THE HONDA CLASSIC

March 8, 2001

Geoff Ogilvy

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I guess I played good. Struggled early. My coach actually was pretty amazed when I finished at 65. I walked with me the first nine holes, and I don't think I hit a fairway the first six or seven holes. I didn't feel good. Holed a couple putts. Back nine, I just sort of found it. Found the swing and I played the back nine pretty good. I putted unbelievably on the back nine.

GEOFF OGILVY: Just a good feel. I just couldn't -- I mean, my swing felt real by good Tuesday, Wednesday. I felt like I was hitting it pretty good. And this morning I just felt ugly. I don't know why. Just one of those golf things, I guess. First 10 holes I really didn't feel good and I just -- something I worked on, a feel that I've been working on the last few weeks. I thought about that and I tried it out and it worked. I guess I should put one swing on it and I thought, "Well that felt pretty good," and tried that and it just worked all the way in and I got more confidence.

GEOFF OGILVY: It's just a guess. I think I was getting a bit open maybe on the way back. I feel like I was taking a shot -- that's my feel I feel, like I'm hooking a shot and it felt a lot better. To the eye, you probably could not tell -- if you put it on video, you probably couldn't tell. One of those things you feel; you feel more comfortable on top if you put more downspin on it.

GEOFF OGILVY: We're related to a guy named Angus Ogilvy and he married someone to do with the Scottish royalty, and, I don't know, you'd have to ask my father that. I don't -- it's definitely on our family tree somewhere, but it's a thousand years ago.

GEOFF OGILVY: I think it's quite wide on the family tree. I think it's there. I think you can find it, but I think it's pretty distant, and you're just clutching it, trying to find some royalty down on the perch.

GEOFF OGILVY: I played a little bit with him. He was from Sydney and I was from Victoria, a different state. I played a bit with him. He's always made been a solid player. He's always hit the ball pretty long and pretty straight. I had not even him for a few years and actually played the last round of Q-School with him last year and he was still pretty good.

GEOFF OGILVY: No, I don't think so.

GEOFF OGILVY: This year we had -- I'm not sure how many new ones we got on the Tour this year, but there's something like 13. That's something like second on the Tour representation behind you guys, which is pretty cool, I guess. And I guess a lot of us chose to play this week; in other words, at this point, but it's a pretty good representation. Australians are pretty proud at home that we have ten over here.

GEOFF OGILVY: I'd like to see some wind during a golf tournament. It doesn't have to blow like it did the last couple of days because it's just no fun. Definitely, I would like to see it blow. Just like last week I guess;, it was so nice the first couple days and gradually got windier and windier. I'd like to see a bit of wind because it makes the tournament more interesting. I'd rather see scores between 10- and 20-under, not between 20 and 30 (-under) win.

GEOFF OGILVY: Why? This is the best tour in the world, and I guess if you play in Australia, you play here or Europe. It's here or Europe, and I guess most usually come over here these days because it is the premiere tour.

GEOFF OGILVY: Some Australians?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I guess. I don't know who the Australians who would be in the majors at the moment. I guess Aaron obviously, and Greg is over here to play the Masters. I'm not sure. I guess this tour, it's pretty, important thing, a U.S. tour card. You've got to try and play as much as you can the first couple years, and I guess that's what the Aussies are deciding to come over here, forgo the Australian Tour, just work pretty hard and get their card until they get established over here. And I guess that's what I wanted to do.

GEOFF OGILVY: That's not my main goal. If I do that, yeah I've achieved one goal. I mean, first year, you always think about things like Rookie of the Year. There's always somewhere better -- if you have one good week maybe, maybe finish in the Top 50 -- if I can finish Top 50 get and get my World Ranking to the point where I can get into some match-plays and making Masters and stuff. There's lots of different -- you set a little goal like getting your card, and if you just missed, it's no good. But if you set your goal to be 30th and you finish 40th, you just missed and you would be in great shape. My goals will probably change depending on how I'm playing week to week, I guess.

GEOFF OGILVY: Third in Tucson. First week of the year.

GEOFF OGILVY: It's a nice way to start the year, yeah. It takes the pressure off, for the reshuffle, especially. I knew I was playing pretty good and I knew I could hold my own against a lot of the guys out here. It's nice to do it very early in the year, especially for that reshuffle, and it gave me the opportunity to play a couple tournaments in Australia which I wasn't going to have a chance to do in case my ranking wasn't going to improve. So it just takes, I guess it takes the pressure off and makes it a little bit easier if you do that the first week of the year here.

GEOFF OGILVY: Right. Generally. I probably -- the back side, 10 through 18. I might have hit the 18th fairway and the other par 5. I think I hit two fairways, the par 5 and the 18th.

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah. That's my bad shot. If I'm playing bad, that's where it's going.

GEOFF OGILVY: Dale Lynch.

GEOFF OGILVY: He's got four golfers in this field: Craig Spense, Steve Allan and Aaron Baddeley. Three are playing together. He coaches them all here so he went off to go and see them warm up. He just sort of -- he was just -- he didn't think I was swinging it that well and when he saw the 6-under or 7-under come off the board, he said, "Well, what did you do there, because it didn't look like you were going to have that earlier."

GEOFF OGILVY: Every hole I went through, the round felt better and better and better. Just one of those rounds that just kept better and better and better it didn't feel like a 7-under I guess until the last hole. I was three more -- birdied two or three in a row, and then I'm 5-, or 6-under with two or three to play. It didn't feel a great round until I finished, which was I guess -- you build on a score you build on a score and it all of the sudden happens. I was expecting to it get windier and windier and windier, but it just didn't get there. The wind just didn't come up. I'm not sure what it's like now. On my second shot of the last hole, it was between two-miles-on-hour wind and no-miles-an-hour, none. And it was amazing after the last couple days, you didn't expect anything like that.

GEOFF OGILVY: Not too much because we play in no wind quite a bit, I guess. The adjustment I make is I don't hit a lot of balls, if it's windy on a Tuesday or Wednesday. I probably hit only 50 balls -- not even that, 40 balls combined on the two days, just because you'll get too used to hitting a ball in strong wind and you'll start a technique without look thinking about it leaning forward, trying to hit the ball low or start trying to do something to affect your ball flight because it is so windy; and then you come out and if it is still the swing is gone. So what I did is really not hit a lot of golf balls in the wind. Because you know how to hit a low shot. You don't need to practice it too much.

GEOFF OGILVY: 3-iron, 8-iron about 25 feet and holed it. Driver up the middle. 2-iron sort of pin-high just up the edge of the green rough and chipped up about two feet and made birdie. 3, was a driver and a wedge to about four feet and made birdie. Driver, 3-iron to about 85 yards, pitched up about a foot, foot and a half. Pretty close, yeah. Driver, 6-iron about eight feet and made that one. 7 was driver -- 3-wood, sand iron about 20 feet behind the hole and -- big break and broke about three feet. Very good putt. 9 was a driver, 4-iron to just behind the hole, 20 feet and 2-putted.

GEOFF OGILVY: Pretty much every night we'll hang out. Have a bit of dinner or do whatever, yeah. It's nice.

GEOFF OGILVY: My accent isn't the strongest Australian accent in the world, but I definitely get kangaroo jokes and the crocodile hunter jokes.

GEOFF OGILVY: I don't go. They are not very Australian.

GEOFF OGILVY: Steve Allen. Me and Steve lived together in Europe the last couple of years and we live right next to each other in Australia, in Melbourne. We've known each other a long time. But all of the guys really who live in Scottsdale which is me, Craig Spence, Matthew Gogen, all the extra hangers-on, the girlfriends and stuff. Those are the guys that seem to hang out together.

GEOFF OGILVY: It's usually between five and ten somewhere. Yeah, there's always a coach here, this guy, a few girlfriends and that sort of stuff.

GEOFF OGILVY: Greg. The Shark. Every time you see him comeback to Australia, he would win something, draw big crowds, like a superstar. He played good overseas. Probably the only Australian growing up doing anything in golf worldwide when we were young. There were a few others, but he put golf on the map in Australia. He was the only one, yeah. He was the king at that time.

GEOFF OGILVY: I think it's a big reason. I think he made golf cool in Australia. I think golf, when we were growing up before Greg, maybe it can't the coolest thing to do. But all of the sudden Greg comes out, and he's a pretty cool guy; he's playing golf, too; it's probably not so bad, and it just got everyone all of the sudden golf is on the front page of newspapers, not three pages in from the back or something. So he was not just a golfer. He was a superstar. He got everyone thinking about it. He's probably another big reason I think the Australian government spends a lot of money on this sport. You can probably see with the Olympic results that Australia is doing good in the sports. Of the sports, golf is the one that gets a lot of money spent on.

GEOFF OGILVY: Victorian Institute. Yeah, it's a pretty good system. Start pretty young till you decide to turn pro. We don't go -- we've got all of the available things there. We don't -- there's no -- we know everything we need to know. It's there if we want it. So whoever the educated golfers are that we know, all the coaching, nutrition, the fitness, the psychology, the public speaking, the expense, all sorts of stuff. But everything you can think of, it's amazing. They are pretty impressive.

GEOFF OGILVY: I was in it when I was about -- it must have been 17. I had just finished high school. 17 until I turned pro. So four years, I guess. Three years, four years.

GEOFF OGILVY: Well, Steve Allen, Craig Spence, Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby.

GEOFF OGILVY: Gogen was Australian Institute of Sport. Stuart, Robert, myself, Steve Allen, Aaron, were all Victorian. Yeah.

GEOFF OGILVY: Well, the humidity -- well, personally, I don't like humidity. It's Orlando or Scottsdale and Scottsdale seems to be the flavor of the month at the moment. The heat is nice. I mean, it does get ridiculously hot in the summer but it's a nicer heat. I think it's a younger town, too. The younger guys are out there and the not the older -- but the older ones seem to be going to Orlando. It seems to be quite a young, happening town Scottsdale. And it's also an extra four hours closer to Australia so that might be another reason. If you go to Australia from Orlando, it's six fours and then 14; as opposed to one and 14, it's a bit easier to go from there.