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U.S. SENIOR OPEN

June 29, 2019

Billy Andrade

Notre Dame, Indiana

Q. Well, you're red again, your score.
BILLY ANDRADE: Yeah, I thought today was a little different golf course. It was not as easy to get to some of the pins, and the greens are getting firmer, which is nice.

Steve Stricker is doing Steve Stricker things, which is amazing. Just unbelievable what he's doing out there. I know he's a hell of a player, but this is pretty special what he's accomplished so far.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Going out battling again and see if the combination of an amazing day and then he's got to obviously have a funky day to have some sort of chance. But there's nothing I can control except me. So I'm just going to go out tomorrow and just see if I can shoot as low as I can and see if it's good enough to give him a scare.

Q. You've gone low before in the final round of the Senior Open.
BILLY ANDRADE: I have.

Q. What's it take to do that?
BILLY ANDRADE: You know, you've got to -- obviously you've just got to make a few putts at the right time and not make many mistakes. Today I was 1-under, and could have been a few more, maybe, but not a lot more. So tomorrow has got to be a pretty amazing day. Ball-striking, everything has got to fall into place to be able to shoot a really, really low score.

Playing late in the day like this is different. I think tomorrow we'll be more used to it. But knowing that we're not going to get any more rain, knowing the golf course is going to play a little faster, you've got to pay attention, especially with some of the hole locations.

Q. Does that make you even more aggressive, or do you have to just try and pick your spots?
BILLY ANDRADE: Yeah, you can't be like, oh, I'm going to go at every pin. You've got to pick your spots and try to have putts where you can be aggressive versus putts that -- I had a putt on 10 today that was a sidewinder and it looked so fast. It's a tentative roll. It's not like I can just go free willy and hit it hard because if it doesn't go in, it's going way by.

You have to get a little lucky on some shots that kind of hang on the greens, and maybe you have some putts that you can be a little more aggressive. But I think tomorrow is going to showcase how great this golf course is, and I think tomorrow will probably be the hardest day because of the fact that it's firming up.

Q. How much golf have you played with Stricker, and what impresses you most?
BILLY ANDRADE: Yeah, he's got -- I don't think his short game, chipping, around the greens when he misses a green -- I played with him in the third round of the Tradition, the major he won, and he got it up-and-down eight times that day. He didn't have his stuff, and he was eight for eight that day. And they weren't -- some of them weren't very easy up-and-downs.

He just has a knack, world-class knack. You put him in the category with -- everyone talks about Mickelson, and Mickelson does have an amazing short game, but so does this guy. Compound that with an unbelievable touch, beautiful putter, does it a different way, does it his way, but he doesn't have a whole lot of weaknesses.

People ask about Bernhard Langer, what's it like when you go around with him, and you say, well, at his age, it's amazing, but he doesn't have any weaknesses. He hits it straight. He hits his irons really good. If he does miss a green or miss a fairway, he finds a way of getting it in the hole, and the great ones do that, and that's what I can say about Steve. He's just -- nothing kind of fazes him. Not that it's a walk in the park.

But tomorrow is different. I'm hoping for a lot of wind. Wind is a barrier for having a chance. If it's benign, then it brings a lot more guys into play.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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