	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

September 10, 2009

Marc Leishman

LEMONT, ILLINOIS

JOHN BUSH: We have Marc Leishman with us after a 4-under par 67. Just continued your good play from over the last month. Can we get your comments on your opening round?
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah, I started off pretty scratchy. Was driving it well all day, but the irons weren't so good. Made a few good up-and-downs on the first couple of holes and a few good par putts.
But started to roll the ball a lot better on about the 7th, holed a few birdie putts, and then kept hitting the ball well on the way in but was missing the birdie putts inside 15 feet.
It was a good day all in all. They're fairly tough to read, so I was pretty happy.
JOHN BUSH: Talk a little bit about your goals for the week. You're currently 67th in the points standings, so you need another good finish. Let's get your comments.
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah, three more 67s would be good (smiling). I mean, I've got nothing to lose. Probably Top 5 I would have to do, I'm guessing, to get into the TOUR Championship. So it's either that or a couple weeks off. Go hard or go home, I guess. Hopefully can go hard.

Q. As it turned out, you needed that eagle on Sunday to get through. Are you glad you didn't know it at the time?
MARC LEISHMAN: I sort of had an idea. I mean, I wasn't 100 percent sure. But yeah, I thought birdie may have been good enough, but I was thinking I probably had to hole it. So I don't know, when it's like that I tend to focus a bit more. I wish I was like that all the time, actually. If I had that focus all the time it would be nice.
Yeah, it was probably good not knowing that I absolutely had to hole it. Yeah, you're right, yeah.

Q. Can you tell us a little bit about sort of where you came from in terms of -- and then look at your goals for this year, because you pretty much I think are the forerunner for the Rookie of the Year. I don't know if you're thinking about that, but you're certainly looking like a candidate. Where were you at the start of the year? What were your goals? And sort of in the last few years, how have you been building to get to this point?
MARC LEISHMAN: Well, as far as Rookie of the Year goes, I guess if I can just keep playing the way I've been playing the last few weeks, hopefully everything will take care of itself. It depends on what the other guys do, as well, I guess. Some of the other boys might win or whatever. Obviously that's out of my hands, so I've just got to do what I can do.
As far as how I got here, I played in Korea for a year, on the Korean Tour. I had a win over there in 2006, which sort of took the pressure off me, gave me enough money to come over here and do the Monday qualifiers for the Nationwide Tour. And then if they didn't go well, I was still exempt in Korea for that year and another two years afterwards. So I knew if things didn't quite go right over here doing the Mondays, I could always go back there and play there again.
So I did the Mondays over here in '07. And then had to Monday at the start of '08 again; I only had conditional status. Had a top-ten in one of the LA tournaments which got me status for the rest of the year and ended up finishing in the top 25, and here we are.

Q. Just to go on from that, has it been a quick sort of escalation for your career in terms of being -- where were you before Korea, just playing in Australia?
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah, well, I turned pro in -- I came to Q-school here at the end of '05, so I was playing just amateur golf for Australia, traveling around the world doing that until, I guess, September '05. Then went to Q-school and missed over here, and then pretty much straight to Korean Q-school in January or February of '06. I probably only played 10 or 11 events up there.
I guess you set goals, and you always set them high, so you're not going to overachieve, I guess. I set them high, and I always wanted to finish top 25 last year to get out here and see what I could do out here. But to actually do it -- yeah, I'd say it's been reasonably quick. But at the same time, you know, it was definitely one of my goals to be out here as soon as possible.

Q. Did you know like when you were younger -- did you play footy? What did you do? Did you always think, golf is what I'm going to do?
MARC LEISHMAN: I played quite a lot of cricket growing up, a little bit of football but mainly cricket. Loved the beach. But golf was always there, and then I pretty much had to decide when I was about 15 whether I wanted to keep playing all the sports or just concentrate on golf, and ended up concentrating on golf.
It was a lot of travel because our family lived out in the country. We lived a three-hour drive from Melbourne, which is where all the amateur events were. Mom and dad had to sacrifice a lot. They gave up pretty much every weekend to drive me down and spent all their money on motels and petrol and all that. You know, my sister, she was younger and she'd stay at home and just do whatever she did on the weekends.
Yeah, there was a lot of sacrifices, but it's all been worth it.

Q. Pay them back now?
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah, try to pay them back (smiling).

Q. What did you do on the weekend out in the country if you weren't playing golf?
MARC LEISHMAN: Go to the cricket, watch the cricket or play cricket, go to the beach. Just hang around with your mates, go down the street. Just normal stuff that kids do, I guess.

Q. How far from the water were you?
MARC LEISHMAN: We could walk to the beach in about ten minutes from my place.

Q. So it was close then you would say?
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah, really close. We could walk across the golf course -- we lived across the road from the golf course in Australia, so we could walk straight across the golf course, and we could be in the water in, yeah, ten minutes if we wanted to be. Take the dogs over there and have a bit of fun.

Q. You're from Warrnambool?
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah. Fair hike from Melbourne.
JOHN BUSH: Let's go through the card. Opened up with six pars. Take us through those three straight birdies on 7 through 9.
MARC LEISHMAN: Yeah, took driver off 7, which I wasn't going to do, but with that front pin it was going to be too tough to get it close from back where I was playing. So I hit driver, and I think I only had about 80 yards to the pin. Hit it to about eight feet and rolled that in.
Then hit 3-iron down the next, sand iron from about 120 yards to eight feet again, rolled that in.
Then holed about a 10-footer on 9.
11, I hit a decent drive, hit 3-wood over the back into the back bunker and then chipped down to probably about 12 feet, hit a good putt. I hit a spike mark, and it bounced probably three or four inches right. It bounced right and broke hard and went in the hole. So it was a complete misread and worked out. That spike mark saved me. I suppose that happens on your good days, yeah.

Q. Playing in a twosome, was it hard to get your rhythm having to wait on every hole?
MARC LEISHMAN: I mean, we've known for a couple of days that we were going to be a two in the middle of the field, so we were pretty much just taking extra time, just not hurrying, walking slow, taking a bit of extra time reading the putts. Just cruising, really. There was a few stages where we had to stand around a little bit, but we sort of managed ourselves pretty well, I think, just playing a bit slower than we normally would, which was pretty nice.
It was a good day out there, so just taking in the scenery, and yeah, it was good.

Q. Are you a generally fast player?
MARC LEISHMAN: Probably average. I wouldn't say I was super-fast, but I wouldn't say I'm slow, either. I guess, yeah, reasonably quick.
JOHN BUSH: Marc, thanks for coming by.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297