THE MODERATOR: Welcome to Mexico City, and enjoy your week. Sergio, I’d like to start with you, the captain.
You’ve been coming to Mexico for many years. You’ve played at Chapultepec on several occasions, and you’re always a fan favorite. Tell us a little bit about how you’re received in Mexico. How do you feel playing here?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, thank you very much. Yes, honestly, the way they treat us, or the way they’ve always treated me here in Mexico, has been incredible. They’ve always treated me like one of the guys, as if I were playing at home. And well, it’s always a pleasure to come back here. And well, my teammates on the Fireballs are also eager to play.
The course is actually in really good shape, a little soft. It rained last week. The changes, I think they’ve improved the course a lot, even though more are coming after this week. But anyway, we played a few holes yesterday. And honestly, we really enjoyed it.
Q. David, next to you. You had a lot of Top Tens last year. Half of your tournaments were Top Tens, and this season you’ve already had three of them as well. Tell me, what do you have to do to adapt to this course to get a result at the top of the leaderboard again?
DAVID PUIG: No, well, I think the key is to hit it as straight as possible off the tee, try to avoid the trees at Chapultepec, and from there, play those second shots smartly. The greens are relatively small, and if you miss on the wrong side, it can obviously be pretty tough to try for a birdie. But if not, save par.
So having a good strategy, I think, is the most essential thing. Trying to execute it as best as possible, and if I do that well, I think that’s going to be key to playing well this week.
Q. Josele, you’ve had a T6 and a T12 in your last two outings. Obviously, your game is on the right track. How do you adapt to the altitude in Mexico City and try to keep moving in that direction?
JOSELE BALLESTER: Yeah, well, these practice days have been partly for that, to adapt to the altitude. We’re not used to playing so high above sea level, and it’s something that certainly takes time and practice. As for the last few tournaments, I actually think I’ve played a little better. Honestly, since the start of the season, things have been going pretty well. The thing is, I’m a little weaker around the green at the start, but as soon as I’ve managed to get a bit more precise, the results have started to go a little more my way. And that’s it. I'm really looking forward to competing and seeing how I progress and play.
Q. Luis, this is the first of two tournaments being played in a Spanish-speaking country; last year you had the chance to play both. What does this mean for you as a team? Is there an advantage for the Fireballs to play in a country where they speak the same language as you?
LUIS MASAVEU: I think there’s definitely an advantage. We saw it last year. We’re kind of the second favorite team here. They support us a lot. And I think that’s going to give us an edge, not just when we’re doing well, but when we hit rough patches down the stretch. Feeling the crowd support is going to help us a lot. So, yeah, the whole team is really looking forward to doing great this week. And that’s why.
Q. I have two questions for you, one regarding your play last week at the Masters. Things didn’t go well. It’s true that you compete at the individual level. Now that you have a team by your side, I don’t know if that makes you approach the game a little more positively, perhaps?
SERGIO GARCIA: Well, obviously when you’re surrounded by your teammates and friends, you always feel a little bit better, right? But anyway, I think that in the end, what we’re all trying to do is play at the highest level possible. Obviously, I’m trying to find my rhythm. And well, obviously last week there were things I did pretty well because, even though I wasn’t feeling great, making the cut there isn’t easy. But yeah, there were too many mistakes. Right? Maybe that’s why I didn’t finish as well as I would have liked.
But anyway, I’m happy to be here with my friends and teammates from the Fireballs. And honestly, we had a really good practice yesterday. We enjoyed it a lot, and well, let’s hope it’s a good week.
Q. The second question is about a rumor that woke us all up early this morning, regarding some kind of potential issues with LIV Golf moving forward, specifically regarding this tournament. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything as captain or owner. Do you know anything you can share with us?
SERGIO GARCIA: No, honestly, we haven’t heard anything other than what Yasir told us at the beginning of the year. That he’s behind us, that they have a long-term project. And well, honestly, you know how these rumors are. There are always a lot of them. And I can’t tell you anything more than what we already know.
Q. Josele, this is your first look at this course, obviously, at elevation. Last year Bryson had five drives of 400-plus yards. How many are you going to have?
JOSELE BALLESTER: Six.
I've been training a little bit for this occasion in Arizona last week, and it's pretty fun to just tee it up high and send it when the ball goes this far.
But the course is pretty tight, so you've got to have the accuracy, as well, to hit those shots. So you never know.
SERGIO GARCIA: Remember that then you have to chip back to the green once you hit it over with the driver.
Q. Have you played a tournament at elevation before?
JOSELE BALLESTER: Well, South Africa was quite at elevation, as well. Not as much as this, but I would say South Africa is probably the highest I have played before this week.
Q. David, you had a 400-yarder last year. Do you remember it?
DAVID PUIG: Just one? I don't remember what hole was it. Do you know? I hit a lot of 7-woods so they were only going 380.
Q. It was the 11th hole.
DAVID PUIG: Nice.
SERGIO GARCIA: How many did I have?
Q. I'm sorry, Sergio, you didn't have any. Four years ago, David was on your team at the first event in London. He was a 20-year-old amateur. Can you talk about his growth as a player in these four years that you've seen?
SERGIO GARCIA: I think he was better before. No, I'm joking.
Look, I remember at the Centurion in London when I picked him in my first draft, we had a fun week. Obviously he didn't play as well as he would have liked to. Neither did I.
But you could see the potential that obviously he had. It's definitely been fun to see him grow and develop, not only as a player but as a person. Man, he's improved a lot.
Probably, in my opinion, he can probably corroborate or not, but in my opinion where he's improved the most is his driving. I think he's hitting it farther and straighter than he was hitting it then. So that obviously helps a lot.
He's improved in every part of the game, but I think that's probably, I would say, his biggest improvement since then.
Q. Do you agree?
DAVID PUIG: Yeah, I agree. I agree. My mental health has also -- how I behave on the course has definitely improved, as well.
Q. Sergio, you have the most experience at elevation. The first shot off the tee obviously goes much farther, but how difficult is it to determine how much extra distance you're going to get on shorter shots when you have to flight wedges, things like that?
SERGIO GARCIA: It's a good question. Obviously, I think by working on it and through the years and stuff, we've kind of found out that probably the biggest percentage that you'd see in distance for a player like me, a player that maybe I don't hit it as high with the driver and stuff, it would be from the wedge to the 5-iron. That's where you get probably the highest percentage on distance gain because of the altitude.
But definitely if you're a player like me that likes to bring the ball down here and there in windy conditions or something like that, that definitely makes a difference, too. The higher you hit it up here, the higher the ball stays in the air, the longer the ball stays in the air.
Then if you bring it down with a 6-iron, the altitude is not going to affect it as much. You've got to make sure that you kind of calibrate all of these things to then at the end of the day get the best guess on how far the ball is going to go.
Q. Josele, you started the season relatively slow but you've been really picking it up over the last few events. Do you feel like it's all starting to come together and you might have a chance to contend this week?
JOSELE BALLESTER: Yeah, I had a similar question before in Spanish. Honestly, I'm playing pretty similar to how I started the season. I was just a little anxious around the greens at the beginning. First year as a professional, high expectations, ended the year great in 2025, and the first events just didn't really convert around the greens, and that kind of stayed in my mind a little more.
But been working on it the last two weeks. Putting and chipping was better. When the long game is there, just need to be a little bit more dialed in in that aspect.
Hopefully it can continue to be improving so I can have a good week.
Q. David, you're right in that 80 range in the OWGR. How focused are you on continuing to have strong results to make sure you'll get into majors over the next few years?
DAVID PUIG: Yeah, it's definitely something that I think about sometimes. Here on LIV you've got to have great weeks to keep moving up. But yeah, I think about it. I try not to put a lot of pressure on it. It just requires good golf, and that's what I'm kind of more focused on. Just following my plan and making sure I do all the work that I need to be ready for the week.
I'll keep doing that, and hopefully the rankings keep getting a little better.
Q. For Luis and Josele, you're playing the Singapore Open next week. Obviously there's a spot on the line for the Open Championship. How excited are you to kind of have that opportunity and chase that goal?
LUIS MASAVEU: Yeah, we're definitely looking forward to it. That's one of the main reasons we went there, because it's very far away from here. It's going to be a long travel.
But yeah, that's our main goal. We're going to try to give it a go.
Q. Josele, you finished T6 there, so obviously you might have picked up some things you can use next week?
JOSELE BALLESTER: Yeah, I love the course. I think it's a course that kind of plays to our advantage. It's a ball striker's course. I loved the conditions we found it a month ago, and I'm pretty confident we're going to find it in really good conditions again.
The fact of having those two Open exemptions for the top two guys, it's definitely really cool to see, and hopefully both of us, we can get it done.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports