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ABU DHABI HSBC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPJanuary 15, 2014Luke DonaldABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES STEVE TODD: Happy new year to start off with. LUKE DONALD: Thank you. STEVE TODD: Wonder if you want to start by updating us on your Christmas and preparation for the 2014 season. LUKE DONALD: Yes, I had a couple of weeks of downtime in Chicago over the Christmas period and then went down to Florida and have been working on my game hard ever since.  Got in some great work with Chuck Cook last week, and feeling excited about the progress I'm making with him. So looking forward to hopefully a lot better 2014 than last year. STEVE TODD: Just looking specifically at this week, Abu Dhabi, great field and a great tournament to start off the year. LUKE DONALD: It is. It's nice to play in a tournament with such a strong field on a good golf course. This course demands very good golf from tee‑to‑green. It's got some tricky angles. I think that you have to drive the ball very well around here. It's a good test. It's a tough test being your first tournament of the year, but I'm excited about being here again, and you know, obviously this is one of The European Tour's best events of the year. Q. I understand from Twitter that you had a bit of a journey to get here. Can you outline what the problem was and how long everything took? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, I got connected in Dulles, Washington Dulles, I got to the airport at 6.30pm for a 9.30pm flight and was told that there were some technical problems with the plane leaving from Abu Dhabi; they had to switch planes and it wasn't going to be arriving until 4.30am. So it was a bit of a tough journey here. In the end, it didn't leave until 6.30 am. So I spent a good, nice 12 hours at Washington Dulles Airport before coming here, but thankfully got some good sleep last night and feel pretty good now. Q. Over which day was that? Sunday night into Monday? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, I left Florida at about 3:30pm on Sunday, got here Tuesday morning, at 4:30am. Q. You mentioned the good work you've done with Chuck last week. How encouraged are you with how that's going since you started working with him? LUKE DONALD: Very encouraged. It's some decent changes for me. So it was nice to get in four solid days with Chuck. Obviously with my international travel at the end of last year and needing a couple weeks off in Christmas, I had not seen him really since he came out to Chicago in October. So it was great to get in some good work. I'm looking forward to the next month or two, because he'll be coming to see me quite a few times in that period and we can really get stuck into what he wants me to do. Q. Spoke to you just before Japan, and you said you felt the wheel was starting to turn, and then of course you defended your title in Japan. How much confidence did you take out of that win, and I suppose how optimistic are you looking forward to this year? And coming back to your best? LUKE DONALD: Yeah, any time you win gives you confidence. And obviously, you know, to play like I did, especially the last three rounds, I shot 2‑over the first day, and came back and won by four or five shots in the end. So, you know, just to feel that control that I started to have that week, that's something that ultimately I want to achieve by working with the stuff that Chuck wants me to work on. So yeah, that was a step in the right direction for sure. Obviously again, wins are important and they give you a lot of confidence. Q. And just if I can, just as a follow‑up, do you feel perhaps, is there any sense of you perhaps missed when you were at the top of the tree, you missed your window in terms of getting your major, or is that not in your mind‑set at all? LUKE DONALD: Oh, absolutely not. I think, you know, Phil Mickelson is a great example, won his first major at 36. I just turned 36; I feel like every year I'm understanding my golf game better. I understand what I need to do to improve. You know, I feel like I still have time on my side. Fortunately in golf, unlike some other sports, you can be very competitive until your mid 40s or even later. Q. When did you hear about Matthew Fitzpatrick, what is your reaction to him leaving, and have you actually spoken to him? Did you and he have any talks at all at the end of last year, or were you too busy? LUKE DONALD: Pat texted me, told me‑‑ this is probably the first week of January, just heard from Matt that he wasn't returning, disappointed. He was thinking about asking me to talk with Matt; in the end he didn't want me to go down that route. I don't know if it's NCAA rules or what there is. It's a very personal decision. I think Matt struggled in school a little bit. He found Northwestern tough academically, and he found it tough to juggle academics and golf. Northwestern is a very academic school, and having three Majors that he's exempt for this year, he wanted to concentrate fully on those. That's what I got from Pat, anyway. I haven't talked directly to Matt yet, but if he wants to call me, he's more than welcome to. It's a tough decision. I think everyone is different. It's an individual decision. It's a tough loss for Northwestern. Personally for me, I think the four years I had were invaluable. I really enjoyed my experience. I felt like I got better at golf but I enjoyed just college life and I think that was great for me. That's not for everyone, and Matt, I wish him all the best. Q. When you decided to overhaul your swing or your game with Chuck, you already were the best player in the world from a hundred yards in. Is that something you worked on with Chuck or is that an area that you have not really touched upon and it's still what you had from before? LUKE DONALD: I'm still working with Pat Goss on my short game, so there's no real boundary where that starts and finishes. I still work on‑‑ a 100‑yard shot is still a full swing, so I'm working with that with Chuck, but my short game I'm still concentrating with Pat. The last few years, even my short game was still at a high level. Just my long game needed to improve, but the year I had, my best year, 2011 I saw improvements in my long game that aided me having a great year. So I've never really worried about my short game and my abilities, and I still work hard at it. So obviously everyone wants to concentrate on their weaknesses, and hence, some of the impetus for why I wanted to change coach with my long game. So I'll continue to try and improve my long game and keep my short game at a high standard. Q. Can I ask about your change of management situation, why you felt the need to change, and how difficult a decision was it after such a long time with one company? LUKE DONALD: I'm someone that doesn't like a lot of change in general, and I preface by saying that IMG managed me very well and represented me very well for 11 years. The management scene has really changed a lot in the last five years or so. There's a lot more choice out there. I think it's just changed a lot. I've known Steve Lloyd since I turned professional. He was one of the companies I met with when I first turned professional in 2002. I got along straightaway with him. Management is really a relationship business I think, and I've always enjoyed my relationship with Steve. I've been impressed with his business and how it's grown over the last few years. The impetus for change really was since when John Wagner left a couple years ago. It was a bit of a change in some of the people that came and went at IMG, and I just felt it hard to find a manager that I was comfortable with, and that was really the only reason. Q. Were new Chicago at all during the time of these freezing pictures we've been seeing on telly? LUKE DONALD: I was fortunately in Florida. I was in Chicago through Christmas. It was cold but not that cold. Q. What kind of things were happening to your house in Chicago? Do you have to take all sorts of precautions to keep it in working order? LUKE DONALD: Well, you keep the heat on to a certain degree and you make sure the pipes don't freeze. There's not much you can do. I don't know what‑‑ (laughter) yeah, there's not much you can do. But fortunately Diane checks on it every few days and makes sure it's okay. Chicago doesn't blink an eye at that. It gets pretty cold there anyway, a couple extra days of real cold wouldn't have bothered them. Q. Do you remember it being like that in your university days? LUKE DONALD: The odd day here and there, there was some minus‑20, minus‑30 degree temperatures, but you just get on with it there. I think they are pretty robust people in Chicago. They have long winters and are kind of used to it. Q. You are the first man out in the singles in The Ryder Cup at Medinah. Can you tell us where you feel you are at the moment in terms of qualification and how determined you are to be at Gleneagles? LUKE DONALD: I certainly want to be there. I've enjoyed four very memorable Ryder Cups and four victorious ones. I would love to be a part of that team. But again, it's not really putting pressure on myself. It's about continuing the process of getting better each week and trying to churn out consistent results. If I do that, I know I'll be on the team. Q. The Scottish Open you won in 2011 but gave it a miss last year; is it on your schedule this year? LUKE DONALD: It's very likely, yeah. Other than the U.S. Open, because of schedule‑wise, I think there's a good chance I'll play the week before each major. I think I want to, I've tried very different things throughout my career, but this year I've decided that I think that's a good way to go. Q. Have you played Royal Aberdeen? LUKE DONALD: Never played it, no. Q. I understand you're good friends with Simon Dyson, it's obviously his first event back since the ban, suspended ban, he was given at the end of last year. Have you spoken to him, and if not, what kind of reaction are you expecting him to get this week? LUKE DONALD: I haven't‑‑ I spoke to him yesterday but it was more just pleasantries. I haven't talked to him about the incident.  Just the body language I got from him, that he probably has some remorse and feels bad about what happened. Hopefully he's learned from that and he can carry on. I think it's something that he'll remember and learn from, and hopefully it doesn't happen again. STEVE TODD: Luke, thanks for joining us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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