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U.S. SENIOR WOMEN'S OPENMay 17, 2019Sally AustinSouthern Pines, North Carolina Q. Looks like you're going to make the cut on your home course. How sweet is that? SALLY AUSTIN: It is really sweet, but I was stumbling out there. Talk about performance anxiety, I certainly had it. But if the cut holds where it is, I should make it, and I'm thrilled. Q. Did you grow up on this course? SALLY AUSTIN: I did, but it's a lot different than what I grew up on. Q. How special was that relationship with Ms. Bell? SALLY AUSTIN: Oh, my gosh, it's hard to describe that relationship. She was -- she taught me -- was one of my teachers. She was a mentor. She mentored me in all kinds of ways, as a player, as a teacher of the game, as a coach. She and Mr. Bell just opened their doors to me, and many other young golfers, too. They were all about helping young golfers, and I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of that generosity. Q. And it led you to UNC. You were the first one to open the golf team there -- SALLY AUSTIN: Yeah, Mindy Moore and I started the golf team at UNC I think in the fall of '73 or spring of '74, I can't remember which. It was our freshman year, so Mindy and I started it, and Ms. Bell was thrilled about that, too, because she was a Carolina fan. And then her daughter Bonnie transferred from Rollins to UNC, and my senior year I played with her. Q. What was it like back in those days? You started the golf team. SALLY AUSTIN: We started the golf team. We were pitiful but we started. There were four or five of us, and this isn't really bragging, but I think I was the only one that broke 100 in the first tournament, and I shot 97. But from there, my senior year there were two -- I think two players on scholarship, Stephanie Kornegay and Susan Carey. And Mindy went on to play on Tour longer than I did and became president of the LPGA and then went to work for the LPGA. But we started -- our beginnings were -- if we got a sleeve of balls for the tournament, that was great, and we rode to tournaments in a leaky van, and I said this on the last interview, that we slept five in a room. We just put a rollaway between the two beds and slept five across. I can't imagine any of my players ever doing that, much less five people sharing a bathroom. That they would not have done. But we had the best time. We had great stories to tell. But that's where it started, and by our senior year, we qualified for Nationals in Hawai'i. So we were probably a top 20, 25 team. I can't remember. Q. And times got better when you became coach. SALLY AUSTIN: Yes, so our first coach was Jean Eller who started the team, she was a PE teacher, and then we had Dr. Pam Robinson, who had played organized basketball. She played on the basketball team at Ohio State, so she kind of knew what was going on with sports, and then she was actually hired by the University to do research. They wouldn't let her keep coaching. So we got Coach Gunnells who coached the cheerleaders, and she became our coach because she played golf and knew about golf, and she was there for 19 years and did a great job and built the team and created our scheduling, cooked for us. She did all kinds of stuff for us. Q. And finally, just one more question, what do you look forward to this weekend? SALLY AUSTIN: I hope I am not as -- my anxiety subsides now that I made the cut. I'm certainly not going to be able to win. But I'd like to perform well on this course, and that's my goal, to just go out there and see if I can put a good round or two together, play as well as I can. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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