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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIPFebruary 21, 2012Lee WestwoodMARANA, ARIZONA SCOTT CROCKETT: Lee, thanks for coming in and joining us. As always, looking forward to this week. Give us your thoughts on the week. Tricky first round tie against Nicolas. LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, it's a week I really enjoy. I think everybody looks forward to it being different to what's a normal tournament structure. Tomorrow is an exciting day for everybody. It's all in good condition, as usual, the golf course, the greens are great. I've got a tough first round match, but there are no easy ones. Nicolas is a good player, I played him before. I know him fairly well, I played him September of last year. He's got a game suited to this course and this format, so it will be a tough match. SCOTT CROCKETT: An interesting preparation for you at Buckingham Palace to get your award from the Queen. LEE WESTWOOD: It was something I never experienced before. I've been to Buckingham Palace, but to accept an OBE from the queen was a special moment. It was nice to share it with everybody. And obviously it's a reward for having a fairly long, successful career. SCOTT CROCKETT: Did she say anything to you when she pinned it on? LEE WESTWOOD: We had a little chat about traveling, weather and golf. SCOTT CROCKETT: Swing tips? LEE WESTWOOD: No, no swing tips. I would rather talk to her about race horses, and she'd rather talk to me about racing. Maybe next time. SCOTT CROCKETT: When the knighthood comes around. LEE WESTWOOD: If I ever get one, that would be great. Q. Nick, he says that you have to ‑‑ LEE WESTWOOD: I'm a couple of tiers down from that. Q. You're really not in the sir level? LEE WESTWOOD: No, I'm not that high up in the chain. Q. I'm from The First Tee program. I'm a representative, and I just have one quick question. How do you mentally prepare for a match play tournament rather than just a regular tournament? LEE WESTWOOD: Well, you have to sort of prepare with coming out of the blocks quicker in mind. I suppose I'm a fairly steady to slow starter to the tournament, I lead my way into it which you can generally do in stroke play events. But in this if you come out slow and shoot 1‑over for the front nine, you could find yourself three or four down and only have four holes to recover and get it back. Mentally you have to prepare yourself for that. You want to come out of the blocks quick and make as many birdies as possible and as few bogeys, so you don't give so many holes away. Q. Could I ask you after Dubai, what the flight was like and the week after, your final conclusions? LEE WESTWOOD: It was quite hard to fly when you're on the wagon, you can't have a drink. No, I was just disappointed after Dubai, sort of ease my way into the tournament nicely and got myself into a good position from sort of eight in, gave myself seven or eight good birdie chances and didn't make any of them. And then made a mess of the last really off almost too perfect a drive. It went too far and left me on a hanging lie. Anybody that's played that hole to that flag, you don't really want to be sort of on a hanging lie feeling like you could take a bit of distance off it. It was just in between clubs, as well. And I went trying to take the water a little bit out of play and came over the top of it a little bit and left myself a tough chip. The lie in that first cut wasn't good, and it came firing out a bit. But the damage felt like it had been done before that. Not making putts on 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16 and 17. Q. How long did it take to ‑‑ LEE WESTWOOD: Not long. I was being a bit of a drama queen on Twitter, just for your benefit. It didn't take long. But the first three weeks of the year, you know, while I treated them seriously, a bit of preseason training exercise for me. I do a lot of gym work and try and get all that stuff out of the way early on. And it's the best I've played out of the year those three weeks in a long time and gave myself a chance to win Dubai again, and finished 17th and 12th in the other two events. All in all, I came out of the three weeks pretty pleased with the way things started and looking to carrying on and building up to The Masters. Q. Looking at the course out there, which part of your game do you think will be needed most out there? What's the strength needed to play that course best? LEE WESTWOOD: I think if you drive the ball well, the golf course sets up nicely. I think it's quite‑‑ there's some tough drives out there. Having said that, with the match play format, somebody that holes a lot of putts is always very difficult to beat. Then again it's a world class field and your whole game has to be on form for this week. Q. You've played these tournaments but never gone very far in them.  But people think you're a very strong match play player? LEE WESTWOOD: And World Match Play at Wentworth, as well. Q. Is this just bad luck with this? LEE WESTWOOD: I don't really know what's happened. I can't put my finger on it. I've played well in individual rounds. I had bad luck a couple of times. I lost to Scott Verplank, it was about the 8th extra hole one year in the second round. I've lost to Stewart Cink; I think it might have been around this golf course on the 7th extra. It's not quite happened for me in this tournament. Q. You mentioned your gym work that you were doing. How does your off‑season gym program work different than what you do during the regular season? How much do you do during the regular season? LEE WESTWOOD:  I'll answer that question with what off‑season first, now it's more now like off weeks where I up the weights a bit heavier, and do a few different sort of exercises, and then try and tone it down a little bit the weeks of the tournaments, where I go a bit lighter. Q. We're live on a couple of holes with PGATOUR.COM. Both par‑3s, No. 6 and 12. Could you help us out from taking us from tee‑to‑green, what your strategy is on both those holes? LEE WESTWOOD: 6, is that the one with the big bunker shot, right? Q. Bunker right in front right there? LEE WESTWOOD: With the blind green? Q. Drop off area in the back? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, and it all gathers on the left. It all depends on the pin placements for par‑3s and the tee placements. They move them around a little bit. They play varying lengths. The one thing about 6 is that you don't want to be in that front right trap, try and avoid that. And 12, that's a long par‑3, depending on the wind. And obviously the pin positions, because they move the tee up in the pin front, is it's a 4‑iron from the back tee. So there's a lot of variables in those two holes. Q. You made a joke about not having any beer on the flight home. I'm just kind of wondering going beer‑free, what's the thinking there? LEE WESTWOOD: I'm just trying to lose some weight. Q. That's it? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. Q. How long have you been on the wagon? LEE WESTWOOD: Well, it was going really well (laughter). Q. (Inaudible.) LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. And then of course you pick up an OBE from the queen at Buckingham Palace, and you have to have a couple of glasses of champagne at lunch afterwards and at night, and the night before. But apart from that, I'm sort of back on being off of it. Q. When did you start? LEE WESTWOOD: 8th of January. Q. Has it helped? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. Feel a lot better. Q. What are you, about 185? LEE WESTWOOD: I wish I was 185. Q. How much are you? LEE WESTWOOD: 91 kilos. It's about 200, is it? Q. Your schedule between now and Augusta, what it is, and then how much have you thought about that schedule in regards to preparing yourself for Augusta? LEE WESTWOOD: Well, the whole schedule for the first part of the year is geared up to Augusta, really, being in good shape by then. And obviously, you know, there's big tournaments, with these World Golf Championships, I put them in as well. I like starting in the Middle East. It feels like good preparation for me. They're big tournaments. I enjoy playing the Honda, it's in a good spot, great golf course, tough finish, tough golf course. So that's why that goes in there. And after sort of playing six weeks out of seven, which will be when I go home from Doral, I need a couple of weeks off to relax and freshen up again. And Houston is a good preparation for The Masters. And I like the Shell Houston Open, I like the tournament director there, Steve. And the golf course is good preparation for the following week. The greens are very fast and there's nice roll‑off areas, if you get poor shots you get snaffled by. So that's really why I play the schedule that I play. Q. Just following up on that question. Do you see the Middle East swing as being very beneficial, and has some characteristics similar to this golf course out here? Does that give the Europeans an advantage as they've shown winning the last couple of years? Do they have an advantage coming into this tournament because they play Dubai and Abu Dhabi? LEE WESTWOOD: It's very similar playing the Middle East as to here. The greens will be very similar, and some of the golf courses are fairly similar. So it's probably good preparation for this tournament, yeah. Q. Do the Europeans have an advantage? LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. Q. Just want to float a quick one about your stablemate, Charl, at you. Birdieing the last four holes at a Major had never been done, came out of the pack, and I wonder what your thoughts are on how hard that would be to do and that particular achievement seems like it hasn't gotten perhaps the bump that it deserved? LEE WESTWOOD: I think it got the recognition it deserved. Certainly from the players. It's tough to close out a Major championship and to birdie the last four holes was an amazing fete, probably there were a lot of people birdieing‑‑ a lot of birdies flying around in those last few groups. It seemed like everybody played welcoming down the stretch. He just played extra special. Q. This non‑use of alcohol‑‑ LEE WESTWOOD: You can't comprehend that, can you, Alex? Q. I actually can. Do you think this is just one more thing that can help you? LEE WESTWOOD: I don't drink a lot, anyway, to be perfectly honest. But I just felt like stopping altogether. Q. When you say you feel better, what do you mean exactly? LEE WESTWOOD: Well, I mean after Christmas I was trying to lose weight. There's a lot of calories in alcohol. So it was the easiest place to cut it out for starters. Q. What were you up to? LEE WESTWOOD: 97 kilos, something like that. Q. So it's just the weight? LEE WESTWOOD: The main reason, yeah. I like a break every now and then. SCOTT CROCKETT: Lee, thanks, as always. Good luck tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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