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NewsTranscript
00:00The UE has a special place in your heart. Is it nice to be back?
00:06Of course. I have to say, and I've always been saying the same thing, it's similar to home.
00:13That helps a lot to feel comfy in every single venue.
00:17Because the weather is normally good, sunny, even windy in some occasions.
00:24And that's why probably I feel more comfy, yes.
00:27Let's go back to 2011, Desert Classic, and then you top it off with the DP WorldTour Champs.
00:34How amazing were those two wins just down the road in Dubai?
00:38Well, clearly Dubai Desert Classic, it was a golf course that I enjoy a lot, always.
00:43And Dubai is a busy city, you have a lot of restaurants.
00:47It's nice to be able to disconnect from the golf, and in that case Dubai is nice.
00:53And then winning the last tournament of the year was obviously my biggest event back then.
00:58And it's still the biggest tournament that I have won ever.
01:02Two golf courses that I like, it suits my eyes, and that's why it was easy.
01:08And probably that was the best year of my career.
01:13I was co-leading at the Masters the same year in the middle of that season,
01:18so a lot of positive things that year happened.
01:21Dubai, as I said, was a golf course that even when you have to turn the ball sometimes left,
01:27I was able to manage, playing with my face or with my high ball.
01:32And then the Jumeirah course is a completely different one.
01:36It used to be a bomber golf course, a lot of blind shots to the greens.
01:41But again, I think the two things that I can really remember in common was my shape, my own shape.
01:48I was playing the best golf of my career.
01:51Luke Donald, just finishing in front of me, it was that year that Luke Donald
01:55ended up winning the European Tour of Merit and the PGA Tour of Merit.
02:00And he was the best result in the clubhouse right before me.
02:05It was an exciting, obviously, moment.
02:08It was a long putt, right, left, uphill, downhill.
02:12He had everything.
02:13But in my mind, I knew that if I make two putts from there, I won't defend.
02:18It wasn't easy, but I would have won it.
02:31Luckily enough, the ball found the hole and it was one of those rare moments
02:36that you can really express all the excitement that you have in a final hole to win an event.
02:44Sometimes in golf, you have to really be under control constantly of your own feelings
02:50and you don't have the ability or the opportunity to express that kind of excitement.
02:57And that was one of those moments.
02:59After I won the second event, I ended up like, I don't know, top 20 in the world, top 25 in the world.
03:06And I thought that it was time to become a little bit more consistent, technically speaking, with the short irons.
03:14I took the decision to change technically and clearly it wasn't a good decision.
03:21I started playing worse and feeling the swing kind of weird and out of place.
03:28And by the middle of the year, I started to feel some kind of pain in the wrist.
03:33I thought that it was all related to the technical change.
03:38And I remember by, I don't know, July of 2012, I could really barely hit the ball.
03:46I went to the doctor and the doctor says that I have a ligament partially broken
03:51and I have to have surgery at the end of 2012.
03:54Since then, my golf never ever become the one that I used to know naturally.
03:59And to be honest, I have never recovered a golfing level as I used to play.
04:07So it has an effect that gives me a little bit of a boost to change technically.
04:12But I have to say that that technical change didn't help to the rest of my career.
04:17So we take decisions, some of them work, some of them don't.
04:23And in this time, it was great to have those victories.
04:28But it wasn't that nice after that.
04:31Is it frustrating?
04:32A lot.
04:33Or is it upsetting? Does it make you angry?
04:36Everything. The full package. I have everything.
04:38I still have some moments, but in a way, I have learned to manage it.
04:45But golfing speaking, before it was, in my personal case, it was all enjoyable.
04:53Even when I hit a bad shot, I have the boost and my self-confidence
05:00to face the next shot as a good opportunity to hit a good one.
05:05When the surgery happened, then I came back in 2013,
05:09that situation never happened again.
05:13I haven't been able to find my own swing again.
05:17So in that sense, golf has become more of a job,
05:22more than a way of living as I used to.
05:27I was happy playing golf.
05:29Now it's my job and I have to do the best that I can.
05:32But I don't enjoy it as I used to.
05:35This year, you're playing this season on the Challenge Tour a bit.
05:40Is that tricky to accept?
05:43No, because it's not because last year I played worse than never.
05:50No, no, no.
05:51It's because probably last year I wasn't able to deal with my worst golf,
05:56which is different.
05:58So I've been playing poor or average for the last four or five years.
06:04Before, for different reasons, I was able to put myself
06:09at the end of the year in a position where I can save my car.
06:13But I wasn't really in contention anymore.
06:16I was dealing with a bad golfing level.
06:19Last year, unfortunately, it didn't happen.
06:23So it was something that you can expect.
06:27What I wish for this season is to turn around the situation a little bit,
06:33mentally and golfing speaking,
06:36like stroking the ball a bit better to give me the opportunity
06:40to fight for my European Tour card again.
06:46But as I said, things in golf are not magic.
06:50This is not like, oh, sadly. No, no, no.
06:53You have been doing the things OK or good,
06:56and as a consequence, you have good results.
06:59So I want to really feel again that I'm in that kind of path, positive path,
07:04to being able to say, well, I can shoot low or not,
07:09but at least I'm feeling that I'm doing the things properly.
07:19Perspective.
07:20Point of view.
07:21Opinion.
07:24It's difficult to make a judge when you are not in part of it.
07:32But what is clear is that from my point of view,
07:35every single player, as we are individual sport,
07:38is free to manage their own career as they want.
07:43But it's true, too, that we have rules
07:45in every single professional tour in the world.
07:50The differences are more in what are you expecting from your own career
07:58and what you want to do.
08:00Some people, because they have already experienced
08:02every single stage of their career,
08:05are maybe tempted by the money, as some of those Leaf players.
08:11Some people are younger, they are hungry for titles
08:17and they want to stick to the regular tours.
08:23And you have some people who just want to really play less and for more.
08:28I don't really know.
08:29Every single player has his own point of view about his career.
08:34So criticizing the different options is not my style.
08:39What I completely agree is following the rules.
08:44Some people play the PGA Tour.
08:46When you agree to the membership, they have a regulation.
08:49Same in the...
08:51Sorry, I was about to say European Tour because I'm old-style.
08:54But the Big World Tour is exactly the same.
08:57Having said that, I'm in the Challenge Tour.
09:01I don't have, unfortunately, those kind of decisions to make.
09:07And I have to deal with my own issues.
09:10Call it that way.