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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 26, 2005

Mike Reid

KETTERING, OHIO

RAND JERRIS: It's our pleasure to welcome Mike Reid to the interview area this afternoon. Mike is playing in his second United States Senior Open this year.

Mike, you've been known throughout your career as a very accurate striker of the golf ball. If you could start us off by talking a little bit about this particular golf course and what the challenges will be off the tee this week.

MIKE REID: This golf course is a very stern but very fair golf course. I'm very impressed with it. The condition is just superb. I think it's everything that any of us could want as far as a thorough test of golf.

I think with regard to driving in particular, I think there's a lot of balance on this golf course because it's not a one dimensional course. The greens are challenging, the approach shots coming from some occasionally awkward lies. That's what I mean by a "very thorough test". Every part of the game is going to be examined this week, and I'm looking forward to it.

I'm sure the USGA is happy with it. I haven't heard any players complain about it. It's just a very thorough, very fair golf course.

RAND JERRIS: Tom Watson was in here earlier and he was talking about how unusual the greens were. He commented that he had never seen greens quite like this before. Could you talk about your impression of the greens and what role putting will play in the championship this week.

MIKE REID: My opinion of the greens, I felt like each green had sort of a personality all its own. There are some golf courses where you kind of get the book on them after five or six holes, and that's what you're going to see the rest of the day. But you can't do that on this golf course because each green has just got its own personality.

As I got towards the back nine today, I found myself feeling a little anxious thinking, "boy, I wish I had about 20 more practice rounds." But it's that kind of a course. You've really, I think, got to be a keen study of things early in the week to figure out how you want to approach and attack it, depending on what opportunities you have.

Q. One of the things that Tom was talking about was that some of the greens are very large, but there's not very many pin positions on them, and it's a green within a green, and he even compared it to Augusta National, in that the greens there are the same way. What you see is very large but what you can play is much smaller than that.

MIKE REID: Yeah, that's a very that statement says a lot really there. The greens, the approaches into them, give you a lot of interesting looks, but the actual playable, where the pin placements are going to be, I think that's a very good statement.

RAND JERRIS: You had some real success earlier this year when it sort of came together for you at Laurel Valley. Has your play continued at that level since then?

MIKE REID: I had a good stretch there for about a month, and then it tailed off a bit. I think I played six out of seven weeks and the last two weeks weren't very good. So I'm kind of glad to have had the last two weeks at home. I'm feeling a little bit more rested, more ready maybe.

Q. Can you reach the three par 5s or any of the three?

MIKE REID: I reached one today, No. 6. But I didn't reach the others.

Q. Will that put you at a disadvantage? I've been hearing a lot of golfers say they can reach the par 5s.

MIKE REID: Oh, you know, you've got to play them all. You've got to play with what you have. You know, I don't see it necessarily as a disadvantage. I think I just have to look at the course in terms of, if I can set up enough opportunities to score and just play carefully on the holes that are going to play pretty tough, that's sort of the way course management I think everybody has to look at their strengths and their weaknesses and go about crafting a strategy that's going to work. But I don't ever see it as a disadvantage.

Q. Overall does the course set up well for you, and do you think you can play this course well?

MIKE REID: I like the course. Yeah, I think I can play it well. I just feel like my game is a little rusty after two weeks off. I practiced the first week at home a bit, and last week I was at scout camp with my 11 year old. I love scout camp, but I don't know if it did worlds of good for my golf game, but it was sure fun.

Q. Did you sleep on a cot?

MIKE REID: My wife had bought a cot, but I've always been I want to be on the ground with my buddy. We found a site that was fairly soft. It was sort, near a river a little bit and the ground was a little softer, so we did fine. It was on a little angle, though, and his mat is one of those you can kind of inflate a little bit but it's sort of slippery, and about three times a night because our tent was tilted, I had to drag him up, about three times a night, but other than that, we did pretty good.

He made three merit badges, and their troop won the Spirit Stick, and also they won the mountain man relay. Ten guys out of the troop participate in sort of a relay around the area, and I'm really we had a great week.

Q. What state was that in?

MIKE REID: Utah. We were up at that's why it's such a shock to me, because I spent five days at 10,000 feet last week, and it was down in the 40s at night, and it would get up to the 70s in the day. I'm thinking, you know, Dayton, Ohio, summer, what could be better? I'm training at altitude, so I'm out there running every day and getting this high altitude air, drinking lots of water because you can get dehydrated pretty easily there. I'm thinking, I'm feeling good, and I get here, and man, this golf course today and this humidity, I don't know if I'd trade humidity for altitude, but geez, it wore me out pretty good.

RAND JERRIS: Do you have a regular exercise routine? Do you alter that at all when you're preparing for a championship that's more significant like this one?

MIKE REID: I don't know how regular it is. It's just common sense. At times of the season I'll do more than other times, but I'm just more of a common sense kind of just see how I feel.

Q. The folks, there were 25 that played in the Senior British. When you don't play, do you pay attention to what they do and what's going on? And two, you can only imagine with the extra travel, there are about half of them that still aren't here, you've got to say, you like your advantage just from the standpoint of jet lag and travel and the humidity that you just talked about?

MIKE REID: Yeah, I do watch it. It was great to see Tom win. I'm a big Tom Watson fan, and it was great to see him win a tournament. He's played well this year at times, and gosh, I watch it while I'm home as much as I can. You know, I came from the British Senior last year to Belle Rive, and I think after a day or two, you know, I don't think much needs to be made of that. These fellows have done this before, and as a matter of fact it may, in fact, help them because I guess yesterday was hotter than today, and today isn't any picnic, so maybe one look at the course and they'll be good to go. I'll be worrying about it the next couple of days, and they're just worried about trying to get here.

Q. Just curious to know your thoughts, how hard is it to win a major championship on the Champions Tour?

MIKE REID: You know, the equation, I think, for winning tournaments doesn't change. It's just, you've got to execute a lot of shots well, you've got to be able to map out how you're going to play the golf course as far as your course management and that, and then you've got to be very patient, but I think in the major tournaments more so. There's a lot more the examination is tilted a little bit more in patience than it is the others. So I think from that standpoint, that's a little bit tougher. And it takes a little bit of luck.

To be quite honest with you, you can do an awful lot to set up the opportunity and create the situation and that, and then it comes down to a bounce or a roll or a putt that lips in instead of lips out. So I think that the difficult part of it is creating that chance, and that to me is the genius of Jack Nicklaus' career. It isn't that he won the majors that he won, but what is it, 41 times finishing 2nd? That's the difficulty of it, to play well enough to create that many opportunities.

Q. Your personality, you're the most undeterminable golfer on the golf tour; nothing upsets you. You're very calm. Playing a course like this, does that calm demeanor, your perspective on things, help you?

MIKE REID: I'd like to think it does, but more to your point, I think you just have to play and be the way you are. In other words, even if I really wanted to, I couldn't go out and play like a course Lanny Wadkins. My blood pressure goes up, my breathing gets shorter. If I go for a pin in a rowboat like he would. I try to be the same way in life. I try not to go over the speed limit and stuff. You get the feeling if you are like Lanny, you swing kind of fast and you play fast and play aggressive. He's the same way on the course as he is off the course, and that's to me what you've got to be like. I'm pretty much the way I am. I'll try to compute a slower way to get to the golf course. That's just the way I am, a little bit more deliberate, try not to have too many highs and too many lows.

Still, inside, it's a little bit different than appearances, and I think nobody said it better than Bobby Jones when he said that golf is played with the outward appearance of great dignity, but inwardly it's a game of passion, either the kind that burns in the open that is called temper or the kind of sears the soul, burns within and sears the soul. I'm kind of the latter. I still burn a lot but I don't show it. You have to, I think, have to have a lot of passion to play golf and to enjoy it and to appreciate the challenge of being able to play tournament golf, and so some of us just disguise it a little bit better.

RAND JERRIS: Well, Mike, thanks very much for joining us this afternoon. We wish you luck this week.

MIKE REID: Thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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