CANON GREATER HARTFORD OPEN

July 1, 2001

Billy Andrade

BILLY ANDRADE: First I am a little disappointed that I didn't get the job accomplished in winning here. Usually most people don't remember who finishes second. They remember the champion. I gave it a good fight today. I felt like I gave myself a lot of opportunities to make a lot of putts. I hit a lot of good putts today that didn't go in. It was nice to birdie the last the way I did in that fashion, to put a little bit of pressure on him but it seemed like nobody really put any pressure on Phil today. That's what you got to do. You got to do what he did yesterday sort of. All of a sudden you look at the leaderboard, you think you are two ahead, you might be even or behind. For me it just didn't happen but I gave myself a lot of opportunities and when I drive back to Rhode Island tonight I will be satisfied with a second place finish and all that's nice, but I really wanted to win the 50th installment of the GHO, and have my name on that trophy with all those great past champions that they have had here over the years.

BILLY ANDRADE: My wife and my son, my daughter and my parents. My sister and her husband and a few other relatives, so we had a big contingent of Portuguese that came down from Bristol. There was a lot of other familiar faces that's I haven't seen in a while that made the trip down. So it was nice.

BILLY ANDRADE: My son is 7 and my daughter is 4.

BILLY ANDRADE: It was very important and that's probably why he won the tournament was that nobody put that pressure on him early to make him think about maybe a few shots out there and he hasn't finished like he would like -- like he would like to. So I thought about that last night and thought about it again today when I was playing, to try to get something going. Unfortunately the putts didn't seem to want to go in, but I gave myself the opportunity, so I can't walk away from here totally disappointed that I gave one away here; I gave one away there. I shot 66 today and it could have been 62 or 61 like he shot yesterday, but unfortunately it wasn't.

BILLY ANDRADE: That hole bothers you because you have to wait on that hole off the tee, usually you have to wait and wait and wait on the tee because there's always a backup there. But any time you have an eagle putt that's around 15 or 20 feet, you shouldn't be too bothered by it. I wasn't bothered by the wait. I actually endorsed the wait. We could have putted out; then we would have waited on the 16th tee for a really long time. I said: You know what, they let us hit up and the way it is going around, why don't we just wait to putt, let them hit and then we will all be back in sequence versus us sitting on the 16th tee with a group on the green and the group ahead of us still waiting to hit. I didn't want to do that and stare at that shot. So we just kind of took our time and all discussed it and decided that we will just wait on these putts and wait until we watch these guys hit up and just kind of keep it in order the way it was going.

BILLY ANDRADE: Not really. I can't kind of remember. 7 at Westchester last week, some guys were going for that. David Duval hit it. But it is a blind shot; nothing where I want recall where you actually can see the whole thing.

BILLY ANDRADE: I had 125 yards straight downwind and it was just a good hard sand wedge. Just didn't quite flush it and left myself that 25-, 30-foot putt there. So I was a little disappointed with that shot. I was kind of envisioning John Daly's shot on Friday which went in the hole in the fly, which I witnessed, so that was my picture, which would have been really great. But I didn't pull that off.

BILLY ANDRADE: When I hit it and it bounced, it bounced straight which you know it was on a slope, the slope where the pin was. It bounced straight which was -- which is what I noted it to do. When it bounced straight I thought this is going in. In 1991 or 1992 I had a similar chip there and I made it in one of the rounds, I was thinking okay I have done this before; let's do this again. When it bounced straight I thought I had had a chance and then it kind of just kind of took a lefthand turn. But I hit a hell of a shot there. That was -- we were thinking about hitting 8, that was the club, it was 149 yards the wind really wasn't blowing. See things that when you think back the difference between winning and losing or having a better chance than not, you know, 13 we stepped up on the tee, we had to wait. The wind wasn't blowing. It was very calm. It wasn't a breath of wind, we had to wait and wait and wait because the guys up ahead were just slow. By the time we got ready to hit I mean it is blowing into us pretty hard. There we go on 16, we waited, waited, waited, when we got to the tee it was no wind, and right before we got ready to tee off the wind just really freshened to where I switched from an 8 to a 7 and hit the most beautiful 7-iron right at it. I was thinking this is perfect and it came up a little bit short. I told my caddie I was lucky that, you know, you go there and you see the grave yard, it is like 8 golf balls that are in the water right there, so some guys hit it in the water today coming up short.

BILLY ANDRADE: It was very short. It was from the TV set to me, so that is you know, ten feet, maybe. It was pretty close.