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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 24, 2005

Nick O'Hern

CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Nick, thanks for joining us for a couple minutes here. You had to go an extra hole, but you beat Charles Howell III, a good player, and you get to move on. Start with some opening comments, a good day for you.

NICK O'HERN: A very good day. I played well all day, hit the ball nice and solid, fairways and greens. And I couldn't make a putt all day. And we sort of see‑sawed a little bit, I went 1‑up, and he was 2‑up with five to go, and I needed to get my butt in gear.

I played some great shots, just didn't finish there. I just hit a wonderful shot into 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19, so five in a row is pretty good. I finally made a putt on the 19th, so it's nice to get through.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Talk on the putt on 19. Did you think you made it?

NICK O'HERN: Yeah, it looked left. I misread everything before that, it just went straight on me. So the greens are extremely bumpy, and it's ‑‑ I missed a couple of sure ones today where I felt I hit good putts. That's all you can do is just keep hitting the putts that you feel are correct. And if it doesn't go in, you say, so be it, and move on to the next one. That's all I did all day. I finally hit one on 19 and it bounced and went in.

Q. After the playoff with Pazza when he made everything, and Charlie making that long one, was it hard for you to keep your chin up?

NICK O'HERN: I expected him to make that one. In match play you expect it, and I feel we're going to have a 10‑footer to win the match here. And when he holed it, it wasn't any great surprise. I know he was playing well, but I felt it was going to be my turn soon. He holed some good putts today and he deserved to. It was just a matter of time. He hit inside me on the 19th, and for once he missed it. So it was one of those things.

Q. How long were those two putts?

NICK O'HERN: I had about an 18‑footer, and his was about from 10 feet. The greens are extremely bumpy. And we went back to the green, which I was struggling on the first. On 15, 16, 17, 18, the match wouldn't have gone that way, and the greens would be smoother, but it's to be expected. You've just got to plug away.

Q. Nick, just to follow up, just in terms of your own, they have an expression in America called snake pit, where you think every time you get to close something out, somebody is going to make a putt on you, especially with Pazza making all those putts on the playoff. Does it get to grate on you a little bit?

NICK O'HERN: I actually did think about it when I walked off the 9th tee. After I hit my tee shot, it was ‑‑ something good has got to happen now. The playoff came back, and the thing I remembered was I kept it in with a good shot. That's the positive I took out of it. The same again on the second shot on the playoff hole, I hit a pure shot that spun back a bit, and yeah, you just kind of think the law of averages says something is going to go your way. Pazza had some great putts on that playoff, and I had my chances. I hit good putts, but they didn't go in. Sometimes the hole isn't four and a half inches ‑‑ there's only so many times it's going to graze the hole and go out, it's going to graze it and go in.

Q. You have Tiger tomorrow?

NICK O'HERN: Apparently, yeah. I've never played with Tiger. It's going to be interesting now. I'll be hitting my second shots first all day, which is fine, which is what I did today anyway. I enjoy that in match play, because I get to knock one in close and make your opponent think. I'm looking forward to the challenge. If I play well ‑‑ I didn't play poorly today. On any given day, on match play, anything can happen. It will be a lot of fun.

Q. Did you hit fairways and greens all day?

NICK O'HERN: Pretty much, I missed a couple. But got up‑and‑down, I think a bogey or two ‑‑ I three‑putted once for bogey. So other than that I played very solidly. Around here with the rough like it is, if I miss the fairways, I can't advance the ball very far, but the longer hitters can dig it out a bit more. If I hit the fairways and hit the greens, eventually some putts will drop.

Q. What's it like, the sense of relief just to get past the first round in this event?

NICK O'HERN: Great. I flew from Australia on Sunday. I thought I'd get over jet lag, and I could have gotten here Tuesday. But you never know. The last few days, thinking about the first match, wanting to get it out of the way, and mainly that I just wanted to play well. To come all this way and not play well would be disappointing. If I keep playing well, I can keep winning.

Q. What did you do the first part of the week after you got here?

NICK O'HERN: Practiced, a couple of movies, just chilling. I'm a bit of a Starbucks fan, so I got a few of those. There's not much you can do. I'm not a big practicer, I only do a few hours a day. There's not any point in me beating balls all day. I find the more I practice the worse it gets; other people are opposite.

Q. Do you know what the air mileage is ‑‑ where did you fly from?

NICK O'HERN: From Perth, so it was four and a half, five hours to Sydney, and about 13, 14 hours from there. Figure it out. It's a long way.

Q. Did you by any chance write for sponsors exemptions at Pebble or LA?

NICK O'HERN: I play next week in Dubai and have a week off and then I'll do Bay Hill, TPC and The Masters. Top 50 in the world gets me in those. But the others, no. We had some events down in Australia I wanted to play.

Q. Is this a coming‑out year for you?

NICK O'HERN: I think so. I had a great season last year, and the world rankings are dropping nicely and heading in the right direction. Yeah, my game is there, it's just a matter of practice and work and playing on the European Tour are starting to pay off. This is more a payoff for all the hard work I've done. So it's heading in the right direction, and I don't know what my ranking is in the world, but it's decent. And there's however many to go until we get there.

Q. At the end of the day, is playing on the U.S. Tour something that you sort of set as a goal?

NICK O'HERN: You know, I'm really enjoying myself in Europe. I've been asked this question a bit, and it's an interesting one. To play against the best players week in and week out, I think you do have it to play over here. But it's a heck of a competition going in Europe, as you would have figured out with the Ryder Cup and whatnot. It's very deep over there. And I enjoy the lifestyle, enjoy the culture, and it's really good.

Whether we come over this week is another thing. We're just going to see how we go this year, playing the extra events, playing the majors, seeing if my wife enjoys it or not.

Q. How about you?

NICK O'HERN: Each time I've come over I've enjoyed it. I've found the courses are probably better in Europe, where I think it's a bit weak here, and you don't have to carry it as much. Every time I play over here it seems the courses are soft. I'm not a long hitter. But you can adapt to any situation. There's a lot of Australians over here, and they all enjoy it, so maybe I'll come over eventually.

Q. Didn't you come over and try Q‑School a few years back?

NICK O'HERN: Yeah, I tried the Q‑School in '97 or '98.

Q. You made it to the finals when they were in California?

NICK O'HERN: I missed the second stage and I was exempted in the final stage of Europe and I went there, and I've been in Europe ever since. If I got through that first year, I'd still be here.

Q. How are you a better player now than you were then?

NICK O'HERN: Sorry?

Q. How are you a better player now than you were then?

NICK O'HERN: Now? It's just a progressive thing. I think my swing has got better, I've gotten fitter and stronger and mentally I'm sharper, so it's a combination of things. I'm not a player who is going to overpower a golf course, so I have to do the little things well. And I think course management, positioning, thinking your way around the golf course and so forth, strategically that's where I could really be better than a lot of guys. And that's where I feel as though I have to make up ground, because I can't bomb the ball 300 yards. So it's a matter of those type of things; little things I've done are starting to add up.

Q. When you came over you were mid‑20s?

NICK O'HERN: About mid‑20s, yeah. To begin with I wasn't a very good player, to be honest. I was a bit of a late bloomer, and every year I've been on the Tour I've gotten better. If I can keep climbing the ladder, it's the right way to go.

Q. Is there a point at which you wondered whether you could keep going with golf?

NICK O'HERN: Oh, yeah. I was a hacker as a golfer. As an amateur I was terrible, couldn't break 80. Even as a pro I couldn't break 80. I think it was about '95 or something like that, I started to turn a corner where I met a new coach and my game started coming around and I believe it started coming. But up to 24, 25, I didn't know what I was going to do.

Q. Did you have a job?

NICK O'HERN: I used to teach and things like that, and stock shelves and all that sort of stuff. And my wife, we sort of made a deal, we gave ourselves three years from this point, back in whenever that was, and if we're no better then, we'll pack it up and do something else. And that's when we started playing well.

Q. Did you start late?

NICK O'HERN: No, I played golf early, I was eight years old. But I played a lot of sports, baseball, tennis, and chose golf when I was about 16. But it took a while for it to come around.

Q. You first started when you were eight or when you were 16?

NICK O'HERN: No, when I was eight. When I was 16 I made up my mind to play golf as a career. I was tossing it between baseball and tennis. Good thing I chose golf.

Q. Were you a pitcher?

NICK O'HERN: Pitcher and catcher. Not at the same time, though.

Q. When was the three years? When did you give yourself the three years, what year was that?

NICK O'HERN: I think that was about ‑‑ I think it was about '95, when I was like 24, I think I was. We played pro‑ams and a lot of small Tours for a while there, nothing was happening, we weren't getting much better. So it comes to a point in your life where you go, is this the right thing to do.

Q. Where would it have gone, do you think, if you hadn't have stayed with the golf?

A. I probably would have stayed teaching. I'm qualified to teach.

Q. Teaching golf?

NICK O'HERN: Yeah. I used to speak Japanese, not anymore. If that would have taken me to Japan, who knows where I would have gone.

Q. But you're here?

NICK O'HERN: Here we are, playing Tiger Woods in the second round.

Q. What possessed you to learn Japanese?

NICK O'HERN: The golf club I was at, they started bringing some Japanese tourists to learn golf. So I thought it would be a good opportunity. So I taught them and they taught me. I met a nice fellow, a Japanese fellow where I lived and he taught me Japanese, and I taught him golf. And we both pretty much sucked after a while.

Q. What was the name of that club?

NICK O'HERN: Oh, that was ‑‑ oh, my gosh, back at Marangaroo.

Q. Do you have any plans to play over here very much apart from obviously majors and what have you, any regular events, perhaps?

NICK O'HERN: This year I'm going to be playing a few more, Bay Hill, TPC, and hopefully one around the U.S. Open, the PGA, but that will be the extent. I'm playing a pretty full schedule.

Q. Are you already in The Masters?

NICK O'HERN: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

End of FastScripts.

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