MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 6, 2023

Sandy Lyle

Quick Quotes

Q. All these years here and you've never snapped a club in half before?

SANDY LYLE: 1st hole, and it wasn't even over my knee (laughter). Just hit it wide. I nearly always pulled it off the 1st hole, and this time I actually hit the other shape. So the brain got in the way, blocked it to the right.

And I thought, well, it's just maybe far enough where I could be clear, but obviously I wasn't. I had a four-inch bough of a tree that comes down from somewhere, and my ball was sitting right underneath it.

I got just about enough ball before I get the tree. I thought, if I can get the left-handed 8-iron to it, not full whack, but just a short, stubby bang. Timed it perfectly and obviously hit the bough. I hit a cameraman somewhere about 15 yards away, and dropped down still in trouble.

Yeah, I mean, a helluva 5 really. Looked like it could be a 6, could be whatever. Making 5 there was quite a nice help. And then a chance for birdie at No. 2.

Then just gradually leaked away here and there. Not chipping and putting. Not hitting some good irons. So some of the quality of golf was pretty substandard, which didn't help matters.

Q. The first day your club snapped here?

SANDY LYLE: It's the first one I've broken here, yeah. It's the first one. Taken 40 years to do it, but it's happened.

Q. A frustrating day overall really?

SANDY LYLE: Very substandard golf. I was very disappointed. I thought some of my iron shots on the range would be perfect for some of the holes.

Like No. 12, I've been practicing a small fade in there. I've thought I've got the right club and fade it and tugged and up at the bank on the other side, which went about 170 yards, which it should have gone 155, which would have been nice. I'm in trouble again.

It's all recovery, recovery, recovery. I end up with a 5 in the end on 12.

Q. It sounds like it's a tough job to make the cut.

SANDY LYLE: That's gone. That is totally gone. I've just got to try and maybe even shoot a 72 just to see if the game's not too bad and give it a go. And at least don't get in the way of the two people I'm playing with.

Q. There's a lot of encouragement from the crowd. Is that nice?

SANDY LYLE: Yeah, there's a lot of people obviously who have been around the same time when I won this. That's always good. The patrons here are excellent and knowledgeable about the game. They're very appreciative and a good shot. It would be nice to play some better shots to show what I can do.

Q. Obviously the next when you hit the shot from there, I'm looking at the camera and I'm thinking why use it? (No microphone). Seems to be a help.

SANDY LYLE: I'm basically trying to make sure I don't whiff it and the ball's still there, when you're doing it left-handed and it's the first shot of a left-handed shot in the morning, you're not really ready for it.

So I'm just trying to make sure I make contact with the ball, anything just to get it out in the fairway so I can at least try to make 5 from there.

Q. And you got the club back on the 7th?

SANDY LYLE: 7th, yeah. It's only about an hour or so, an hour and a half, and they've got a club back in play.

Q. On tomorrow, how do you process the last time you play 18 here? Any thoughts on how you might approach it?

SANDY LYLE: I've been on the last sort of four or five weeks trying to salvage a golf game that I feel would be good enough to get it round in maybe par, not much below par, but generally par.

I've had some lessons off Jimmy Ballard over a month ago just to see if we can twinkle a little bit of dust over my golf swing. It's been pretty hard work. I just need to get a bit more length in the swing and stop the head moving a bit, which is easier said than done.

I've changed my ball position quite a bit, put it further forward to get a little bit more of a natural fade. It started to look from sort of yesterday onwards that I thought, yeah, I like this. I'm looking forward to going out there and playing and just play a good round of golf. If you get a few putts in there, who knows? 71 is within my reach. 68, 67, no, but a 70 is in my reach.

When you're just gradually not holing the putts and not hitting some quality mid-irons when you need to -- everything has to be firing when you play here. I don't have the pleasure of hitting it 90 yards further and making a lot of these holes down the stretch a little shorter and stuff like that.