	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

THE 146TH OPEN

July 20, 2017

Stuart Manley

Southport, England

STUART MOFFAT: It's my pleasure to welcome Stuart Manley, the early clubhouse leader, to the interview room.

Stuart, well done on your round today.

STUART MANLEY: Thank you.

STUART MOFFAT: Can you talk us through how important it is to get an early start in The Open and make a good first round score.

STUART MANLEY: Yeah, obviously very early start, the conditions were pretty bad on that first hole, you know. Very nervous on the tee. But luckily I made contact and went forward. I stayed inbounds, so that was nice. But made bogey.

And after that I kind of settled my round a little bit, pretty steady. And played quite nicely and obviously finished it off in a nice fashion.

Q. There have been a lot of high numbers already on 6. How did you birdie it? And walking off that, you must have felt really good.
STUART MANLEY: Yeah, my caddie wanted me to hit 3-iron off the tee and keep it short of the bunker on the right, but I thought it was going to be too far in for the second shot. So I took a risk and hit the 3-wood, and hit it past that bunker, and just missed the far bunker in the distance. That left me like 215 in. Hit the rescue as good as I could have really - it was into the wind off the right. I hit it to 25, 30 feet past and holed it coming down the slope.

Q. Could you take us through your career at west Florida, how you ended up there?
STUART MANLEY: There wasn't many people actually from the UK going to America at that time. Obviously it was about 20 years ago -- more than that, actually. And I had a couple of offers. And Florida sounded and looked quite appealing; you know the sun, I thought it must be good there. I'd never been on a plane before. So I jumped on a plane, went there. The head coach, Steve Fell, recruited me, and absolutely loved it. I went there as a pretty, you know, I was an International boy golfer but I wasn't very good, and it improved my game massively. I came back quite accomplished. I had a decent college career, and then played amateur golf a couple of seasons, played very well as an amateur and then turned pro.

Q. Could you please talk a little bit about how you played the course today.
STUART MANLEY: I kind of didn't take so many risks. I tried plotting my way around. I didn't feel like I had my game with me today. I didn't warm up too well. I had too many layers. Waterproof from the rain. I didn't get any rhythm on the range. Although yesterday was fantastic. I thought the warmup would have gone better this morning, but it didn't. So I thought, okay, this is the game I've got. I'm just going to have to plot my way around, and it seemed to work. I took out a lot of the fairway bunkers, and I kind of aimed at the front edge of the green every time, and just tried to making par every hole, really. And then capped it off with a great finish to make the score a little bit better.

Q. You said you had a wee bit touch of the flu or something this week. Has it got to the point where it was a struggle getting up and about this morning?
STUART MANLEY: No, it was really bad Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. It's got better as the week's gone on, to be honest. As you can probably tell, I'm a bit nosey. But my legs feel heavy. I think it's because of the cold or whatever I've had. I'm sure as the days go on, more adrenaline and the cold is easing off, to be fair.

Q. You played football growing up. Do you ever still kind of have dreams or anything when you watch games on TV thinking that, "I could be out there"?
STUART MANLEY: Not really. Some people say, I should have stayed -- gone professional or whatever, but I deep down didn't believe I was good enough. Nowhere near good enough. And I didn't really enjoy it; I thought it was too much pressure. And I loved golf so much that I thought every time a game was canceled, I'd be like, great, I can go practice, play golf with my friends. I loved golf. I didn't really like football. It just got too pressurized, you know? The enjoyment came out of. I think I was pushed into it too much.

But I still follow football. I still to my local team. I see those guys running out on the pitch in front of a full stadium. I think that is pretty special, but I wouldn't swap it for what I'm doing now.

Q. Has that enjoyment of golf been the same?
STUART MANLEY: Yeah, I love it. I love it more than ever.

Q. Any expectations you'd be sitting in this chair today? And any hopes that you'll be sitting in this tomorrow?
STUART MANLEY: No, I didn't dream of it. I didn't think about it. I just thought post a decent score, give myself tomorrow for making the cut and have a good weekend. I didn't really dream I'd be sitting here and being the leader after round one, so far anyway.

Q. Obviously you had a really early start. Can you explain what your routine was, what time you woke up, what time you got here, what did you do, obviously it's kind of a challenge to do things when you're getting out on the golf course before 7:00.
STUART MANLEY: I tried to go to bed early last night, but I was maybe too excited. I didn't get to sleep until quite late, then. I have a baby, who is six months old. He woke up at 3:00. He needed his tummy to be put back in. But I woke up at four something, and I just couldn't sleep. I was looking at the clock, as you do. I think I'll sleep a lot better tonight. I'm really pretty tired.

But yeah, I got here an hour, hour and 15 minutes before my tee time. Had some food, a little putting, hit balls for almost an hour and off I went.

Q. Two things: One, could you say how many drivers you hit today?
STUART MANLEY: It wasn't many. I'm pretty bad at going back through the round. I don't even know half the holes how I played them, to be honest.

Q. I'll go with "not many". I don't know if this is because of the cold, but you seem like it -- it doesn't seem like a person who is leading The Open right now.
STUART MANLEY: No, I don't think it's sunk in. It probably will -- I think I've got quite a bit of crowd of family and friends waiting for me there, so I think it will sink in. Right now I'm tired. Kind of just want some food. I just want to get back and chill out, you know.

Q. Just a quick one on the football: Did you play with any players as a kid we would know?
STUART MANLEY: Michael Owen, his position came up against my position, and Craig Bellamy a couple of times.

Q. Is that United?
STUART MANLEY: That actually was in Wales. It was like the county I played for. He played for like another Welsh county up in north Wales, I think it was Flintshire or something like that, and I was Mid Glamorgan. And it was the same with Craig Bellamy. I probably played against players that I didn't realise at the time because of trials. When I played for Swansea for a couple of seasons and Cardiff, I don't think there was any big names that made it to be honest.

Q. Which football team do you follow and what players are your favourite players?
STUART MANLEY: I don't really have many favourite players anymore. Cardiff City is the team. I've always had a soft spot for Everton for some reason. But the players I don't really care for much, it's more the team.

Q. Did you actually afford yourself the luxury of looking up at that leaderboard or did you try to keep away from it?
STUART MANLEY: No, I look at leaderboards; it doesn't bother me. I looked at them all day to see how the score is going. It sometimes makes you think, okay, par is a good score. If people were blitzing it, you think maybe I need to push on a little bit. When I saw the score was only around par or 1-under, 2-under, I was thinking okay, just get a round in and par will be decent.

Q. Was it surreal though?
STUART MANLEY: Not really. It happened so quick. I eagled 17, birdied 18. Didn't have much time to look at the leaderboards. It was only 20, 30 minutes and I finished. So it hasn't really sunk in, I don't think yet.

Q. You said you had to get up to put dummy in baby at 3:00 in the morning. Now that you're The Open leader, do you think your wife will allow you sleep tonight?
STUART MANLEY: I hope so. I had the earplugs in last night but it didn't work. She's pretty good, to be fair. She normally gets up. But I was awake, anyway. We were chatting at three in the morning. It won't be a problem, I don't know.

Q. If you go deep into the tournament will you think to perhaps taking to yourself another house to try to get a good night sleep?
STUART MANLEY: Possibly. I rented a big four-bedroom house today and my coach is is leaving today, so his bed is available, so I might just jumped in there.

Q. Do you remember how you got on marking Craig Bellamy and Michael Owen?
STUART MANLEY: I shouldn't really say it, but he was a bit of a horrible git.

Q. Who?
STUART MANLEY: Bellamy. He was nasty. He was a horrible little... I was centre half, and he was a striker, I gave him a few kicks and he wasn't happy. He was just like that all the time.

Michael, I don't remember very much about. I've got the program in the house. We were both very young.

Q. Secondly, this has been your first Open, what would previous Open championships have held for you, what would you be doing normally?
STUART MANLEY: It depends, if I'm playing the European Tour, it's a week off. If I'm playing the Challenge Tour, I'm off wherever that takes me. But this is one tournament I watch. I like watching the Masters and I like watching this. These are the two tournaments I definitely like to tune in.

Q. You said you felt more pressure on football, which is why you gravitated toward golf. I think some people might think you would feel less because golf you're just so isolated, it's such an individual sport. Why was it different for you?
STUART MANLEY: Yeah, I know what you mean. Obviously football you can kind of hide, can't you? You can kind of let the teammates bail you out little bit. But I don't know, I felt like I was playing for a contract, whereas this is in my own hands. If the scouts or the manager didn't like me, you know, I could have been kicked off or not offered a contract. I think in golf nobody can take away your scorecard. You sign for 68's, that's what you've done. It doesn't matter how you do it. So I think that's the reason -- it was in my own hands with golf.

Q. You talked about your coach. Can you talk a little bit about your team and then your dog?
STUART MANLEY: My golf team?

Q. Yes.
STUART MANLEY: Obviously I've got my coach with me. We kind of grew up together, actually. We were both amateur golfers, he was the best amateur in Wales in my age group. And we stayed in touch for years, you know. He's a great guy. I've got my manager with me. He's been here a week; we get on great. We all are staying in the same house. Obviously I've got my caddie with me, as well, and my family with me. The whole team is around me, my support team. And I've got some members of the rest of my family up from my golf club, so it's a good week.

Q. The coach's name?
STUART MANLEY: Neil Matthews.

Q. How about your dog?
STUART MANLEY: Griff. I'm gutted I didn't bring him this week, to be fair. I wanted to take him to Scotland because I rented a house the last couple of weeks and the house is dog friendly. He gets a bit restless driving six or seven hours. He's on holiday, down in west Wales at the moment. It's a shame. I've got three weeks off in a couple weeks' time, and that would be nice.

Q. What breed is he?
STUART MANLEY: Schnauzer.

Q. You've been on the circuit since '05, what's more or less --
STUART MANLEY: '04.

Q. What's in the way of more moments or more days like this, if you had to analyse yourself golf-wise?
STUART MANLEY: I think obviously there will be more days. I think I've analysed back from 2004, 2003 when I turned pro, I've improved I think every year. I still feel like every year I'm making gains. Sometimes you question yourself when you've got a couple of poor years. And then people ask you, do you think you should continue? But since I've met Neil, my new coach now, I've really felt like my golf game is getting better and better.

I still love the travel. I love everything about it. Obviously a lot of my friends that I started with have fallen by the wayside. They've had families and they've not loved it as much as me. I'm lucky, my appetite for the game is still there. I want to learn and improve, and keep playing until 60 perhaps. So I think with golf the longevity is there, isn't it?

STUART MOFFAT: Everyone, thanks for joining us, and thanks, Stuart again, for joining us.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297