U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 29, 2001

Gil Morgan

GIL MORGAN: So what are you guys up for?

GIL MORGAN: My round today? I think overall I was -- I played a lot more consistently than I did yesterday. Still had a couple foul balls from time to time, but ended up hitting spectators occasionally. But other than that it was okay, I guess. Maybe I played a little too conservative at times, but at the same time it's not a bad place to be conservative I think at that point in time. I think the conditions obviously are a lot better today, not as much wind. The greens are a little bit more receptive at times, I think. They're still pretty firm in places. They still were, I think, maybe a little moist. They might have been a little bit slower at times. Probably depending a little bit on where you put your ball. But overall I thought the course played pretty well, and I expect -- I think it's going to be easier for the afternoon guys today than it was for us yesterday with the wind and everything. Maybe they'll play a little bit better than we did in that respect.

GIL MORGAN: Yeah. I think this morning was a good time to really have an opportunity to shoot a low number. It's still pretty dependent on where you put the ball on the green. Tom made a -- he played really awful kind of on the back side and then he played really great on the front which was our back 9. He got his ball in a couple of places, and he got to look at a couple of our putts first inside us. But he played well and brought it back. I thought it was really pretty good for him to recover like that, because it looked like he was going south there for awhile. He's still a pretty competitive guy, so he kept struggling and going forward. All in all I think the fact that yesterday the wind seemed a lot more crucial than it was today early. It will probably be a little bit, like I said, easier for the afternoon group than it was for us from that standpoint. Kind of like you say, I kind of felt like I missed an opportunity today. I started out pretty good. I just couldn't seem to make it happen after that. And I made a couple of mistakes, hit a couple of errant drives, put myself kind of behind the 8-ball.

GIL MORGAN: I didn't really try to hit it a long ways all the time. I was more trying to keep the ball in play off the tee. I was just trying to -- I wasn't really getting the best drives I could on some of the holes. So I maybe had a little longer shots in there than I would have normally, but I didn't miss as many fairways as I did yesterday. It seemed like I missed a lot of fairways yesterday. I was pretty fortunate to get away with that at that point in time. With the pins, they've always had the pins both days pretty much in the corners. So they're not giving us any slack on the pins at this point in time. So you didn't have -- even if you get your ball on the green, 15-20 feet from the pin, you've got a lot of slope, mostly sidehill or over humps. I just thought it was hard to score. And I played somewhat more toward the center of the greens, so I didn't miss on the short side if I could help it. And therefore I had longer putts and just didn't really -- wasn't able to take advantage of getting close to the hole and having a good chance to make a putt.

GIL MORGAN: I didn't play last week, and I won the week before. How does that sound?

GIL MORGAN: It was a little tentative early. Another part of it is I just didn't want to push it too hard. I'd kind of like to finish the weekend at this point. I'm hoping it will still hang in there to that point at least. You never know.

GIL MORGAN: Have I had Lasix? No. I'm hyperoptic for one thing. It's mostly a myoptic procedure, nearsighted people. I'm farsighted. They don't have as much knowledge of doing it, for one thing. And it's a little different type of procedure. So I'm kind of holding off right now. Okay. Thank you, guys.