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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIPFebruary 21, 2012Rory McIlroyMARANA, ARIZONA SCOTT CROCKETT: Rory, thanks, as always, for coming in and joining us. Welcome to the Accenture Match Play. Give us your thoughts on the week ahead, it's obviously different from a stroke play event, how you are approaching it and how you are looking forward to the challenge. RORY McILROY: I always look forward to this event every year. It's a little bit of a change from what we usually play. We only get to play match play a couple of times a year. It's a nice change, you know, especially over 18 holes. You need to be pretty aggressive from the start and try to get off to a good start. It would be nice to get into a good run this week. I've been put out in the second round the last couple of years, so it would be nice to get off to a good start here. It would be nice to advance to the weekend at least and see what can happen from there. SCOTT CROCKETT: I know you haven't played much with George, but he'll be a tricky opponent, won't he? RORY McILROY: He's been playing well in Europe the last couple of weeks. To be honest, that's all I really know about it. I have seen him up there on leaderboards or whatever. There is no easy match in this tournament, especially over 18‑holes. Anyone can beat anyone. You are going to have to be on the top of your game for basically the whole week if you want to have a chance to win. SCOTT CROCKETT: Your own form, Rory, on European Tour has been pretty good. Second in Abu Dhabi, fifth in Dubai, it's been a pretty decent start for the year. RORY McILROY: Yeah, I have met some good progress. I have been working on a few things. It feels like they are starting to click into place. Yeah, I mean, I had a chance to win in Abu Dhabi. I had a great chance to win in Dubai going into the weekend, but I didn't quite have a good enough weekend. Two solid finishes to start the season. It would be nice to add a third this week. Q. What do you think is the harder event to win, a match play in this format or stroke play and why? RORY McILROY: You can sort of look at it at both sides. Match play you can think you only have to beat six guys on your way through to win. Whereas in a stroke play event you have to beat 150 or whatever. Both formats present, you know, so many different challenges. Having to hole putts to halve holes or ‑‑ to be honest, it's just different. I don't know if you can say one is harder than the other. We're playing the man or we're playing our opponent in this format. In stroke play you're just playing the course so you shouldn't really care what anyone else is doing. I know some guys approach match play that way as well. Where they just go out and play the course and try and shoot the best score possible and see what happens. But sooner or later you're going to have to react to what your opponent does. So they just present very different challenges and I think it would be wrong to say that one is harder to win than the other. Q. Secondly, what are your plans through The Masters and can you talk about a home base and where you plan to be? RORY McILROY: So I'm playing the next three weeks, playing Honda and Doral and taking three weeks off after Doral before The Masters. And I'll base myself in West Palm Beach for those ‑‑ through then until the TPC. I'll just be there. Q. Where do you play your golf there? RORY McILROY: The Bears Club. Q. Could you tell us how you could possibly improve on the swing that you had at the U.S. Open? RORY McILROY: To be honest, I'm just trying to get back to that point. In golf you always fall back into bad habits or you fall back into the same habits. It's just trying to tease those habits back out. So I mean I would love to swing it like I did at the U.S. Open every day but that's not possible because you play in different conditions and golf isn't ‑‑ it would be great to be able to do it but ‑‑ so it's just trying to get back to basically where I was in the middle of last year. It's not like I'm trying to change my swing or anything. I'm just trying to get it back to where I want it to be. Q. Wednesday at match play is one of the most fun days in golf for fans. Such a chaotic crazy day. As a player is there a fan in you, too? Do you get caught up in the brackets that day? RORY McILROY: To be honest, not at all. I don't even know like who I would play, say, if ‑‑ if George or I win tomorrow, I'm not sure who the next opponent would be. I haven't really looked that far ahead. I mean, I think for us ‑‑ you know, maybe a couple of years ago I might have got caught up in it. Now I feel like this is my fourth time here. I just try to take it one opponent at a time and see how far that gets me. SCOTT CROCKETT: Do you want to know who it is? Kyung‑Tae Kim or Anders Hansen, for the record. Q. This was your first stateside tournament three years ago. What do you remember about that event and how are you different now than you were the first time you set foot here? RORY McILROY: I mean, back then it was just a great opportunity for me to come here and play and play in these big events. '09 was the first time I got into the WGCs and the majors. This was also my first event since my first win. I won in Dubai and had a week off and then I came here. I was sort of riding the crest of the wave and came here and got to the quarters and played well in the next two events in Florida as well. It was great. It was all a new experience to me. It was fantastic and obviously I was having a lot of fun and now I'm here and this is my fourth match play. I just feel like I'm a more experienced player and a better player. But you know still obviously loving every minute of it, being out on Tour and having a good time, taking in everything that comes my way. Q. You've done a lot to order the back office of your professional career, changing managers, not flying charter anymore, stuff like that. Can you talk a little bit about how that's affected your mental approach to the game? Has it given you the kind of peace that you were after? RORY McILROY: Not particularly. You know, things change and you know people move on. I felt like I just needed a few fresh ideas and ‑‑ yeah, I feel very content and very happy at the moment with everything that's going on and I feel like my golf game is in good shape. I think when things are in order off the golf course it can allow you to play better on it. Q. Do you like to share a lottery with this format? The fact that you could play well and lose or play mediocrey and go through? RORY McILROY: Not really to be honest. It's okay if you ‑‑ it's a tough one as well. I definitely prefer to play match play over 36 holes. Obviously with a 64 month deal it's not really possible. 18‑holes of golf is ‑‑ anything can happen. You can be five or 6‑under par and lose or you can play mediocre, as you said, and win. I don't mind losing a match if you don't play well and you don't deserve to win. When you feel like you have done all you can and still come up on the wrong side, it's pretty tough to take sometimes. That's the nature of this format. And I think that's why everyone sort of enjoys watching it. It's a nice change for us as well. It does ‑‑ the further you get into this tournament, it's nice. You turn up on the Friday morning and there is only 16 guys here, the Saturday morning, there's only 8 guys. As you progress through it gets smaller around smaller. It's the nature of this event. Q. Did you feel any differently when you woke up Sunday morning at The Masters versus a month or two later when you woke up at the U.S. Open? RORY McILROY: I had double the lead, that was nice to start off with. Of course. I felt a lot more ‑‑ I had a lot clearer picture in my head of what I needed to do to control myself on that Sunday. At The Masters it was all ‑‑ it was all new to me. Leading first round, second day, going into the final day. I've led tournaments before but to lead The Masters going into the last run that's something a lot different. Yeah, I couldn't stress enough at the time how much I learned from The Masters. I knew that if I got myself in that position again, that I would know what to do. Thankfully, I was able to get myself in that position pretty soon afterwards at the U.S. Open. I was able to prove to myself that I did learn an awful lot at The Masters. But hopefully, a day like that never happens again Q. Was your timing of your day differently on that day? RORY McILROY: No. I have never been one to set ‑‑ to stick to set routines, you know. I just got up, had some breakfast, chill out. I didn't watch TV at the U.S. Open. I watched a movie instead, which is probably a little bit of a difference. Q. What was it? RORY McILROY: Batman, maybe. I did do things pretty different. Just the way I approached the whole day and my mental state was a lot different, a lot calmer, a lot happier in a way. I felt like the last day of The Masters I needed to be some sort of machine or robot, robot that, you know, doesn't look at anything and just sort of focused on the goal. Where at the U.S. Open I was more ‑‑ I chatted. I had fun. I talked to JB the whole way around. That sort of calmed me down a little bit. I realize that's what I need to do on the golf course to get the best out of myself. Q. Six and 12 are a couple of holes that we're streaming live. What is your approach? Is this an opportunity to get aggressive or just get a three and get out of there? RORY McILROY: It all depends on what your opponent does. I suppose the 6th hole is ‑‑ it's still pretty early on in the match. It depends on where the flag is. If they put the flag on the left side there, it's was very easy if you get too aggressive to run off down that hole. You want to keep your ball right of it. But, yeah, I mean they are two pretty difficult par 3s. I think if you make three there, you are pretty unfortunate to lose the hole. But I think you are going to win more holes with a three there than you are going to lose. Q. Since your U.S. open win, have you noticed differences when you do play in the States now? Are there bigger galleries or more people watching you? Is there a difference now after your first major win when you play here? RORY McILROY: Yeah, a little bit, to be honest. I actually noticed a first ‑‑ after The Masters last year, I came to ‑‑ the next tournament I played was Quail Hollow and I noticed it there right away that the level of support had just risen. Yeah, I mean, it's nice to have support of the gallery and even play a practice round today and there is people out walking with you and watching you. It's great. As I said, I love coming back here and playing in the States. It's great to get such a warm reception. Q. For the first time there is an American No. 1 seed and it's because internationals are all the top 4 players in the world. In your opinion what do you think has been the biggest significance for the game with all four players being internationals? Is it World Ranking points towards the European Tour?  Is it just an environment in world golf? RORY McILROY: I mean, I get asked this question quite a lot. It's hard really to put your finger on it. I think things like this just go in cycles. If you look at the mid '90s, early 2000s, the Americans dominated the world ranking, dominating the World Ranking. Tiger was winning every other major anyway. The Americans were dominating those rankings. I think it's ‑‑ obviously with the top ranked players coming from Europe‑‑ and if we play in Europe regularly, you are going to get more ranking points going to tournaments there, so that obviously helps. I think again, you know, seeing someone from ‑‑ seeing [ck] Lee get the No. 1 and then Martin and Luke. You see those guys do it, and you're sort of thinking to yourself if they can get there, so can I. I think that's got a little bit to do with it as well. Q. So going back to the aftermath of The Masters, when I saw that photo that you Tweeted of you and Charl on the jet arm and arm and him wearing the jacket and the look on your face, I had the sense then that you were going to be just fine. How long after that did you know you were going to be just fine? RORY McILROY: I don't know. That's a hard one. That picture was taken when we were traveling to Malaysia to play the next week. I played decent in Malaysia. I finished third. I got home the week after and had two weeks at home. That's when I sat down with a lot of people close to me, sort of figured out what I needed to do differently, some things that I needed to put in place to become a better player. I think then ‑‑ I think coming home and having the support of your family, of your friends, realizing things aren't that bad. You are going to lose tournaments now and again. Just for me it was one of the biggest tournament in the world, but I realize I'm hopefully going to have plenty more chances to win that jacket that Charl was wearing. I knew maybe two or three weeks after that that I was okay. Q. We know about the strength of your relationship with Jack Nicklaus. You mentioned that a few weeks you are going to be going to the Bears Club. How many lunches, chats or pep talks do you envision having with him during that time? How close as your relationship grown? RORY McILROY: I feel like I have a good relationship with Jack that actually started just after this event in '09. I bumped into him at the Gardens Mall parking lot in Palm Beach. He asked me what I thought of this golf course and I said it was great. He asked me about the greens, and I went they are okay. But, yeah, it all sort of started from there. You know, I've had a few chats with him, a few lunches, but I mean, I'll be at the Bears Club every day. I'm sure I'll bump into him now and again. He's just great to have around. He says to me, look, if you ever want to sit down and have a chat, he's always there, which is unbelievable to sit down and sort of pick the brain of Jack Nicklaus, 18‑time Major champion, 19 times a runner‑up as well. He knows how to get in the mix. Just to have that relationship with him is very cool, especially for someone ‑‑ I mean, I never grew up idolizing Jack Nicklaus because he was so far ahead of my time, but just the videos that you see and the things that he's done, it's pretty incredible. As I said able just to spend some time with him is very cool. Q. I'm a representative from The First Tee of Tucson. I was wondering how you adjust to a desert course rather than a regular course? RORY McILROY: Desert golf is a little different than the golf we usually play. I think one of the things here in Tucson is the altitude. The ball flies a lot farther here, especially when it gets warm. So that's something you have to try and adjust is your distances and something I try to today on a practice round where usually I would play earlier, I deliberately went out a little later because I wanted the temperature to rise a bit just to see how far the ball is traveling. Especially tomorrow, I'm playing 12:30 or around that time so I'd know how far the ball was traveling in the afternoon. I think that was something I did today that will be beneficial for this week. Q. (Inaudible.) RORY McILROY: It actually depends how far you get the ball up in the air. If you hit the ball high then the ball can go forever. Somewhere between five and ten. Q. What have you come to appreciate most about Luke Donald's game and what do you think is the largest factor that got him to No. 1? RORY McILROY: I mean, I think I'll probably answer the same as everyone will answer it and say his short game. I played the back nine today with Martin Kaymer, who has his brother on the bag, Christian. Christian said last year Luke just chipped and putted people to death here. That's how he won. I mean, his short game is incredible. You know, he never ‑‑ he rarely makes mistakes from around the green and he always ‑‑ he's a very, very solid putter. Obviously you need more aspects of your game than just the short game. He's probably one of the best iron players out here as well. When he drives the ball in the fairway, he's always up there and he's very dangerous. Q. I'm also a First Tee representative and I was wondering what would you say would be your favorite part about golf? RORY McILROY: For me my favorite part about golf is probably ‑‑ I was going to say the travel, but the travel gets tedious. But going to different places and seeing new places is very cool for me. And for the game of golf, I think the great thing about golf is everyone can play it. There is no age limits. There is no physical limitations, really. Any person, size or age, everyone can play. I think that's the great thing about golf, the handicap system. I, for instance, could go out and play against you. You have your handicap and it would be a good even contest. However many shots I need to give you, I don't know. That's the cool thing about golf. And again, normal ‑‑ I could never go, say, to ‑‑ for me, I'm a massive Manchester United fan. They play in Old Trafford in England and I could never really just go on and kick a football around Trafford. People can come and play some of the best golf course in the world which I think is very cool. SCOTT CROCKETT: I'm not sure there is better way to end than that, Rory. Thank you very much. Good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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