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DUBAI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY DP WORLDDecember 11, 2011Alvaro QuirosDUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES MICHAEL GIBBONS: I think we'll get going, shall we. Alvaro, many congratulations, Dubai World Championship winner; how are you feeling? ALVARO QUIROS: Pretty good. Pretty good. Now I can say that I feel very good. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Just tell us about the day and tell us about the finish. First, it was such a dramatic finish at 18. ALVARO QUIROS: Well, obviously from the beginning, Paul was holing every single putt that he had. I started with three birdies and that wasn't enough to take off, you know, to have a good advantage between him and me. So just was trying to repeat myself, keep doing the same, try to enjoy the moment, and fight it. Just if you can fight until the end, at least if you don't win the title, you're going to be close, and that's something positive. Obviously I was very lucky because I holed good putts, I hit good shots, and Paul stopped holing putts. (Laughter). MICHAEL GIBBONS: That always helps. ALVARO QUIROS: Well, you are on 18, and he holed it. Obviously the good thing is he finished second, if I'm not wrong, so great for him and great for me, too. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Tell us about 18. You played it so well. ALVARO QUIROS: Yeah, I mean, I knew about the people's roars that Luke holed a good putt on 17 and 18, and obviously Paul just had the same score, just one score behind me. Hit a good shot, and watching how he was putting during the day, I thought, you know, the putt that he has is very hole‑able, makeable. I was looking to give myself a chance, metre and a half around the hole. From the tee, great 3‑wood. The second one was a very nice 3‑wood again, downhill lie, left‑to‑right wind and I put it on the green, which was good. And then the putt was simple as, perfect, genius. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Absolute genius. ALVARO QUIROS: (Very, very broad smile). Q. Considering that you knew that you had a one‑shot lead on the 18th tee, did you never think of laying up on that hole? ALVARO QUIROS: No, because obviously Paul is still being in contention. He is still having a chance to make birdie at the last. And if I make a lay‑up, then I have to fight for the birdie with technically the most difficult shot with putting. It wasn't a crazy distance. It was a comfy shot, I mean, with the difficulty of the wind, the downhill lie and the 3‑wood. It was a comfy distance, and so I just had to go for it. Q. How long was the putt of yours, 50 feet? ALVARO QUIROS: In feet? (Laughter). Metres it would be 12, something like that, but with a big, massive hill, right side, right‑to‑left breaking. So it was a difficult putt, yeah. Q. Paul was saying outside that when he bogeyed the 12th, you seemed to grab the initiative. Did you sense that when Paul dropped that shot at 12, that you were sort of‑‑ your game plan sort of changed and you had a lot more confidence? ALVARO QUIROS: I don't think so. If you pay attention to it, I've been hitting good shots all the day. But as I said, Paul was marvellous. He was holing every single putt. He was in contention every single time. I think he was just one or two times in troubles, and the second one was on 12. And after watching his sand shot, his third shot, I thought, well, okay, now we are going to have‑‑ and obviously I was lucky, he made bogey and I made two good putts over there. From this moment onwards, obviously it changed completely the situation. Because when you see that somebody holes a lot of putts, you don't see the way to reach him, but in this case, we were halves, so at this moment, I thought, okay, now we are going to be in the same position. And we have a long par 5, in my favour, then afterwards, I watch him, because I have to make lay‑up like him. In general, it was a very good day of golf between him and me, and obviously Luke at the end, who obviously wants to finish with our own party again. It's unbelievable. You can never leave behind this guy. He's always coming back, always coming back. Yesterday I heard a statistic about him about the third round, that he played 67.5. That's unbelievable. I mean, thinking about that, you know, obviously he feels very well under pressure. So at the end, we were three in the same situation almost. Q. Were you playing that almost in a match‑play situation or were you aware of what was going on behind? ALVARO QUIROS: No, no, because even when we were a little bit farther away from the third and fourth players, they were too good to say, they are not going to come back, Oosthuizen and Luke. So I wasn't focusing on that. Q. Do you feel like this victory elevates your career to another level, and what do you think it will do for you going forward, beating such a great field? ALVARO QUIROS: Well, I wouldn't say that after winning, has changed something, but I can say after this week, thinking in the proper way, not being just a little bit too pessimist, it change something. It doesn't matter whatever happens today. I was coming to the 17th putt with my caddie saying, "Hey, Mike, we have made whatever we can do today. We need to hole putts." Yeah, we need to hit good shots; we did it. But if somebody shoots just one shot less than you, okay, take your hat, congratulate and that's all. And this is why I was very happy to myself, I was very pleased to play like that the golf, obviously I felt the pressure because I was winning, I was leading. But I felt really the way I can feel now the difference to tell yourself in a proper way, or just in a normal way. I think it could make a huge difference if I'm able to repeat these thoughts every single week of my life. Q. Why and how do you hit the ball so far? And have you always hit the ball a long way, even when you were a junior? ALVARO QUIROS: Well, obviously my physique. (Grinning). Honestly, I look so asleep now, but I lost three and a half kilos in the last three weeks. But obviously I'm a tall guy and I have a big arm span, how do you call it. MICHAEL GIBBONS: SàALVARO QUIROS: And I've been growing up doing the swing a little bit too quick, and it's always an advantage. I start to have the feeling that I hit the ball long when I start to play with people the same age as we. I grew up on a public line golf course La Cañada, and everybody was a little bit older me and so I never realised that I was long. But when I reached 17 years old, when I start to play with the people of my age, I said, hey, yeah, I'm a long hitter; but not before. Q. In the Desert Classic, you had a hole‑in‑one, and you hit a ball in the tree. And then today, you have the 40‑foot eagle putt. What is it about drama for you on these final rounds that you enjoy? ALVARO QUIROS: Well, I have to say that the situations were different. In the Dubai Desert Classic after the 7th or 8th, hole No. 8, I was still being in contention. Today, I never played any bad hole. I was just, you know, doing pars or one or two bogeys today and birdies. It wasn't a really big mistake in my scorecard.  But the others were pretty great. So on 18, I knew the situation, I knew that Luke makes birdie, so for 16, that's it. I knew that having three putts, for him this is something that I wouldn't expect. And I'm watching the second shot that Paul hit, I thought I didn't need to make two putts to win the tournament, because he has great chances. And you can see, he holed it. I mean, I'm trying to enjoy of the under‑pressure moment, and this is the way to take out the pressure I think, the positive way. Q. I understood that you've made some tweaks in your swing in the past couple of weeks; is that true, and did that help this week? ALVARO QUIROS: Well, we were working on the swing a little bit far away, like two, three months almost ago. Because we want to become more consistent player. They are working, but they are not completely mechanized. I have to transform myself, and this is at the end the most important thing. The swing is the way to do the things, but not the key. At the moment, the mental statement is the one that moves the real golfer that we have inside, and you can see it in Luke. He feels so good under pressure, so good being‑‑ as he said, feeling that some people is chasing him, there is something huge. It's not easy to be No. 1 in the world when everybody wants to catch you and he's again in contention. Q. Alvaro, when you said there that you were most pleased this week with not thinking pessimistically, trying to be positive, did that arise out of what happened last week in Hong Kong? Is it something you've just done over this week, or is it something you've been doing for a long time? ALVARO QUIROS: Obviously Hong Kong was a portion of this situation, but at the same time, I have to recognise, Johan and Klaus, the people from my management company, makes a big effort to make me see the things like they are, not like I want to see it. Because there is always two ways to see the bottle, half‑empty or half‑full, right. And I've been working so much time watching it half‑empty, so it's time to see it in the other way. It's the proper way to see it I think. MICHAEL GIBBONS: Alvaro, many congratulations well done. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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