IR SENIOR TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 4, 2000

Leonard Thompson

LEONARD THOMPSON: Today was the best ball-hitting round that I've had. I felt more -- a lot more under control today than I have either of the first two days. I think I only really hit maybe two shots that were -- well, I don't know one of them was just a really bad shot, and the other one was kind of mediocre. Most of the other shots were where I was trying to hit them. You never hit them all right in the middle of the club face. But it was a good, solid ball-hitting round and a good putting round. I made a couple of 8-, 9-footers for pars. One was after I hit a 20-footer coming down the hill at No. 4, I think it was, and it kind of got away from me and went about six or a eight feet past and I made that. I think it was the very next hole, I hit it just over the green. Hit what I thought was a good shot. Hit on the back of the green and just went over. Had a 4-wood out of the rough about six feet past the hole when I made that. Those were the only two par putts that I had to make of any length, I think. I think it was 4 and 5. I don't think I had to make any other ones that were -- you know, more than a foot and a half or so. As we get through the round -- yeah, that was about it.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Started out with a birdie at 1. A driver and a 9-iron -- sorry. 3-wood and 9-iron about, I guess, six feet. Birdie at 2. I hit it right of the green. Pitched it -- hit a good pitch to keep it up on the flat part of the -- keep it from going over the green into the grass. Stopped about three or four inches off the green, dead, pin-high. Couldn't have been 12 feet from the hole and I made that. I made the putts at 4 and 5 for pars which were both kind of round-savers early in the round. And I birdied 8, I believe. I think that was about six feet. A 3-wood and a sand wedge. Birdied 11. Driver and a wedge about eight -- six or eight feet, I think that's right. I don't remember the length of that one. It was pretty close. I thought I let two get away from me at 12; one at 12 and one at 14. 12, I drove the ball right down there about 30 yards from the green and then pitched it 20 feet short of the hole. You kind of feel like you ought to birdie that hole when you get in that position. And then 14, I just hit a terrible drive, and still had got it out where I had a sand wedge to the green and didn't hit a very good sand wedge shot. So, you know, you feel like you ought to birdie one of those two, if not both of them. Then I birdied 16. 3-wood, middle wedge, 52-degree wedge about eight feet. And I birdied 18 with two putts. Driver and 3-wood, just about 30 feet from the hole and 2-putted that. It was getting dark. Really, the last three holes, I know John was having some trouble seeing, and on the last hole I really had some trouble seeing. I couldn't see -- I couldn't see the breaks very well, and I couldn't tell whether the grass -- we were getting a little moisture on that or not. I would have liked to have taken a fling at that one for three, but I didn't have much feel there.

LEONARD THOMPSON: I moved to Ponte Vedra twice. In 1987 I moved to Ponte Vedra, and we came back to Myrtle Beach in 1990; and then we moved back to Ponte Vedra in '94. So, we were here two separate times -- actually, three separate times, because I also lived here at Bay Tree in 75, '75, 76. And we moved back here in '80, and stayed '80 -- it was kind of three different times.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Bay Tree, when I was early on in the Tour and Crestwick (ph) the last four weeks I was here. I never had affiliations with Dunes. I was a member at The Dunes Club. I paid dues and bought a share of stock just like everybody else.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Winning anywhere is in front of all of your friends and family, because of the media; it's on TV every week. But it would be special to win here. Yeah, it would. I lived here a long time. I have a lot of friends here, and this is one of our bigger tournaments, if not the biggest. Is this the biggest one we play?

LEONARD THOMPSON: Well, it would probably be the biggest if you took the guarantees out of the Senior Open. Well, yeah, to answer your question, yeah, it is something that I have pointed toward. I think every -- I said this at Baltimore: One of the biggest mistakes I made in my career on the regular tour is I didn't point enough at major championships and tournaments like this. They didn't really mean that much to me, because early on, I felt like the USGA really didn't treat us very well at the Open, and that -- you know, I took offense to that. And later on, I figured out that was all part of the deal. That's just what you have to do to win a U.S. Open. You have to deal with all of it and all of it is part of the test. I regret that. I regret not figuring that out before I was 50 years old.

LEONARD THOMPSON: I never came to The Dunes Club with two weeks off before a tournament. I was always real tired when I got there, having played six or seven weeks in a row, at least. I think I've just given myself a better chance to play well here. And the ground is harder here than it was at The Dunes Club; so the course isn't playing quite as long. It isn't playing quite as long for everybody. I would have liked to have played at The Dunes Club with a two-week break before it, just to see what would happen. As much as I knew that golf course, as much as I played it, but I never really went there with what I thought, a good frame of mind or well rested and really ready to go for a tournament like this. I'm in a good frame of mind. This is where you want to be. You want to have the lead. I'd like to have the lead after every round. Every time, if I've got the lead, I've got one mistake that I can make that somebody else can't make. That's the idea; get as far ahead as you can get and keep going.

LEONARD THOMPSON: I think all of us are learning more about the course, because none of us had played it until this week. So, that probably translates into everybody gaining a little more confidence as the week goes along. We become more familiar with what you can do and what you can't do, where you want to go, where you don't want to go.

LEONARD THOMPSON: He's only won, what, 12 majors, $42 million? Why would he have an advantage? How many did he win, 36 tournaments? 35, 36? He's one of the best players ever. But I've said this a lot of times: I don't care. You're going to win a tournament, why not win when the best there are? I wish that Palmer and Snead and Nelson and all of them, if you're going to win, you know, try to beat the best. And the best are here. And he is one of the best, one of the best who has ever been.

LEONARD THOMPSON: Thank you.