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U.S. SENIOR OPEN

August 11, 2016

Joey Sindelar

Columbus, Ohio

JOEY SINDELAR: I'll tell you one thing. It's fun to be speaking to you, not just as a 35 year ago Buckeye, but to actually have had a good round. So what the heck?

Very fun. As you saw by the scoreboard, the course won versus the field. In a very fairway, it's an awesome, awesome golf course. You know, you can hold it together in spurts and five or six holes at a time. But all of a sudden, you play that seventh hole or hit that one shot, and you're looking around going, okay, let's minimize the damage.

I don't know what I had in birdies today, maybe four or five. It's going to be hard to do eight or nine unless the rain comes and the greens are for more accessible. The course -- it's not like they gave us all of everything today. It was set up beautifully for distance and for decision making versus the wind. You know, it's just not a golf course you're going to make -- somebody might make -- how many did Vijay have today, birdies? So he had four and zero -- five and one. That's about all that's out there.

I'm very happy. It was a little ugly coming in for me, but, again, when the whole day is full of shots that matter, that's what the U.S. Open does. Everything matters, you know. There's no messing around. There's no 50-yard mistakes, 50 yards offline stuff. If you do something wrong, you're going to pay the penalty.

So an enjoyable day for me out there, and of course, a great pleasure to be with John and Rod.

Q. You made, it seemed like, several 8, 10, 12-footers to save either par or -- at least what I saw of your round.
JOEY SINDELAR: Yes, if you saw the end of the round, that's what you saw. 16, I missed the fairway, so that set that up. 17, you're not even aiming at the green hardly. You're just trying to use the same golf ball until it goes in the cup on 17. So that's what those two holes are about.

And then on 16, at the top of my backswing, I totally lost my grip and hit the merchandise tent. So I was just, you know, again, trying to play and not compound the error

The greens are good enough -- that's what's interesting here, even though I just finished saying there won't be a ton of birdies. The greens are good enough to make putts all day long. They're not at that scary speed yet. They're very, very true. So you can make putts. You've just got to not magnify the errors. You're going to do some things wrong, but just don't multiply it.

Q. But you're in the fight?
JOEY SINDELAR: In the fight so far. Yes, thank you.

Q. Talking about the experience, just the three of you being together, I know you've talked about it the last couple of days, but I hear people yelling, O-H. I hear people yelling, go Bucks. What was it like to go through the day and have that kind of support and get to be together? What will you take away from that?
JOEY SINDELAR: First of all, being with John and Rod today, and, of course, Brian Mogg yesterday, those were just memories flashing through the brain all day, and things I kept wanting to tell son Jamie, who's caddying for me, and remind me of, oh, yes, we did this and did that, all those joyful things.

Then we stood on the 1st tee this morning, and that awesome, awesome crowd was there, and they stayed with us for the better part of the front nine until we scared them off with wayward shots. It was just great. But this town is that. They love their sports teams. They've forever been in the corner of the three of us, and it's just awesome, awesome stuff.

Couldn't have been better. We've looked forward to this ever since we've known for the couple or handful of years we've known we were coming here. It's everything we hoped it would be.

Q. The broadcast was saying this is your first sub-70 U.S. Senior Open round since 2012. What do you feel on a personal accomplishment this round might mean for you moving forward?
JOEY SINDELAR: That's interesting to know. I don't know those things. These are always fun stats we learn in these conferences.

That's great news for me because I had back surgery in the fall of '12, and in the early winter of '13 when I came back at the second turn, the exact same pain came back, and both my doctors said, probably not going to be playing again. So I had to change everything, and it took -- it was a year -- it was almost a year before I even felt like I could -- it was at least seven months before I could even feel like I could come on a golf course.

And then I had to make speed a different way and learn how to hit it straight a different way, and it's been the most fun thing I've ever done. So to know that and to experience what I did out there -- you know, I don't hit it as far as I used to, and I don't know if it's because of the new swing or weight loss or age or all three, but it's now -- I'm starting to be on -- I'm probably in the 70th percentile for distance. But luckily, on the accuracy side, I'm up there.

And I'm learning how to hit the harder shots, the more difficult shots better, and, of course, that's what you need on a week like this. That's actually a -- that's not the end of misery for me. That's the end of a long climb that's been a lot of fun for me. So I'm happy to know that.

Thank you all. Hope we get to do it again this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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