U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 28, 2001

Frank Conner

FRANK CONNER: Well, basically I played tennis all the way through college. I went to Trinity University. I grew up in Illinois. And the St. Louis area was a hot bed of tennis at that time. We had a lot of top, top players in the world, Butch Buckholtz, Chuck McKinley, and myself and Jimmy Conners. So it's a pretty big group of tennis players to come out of the St. Louis area. Basically I played tennis all the way through college and started playing golf once I finished at Trinity in 1969.

FRANK CONNER: Twice. Back when it was at Forest Hills on grass.

FRANK CONNER: '66 and '67.

FRANK CONNER: Well, my round is pretty much down to holes, 2 and 3. I bogeyed 2 and birdied 3. Actually on 3 I almost made a hole in one. I hit a little 8-iron that landed above the pin and back towards the back third of the green, came back down the hill. It stopped about four inches short of the hole. That was an easy birdie. That was the only birdie I had all day. And the only bogey, on number 2, I hit in the left rough. I just had no shot. I think I used an 8-iron just to chop it out, past the right bunker. I hit a wedge just left of the green and 2-putted for a bogey.

FRANK CONNER: Well, the greens are firm. So it's hard to get the ball close. If you miss -- I played with George Burns today, and unfortunately for George he kept hitting the ball in the middle of the green, and the ball kept running over the back of the green. And he made four or five bogeys that way. It was just impossible to get the ball up and down from over the green. As a matter of fact, on this golf course it's very difficult to 2-putt if you're above the pin or pin high off to either side. You have big breaks and it's hard to get the ball to stop by the hole. You're always going to have a 3-, 4-, 5-footer for your second putt.

FRANK CONNER: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I would have thought somebody would have shot 3-, 4-under par today, especially the early players. And I notice I think Fleisher is the only one that's under par that's finished, right? I saw a couple of other 1-unders, but I think they were probably earlier in their rounds this afternoon. But the course is hard. The course is playing hard. This is probably the second hardest rough that I've seen on a Senior Open golf course. The Riviera with the kikuyu grass they let get a little bit out of hand. But this is very, very difficult rough. If you miss by a yard, it's 20 yards, you're dead. You're basically chipping out. I got lucky on a couple of holes, where I missed the fairways, were on the two par-5's, where I could hit irons, then I could have irons into the greens. I didn't birdie either one of them, but I parred both of them. That's the kind of place where I got away with some drives in the rough.

FRANK CONNER: Terrible. That's the best part of it.

FRANK CONNER: Yes, I am. I haven't been driving the ball well, so that really kind of says it all. And I haven't -- I've been working on the range quite a bit this week. As a matter of fact, I played 9 holes Monday, and I didn't really play all that well. And I didn't play well in Nashawtuc last week. So on Tuesday I had a game on Tuesday, and I didn't play. I just said, I need to spend some time on the driving range. So basically all day Tuesday I spent on the driving range working with my driver and my irons, but mostly my driver, just to try to get something where I felt like I had something going. I didn't have anything going before. So hopefully -- today I hit the driver very well. I hit it very well. I hit one bad 3-wood and I got lucky on the 16th hole. I pushed it out to the right and it got in the trees. I had a shot and actually made par on the hole. I knocked the ball on the green and made par. But I was very fortunate there. But overall I kept the ball pretty much in play.

FRANK CONNER: Well, I think the fairways are still soft, and the greens are very firm. And I think that that's what's making it hard. The course is playing longer probably than it normally does. And then you're going into the greens with the longer clubs, and the greens are firm. They have a lot of runoff areas on these greens. Even like the 18th hole, if you don't get it up there, it rolls back down and all of a sudden you're four or five yards short of the green with a very difficult little pitch shot. Even though you're in the fairway, you have a very tough pitch shot because with the winter kill this winter, it's a little bare, and you've got a little bare lie to try to pitch up and stop it. You hit it a little heavy, you chunk it, thin it, so it's really hard to play real tough shots from those lies.

FRANK CONNER: I never really thought about it until I started playing golf, because once I got into -- honestly, nobody ever paid attention to it nor did I when I started playing the tour. And I played a couple of Opens. I played at Medinah the year that Lou Graham won and then I played the year Johnny Miller won were my first two U.S. Opens in golf. And it wasn't really that big a thing to me. Back then I played tennis, and now I'm playing golf. So it seemed like kind of natural. And I've got to tell you a funny story. Elsworth Vines is the other guy that played both the opens. Actually I met Elsworth Vines in a supermarket in Palm Springs, California. I was staying with a friend of mine, George. And George and I were in there getting some stuff for the house and Elsworth happened to be in there and he came up and introduced himself. Very, very nice man. And as a matter of fact he became a big golfer, played a lot with John Brody at La Quinta Country Club. But he was a starter for the Bob Hope Desert Classic on the 10th tee at the La Quinta course there in Palm Springs. Very, very nice man.

FRANK CONNER: Beautiful. Thank you.