U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 28, 2001

Gil Morgan

GIL MORGAN: Well, thanks, Tom. I think it was pretty tough out there, especially the short pins like you're talking about. Some of the holes, if you landed it short, it stopped. And so, because of the upslopes, a lot of times it was difficult to hit the ball, to run up those slopes. And then if you landed on the green it released on back. I think the pins were pretty tough. Plus, the wind swirling around a little bit made it difficult to get the ball the right distance. The Tom Kite on the last hole, we were all hitting 9-irons in there, but if you miss on the front, on the short side in the rough, then you've got a lot of trouble.

GIL MORGAN: I didn't drive it very well. I think I was a little tentative in the Open here. I didn't drive it quite as well. I had more shots out of the rough than I wanted, at least for any round in this tournament. But I'd say I salvaged a couple of them and made some bogeys out of some of them.

GIL MORGAN: In some respects, like a couple of holes I felt like I missed a couple of opportunities. And I made a couple where I shouldn't have, so it probably balanced out today.

GIL MORGAN: I thought the golf course, just looking at it the little that I did, the rough is so soft that the ball goes right to the bottom almost every time. It's very difficult to make that come out, especially on the longer holes. With the pin placements, I thought it was very difficult to get the ball really close to the pin. Even if you did, you never had it in the right spot sometimes. Just the way the greens were undulated, you had some pretty tough pins out there today.

GIL MORGAN: I can't think of any offhand. I was thinking about that earlier, that there's just one guy under par, kind of unusual, like you say. It seems like maybe somewhere back there, there might have been something that was close to that, but I can't recall what it was.

GIL MORGAN: You expect it to be tough. I just didn't play as well as I'd like today. As far as hitting the ball off the tee. Other than that I played pretty good. The greens are a little bit crusty in the afternoon, that may be afternoon timing. Other than that it was pretty straightforward.

GIL MORGAN: I hope I drive it a little better tomorrow. Maybe I will. You never know. I was a little tentative at times. I think the wind, left-to-right, right-to-left, that type of deal, it's hard to get a feel for it on the tee sometimes. I didn't hit the ball as solidly as I like off the tee, too. Both of those combined made it tough for me.

GIL MORGAN: I Was pretty fortunate there. I missed the fairway. I tried to hit a 6-iron. I ran it short, ran it right by the pin and ran over the green. I was about three feet over the green. I just chipped it. It was going too fast really. It hit the pin and just dropped. It was pretty fortunate, really. I would probably have been 8, 10 feet by really is what it looked like to me.

GIL MORGAN: Okay.