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ABU DHABI HSBC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPJanuary 26, 2012Rory McIlroyABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES RODDY WILLIAMS: Well played out there today, you must be delighted with that opening round, first round of the year. RORY McILROY: Yeah, it's a nice way to start the competitive season I suppose. I didn't feel like I played that good. I definitely didn't strike the ball as good as I have been the last couple of weeks. I think it's just because your first competitive round of the season, card in your hand, you can get a little bit tentative or a little apprehensive. I was able to manage my way around the golf course and end up shooting 5‑under. So, yeah, great way to start the season and hopefully I can continue that. RODDY WILLIAMS: You looked very relaxed out there in the feature group of the morning. How was it out there playing with Luke and Tiger? RORY McILROY: Great. I always enjoy those sort of pairings. I feel like there's a little more atmosphere and it makes you focus. 7.40 tee times on Thursday mornings don't usually get me that excited but this morning it did. It was nice. RODDY WILLIAMS: And three birdies early on, as well, obviously got you in the right frame of mind.       RORY McILROY: I made a really good up‑and‑down on the 10th hole, which was our first. I didn't really play that hole too well and after that made three birdies in a row. So that sort of settled me down a bit and that was probably the best stretch of golf I played the whole day. Those first four, five or six holes. But, yeah, I'm very pleased with today and hopefully I can just keep it going. Q. Is that a sign of increasing maturity, or is it something that you've always been able to do in terms of not necessarily play your best golf but still score very well? RORY McILROY: No, it's something that I felt like I improved a lot on last year. I felt especially the last few months of the year, even if I had not played so well, I felt like I could still get anyway around the golf course. When you play really bad, turning 74s into 70s and you play average like today, turning a 70 into a 67, it makes a huge difference. Q. I think some people are wondering if you were going to turn up at the first tee; were you deliberately slow reaching the tee or had you forgotten the timing? RORY McILROY: No, not really. I knew it was a pretty long walk. I sort of had maybe six minutes to go, five or six minutes from the putting green, and then I was walking to the tee and I looked at a clock just as I was walking past the clubhouse it said like four minutes, and I was like, oh, better start walking a bit quicker here. No, I was fine, I had plenty of time. Q. You seemed to have a lot of good chats with Tiger on practically every fairway; what sort of things did you talk about? RORY McILROY: Everything. Gym routines, dogs, what we did in the off‑season. Yeah, just normal sort of stuff. Q. Does Tiger have dogs? RORY McILROY: Yeah, two. Q. Apropos to that‑‑ can you imagine that he's 15 or so years older than you? RORY McILROY: Not so sure. I definitely feel older than 22, just because I've basically been travelling the world every year since I was 16. So you grew up pretty quickly. But I mean, I feel like I can‑‑ it doesn't feel like I'm talking to someone that's a lot older to me out there. Q. He has the same taste in music and things; you don't say something to him about a band and have him look at you blankly? RORY McILROY: Not yet. (Laughter). Q. I know what you're going to say here, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is hard to avoid getting into the kind of like long‑driving contest and stuff like that when you and Tiger are bombing it out there, sort of wondering if you can hit it further than he can? RORY McILROY: I'm going to answer it honestly. It did cross my mind a couple of times. So that's not the answer you were expecting. (Laughter). Q. Tell us more. 18, for instance. RORY McILROY: No, 16. He took it way left on 16. And I was like, I'm not sure if I can take it down that line. I tried to and blocked it way right, ended up hitting the fairway, but yeah, I mean, when you see a guy out in front of you hitting it out there, you want to try and keep up with him. Q. Were you surprised that he was hitting it further than you? RORY McILROY: No. I mean, he hit a couple of‑‑ he's swinging really good. I think his game is in really good shape. There's a couple of times when he hit it out there and I wanted to try to keep up with him. Q. I think one of the few previous times you played competitively, he outscored you by four at the Chevron? RORY McILROY: I doubled the last.  Wasn't good. Q. Did you take a particular satisfaction out of out‑scoring Tiger in a head‑to‑head situation like that? RORY McILROY: Not really. It's only the first round of a tournament. If it was the last day of the tournament and you're both going in there with a chance to win, I would take a lot of pride from that obviously. But the first day of a tournament is a little different. You're just going out there and playing and seeing what you can do. But hopefully I can get myself into position where I do play with him on a Sunday and see how I get on. Q. In terms of trying to keep up with Tiger, in a way, you out‑Tigered Tiger on the 17th, or your 17th, when you rent rough, rough, rough, and chipped in. That's the sort of thing he used to do that would always kill the opponent. What did that feel like when that went in? RORY McILROY: It was nice. It was actually funny, after the third shot we were walking up there and JP said to me, "This chip is very makeable."  I walked up to it and all I needed to do was just sort of land it on the green and let it roll down the hill. It was nice that I read it right. But yeah, I felt like I wasn't seeing the fairway at all that back nine. I even said to Tiger, I was like, "I've got to hit a few more fairways here."  He said, "Doesn't look like you need to. "Yeah, it's something I want to try and improve on. Will go and work on it a bit on the range this afternoon. Q. I just wondered how your preparation at the Els Club coming into this event has helped, you and what kind of things have you been doing? RORY McILROY: It's been great. Every time I go to Dubai, I usually practise there.  I like it because it's pretty quiet and I know all the guys there. They look after me really well. I practised there for ten days, the previous couple of weeks and just working on a few things with my swing and trying to bed those in. It's got a great short game facility there, as well, and a good green and it's also got a decent gym and some 3D analysis as well. Basically got everything there. It's a great facility. Q. Tiger was saying he couldn't read the greens at all, that they were very grainy. Is that something that you have learned to do from experience here, or was it something you worked on last week, as well? RORY McILROY: To be honest, I've always struggled to read the greens here, as well. I think it's because the grain‑‑ there's quite a lot of grain but it's not very apparent. The green doesn't change colour that much or the holes don't get that‑‑ as damaged as much as they would in Florida or somewhere like that. It's pretty hard to read the grain. I've been able to hole my fair share of putts around here the last couple of years, so I feel like I'm getting used to them. Q. What did you think of the course overall today compared to previous years? RORY McILROY: It's very similar. If anything, it might be playing a little bit more difficult than previous years. The rough is pretty thick and the greens are pretty firm. But if you hit your ball in the fairway, you still have chances to get it close to the hole. It's a little bit more difficult but still very scorable. Q. How much of your off‑season have you spent in the gym? You appear to have got a bit wider. RORY McILROY: A good bit actually. I put the clubs away straight after the Dubai World Championship and took a few days off until I was feeling a bit better. Yeah, I've been working hard in the gym, which has been good. I really started working hard last year and I really got into it and really started to enjoy it. Yeah, I feel like I've got a lot stronger and it's definitely helped my golf, as well. But yeah, basically every day since the start of the year I've been in there. Q. Sorry to be slightly predictable, just wanted to know if Caroline is here post‑Melbourne. RORY McILROY: No, she's not going to be here this week but I'll catch up with her soon. Q. Would you give a couple of examples where strength today helped you, like say the 8th, for example, the second shot there; is that a shot that you would have got further down, being strong? RORY McILROY: No, I think it's more to do with stability in my golf swing. I feel like my lower body has gotten a lot more stable and a lot more stronger. I was doing a little bit of 3D testing last week. I don't want to bore you with all the details. But I used to thrust quite a lot with my hips into the ball; so my hips would go sort of forwards. And so instead of keeping your spine angle the same, and that's a lot to do with your hips and your legs and your glutes. That's got a lot stronger. We saw in the 3D analysis that that's got a lot better this year. That means that you can put the club in a better position on the way down and you can do it more often, so you can become a lot more consistent. Q. Just a follow‑up on, that your coach, Michael Bannon, was saying that your fitness coach might not have known that much about golf when he first started but he pinpointed what I think he called weak legs. This was obviously awhile ago. Was that the case and kind of was that impacting your swing? RORY McILROY: Yeah, it was more a weak left side. More a weak left leg, rather than anything else. I could create a lot of power and a lot of speed on the way down but I couldn't hold it through impact because my left side basically wasn't strong enough. It's something I've worked on a lot, a lot of single‑leg stuff and it's come a long way since the start of last year. RODDY WILLIAMS: If you would rattle through the card quickly. RORY McILROY: 11th hole, 3‑wood off the tee into the fairway bunker on the right, 115 in. Hit a pitching wedge about 12 feet past the hole. Held that. Hit a 6‑iron from 195 yards at the 12th. Hit it 15 feet left of the pin. Made that. 13, I hit probably the best drive of the day. I had 85 yards in. Hit a lob‑wedge to three feet. 18, I hit a good drive off the tee in the fairway. I was trying to hit a hard 5‑wood and I turned it into the hospitality stand and obviously got away with it. Was able to drop it in the drop zone. Q. Did the ball come out? RORY McILROY: No, it stayed in the hospitality, I'm not sure. It's probably in someone's lunch. The second hole, I hit a driver into the right rough. I actually drew a good lie luckily and was able to hit a 3‑wood down there. I got it pretty close to the green, about 50 yards but in the left rough, and chipped that up to a couple of feet. Hit a 6‑iron from 190 yards on the 7th hole. Hit it to three feet. Then on the 8th hole, hit a driver in the left rough. Hit a 7‑iron to the right rough. Hit a pitching wedge from 130 yards just off the green on the right and chipped it in. RODDY WILLIAMS: Thanks very much. Well played. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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