SENIOR TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

October 28, 2001

Bruce Lietzke

BRUCE LIETZKE: I thought our field staff did a really good job on golf course setup today. Obviously they had -- must have been -- of course we have our own weather guy that follows us. But this golf course could have just turned into a joke with, you know, funny pin placements, and maybe greens that dried out because that wind has really taken just about all the moisture out of there. Midway through the round I just kind of made a mental note that I really thought they did a great job on pin placements and I have been in tournaments like this that have gotten carried away. The Tour a lot of times and certainly a lot of major championships try to walk a fine line in setup and most of the time they -- a lot of times they fall over the wrong side of that line. Anyway today's conditions I thought -- it was a brutal golf course but I thought they did a real good job of setting up the golf course. So I have got no complaints there. I think my round pretty much got away from me in two categories today. I drove the ball poorly. I don't know what my stats are but I am going to guess I missed five or six fairways today. I haven't done that all week. I was playing out of the rough today that really made it double tough to be playing maybe hitting fliers out of the rough, and dealing with this wind and I missed a lot of greens because of those tee shots that weren't in the fairway and my chipping was not good today. I do know my stats for the last three days. I have hit like 94 percent of the greens. I haven't been having to chip to these greens and I did a little bit of extra chipping this morning before I teed off, thinking -- anticipating that there would be some missed green and some chipping. I had some chip shots today that should have been probably pretty close to routine up-and-down and I don't know if I got any of them up-and-down. I got one bunker shot up-and-down. But my chipping -- and I just wasn't chipping to three, four, five feet. I was chipping 8, 10, twelve feet past the hole. I wasn't able to make those. My disappointment really is not the conditions didn't catch me off guard. I just -- I hit it in the rough quite a few times today. Never did recover and the greens I missed, I very seldom ever got up-and-down. I had some downwind all day. I played great. I birdied all the par 5s. Had chances on eagles on those three downwind par 5s, and made a couple of birdies on some of the downwind holes. But the into-the-wind holes were pretty troublesome I am sure for everybody and the crosswind holes were tough for me with the driver today when they hadn't been earlier in the week.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I saw Gilder back off some putts. Without slowing up play you are looking for a little lull in the wind. A couple of times there were times I would have (inaudible) the ball if I would have continued to stroke. There were a couple of times when I was moving so much and I'd back off. Some of times I backed off I was just maybe hoping for maybe a little lull in the wind and wait about ten seconds; if it didn't come then you got to go ahead and pull the trigger. It's just a little bit of a liability. I was a little off balance today for sure. Like I said, I saw Gilder back off an awful lot. I think Kite was up ahead of me; I saw him miss a lot of putts. It was a tough day. I'd say that putter is just a slight liability. I am still a pretty big believer in it and days like this it's tougher, but I have had good putting days on days like this and I didn't have a real good one today.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I am not real happy about the way I played today. I am happy with the way I started my SENIOR TOUR career without a doubt. I will get over this pretty quick, but I had a real good feeling about this golf course ever since Wednesday when I set foot here. I love this golf course. I will do whatever it takes next year to come back here and play. This golf course still fits my eye and fits my game beautifully. Yeah, it's probably going to blow again next year and I hope I am here to go at it. I really love -- I got to tell you I love this tournament too. Had a real nice feel to it when I drove in here. I guess, I have been an Okey - I lived in Oklahoma for ten years so I am kind of familiar. My kids went to school here in Norman. I have got a pretty good feeling. I love this facility. That golf course, I absolutely love. I am going to do whatever it takes to get back here next year. And I have got to tell you I have got a little revenge on my mind. I am not happy with the way things turned out today. So I want to come back and do something about that.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I knew it was going to be a tough day. In my head I kind of went through the round ahead and figured out crosswind tee shots and downwind tee shots and easily potentially birdied holes. Like I said, I am counting all three of the par 5s that are downwind. No. 3 is dead into the wind. It's not a birdie hole. So I kind of came up with a game plan and tried to anticipate, like I say, certain drives and stuff like that, and I think my game plan was okay. I just didn't execute, especially the driver I am really disappointed with the way I hit the driver today. I have hit so many fairways the last three days, I guess I was thinking this was kind of an easy golf course. Like I said, it feels so good to me - most of these tee shots look so good to me, but a 25 mile an hour wind can throw some debris into your eyes. It didn't look quite so friendly today, but I love this golf course. I am going to be back. I am going to do try to finish off my tournament better next year if I make it back here.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I didn't play any practice here. I should have practiced. Dallas actually is a very windy city too. But I don't play when I am home there either. The only exposure I get to the wind is when I come to a tournament like this.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I put it in the right rough on 11 and just had a real bad lie; couldn't put it on the green. Hit a poor chip 15 feet past. Gilder drove it into a fairway bunker; had a real difficult second shot. Hit a great shot in there 10, twelve feet from the hole. He made a great birdie and I made a bad bogey. Only 353-yard hole. 12 with a real hard left-to-right wind. I didn't want to lose that drive to the right and I hit what I thought was a great drive. It just stayed to the left; ended up in the left rough. Came up short of that green, misjudged a flier lie there and couldn't 2-putt from about 75 or 80 feet. He hit a great iron shot in there. I think he was coming from the rough. He might have been coming from the rough on 12 and he makes I think a six- or eight-foot putt. That was really tough. That was four strokes that I gave up real quick. I still knew I had two eagle holes ahead, and I had a chance at eagle on both holes. Real good eagle putt on 14 that just died away from the hole right at the last second. I made an easy birdie. I had an eagle putt on 18. So it didn't stick the a knife in my heart losing four strokes but it certainly put me way behind and I wasn't able to recover sort of like Doug said, he couldn't recover from his Friday round and I didn't quite recover from those four strokes that I lost there.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Probably 20 feet.

THE WITNESS: Two and a half to three hours, very northeast corner of Oklahoma. On a lake called Grand lake (phonetic).

BRUCE LIETZKE: 16 into the wind another poor chip. I had a relatively easy chip except it was off a really hard fairway lie and I just caught it just a hair thin, hit it about six feet above the hole. I was trying to leave it below the hole. He makes about a good 10-footer. I missed a 6-, or 8-footer so lost a stroke there too. I kind of blame that on my chipping. I did hit a good drive and good 3-wood couldn't get there. That was a brutal -- tough hole. I don't know that anybody could have gotten there unless they ran -- maybe hit driver, driver, something like that. But the wind was just howling when we played that hole. That was another case where a chip cost me a stroke. I really felt like I should have gotten up-and-down really actually trying to chip in because I thought I could maybe make a two-shot swing on that hole. He had a tough downhill par-putt and I had a relatively easy into-the-wind chip shot and I just, real firm lie, I didn't quite slide my lob wedge underneath the ball.

BRUCE LIETZKE: 78 to 88.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I actually thought I hit a pretty good putt. I guess I misread some of it, broken off a lot. But I tried to hit the putt firm and I tried to take some of the break out. I missed -- and a lot of my putts today were dying at the hole and they broke away. I wasn't going to leave that putt short. I had left a couple of birdie putts short today, so I tried to take some of the break out of it and hit it firmer than I had been and it still broke a ton towards the creek. So I misread it, but I hit it -- I hit it on the line I wanted to, and I tried to straighten it out a little bit and by the time I looked up, the ball was lower than I had wanted it to be. It didn't have a good look to it with halfway there.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I wasn't -- in fact I wanted to back away from it because I realized I hadn't read it to start with, and I said, no, I am going to go ahead and just get on out of here. My mind was kind of jumbled there. I had really keyed up for that 18th hole and it worked hard on the driver and didn't hit the driver very good, but yeah, I just kind of get focused. As I was standing over that putt, I remember saying to myself I didn't really read this the way I like to stand behind and to the side. I decided to go ahead and hit it any way. I wasn't very focused.

BRUCE LIETZKE: About four feet probably.