THE SENIOR OPEN PRESENTED BY ROLEX

July 27, 2023

Jeev Milkha SIngh

Royal Porthcawl Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Thank very much for joining us. Any round under par today is good today, 69, 2-under for yourself. What did you do particularly well?

JEEV MILKHA SINGH: : Overall the game was really good today. I expected myself to hole more putts, but I'll take it, 2-under par on this golf course. It's a tough golf course that demands a lot of distance control, especially in the wind because the wind is up there right now and you've got to keep it low and you've got to have the right bounces.

So I got the right bounces today, and I'll take that 2-under par.

Q. I understand your first round of golf on a links course was here when you were 15 years of age. Tell us how.

JEEV MILKHA SINGH: : It's an amazing story how I got here. We were playing the Indo French Championship in Paris. Didn't have a visa for the U.K. Last minute, decided that we wanted to play the British Amateur qualifier.

Get to the British embassy, they said, no, you've got to go back to your home country to get the visa. So it was three of us, and we called up Sir (Michael) Bonnalack. He was kind enough to call the embassy up. Got us the visa, but for those three days, we barely had money to survive.

So we lived on the street, basically. One night we slept under the Eiffel Tower. The next night, we were in a train but cops came and they said, you need to be out. The train station closes at 1.00am and it opens at 5.00am.

So for four hours we are just roaming around. We used to sit on the train at 5.00, go from one corner to the other corner till we got -- to the embassy opened at 10.00, got there, got a visa, got here, and that was the first time I aid a links course. That was Royal Porthcawl. I was 15 years old, got to this golf course, the first day. I said, oh, this is easy golf, there's no wind.

Next day, the kind of wind that blew, I said, how do they play golf in this? That was it. I didn't qualify. And here I am, after so many years, I think 38 years afterwards, I'm playing the Senior British Open at Royal Porthcawl.