MARCONI PENNSYLVANIA CLASSIC

September 22, 2001

Robert Allenby

ROBERT ALLENBY: 9.

ROBERT ALLENBY: I teed off tenth this morning. I had nine holes to play.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Pretty much, yeah. Especially the front nine. Even on the back nine, I still hit some good shots on the back nine. Yeah, the front nine, I just -- you know, I feel confident with my swing so that I'm able to just fire at the flags. When you feel that confident, you might as well just go for it because you know it's going to come off because you've got the confidence in yourself to do it. There was -- there was a few putts out there, on the back nine, the last 3-putts I had -- on 13, 14, 15, all of them I thought they were pretty much going to go in and two of them lipped-out. I played pretty solid. I saw the shot and kept it really simple. Made one mistake, which was on 11, I had a bit of mud on the ball and wasn't sure what it was going to do. The mistake that I did was I should have taken that bunker out down the right on the second shot out of play completely. The ball just kind of shot out straight right off the club face and I ended up -- hit it fat out of there into the next trap near the green and had virtually an impossible bunker shot and hit a great putt and lipped it out. That was my only mistake pretty much all day. If I made any mistakes, a couple of holes, 8, 9, I hit my first putt from about 30 feet too hard and left myself 8- and 9-footers coming back, downhill, and managed to hole them. So what goes around, comes around. You hole some good ones and then your mistakes, sometimes you hole some good ones when you make mistakes. Overall I played pretty solid.

ROBERT ALLENBY: -- to about 15 or 16, and, you know, especially the last four holes I played, you know I was starting to fatigue and starting to get a little bit drained. You know, I had been out there -- I was up at 5:30 this morning to play nine holes. I think the worst thing when you get up so early and there's a delay far an hour because of fog.

ROBERT ALLENBY: I had some lunch and I played cards --

ROBERT ALLENBY: -- with my coach. I'm staying here, so I'm very lucky.

ROBERT ALLENBY: No. Golf, we don't bet. Come on, you should know that. (Laughs).

ROBERT ALLENBY: No. It was too dark. It got to the point where on 15, I mean, I couldn't even totally -- I couldn't read my -- the whole putt properly, and, you know, I probably should have maybe -- well, even Rocco, we both said that, you know, we probably shouldn't have even putted there. We waited for about five or six minutes on 16 tee waiting for the hooter and trying to find out what was going on. The fairway was in the distance down 16 and it was like -- "I know it's down there," but you couldn't focus on exactly where you were going to hit it. When it's like that, it's not worth going, because we've only got three holes to go. Pretty much, there's probably no one in front of us and they are, they are already a hole in front us. So it's just -- you know, what's ten minutes. We might as well go back in the morning when we can see.

ROBERT ALLENBY: No.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Yeah, there was a couple hundred hanging around.

ROBERT ALLENBY: 1, driver, lob-wedge to about six feet. 3, I just pushed my tee shot just a little bit. Tried to bomb 1-over the right trap and pushed it in the rough. Chipped it out. Hit a lob to a foot. 4, I hit driver, 9-iron to a few feet. 6, the par 5. I hit a bad tee shot. Although, I hit a bad tee shot, I was quite long off the tee, but I landed it -- I finished in this thick patch of green -- long, green grass. If I was half a foot to the right or half a foot to the left, I could have been able to go for the green with probably about a 4-iron iron, 5-iron. But as it was, I had no shot. I had to pitch with a wedge out and left myself a full wedge. I hit it less than a foot. Apparently, it hit the flag on the way past. 12, I hit driver, 8-iron. Holed about a 25-footer. It was a putt up the hill, uphill left-to-right. Then the next, 13, I hit it to about 7 feet there. Missed it. Lipped it out. Then I hit it to about 15 feet on the par 3 and I had left it about 25 feet at the next.

ROBERT ALLENBY: I went back to that Sunday at the PGA this year. I had enough of -- I had not been putting that well for a few months cross-handed, and I just felt like a change so I went back to the normal putting and it fixed my right-handed putting -- from going left-handed, which was good. I feel pretty comfortable putting.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Yeah, it was great. Obviously, I was making some and he was making some. He was holing some great putts and hitting some great shots. He still is. He still hit great shots and a lot of great putts, and it's good for everyone. It's good for us to get some good momentum going. Just keep it going, as well. Just keep hitting good shots after good shots and holing good putts and making birdies. It's also good for the spectators, as well.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Oh, were they? (Laughter.) No, it's fine. I've just got to go out there and play golf. If I hit a really good shot, I know they are going to clap for me.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Well, I've got to hit it to a foot. That's why I hit so many shots close. "I'll get a clap out of them." (Laughter.) No, they are fine. I've been in the same situation before when I've been down in Australia and played there at home, and there's been foreign players. That's just the way it is. It doesn't matter which part of the country you go to or the world; it's always the same. But it's great. He grew up around the corner, so it's great for the crowd. Great for the home team.

ROBERT ALLENBY: It's soft. You know, you can really -- on the tee shots, you can just bomb it. It's not going to run very far. Everything is just stopping dead. Same with the greens. There might be one or two greens out there that certain flag positions will release, but nine times out of ten, it's just throwing darts at the greens. That's just because of the weather that we had earlier, middle of the week.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Look, I'm just as upset as everyone else in this country. I think all foreign players -- all foreign people are. I think we are all in it together. I live here. I live in America. I've got to get on a plane like everyone else here. You just -- it's a scary thing that's happened. I know that we all have to go on with our lives and do our day-to-day stuff. But some things are really tough to do. You know, with my wife and myself, you know, we just couldn't believe it. I mean, it was just unbelievable. It's something that you never expect someone was capable of doing, and especially in this country. I really thought the security in it country was really good, and I'm comparing it to other countries in the world. I've played in Europe for seven years and when -- I based myself in London and I was going into the Continent most weeks. I fly back Sunday nights back to London, Tuesday mornings back out to Germany for France or wherever. I was going through customs, I was going through airports all the time. But I just -- I never thought that something like that would happen here.

ROBERT ALLENBY: I was in St. Louis. I was there. I was just leaving the hotel and Stuart Appleby, we were both driving out together to the course and he just ran up to get the keys and came back down and we got the news that a plane had flown into the first tower. By the time we got to the course, the second one was -- just, like everyone else in this room, just devastated.

ROBERT ALLENBY: Well, Orlando is a pretty long drive, and I was worried that if I drove all the way there, I wouldn't be able to get a flight back, so stayed here and I flew here on Monday.