U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 19, 1999

Charlie Woerner

CHARLIE WOERNER: The first match I beat David Olivier, 3-1, and I dormied and birdied 17. And the second match played Rob, and same thing: Dormie, 2, dormie going into 17, and then just hit it on the fringe and just tied the hole. It was 2-1.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, I feel really, really good. I stayed out real late yesterday working on my putting, and it paid off a lot, because my speed was about 20 times better today. I don't think I had any 3-putts; so that was real big, in two matches.

CHARLIE WOERNER: I grew up an hour and 15 minutes away from here, but I only played it twice coming into this week. I played the NCGA, the Northern California Junior Golf Association. They've got a Tournament of Champions tournament out here, and I played that one time; so I played one time then, and one other time afterwards. But only twice coming into this tournament.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, the second match in the afternoon, we had an unbelievable stretch of three or four holes where I birdied 4. I hit the pin, and then he hit it right after me up like 6 feet, and I made the putt and he just missed his. But then the next three holes -- or the next two holes, we halved with birdies. That hasn't happened in either of my matches at all; so that was good to have something put a lot of pressure on you.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, the second match I did, coming down the stretch a little bit. And I hit two poor drives on 15 and 16. In my first match I didn't. I felt in control the whole time. And the second match, especially because I knew he was going to make a couple of birdies, I figured, coming in, because he hit some really good shots coming in on the back 9. He almost holed -- I think he lipped out two iron shots; so I knew he was going to hit some good shots. I was a little bit nervous.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, I think so. I made the Sweet 16 at the Western Amateur three years ago, and that was a real big deal for me. And prior to that, I made the quarterfinals at the U.S. Junior, and that was definitely a big deal. But this outweighs -- this is a bigger tournament than either one of those by far.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, I'm done. I played my first four years, and I have one more year of school, but no more eligibility left. It was fair. I was all Pac-10, second team, and had a couple of second place and third place finishes, but I didn't win any big tournaments.

CHARLIE WOERNER: I grew up in Sunny Valley, and I used to work at Los Altos Country Club, and I worked at Stanford throughout almost my entire high school career. And then we moved to Los Altos my junior year in high school.

CHARLIE WOERNER: A little bit, yeah, but 3.0 GPA is not going to get you in.

CHARLIE WOERNER: No. But he's given me a great opportunity to practice. He let's me go out and work on my short game a couple of times a year when I'm home. I work with a guy right now named Will Neal down in LA. He's from Florida, and he just moved to LA.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, by far. That was unbelievable. If you shoot low 80S, I mean come on, you know. I can't believe I won that match. But it worked out. Yeah, definitely. Like they said, if you're going to play five matches or whatever it is that you need to play to win the tournament, six matches, you're not going to play perfect golf for however many holes that is. You're going to need somebody to kind of lay down. Hopefully, that was it.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Well, I was actually 4- or 5-up with five holes to go. I think it was 4-up with five holes to go, and I wasn't playing good golf by any means. But at least I played a stretch there where I was in control of my game, and maybe 1-over for a stretch of ten holes or something like that. So I expected to finish the last few holes solid; hit the green and make some pars, but it didn't happen.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, because par becomes totally irrelevant -- your score becomes totally irrelevant. You try to put your opponent out of mind and just play for pars. But sometimes when he's in position to make a bogey or double or something, obviously that overtakes it; so sometimes scores are irrelevant. You look at the score, and maybe it was like 82 or 83 or whatever it was, but some of those were bogeys where I was playing for bogey.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Not in college, but as a Junior, I had a really good match play record, and I always have. Like I said, the quarter finals at the U.S. Junior, semifinals at the Western Junior. I played in a tournament called the Cannon Cup when I was a Junior, and I won all four matches there. But I haven't played much match play since then. In college, really, you don't play any match play. There's one tournament that you play, I don't remember the name of it, but there's one in Florida, it was, and we played match play, but that was it.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yeah, definitely. You don't want to show any emotion. When you're playing medal play, it's okay to get pumped up and pump your fist and that. But you almost want your opponent to think: Oh, my God, this guy doesn't -- he doesn't care what happens. He's going to march on and make pars. He birdied the last hole, but he's going to par the next hole. It doesn't matter what the opponent is thinking. You definitely have an effect on the other guy in match play.

CHARLIE WOERNER: I'm going to finish up school this next year and get my degree in business, and then I'm going to take close to a year and practice and work on my game. And then I'm going to try -- then I'm going to turn pro. Probably the beginning of the following year after I graduate. So I'll take that summer and that winter and practice and work on my game and keep doing some weight training, things like that, and get ready to turn pro.

CHARLIE WOERNER: Yes, there's tournaments like this, even during the school year. There's not as many, maybe a handful. But there's still a few tournaments, and there's a lot of mini-Tour pro tournaments you can play in as an Amateur, also. I know a lot of guys do that.

CHARLIE WOERNER: It's a long engagement. It's about a three-year engagement. She's going to medical school; so don't want to screw up the loans or anything like that.

CHARLIE WOERNER: It's three years -- it's her junior year of -- it's the winter of her junior year, definitely excited, though.

CHARLIE WOERNER: A real good friend of mine named Jason Stevens. He's from Menlo Park, and we used to work at Stanford together and practice every day together.