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KITCHENAID SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 25, 2017

Lee Janzen

Washington, D.C.

JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon, everybody, welcome back to the 78th KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship. Happy to be joined by two-time defending or two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen. Lee fired a 5-under 67, five birdies, no bogeys. Lee, looking at the scorecard it looks like a good number of birdies as you were about to make the turn. Kind of got it going there for a little bit, didn't you.

LEE JANZEN: Yes, the pro-am and then in my practice round yesterday I birdied the first three holes, not all of them each day, but I made birdies early on and I thought the golf course got a little harder after the first few holes. So I was kicking myself that I didn't make a birdie on any of the first three holes and I thought with these soft conditions, that there was going to be a lot of good scores. Ball in hand, tees were up on a lot of holes, fairways are going to be easier to hit because they're wet, greens are going to be softer. So I knew that I needed to play a little bit better than the first three holes. It wasn't like I played the first three holes terrible, but I knew that I needed to get a mindset I needed to be under par.

JOHN DEVER: When you were young you actually lived in the area a little, close by, not.

LEE JANZEN: Not too far.

JOHN DEVER: Baltimore. Is it fun to be back here? Does it bring back any memories?

LEE JANZEN: Oh, yes. Of course when you're in grade school in this area there's field trips to Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, there's so many sites to see from the history of the country. So every time I came back for the Kemper and then the AT&T and whatever they call it now, all the years, I always looked forward to being in this area.

JOHN DEVER: Questions?

Q. You mentioned the soft conditions. Are you surprised that 5-under is at or near the lead? Did you think it was going to be deeper than that?
LEE JANZEN: Well I got to 5-under through 10 and I had pretty good looks the rest of the way in and just didn't quite get any of them in. I think there's a 6-under par leading, but I would not be surprised to see an 8- or 9-under, especially with the light winds and soft conditions. Speed of the greens are good, so I think it's all set up to be aggressive and make birdies.

Q. As the course drys out later in the week, is that, do you expect that to come back a fair amount?
LEE JANZEN: It could very well. It's going to take a lot to dry out with all the rain. I guess there's more rain in the forecast today, but the tees, the tees were up quite a bit. I don't see them playing shorter than what we have already played it today. I see it getting longer and longer, which will make it play a lot tougher as the week goes on. So, I don't know what it will take. If the wind picks up at all, which I guess tomorrow it should be windier, that is going to have a big affect on it. Because the rough is pretty good around the greens. So hitting the green as always is always better than not hitting the green but some weeks it's pretty easy to get up-and-down and other weeks it's not. And this week I would say that the rough is pretty difficult.

Q. When you were playing and kind of in the latter part of your career you look up and you would see Tiger on the leaderboard and everybody kind of went, "uh oh," do you have that sense when you look up on the leaderboard and see Bernhard and say, "oh, well there he is"?
LEE JANZEN: The way he played -- I didn't even realize how good he was playing last week and first time I saw a leaderboard Sunday was 17 and he had a four-shot lead and I was like, what happened? Because I thought that Fred Funk and Scott Parel were leading. I didn't seen see -- I guess I didn't look down far enough -- but both of them said that he just knocked the flag down basically every hole and putted good and played great. I guess when you're playing like that it shouldn't be a surprise. Yeah, when Tiger was at his, playing his best, he didn't even have to be in the lead after the first day, we knew we were in trouble. And then there's Langer again today. I think it's more of a fair fight against Bernhard than it was Tiger though.

Q. With so many players coming here for the first time how does that, on top of the conditions, affect the degree of difficulty for this tournament?
LEE JANZEN: Well, we have to learn courses all the time. It is easier going to a course you're familiar with, but there's a handful of courses every year that we're playing for the first time. So we can figure that out. We look around and map out the greens on where we think the pins might be and we get pretty close. It's just a matter of preparing, everybody prepares a little bit differently, but prepare and -- predict, prepare, and execute.

Q. What were your impressions of this golf course the first time or two you saw it this week?
LEE JANZEN: Oh, well I tried Googling it to see the map of the course. You can go on the, I guess the web site for the tournament, but it still showed the holes, it was more of a graphic than the actual holes and it had all the trees on it still and I knew that the trees had been taken down. So it didn't really give a great perfect example of when you're looking out there. When you have trees you have sometimes it frames the hole differently than when there's no trees at all and you have to pick out something different to aim at. So that was interesting getting used to that. It had such a British Open feel Tuesday morning, because it was cool, gray, and a little misty and there was no trees and you're near the water. Obviously it's not the British Open. But I like the feel of the golf course. I think this is a very good test for us, I can see them having other events here Regular Tour events. There's plenty of length, plenty of challenge.

JOHN DEVER: All right. Thank you for your time and see you soon.

LEE JANZEN: Beautiful. Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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