GREATER GREENSBORO CHRYSLER CLASSIC

April 23, 1999

Dudley Hart

DUDLEY HART: That was pretty interesting putting my shoes on this morning. Everybody is talking in the locker room about how low guys are going in the morning. You try not to pay too much attention to that, because you know you've got to go out and play your own round and those guys are running away and you've got to make some birdies. Obviously, you can't play too conservative. The birdies were out there and, fortunately, the putter was rolling pretty well for me today, and I was able to put a good round out there. 10, par 5, I hit 3-wood down there. Just ran through the fairway, actually. Ended up being about as good a lie as you're going to get on that fairway. I hit a 4-iron up in the green-side bunker, hit it about six inches out of the trap; almost made it. Lipped out and made birdie there. 14, I hit a driver and sand wedge about 20 feet, and made that for birdie. 15, I hit driver in the left rough, laid it up, and hit sand wedge about four feet, and made it for birdie. No. 16, I hit a good drive down the middle, 9-iron about six feet past the hole, and made that for birdie. 2, I hit a drive in the right rough; laid it up and hit a 60-degree sand wedge about 15 feet past the hole, and made that for birdie. And No. 6, I hit a 2-iron off the tee into the fairway and hit a pitching wedge about five feet. Made that for birdie. No. 9, I hit a good drive. Hit a 4-iron and ran through just in back of the green in two, and chipped it down about a foot, and made that for birdie.

DUDLEY HART: I'd like to be closer to the lead, obviously. Everyone would always want to be in the lead. Like I said before, I'm just going to go out and play as solid a round as I can. Hopefully, I can get it in the fairway a few more times. I didn't hit too many fairways today, but I wasn't hitting real crooked. I was either running it through -- some of the fairways are so fast that a lot of the tee shots are going a lot further than you think, and you're trying to hit it into a hole that doglegs right or left, and the ball tends to scoot through. And in the past, it's been relatively soft and it won't run 30, 40 yards into the fairway. It makes it more difficult on some holes, because you can hit what you think is a pretty good shot and carry it over a trap that's on a dogleg and it can run through the fairway. Hopefully, I'll figure out how to get it in the fairway a little bit more and take some of that stress off myself.

DUDLEY HART: Yeah, it -- well it was, you know I think today was, wind-wise at least, was very similar to yesterday, because it wasn't blowing too bad early on in the round, but then it started to pick up a little bit as the round went on. It didn't howl or anything, but it blew pretty hard. When I hit a drive or a 4-iron over the green on No. 9 in two, you know, the fairways are playing hard, it's obviously downwind; which generally that hole usually doesn't play downwind, at least to my memory it doesn't.

DUDLEY HART: I can't be disappointed. I've played pretty solid. I don't really want to look at it that way. There's two more rounds of golf to be played. All I can do is the old boring cliche, but you've just got to worry about what you need to do out there and shoot as low as you can every day. Whatever it is, you have to accept it; and whatever anybody else does, you have to accept that, too, because you don't really have any control over that. If they go out and shoot 64 in the morning, good for them. I need to try to shoot 60 or something. But I just think you really need to -- especially when you're in there where you have a chance to win, you really, really can't be watching the scoreboard too much and watching other people, for that matter. Because sometimes you can lose your concentration at the wrong time and hit a bad shot that might really cost you.

DUDLEY HART: Before I played, I did. And to be honest, when I was out there, I didn't see it -- I don't know that I even looked at the scoreboard, because everybody that was at the top of the board I think played in the morning -- 16-under, 14-under. I knew somebody was at 16, and I figured that's all I needed to know. Nobody else was going to go past that.

DUDLEY HART: I would have bet every penny I had that nobody would shoot even 20-under. Because if my memory is right, 16-under for the whole tournament is -- is that the all-time record? I think last year I might -- my memory is not great, but I think I shot -- I want to say I shot maybe 3- or 4-under and finished in the Top-10, or 11th or something. I don't know if that's right. You guys might want to check. But, I mean, I finished 10th or 11th last year, and I don't think I was very many under par.

DUDLEY HART: I don't know that's a good thing to do, because when you set a target, you put a limit to it. It's a limitation, in a way. If you really get hot and say: I want to shoot 64, and all of a sudden you're 8-under through 12 holes, it's like: I'm already where I wanted to be. I try to go out there with the mindset of picking targets and trying to make birdie on every whole and try to be aggressive and give myself as many birdie putts as I can and stay positive and stay aggressive. Obviously, when the scores pretty low and you have to be pretty aggressive. You can't be playing safe or the world is going to pass by you.

DUDLEY HART: I would say first two rounds, this is probably one of my better starts to a tournament.

DUDLEY HART: Not really. I hope not. I hope I don't watch the scoreboard, and I shouldn't. Not on Saturday, especially. I think really the only time I tend to look at a scoreboard is if I'm in a relatively close to the lead on Sunday, the last few holes, if I really need to start pressing to make birdie do something, if I feel like I need to take some chances to get up there which I can possibly win. But other than maybe the back nine on Sunday, I wouldn't really -- ideally, I would not want myself looking at it too much. Not that I could look at it and go, if I look at it and say whatever, but when you're really scoreboard-watching and paying too much attention to it -- you don't know what he's doing the next hole. Anything can happen. Crazy things happen out here sometime. Not that you wish negative bad against anybody. But a perfect example, it was a good time for me to scoreboard watch -- but what year did Rocco win here? 95, '96? '94. Well, I was one-back on Sunday on 18, I drove it down the middle of the fairway and kind of had an in-between number, and I looked at the scoreboard right on 18 and I was one back of two guys and they were both behind me. 18 that year was a new green and there were a couple new greens and it was hard as a rock. It was dead downwind. The pin was right back where it always is; and so I figured I had to just fly it over the trap in order to get it close and get myself a birdie chance. And I hit it; bounced back into the trap about two year yards short of where I needed to fly it. I didn't get it up-and-down and made bogey. And I ended up missing the playoff by a shot because those guys backed up behind me. That was a good time to look at it. If everything worked out the way I was hoping, then you make birdie and there's no playoff even. It didn't work out for me that time, but it definitely was a good time to look at the scoreboard.