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U.S. SENIOR WOMEN'S OPEN

July 12, 2018

Elaine Crosby

Chicago, Illinois

THE MODERATOR: We are here with Elaine Crosby, who shot a 3-under 70 today in the first round of the 2018 U.S. Senior Women's Open Championship. Elaine, great day out there. Just give us some thoughts on your round.

ELAINE CROSBY: Well, it wasn't -- I played a few practice rounds, of course, and you just don't know until you get out there how it's going to go. I saw the scores were pretty high this morning, and I thought, uh-oh. I don't know. I just managed it well. My caddie and I were very careful on the yardages and where we put the ball on the green if possible, and I've just been hitting it well, so that helped, and I rolled it really well today. All in all, I mean, I didn't have -- I only had one bogey, and it was just a bad club. We weren't being timed but we were behind and told we were behind, and I just kind of rushed, and the pin was only -- there was only five behind the pin, and I caught a flier. That was my only bogey today.

THE MODERATOR: You were 3-under on your first nine, the back nine here at Chicago, with back-to-back birdies on 12 and 13. To get off to that kind of start, did that kind of put you in the right place.

ELAINE CROSBY: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we started out on 10, and I hit it above, up on the next tier above it, so there was no holding it, but I was able to manage about a five-footer that went past the hole, so that kind of got me started rolling the ball good to see that go in the hole right off the bat.

Q. And then talk about the experience here this week playing in an inaugural championship like this.
ELAINE CROSBY: Oh, it's awesome. I was not exempt to play, so I qualified up at Conway Farms just north of here about an hour. I was kind of disappointed that I wasn't exempt, but then I think that made me work even harder to make sure I played well enough to get here because I think this is just -- you know, it's history for women's golf, and we've worked really hard. I've been involved with the Legends Tour a lot trying to help grow that, and I think this can really help. I'm starting to -- The Legends Tour is at 45 and I'm 60, so I'm starting to age even out of that, but I think this is just awesome, and they've treated us very well here, and what a great venue to come to for our inaugural.

Q. How much competitive golf have you played this year?
ELAINE CROSBY: This year I played -- we had a Legends tournament in Seattle. It was a two-day tournament. I played in that. And then because I qualified, I went ahead and -- every day I say I'm not going to play in the Michigan Open, and then I do it again, so I had three days of that. The second day I played with two women that play on the Cactus Tour. Between them, their ages did not equal my age, so it was very interesting. It's always an interesting time up there, when they hit it like 50 yards by me. So I had to play my own game, and I think that helps coming out here, too, because I'm not a long hitter necessarily. I'm certainly not hitting it with Trish Johnson.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the conditions and them being so firm and how that might change your strategy either off the tee or around the greens?
ELAINE CROSBY: Yeah, off the tee, there's a lot of times now we're -- it is getting very, very firm in the fairways, and so you have to -- you don't need to hit driver all the time. Me normally on a golf course, I can usually always hit driver, but I hit some -- on some of the par-5s, I just went ahead and hit a 5-hybrid and then another 5-hybrid, so I had a decent wedge into the green, and it seemed to work for me, because if you go for them -- I was watching players I was playing with, they would go for it, and then they'd end up in these weird bunkers or lies and all this, and I'm standing in the middle of the fairway with a sand wedge, so I just thought it was a better way to go, and it did work out for me that way.

Q. What do you think this championship will do -- what kind of impact will it have on the Legends Tour?
ELAINE CROSBY: Well, hopefully it'll gain some momentum. We had it going pretty good for a while, and then it kind of -- we've lost a lot of tournaments, so hopefully they'll see that, yes, we can play, and we are -- there's enough of us to create good tournaments. I've been running this Wendy's Charity Classic in Jackson for -- I think we're on our 19th year, and when I switched it over to the Legends, the amateurs were like so happy because they said they've always had such a great time with the Legends players. We may not have a lot of tournaments, but we need to have a lot of pro-ams because we're really good at it.

Q. And you have another day job, right?
ELAINE CROSBY: I do have a day job. I am the president of Lumen Christi Catholic School in Jackson, Michigan, so it's a full-time -- in the wintertime I don't go anywhere, I stay right in Jackson, and it's about a 50- or 60-hour a week job. I'm just the president, not the principal. So I'm the last -- like when the kids are bad, I can say, go tuck your shirt in, the principal is coming, but I'm like the last resort, so if they don't like the answer the principal gives, they sometimes show up in my office, and I just laugh at them and send them on their way.

Q. How much does that leave you for practice?
ELAINE CROSBY: Well, you know, in Michigan, once the weather breaks, it stays light until 10:00 at night almost, so I have plenty of time. I live three minutes from our country club, and it's just a nice range. The club is great. I can just jump on there. We have 27 holes. I go out and play quite a bit.

Q. I see that you've played in a number of Women's Opens in the past; did you ever play in an amateur USGA championship?
ELAINE CROSBY: I did. I started playing golf in college, so I was a tennis player, and so when I first got out of college, I did qualify to go to the U.S. Am, and I went out to Waverley in Portland, and I didn't make match play. That was the extent of my amateur career for the USGA.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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