BMW MASTERS

October 23, 2012

Tao Xia Fang

Wang Hong

Marco Kaussler

Ivan Koh

Eckhard Wannieck

Zhang Xiaoning

IVAN KOH:  Special guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning.  Welcome, everyone, to the BMW Masters 2012 to bring us the come back of BMW back to the golf stage of Asia.  BMW has combined perfectly first with aesthetics and also has a natural affinity to golf as a sport in terms of its elegance, aesthetics and high profile.  That is why BMW has always been an important member of international golf campaigns for the past two decades and also one of the only sponsors to stage golf tournaments around the world.

Today we have brought a world‑class golf course to Shanghai which carries profound meaning to all of us.  China is one of the most important markets for BMW as a whole; for the first three quarters of this year, our market growth rate is over 33 percent for the first three quarters of this year.

Today\'s BMW Masters campaign is also a good vehicle to express our goodwill and to express our gratitude to our Chinese friends for what they have done so that we can share the charms of the importance of sport.  We are delighted thanks to the China Golf Association, they have 14 entrants and it is a good platform for all of the top players to share with each other good experiences and to play golf with each other.

We are looking forward to a bright future for golf in sports.  Here I want to express my thanks to Shanghai Municipal Sports Bureau, the District of Baoshan and Lake Malaren for their support which makes today\'s event possible.  I wish all of the players good performance and let\'s look forward to a fantastic campaign for this event.  Thank you.

TAO XIA FANG:  Respected leaders, dear guests and friends from the media, good morning.  Today we gather together to attend the BMW Masters 2012 tournament, and also its press conference.  First and foremost, on behalf of Baoshan District government, I would like to express my gratitude, and also for your long‑term support for the economic and social progress of Baoshan.

In 2012, the BMW Masters Tournament will be conducted in our district commencing on October 25.  The top players from all around the world with their Chinese counterparts will gather together in our district to attend this tournament.

Ever since the launch of the campaign which was successfully launched last year, it is the second time for such a high‑level golf tournament to be conducted in our district.  We are very happy to see that, so here I want to express my sincere gratitude to the state, sports and administrative bureau and the municipal industry for association along with BMW group and the players for their support; and I want to express my warm welcome and sincere greetings to all of the top players from all around the world, and also, my sincere greetings to all of the friends from the media.

Cultural events and sports event are really key to enhance and elevate the charm of the city.  It is also a very important to link to be sure of the great transformation of the city on the right track, and here I want to express my sincere hope to all of the players here that not only are we expected to play up or play to your expectations, but also I hope that you can feel free to express and to feel the great charm of our district.

In order to insure the smooth progress of our government and also for this event, all of the relevant parties and institutions of our district have also made great arrangements for this tournament, and we are going to insure that safety and security of this tournament.

So we are looking forward to a great success of the BMW Masters 2012.  I hope it will be a good platform for us to do better in the future so that we enrich our district.  It will also be key to enrich and improve our cultural institutional system, so that you can really give full play to the charms of this tournament as a whole.

Eventually I want to extend my wish for the success of all the events of the BMW Masters 2012 and I hope this event will be of a great world‑class profile.  I am looking forward to your great stay here in our district to highlight the key themes of sports events, and also I want to say that your stay here will be highly welcome.  Eventually, I want to wish the tournament a complete success.  Thank you.

WANG HONG:  Respected leaders from the State of Sports and Administration Bureau and dear friends from both home and abroad, first of all, I want to express my welcome to all of you.

I will be giving a report back to Mayor Han of the latest social progress of our district, and economic and social progress.  He wanted me to convey his personal thanks and greetings.  Mayor Han has always been paying a lot of attention to the tournament, and he said that he hopes that all of you can like our district, and that you can achieve great scores for the whole tournament.

Secondly, as a famous international city, it is our responsibility to correlate such a great world with such a great environment with our daily life for all of the people here.

So I think all of the players here can feel free to give full play to their talents and expertise, and I hope that they can really achieve their due expectations to really play up to their own accountabilities.

And at the same time, a lot of important work has been done, especially the Sports Administration Bureau and I want to thank the Shanghai Bureau of Sports Administration and especially want to thank the BMW group as a whole for their great insights, because it is really a good practise of the company to pay critical attention to both the social benefits and also the economic benefits as a whole.

This will be key for us to achieve higher goals in the few fewer.  As the local government it is our unshakable responsibility to provide all of the facilities to assure the success of this great event.  I hope you will like this event and give all of the help and support for this tournament so that one day in the future it will become one of the most visible events in the world.

I want to thank all of our media friends for what you have done to cover the event from the beginning to the end.  Thank you.

CHEN YI‑PING:  BMW Masters 2012 will be conducted in this picturesque Lake Malaren Golf Club.  On behalf of Shanghai Sports Bureau, I would like to express my warm welcome and sincere gratitude from all of the top players from all around the world, and our distinguished guests, together with all our friends who have given their care and support to this tournament.

In this current season of October, Shanghai has become the top sports destination, and we have the BMW Masters 2012 here as a world‑class top tournament.  This is one stop on The European Tour and it has a high profile and could be regarded as one of the really great events of international golf.  At this time about 78 of the Top‑100 world players will be competing here, including 14 Chinese players.  I believe that it will play a pivotal role to enhance our image of Shanghai as a metropolitan city and also golf sports here in China.

Here I want to thank the management centre of the Sports Bureau of China together with the China Golf Association for their long‑term support and care of the industry, and also I want to thank the district government and the BMW group, together with the Lake Malaren Golf Club for your care and support which makes today\'s event possible.

Last, but not least, I wish that all of the players can really play up to their full potential, and I wish a complete success of this tournament in Shanghai, and also I wish all of you a very pleasant stay here in Shanghai.

       ZHANG XIAONING:  Distinguished guests, dear players, dear friends from the media, ladies and gentlemen, good morning.  On the occasion of the 2012 BMW Masters on behalf of the Multi‑Ball Games Administrative Centre of the General Administration of Sport and the China Golf Association, I would like to extend my warmest welcome to all of you.

The BMW Masters is one of the top golf events sponsored by BMW globally.  It\'s the first time in the past three years that BMW, once again, comes back to China to support the development of golf in China.

The BMW Masters has become the second sport event with a prize money up to 7 million U.S. dollars in 2012 calendar year by the Chinese Golf Association.  I do believe that the BMW Masters will definitely be conducive to the development of golf sport in China, and it will also be conducive to the improvement of the skills and techniques of the golf players in China.  The participants to the BMW Masters 2012 constitutes a very strong field, and the top players in golf sport are coming to China to play the BMW Masters.

With 78 high‑ranking players from 17 countries will be competing and playing in the BMW Masters 2012.  And also in the 2012 BMW Masters, there will be 14 Chinese players so that it breaks the record of the number of Chinese players in the events of the same level.

And also, the No. 1 Asian players on the prize list in 2012 will also be joining this BMW Masters 2012.  With these participants coming into this game, it will definitely improve the popularity of golf sport in China and will attract more and more young players and talented players to join in this golf family.  And I do believe that in the next four days, we will definitely put on a very wonderful show for all of the spectators in order to ensure the smooth running of this event, I should offer a special thanks to the Shanghai Sports Bureau and government.

As far as my knowledge is concerned, the government leaders in Shanghai are far‑sighted with great vision; Mayor Han and Vice Mayor Shen have very special tastes for sport and for golf, and they are very supportive to this event.

Also, I would like to offer our special thanks to the Shanghai administration of sport and the Shanghai Baoshan people\'s government as well as the Shanghai Golf Association.  Thanks also goes to the Shanghai SRE group as well as the Lake Malaren as contributing to the great success of the BMW Masters 2012.

Of course, our special thanks should go out to BMW.  They have done a lot for helping the development of golf sport in China.  On behalf of the Multi‑Ball Games Administrative Centre of General Administration of Sport, as well as the Chinese Golf Association, I would like to offer my special thanks and heart felt thanks to BMW as being tournament sponsors.  And also, I wanted to thank The European Tour for its great support to this event.

The venue for the event is by Lake Malaren; the District of Baoshan sounds very similar to the Chinese version of BMW, so the treasures and also all of these treasures are put beside the Lake Malaren.  Malaren is developed by the SRE Group, and SRE also is a very beautiful Chinese name.  Indeed, we have all of the beautiful Chinese names coming together in this beautiful weather.  I sincerely wish that Baoshan district as well as BMW enjoy a very promising future and health of the BMW Masters will become stronger in the future.

ECKHARD WANNIECK:  Distinguished government officials, dear partners, dear media friends, ladies and gentlemen, also on behalf of BMW headquarters, a warm welcome from our side.  As my colleague just stated, that China is of the utmost importance to the BMW group, both in terms of volume and in terms of growth.

Our customers are demanding, but they are also enthusiastic about performance about innovation about sport.  That\'s why golf is for us the perfect platform to showcase our spirit; the spirit of our brand, dynamic precision aesthetics.  That\'s why we have been sponsoring golf globally for more than two decades, also here in China.

For example, at the start of the new millennium, we were one of the first brands in the world to promote a professional tournament here in Shanghai, the BMW Asian Open.  We continued this commitment to Asia on other levels, and on a global level, we own a portfolio of many pinnacle of events when it comes to golf:  Like our PGA Championship at Wentworth, the home of The European Tour, the BMW Championship in the U.S., and today, and that makes me very proud, we can add the BMW Masters at Lake Malaren Golf Club here in Shanghai.

And I promise, we are going to do it the BMW way, because as the No. 1 leading premium brand in the world, what we would like to generate is an unparalleled premium experience.  So here we once again would like to underpin our claim as leading partner in sport in general, and golf in particular.

So in order to meet our own standards, our own premium standards, we have spent many, many months in planning every little detail of the Masters.  Because whatever we do, our goal is to be creative and our goal is to support the respective sport we are engaged in, providing a special experience for our guests.

This particularly applies to the spectators, players, media partners, and officials and frankly speaking, I don\'t know whether we are the biggest sponsor in golf, that\'s not of relevance.  What we certainly want to be is the best partner, and the best sponsor.  It\'s a matter of quality, not quantity.  We are really proud that so many of the professional golfers appreciate this.

We enjoy a long and quite positive relationship with many of them, and we are proud that we are able to welcome some of them here, many of them here in Shanghai.  Nearly all of The Ryder Cup Members, winners, and it particularly gives me pleasure having the world\'s No. 1 player here, Rory McIlroy and his victorious teammates, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Martin Kaymer, they are going to be here on stage with us shortly.  But at the end of the day, just like making cars, we work with partners to bring it all together.

So I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone in golf to make this happen here.  Our presenting partner, Lake Malaren Golf Club Shanghai, our main partners, Hugo Boss, Rolex and Ballantine\'s, and our suppliers and partners and I would like to thank our long‑term partner The European Tour and the China Golf Association; thanks a lot for your support in staging this tournament here in Shanghai.

And last but not the least, I would like to sincerely thank all of the authorities of the municipal government level of Shanghai and Baoshan District level, as well as multiple games and administrative centre, thank you for your ongoing support.

So in a nutshell as the name indicates, the BMW Masters will play an important and great and integral part in our global golf strategy and as a long‑term commitment to Shanghai.  I really look forward to the tournament and thank you very much.

THE MODERATOR:  Talking about the tournament itself, without further ado, I\'m going to call up my friend and also tournament director Marco Kaussler, if you please, and our Tournament Director of BMW Masters here.

I know that due to some constraint, many people across here are really, really interested and eager to find out the details, so I\'m just going to go straight forward to the essence of the questions here.

First of all on day one, that is, Thursday, we know that world No. 1 Rory will be there; who else will be there?  Please, give us some input.

MARCO KAUSSLER:  Yeah, I think it\'s one of the strongest fields I have to say here at the inaugural BMW Masters with Rory, Luke Donald, Justin Rose and Lee Westwood, we have four of the world\'s Top‑5 here at Lake Malaren.  We have 11 of the 12 Ryder Cup members, the winning Ryder Cup European Team Members, and then 28 out of the Top‑30 in The Race to Dubai.  I think those numbers underline the strength of this first BMW Masters and are really looking forward to great competition.

THE MODERATOR:  Totally star‑studded.

So my second question is, you know these players pretty well from inside out in many ways, and on the other hand, your inside tips, if you will, who might have a shot, as well.

MARCO KAUSSLER:  Well, with such a strong field, it\'s really almost impossible to tell.  I think the guys that took a break after The Ryder Cup are probably hungry to come back.  Maybe a little bit rusty, but to mention one name, I think wouldn\'t be fair.

What I\'m looking forward is actually to see how our local Chinese players are doing.  We hope that they will bring their AGame to compete with the world\'s best and hopefully put on all together a very good show here at the BMW Masters.

The MODERATOR:  We understand many of players are very happy with the course and the conditions, and the weather we talked about, as well; what about the situation of the hole‑in‑one; we know BMW has some good and generous prizes on offer, please.

MARCO KAUSSLER:  First of all, I think what I\'ve heard, Mr.Shi and your team, you can be extremely proud of the course.  All of the players that I\'ve spoken to, they are extremely happy with what they have seen.  You can be very proud of your course and also of all the team behind.

There\'s not only the prize money, $7 million that they are playing for, a whole lot of money, but there\'s always a little bit of luck involved.

So for the first player to actually have a hole‑in‑one on 17, there is a BMW 640 Gran Coupé, for me personally, probably the nicest product that I would like to have.

We have given three hole‑in‑ones away this season, so why not a No. 4.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports