August 20, 2025
Plymouth, Michigan, USA
The Cardinal at Saint John’s
Majesticks GC
Press Conference
THE MODERATOR: Let's welcome the winning team from today's play-in match at LIV Golf Team Championship Michigan, Majesticks GC, who secured a 2-1 victory over the Iron Heads to advance to the quarterfinals on Friday. Well-played, guys.
Lee, you won your match 1-up against Danny Lee. Felt like it took a while for the match to get going. I think you both parred the first 10 holes out there. Can you take us through your match today. Any key moments for you out there?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, plenty really. We had a decent match. Actually we both birdied the 5th but parred the rest. We weren't really giving anything away. I think both of us were struggling to get going and get any momentum.
But then I birdied 11 and Danny kind of gave me 12. But then I gave him 13, and then he made eagle at 14, and I was inside him and I just missed.
Then I holed from outside him on 15 and he made it from 10 feet.
16 we shared in 5s, and then he gave me a good read on a putt on 17, and I made it from I guess about 18 feet to go 1-up.
Then I got a really lucky/good drop for line-of-sight on 18 and then played a great shot from under the trees and made the most of it, got it in there to about six feet, and that was really the game done then.
A little bit fortunate. It was a good game. I think a half would have been probably a fair result, but happy to nick it.
Q. Sam, you clinched the deciding point to take the Majesticks through to the quarterfinal with a win over Yubin Jang, which went all 18 holes. With the other results for Lee, Ian, Henrik in already, were you aware of the situation and what was at stake at that point?
SAM HORSFIELD: Yeah, I asked Ollie on I think it was 16 or 15 how the matches were going, and then I saw Lee teeing off on 18 first, so I had a good inkling that he had won 17.
I was just trying to fight for the boys, and I felt like I played pretty well today. Yubin obviously holed some pretty nice putts. He chipped in on me. So to get the win was really nice.
Q. Henrik, not the result you were hoping for in your foursomes match, but with the quarterfinals still ahead and the draw tomorrow, do you see that as an opportunity to reset going into the weekend?
HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, we were talking about it earlier. I don't think Ian and I played particularly bad. We were up against a solid team today, and whenever it was a bit tight, they managed to make a couple of really long putts and pull away.
Yeah, we're not too disappointed with the way we played, I think, but obviously it was not close enough to get the win. We've got some more time to prepare and get ready for Friday.
Q. Ian, you've got a wealth of match play experience in this team. How does that background shape your approach and the strategy going into this week, and do you feel the format of match play and your experience gives the Majesticks a bit of an edge?
IAN POULTER: Yeah, I hope so. Three of us have played a considerable amount of match play and foursomes matches through the years, and obviously Sam was clutch, finishing out that match today.
But for us, we need to go on a run like the Iron Heads last year. Winning this match was crucial to be in with a chance. We've got an uphill battle being even in the position that we're in to play against a much stronger seed. We're going to need to have all of our games on Friday. Anything's possible. It's match play. It's the best.
Q. Certainly a positive result today; obviously a lot of conflicting emotions from Sunday. How did you guys deal with it, process it as a team from Sunday to getting the win here today?
LEE WESTWOOD: You've just got to reset really and go at it like a completely new week. Obviously through the whole season, we've played stroke play, but then obviously today's match play, and it's the Team Championship, so you've got an eye on everybody else even more.
You're really just trying to win your point and take care of that, which wasn't too difficult out there, because the scoreboards weren't working, so I had no idea what anybody else was doing. I had to ask as soon as my game finished. I wasn't smart enough like Sam to ask somebody to check.
Yeah, it was like being in a little bubble, and that's probably the best way to play golf, in your own little world.
Q. Ian, obviously a terrific performance on Sunday. How did you process it getting here the last few days?
IAN POULTER: Difficult. I think, obviously, not a situation any of us would have wanted to be in. The last couple of months has been pretty stressful being in that position. It was a late rally. I knew I had to make a few birdies last week, and it was very unfortunate for H to come down to that last hole on Sunday.
This week is a different challenge, match play challenge, completely different. Hopefully we can go out with a bang this week and have a long run through this tournament.
Q. Henrik, same question.
HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, obviously it's not been a great season for us as a team, or we wouldn't have been here playing this morning. I think we have a chance to redeem ourselves in that sense.
On a personal note, yeah, obviously a disappointing season and a disappointing Sunday for me, having done some good work on Friday and Saturday to put myself in a pretty good position, but had a bad start and couldn't rally back on Sunday. I made a couple of birdies coming home but not enough to make up for the start.
Yeah, all in all, a disappointment there, but yeah, this is the last week. This is the team event, so we're going to go out and try our hardest here for the next three days, Friday through Sunday, and see if we can finish it off on a brighter note than we felt we did on Sunday.
Q. You guys have had such a strong bond as tri-captains. Did that help the last few days knowing that at the end of the day you're all friends, professional golfers but friends also? Did that help figure out how to process it?
HENRIK STENSON: I mean, over the course of a career, you're going to have good years, you're going to have bad years. All of us are sitting here -- and Sam included that's not got the length of career that the rest of us have. It's part of it. It's part of professional sports. You're going to have disappointment. You're going to have good times.
On this end, I had the worst season out of the team, and I'm the one in the worst spot. You've just got to deal with it and move forward.
Q. I did also want to ask about foursomes. You guys have had four different foursomes these past four years. Do you think you'll anticipate playing together, the two of you, or do you think you might change it up on Friday? You guys seem to be searching for that foursomes mix.
SAM HORSFIELD: Well, I switched balls this year, so that took me completely out of the equation for that.
LEE WESTWOOD: It's a horrible format to have to play, so we just drew straws, and they lost.
Q. Is that how it worked?
IAN POULTER: No.
LEE WESTWOOD: If it works like today, everybody is like, yeah, great, woo! Great team selection. And with it being 18 holes match play, it's such a quick, volatile format, and then having to play foursomes in it is just extra difficult. I've played with Ian and Sam, I think. I don't think I've played with Henrik. I feel like we played all right in a couple of our matches and lost.
Match play is just like that. I've played World Match Play where it's over 36 holes and then you generally get the winner you think you're going to get, but I've played match plays over 18 holes, the Dell Match Play in Austin and when we used to play up in Tucson, and it's a sponsor's nightmare because all the stars you want to watch could be going home the first day. With good players, it's a very volatile format. Nothing is a given.
HENRIK STENSON: I like that one. I won that one in '07.
LEE WESTWOOD: You both won it. That's why I put you together, right?
IAN POULTER: I don't think we've ever played foursomes together.
HENRIK STENSON: Now we have.
IAN POULTER: We have now, and we lost. We'll have a better day on Friday if we play together.
LEE WESTWOOD: You've given it away now, haven't you.
Q. Ian and Henrik, Kozuma and Na made six birdies today. Was it more of a case of you guys not playing well or was it more that team just went out there and -- six birdies in alternate shot is pretty good.
IAN POULTER: Yeah, it's pretty good. I don't know how you want to look at it. Foursomes is a difficult format to play. It's hard to get in the flow. I felt I didn't hit many iron shots all day. I felt it was kind of the way the golf course lays itself out, obviously I did most of the putting. Missed a few opportunities, but they didn't really miss anything.
Every little kind of opening we had with a half a chance, they kind of slammed the door with a birdie on us.
If you're going to play that format and you're going to come up against a pair which shoots 6-under par, I mean, you just have to take your hat off and respect good golf. It's as simple as that.
We actually haven't played bad at all today. I think we missed two fairways all day. Pretty much in position. Yeah, we could have hit it a little closer on a couple of holes with a couple of opportunities. Could have rolled a few more putts in.
But they would have been very hard to beat today.
Q. Do you think now seeing the course in a competitive environment like you guys have gives you an advantage in the next round where the other teams haven't played any matches yet?
SAM HORSFIELD: I do.
HENRIK STENSON: Yeah, I think it might give you a little bit of a feel, more familiar out there, and you certainly will have seen some bounces and some holes play in a certain way that can be a small advantage. It's always hard to put a number on it, but I don't think it's a disadvantage to have played today.
Q. This being a new course, can you talk a little bit about the skill set you think is required at this place?
IAN POULTER: Skill set is pretty simple: Drive it straight. You need to put it in the fairway. The rough is juicy. Obviously yesterday's rain didn't help that. We had a couple of shots today which there was no chance to get it on the green from the rough.
I think the fairways are generous enough. I would expect most people to drive it in play. But quite a few long irons into par-3s, long irons into a few par-4s, and then you've got a few short par-4s as well.
There's a decent mix of top end of the bag and bottom end of the bag and you're going to have to putt well. The greens are pure, hard to read, but again, they're a pure surface. I would expect guys to be holing plenty of putts.
Q. Sam, I'm just wondering about your approach that you hit on 18 there. Were you expecting it to spin back that much, and was that frustrating to see, especially after that great drive? And also on the drive, is that the play, to drive it in that narrow part because you're 1-up? What decision was that?
SAM HORSFIELD: So on the drive, I had been hitting my driver really good all day. I think I had missed one fairway and it was the first hole. So I was really confident with the driver, and I knew Yubin hits it pretty far so I thought he might be able to carry that bunker and just have a flick wedge in. I wanted to be as aggressive as I could be.
On the second shot I had an awful number. I had 102, and the last place you want to hit it there is long. I knew it was going to spin like crazy. I just wanted to make Yubin make a birdie and not give him anything, and hit it over the back of the green. Maybe if it wasn't the 18th hole, I would have tried to take a 56 and just chip it back there, but yeah, I wanted to give myself the best opportunity to make him make a birdie, and yeah, made 4, and now we're here.
HENRIK STENSON: Just food for thought, if you have that much spin, you can actually hit it into the bunker and it's going to come back on to the green again.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports


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