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WGC BRIDGESTONE INVITATIONAL

August 2, 2008

Lee Westwood

AKRON, OHIO

RODDY WILLIAMS: Thanks very much for coming in and joining us. Talk about your round, what a terrific start for you.
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah. Well, I was surprised how good the scoring was when you looked at the boards, because standing on the range you felt like the golf course was going to play pretty tough because we didn't get the rain overnight as expected, and it felt like it was going to dry out as the day went on. I knew they'd tuck the flags like they normally do on the weekend here. So I wanted to come out quick, and birdie, birdie, birdie was obviously great.
I had a great putt on 4 that I obviously missed. I could have been 4-under after 4. But I played pretty solid all day, a couple poor iron shots I pulled and one I hit fat on 7. But other than that, I gave myself a pretty pain-free day under quite testing conditions I thought.
RODDY WILLIAMS: Setting yourself up for a pretty exciting final day. You could be in the last final group with Phil.
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, as a professional golfer that's where you want to be, in the final group in the biggest tournaments. Yeah, it's something I've been looking forward to.

Q. You were talking yesterday to Hoppy about back in the late '90s where anything six feet and in on your putting was automatic. You looked like you were pretty comfortable over a lot of putts.
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I felt really comfortable today, and it showed on the longer ones. I had a good putt on 1 and 3, hit a great putt on 4, holed a nice putt at 7, nice five-footer at 8. So everything feels comfortable. I was running it at the hole most of the day, and it was nice to roll one in on 17 and get to 8 after dropping one on 15.

Q. There was a bunker at 15, right?
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I hit it in the left -- the two iron shots were borderline enough club, and when I get like that, I just lean on it a bit and kind of come over the top and just smother the golf ball basically, and I paid the price. But the rest of the day was very, very solid, pretty much an exhibition of driving, if I may say so myself. It's probably as good as I can drive it. It was long and straight, and unfortunately on the back nine, 11 and 14, it was too long.
11, I left myself -- I said to Alistair, my caddie, this is not going to go too far. He said you should get about 310, 315 and get a full lob wedge up there, and it went about 325. Then I played a nice pitch with a lob wedge which was about eight yards behind the hole. So we figured that one out.
And then 14, I hit a great drive there, and it just went too far, finished on the downslope there, and in between clubs again. Other than that, driving was fabulous I thought.

Q. I'm a little confused on the one that went farther than you thought on 11. What yardage did you have and what clubs were you between?
LEE WESTWOOD: I thought a good drive up there -- well, Alistair thought a good driver there would go about 310 because it was uphill, as well, and it would leave about 95 yards. I hit it about 323 and it left 77.

Q. What kind of shot were you forced to play?
LEE WESTWOOD: I was trying to hit a cutting spinny one. I was trying to spin it because I know it goes back to the hole. The greens are firming up as the week goes on, so it's not possible on some shots, you just have to take your medicine.

Q. What prompted you here in the last year or so to do the weight and do the physio thing with such relish after years of --
LEE WESTWOOD: Don't use the word relish.

Q. Well, you're doing it anyway, which is maybe more impressive if you don't enjoy it. Why at this point dive into that?
LEE WESTWOOD: I'm 35 years old now. I was 34 when I started doing it, and I probably started ten years too late. I should have taken the warning from Ernie. He said he wished he would have started before he was 30. You know, you can fall back on youth when you're in your 20s, and then I looked at the people at the top of the World Rankings, and we're all pretty strong fellows, the Big Five from a few years ago, Tiger, Phil, Retief, Ernie, Vijay, all big guys, big shoulders. I used to be big, and I needed to put a bit of bulk on. It's paying dividends now.

Q. Do you travel with a guy?
LEE WESTWOOD: I don't, no. I work with a guy called Steve MacGregor. He occasionally comes out to events. He was at the Masters this year, and he came to Qatar at the start of the year. We do all the work in kind of in a preseason training, November, December time.

Q. And then just more maintenance stuff to get you through the year?
LEE WESTWOOD: And then maintenance, and in the weeks off I'll do three sessions, and during my weeks on I sometimes do nothing occasionally.

Q. How has it helped you, if at all, other than just endurance and things like that?
LEE WESTWOOD: The weights have helped me tremendously. I'm hitting the ball a lot farther, and when I want to make changes in my golf swing I can implement them a lot faster because my muscles are more responsive to change.

Q. Your last victory was?
LEE WESTWOOD: Belfry, British Masters.

Q. This year?
LEE WESTWOOD: Last year.

Q. I was thinking dating to, say, last fall, it seems like the consistency is what's been --
LEE WESTWOOD: Yeah, I'm not worried about not winning. I'm just delighted about the consistency. I know that winning is very fickle. I went three years without winning and then won twice within four weeks. Winning is strange. Sometimes it doesn't go your way, sometimes somebody else plays a bit better.
U.S. Open, I could be easily U.S. Open champion, but I didn't do the job when I needed to. All you can do is give yourself chances, and I've given myself a lot of chances.

Q. You didn't beat yourself up about San Diego at all, other than just disappointment?
LEE WESTWOOD: Not really, a little bit of disappointment. The couple of days afterwards, what if goes through your head, that I could have been U.S. Open champion. At the same time you can't let yourself dwell on those kind of emotions and you've got to turn the positives out. Played great under pressure and nearly won a major.

Q. Given that you've won 30-odd times in your career, is it more important for you to have done what you've done consistency-wise as opposed to missing every other cut and throwing in a victory?
LEE WESTWOOD: I think so. I think consistency is what all professionals want. That's what it's about, really. Obviously the more consistency, the higher you get up in the World Rankings. If you show the consistency the wins will just come. The more often you get yourself into the fray and feel the pressure of the last group and needing to make putts at certain times, the more comfortable you get, and then the wins come from there.

Q. I was just thinking about this this afternoon. When you won in New Orleans back in '98 it was almost kind of a big deal to have won on the U.S. Tour. Is it as big a deal now, just given the climate of --
LEE WESTWOOD: If I hadn't won in the States I'd feel there was something missing in my career. You want to win everywhere, don't you, that you're capable of winning. That's one of the things back home, I'm proud that I've won on every Tour basically, European, Asian, and Southern African.

Q. Nationwide Tour?
LEE WESTWOOD: No, I never played on that one actually (laughter).

Q. That being said, what would it mean for you to win here?
LEE WESTWOOD: It would mean a lot. These are a rung down from the major championships, obviously, but I haven't won a World Golf Championships, so that's obviously missing on my CV, so it would mean a lot, and obviously give me a massive amount of confidence going into next week, too.

End of FastScripts

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