THE SENIOR OPEN PRESENTED BY ROLEX

July 23, 2024

Paul Lawrie

Carnoustie Golf Links

Press Conference

Q. How much does being here invoke these memories of '99?

PAUL LAWRIE: It's nice. It's always nice when you drive in. Always have memories of what happened 25 years ago, which is unbelievable if you think it's that long ago. It's always nice.

Played here a couple weeks ago on a corporate thing, and every time you come you get the little goosebumps and brings your memories back to what happened a while ago. It's always nice.

Q. How much do you try to draw on the performance of that week when you come into a week like this?

PAUL LAWRIE: Well, it's totally different now. The game is totally different. I think the golf course is set up reasonably tough this week. So it might play a little bit like it did back then.

But apart from that, the whole game has changed. Technology, balls, everything so it's a different kind of kettle of fish now. But the golf course will be the same. The golf course will still play pretty tough. The golf course here stands test of time better than most. They don't have many new tees out there. They don't really have to. The length is always pretty good. So should be a good week.

Q. For you, how much was that a life-changing moment in 1999 as a person and as a golfer?

PAUL LAWRIE: When you go from a decent player who has won two events to winning the biggest event in the word, there's a fair chance things are going to change for you.

But the biggest change was my schedule. Obviously now I'm not in just the European events. I'm in any event in the world that I want to play in for the next five years.

So getting used to that was a little difficult, and I was traveling to America to play golf for the first time competitively, and you're playing all over the world. You can play in any golf tournament that you want.

I took a little bit of time but not long. Like anything, you get used to it. Change is easy the more you do it. There was a lot of changes happening back then. We moved house obviously and we were able to do things we couldn't do before. It was all good. No negatives, I can assure you.

Q. Heading into this week, you probably have not had the competitive reps that you would like, and you've got a lot going on in your life. What's the shape of your game?

PAUL LAWRIE: Yeah, well not playing is my choice. Obviously I can play more. I've only played three events but I hit a lot of balls, and I play quite a lot of golf at home. I tend to play golf or hit balls most mornings when I'm home, and the afternoon is in the office and working for the players that we represent and the tournaments that we run.

But every morning I kind of do work and I hit balls and still love that. Still love tinkering and practicing and working on stuff with Alan McCloskey, my coach. I feel as though I'm ready. I'm not underplayed. I play a lot of golf. I just haven't played a lot of tournaments but the ones I've played have not been too bad. I've been all right. I've been competitive. So we'll see what happens.

Q. You were up at Troon last week. Was that with one eye on this week?

PAUL LAWRIE: A little bit of both to be honest. I'm playing here, and then we are up at Staysure for the PGA next week in Aberdeen. So I thought three weeks in a row would be a little much for me. I'm 55; I was never an athlete but I'm no longer an athlete.

And also, I don't want to take a place in a tournament of that size when I'm not competitive and I'm not playing a lot of golf. If I was playing full-time, I think I would still play. But I'm not playing full-time.

So I feel as though you're keeping somebody out of a big tournament by doing that because even if I made the cut it would have been a big effort for me to make the cut. So you shouldn't really be playing in tournaments if that's a good week for you.

The rest of the boys who are my age are still playing full time, so if I was them, I'd be playing a hundred percent, too. But I'm not. I don't play much golf. Thought I'd better give it a skip.

Q. You do a lot of work with Scottish golf, obviously for your own tour. What have you made of the sort of resurgence we've seen over the last couple weeks with Ewen Ferguson and Bobby MacIntyre winning on the main tour, and what do you make of that?

PAUL LAWRIE: Obviously Bob winning The Scottish Open was amazing. To win your home open is probably the one that any golfer wants. I mean, I said for a long time that if I was allowed one more event, I would like it to be The Scottish Open.

So he clearly, rightly so, was over the moon with what happened there and did brilliantly.

But Ewen Ferguson winning BMW was a massive week, as well. So we had two winners in recent time come through and we had Calum Scott winning the Silver Medal at The Open last week. Calum has been in our foundation for a little while. We know Calum quite well and what he's capable of. His ceiling is quite high to what he's going to be.

So it's exciting times coming through. It's nice to see the boys winning tournaments.