It's just nice to know they appreciate my game, and hopefully I can use that to my advantage. Q. Since the creation of the World Golf Ranking, it's a relatively short list of people who have made it to No. 1. What's the benefit of the ranking and what's the burden? LUKE DONALD: The benefit really is probably more of a self benefit. You know, it just inspires you personally inside. And the burden is there's more expectation. People expect more of you. There's a little bit more pressure on your time, a little bit more media, all that kind of stuff you have to juggle. And you still have to kind of keep the goal in front of you, and that's to keep improving and keep doing everything you can to get better. Q. How important is it for you from your perspective that a world No. 1 should win a major? Because in tennis, for example, there are people who are ranked No. 1 in the world who have never won a Grand Slam tournament. How important is it from your perspective that you decorate the No. 1 with a major win? LUKE DONALD: I really don't think the World Ranking has anything to do with my mindset about winning a major. I've always wanted to win a major since I started -- since I turned pro, even before that, obviously growing up and watching some of my idols, the Faldos and the Seves and the like. It really doesn't change whether I'm ranked 100 or ranked No. 1. You know, I can't control the ranking system; it's a mathematical thing that's worked out. I've obviously played well enough to get to the top, but certainly winning a major would be the icing on a year that has been very, very successful so far. Q. Is the Open Championship on a links course the most difficult place to live up to the No. 1 ranking because of the nature of links golf? LUKE DONALD: I think so. As I've said before, there's very few tournaments we play where the golf is anything even similar to this. You know, it's a different set of circumstances, different grasses, different shots. You're having to manipulate the ball a lot more, really control it, and especially when you get conditions like we had today, it's a challenge. It's not just standing up there and kind of swinging away; there's a lot more thought to it and a lot more control of the golf ball that's needed, and I think this is a tough one to win, yeah. Q. During Tiger Woods' run of dominance clearly he was winning an inordinate share of the majors. Do you think it's easier now to pick off a major or about the same for players trying to break through? LUKE DONALD: Certainly when Tiger was at his peak he was winning a lot of majors, and it was tough to beat him. You know, obviously it's a different circumstance now. I'd say it's a little bit more open, a little bit more people who have chances to win. Yeah, I mean, there is no real one dominant player right now, and I suppose that makes it a little bit more open. Q. Let's say it's Sunday afternoon, you and Lee Westwood are tied for the lead in the final group coming down the back nine. Two English golfers, never won a major, who's going to be under more pressure? And what do you think the back-and-forth would be between you two in that circumstance? LUKE DONALD: Oh, I don't know. Everyone deals with pressure differently. I'm not sure who would have the most pressure on them. That would be a hard question to answer. Obviously it would be a very intense situation but one that I would love to be in and would look forward to hopefully being in that position. I'm losing my train of thought here, but you asked who would feel the most pressure, and what was the second part? Q. What would the banter be? LUKE DONALD: You know, we're very friendly off the course, but on the course I think there's a good rivalry there. So I doubt coming down the stretch on Sunday there would be too much chitchat. We'd be very cordial, but I think we'd be getting on with business. Q. Could you retire happily if you never did win a major but having been world No. 1? LUKE DONALD: Um, it wouldn't be, again, to do with the rankings, it would be to do with my work ethic and the effort I put into trying to succeed and be successful. You know, certainly if I didn't win I would be disappointed, but it would be a disappointment knowing I gave it my best shot. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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