U.S SENIOR WOMEN'S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

August 24, 2022

Jane Geddes

NCR Country Club (South Course)

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We are joined now by Jane Geddes, who won here U.S. Open here at NCR Country Club 36 years ago. Jane, I know you talked a little bit last night in front of the players, but what do you remember from that week?

JANE GEDDES: Yeah, it was a crazy week. I mean, everybody knows the story behind NCR here and everything that happened, the train wreck and the plane crash and the earthquake and everything. For me it was amazing because it was my first win.

I remember being super nervous, and one thing I said last night was I got in the situation when I saw the leaderboard on Sunday and completely blanked out. I was shocked that I was leading, tied for the lead, and my caddie kind of helped me in the entire way. Couldn't have done without him in that instance. I think he pulled clubs for me for the last three holes, and that's never happened to me before, so it was kind of a crazy -- I was stunned. But it was my first win, and I look back now, it's funny because I take it for granted. I thought, oh, I'm going to win a lot more Opens. This is just one of many.

If I could go back and sort of recreate it, I think I would have appreciated it more. Not that I don't appreciate it now. It's the greatest moment of my life. You know, it's great to be back here. It's great just -- I don't remember a lot about the golf course, even though I remembered more today. I didn't remember as much yesterday. But I remembered a little bit more today, so it's great to be out there and kind of have those great memories.

Q. Had you been back here since?

JANE GEDDES: So I played an Open qualifier here, and I was actually medalist, which was completely bizarre. I don't even remember what year it was. But I remembered that afterwards because I hadn't remembered coming back and then I remembered, oh, no, I went for an Open qualifier, so that was probably sometime in the 2000s or maybe late 1990s that I came back after I wasn't qualified to play in the Open again.

Anyway, yeah, that was my last time back.

Q. Of all the craziness that happened this week, what impacted you the most in terms of the off-the-course craziness?

JANE GEDDES: So nothing really. I had to evacuate a restaurant one time, so my parents were in town and I think it was like Saturday night we were right in the middle of dinner and all of a sudden we're in the restaurant and the manager was like, "Everybody has got to get out," so we just literally got up and left. It was bizarre. There were people that had to move hotels, so there were all kind of things -- I never had to move my hotel, but I did get kicked out of that restaurant that night.

Q. What was happening at that moment?

JANE GEDDES: Well, there was supposedly this cloud of like toxic gas from this train wreck that was moving around -- all around. I don't know where it was going. But wherever the wind was pushing it -- again, we didn't have cell phones. It's not like we were getting alerts. I don't know how they knew, there's the cloud. Half of it was probably reactionary, but it was happening, and they were kind of moving people around the town as the cloud went through the town. It was weird. It was really weird.

Q. Can you tell us about your preparation for this week?

JANE GEDDES: Yeah, so I was fortunate, I spent the last two summers out in Aspen, Colorado, and ironically, it doesn't sound like a spot that there would be a number of LPGA players that live around there, but they do. They summer there.

One of them is walking right there. Liselotte Neumann is one of them that lives out there, Lisa DePaulo, Hollis Stacy, so there's a whole bunch of them that live there, and I spent five weeks playing golf with them almost every day, which was for me such a luxury because I don't get to do that very much. Just not in my sort of daily mix.

But when I was out there it was great because they were practicing all the time, so I kind of jumped in with them. So that was great.

Then I went -- at the end of August I had been invited on a trip to Ireland with a group, and I went and played in Ireland for like seven days, played like eight rounds of golf in seven days and walked. I was playing a lot of golf before I got here, which is not always the case for me.

Q. Where did you play in Ireland?

JANE GEDDES: Oh, my gosh, we played Tralee, we played Waterville, we played Old Head, Ballybunion. It was the most amazing trip of my life. I've never played golf courses like that. It was really -- it was really amazing.

Q. You've played in a few of these Senior Women's Opens now. What does this week mean on and off the course?

JANE GEDDES: It's awesome. For us, it's really special. The USGA really does an amazing job of just making this all about the players, and we truly appreciate that. We don't get to play a lot of tournaments throughout the year.

When we get treated so really special, and I think everything that the USGA does this week, just everything, it makes all of us feel like, wow, it's worth being here. Certainly those of us that are qualified love being here, but even people that go and qualify, it's very special for them, a lot of them have never played in a U.S. Open.

There's this sort of array of people here this week that makes it really different in and of itself. And then there's the social part of most of us don't get to see each other very often, so it becomes sort of like a reunion, as well, which just makes it even more special.

Q. When you were playing your games in Aspen, whatever you're playing -- I assume you have money games?

JANE GEDDES: Oh, every day. Every day we had standing games, and we would do team stuff and/or do individual against each other. They weren't big money games, $20 here, $40 there, but we were always playing so that we finished our -- so that we played, so that we kept score and finished our putts and like that. Like we were prepping for what we were having to do and keep score, keep score, keep score, but at the same time betting on it just for the fun of it.

Q. I have to ask everyone, your favorite JoAnne Carner story.

JANE GEDDES: Oh, my gosh. Okay, so everybody probably has -- does everybody have one? They do, don't they. I know I have multiple. Let's see which one is the best one. Some of them I probably couldn't tell.

This one is halfway can't-tell but it's so funny and so JoAnne. So we were in -- I don't know where it was. I want to say Youngstown. I think it was Youngstown. It was somewhere, I think, in Ohio or something, and we had a rain delay, so we all come off the golf course and we come back out and I'm playing with JoAnne. She comes out on the tee, and we're all there and we're all getting ready -- and goes to put her hands in her pocket and she's got her shorts on backwards.

And you know JoAnne, she's like, oh, hang on a second. She goes in the Port-a-Potty, we were at the turn or something -- I think we were at the turn because there was a Port-a-Potty there, and she went in there. Nothing fazes her. She's like, I didn't put my shorts on the right way.

Another time -- I'll tell one more because this was on me but it was her. So we were playing in Colorado Springs at the U.S. Open at Colorado Springs at the Broadmoor. I was not playing well. I was a little bit vocal on the golf course when I wasn't playing well, and I got into a bunker and I hit a bad bunker shot, and she scolded me -- I got out of that bunker, and she's like, Would you please stop; you're like basically annoying me right now. If you're going to complain, like complain to yourself, because I don't want to hear about it. I was like, Yes, ma'am. I was like, whoop! Because she was dead serious. I was like, okay, okay, why was I doing that?

But she was so fun to play with. She was just -- you'd hit a drive -- I don't even know, so she was 20 years older than me, I guess. You'd play with her and you'd hit a drive and then she'd hit a drive and she'd out-drive you and she'd be like, hmm, not bad for an old lady, eh? But she'd bomb it out there, but she'd say it, like literally when she teed off, it's like she's trying to out-drive you, and she did. She was just so fun to play with and so amazing. You just watch her, just her way was just so unbelievable.

It's so cool that she's here, by the way. I mean, she's 83. She's playing here. That's crazy. I mean, I was hoping I was going to get to Pebble Beach when we get there or Spyglass. We were just talking about it, I'm like, oh, my God, I hope I can play long enough to get to Spyglass. She's way past that. She's amazing.

She is, she's just amazing. She's always been, to all of us. To all of us that got to play with her and be around her and be in the locker room with her -- oh, my gosh, she had visor would be like that and she's telling stories -- I mean, she didn't even know her visor was on crooked. She'd be blah, blah, blah, telling all kinds of stories and we'd all be a captive audience, of course. All the players were like, keep going, keep going.

Q. Do you remember when you first met her or when you were a young kid coming up and she's already established --

JANE GEDDES: Oh, yeah, I remember hitting balls next to her the very first tournament I played in. I played in the Henredon Classic in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, or High Point, North Carolina, and it was my very first LPGA tournament, and I hit balls next to her. She was like, "hello." I was like, "hi." Oh, my God, that's JoAnne Carner. At that same tournament years later, so that was like 1983, in 1987, at that point we were back at that tournament in the locker room there, and I was having -- starting at the U.S. Open in 1986, all the way until about when we got there in 1987, I had won like -- I had won seven tournaments in that calendar year, so I was on a roll. I had become like leading money winner like that week.

I remember I went to my locker and she was there at her locker, and she's like -- and I think I won the previous week, and she's like, way to go last week. I was like, thank you, thank you. And she's like, good luck. Good luck with everything you've got going now, like basically the fun has begun, so get ready. So now you're doing all the press conferences, and you're doing -- she was like, good luck. Good luck. You'll see. Just giving me that side-eye kind of look, and she's just going about her business, and I was like, what is she talking about, this is the greatest thing ever. Then I found out. So it was funny.