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WALKER CUP MATCH


September 9, 2007


Trip Kuehne

Jamie Lovemark

George Marucci

Jonathan Moore


NEWCASTLE, NORTH IRELAND

STEWART McDOUGAL: First of all, congratulations to Buddy and three of the members of the Walker Cup winning team. Well done. Perfect match and surely enjoyed, Buddy. Jonathan Moore holed the winning putt for the match, and Jamie Lovemark and Trip Kuehne. Buddy, it's been a fantastic match. Give us your reactions now, please.
CAPTAIN BUDDY MARUCCI: Well, I think it turned out to be a very hard-fought match, which we anticipated. I'm just thrilled with the way our team performed. I give GB&I a tremendous amount of credit. They played wonderfully today. They were just brilliant. It's hard to get it all in mind right now, but the experience has been fabulous. Everything has been great here, and we feel very fortunate to have won. I give our guys a lot of credit. They really played hard today.

Q. Trip, you've waited since 1995 for being able to go home a winner at this thing, and each time you've had a chance to do it, it's been on foreign soil so the trip home that's that much longer and that much bitter. How does it feel right now?
TRIP KUEHNE: You know, it's indescribable because people never realise how close the guys on this team were. Buddy said it in the closing remarks of the tournament; that it was an 18-month process.
This has been more an 18-month process with these guys. You've had Jonathan and Webb competed against each other since they were 12 years old. It's just a very close-knit group of guys that do everything together. I think for the first time in a long, long time, we had -- we were more of a cohesive team unit than the other side was. I think it gave us ultimately a little advantage that we needed.
For me, words can't describe it. I know -- to steal a line from Buddy, for me, it doesn't get any better than this. This is my Masters. This is my major. It's the pinnacle of amateur golf for me as an individual, is the Walker Cup. And to finally be a part of a winning team, words can't describe it. It's the culmination of a lot of hard work, a lot of people; Buddy, ten teammates that believed in me. And really means a lot.
It will take some time to sink in, but I'm thrilled and I'm speechless. And of all of the things that I've probably done before, this is -- I'm a guy that's always liked team accomplishments a lot more than individual accomplishments. So this probably ranks first or second in my book as far as golf accomplishments for me as a golfer.

Q. Your team excelled at foursomes, a format that's typically not familiar to Americans. What did you do in the run up or your practise sessions; is there anything special you did to prepare the team for that?
CAPTAIN BUDDY MARUCCI: Well, I think we started with that right from the beginning when we had our first practise session. I've always been kind of fond the foursomes; I've had a lot of success in it myself. When we got together for the first time with the 24 candidates we had, we played mostly foursomes. The fellows play their own ball every day, so we did that. When we got together after the team was picked, we played foursomes a lot. When we got here, we played foursomes a lot. I think, you know, that's one part of it.
The other part of it is we had ten men that really liked each other. You know, that's important to be able because it's difficult, somebody runs a putt by or somebody misses a shot; it really feels badly.
So I think really we were a little better prepared this time because we put some emphasis on it, and I think our players, you know, knew each other well and got along well.

Q. Your strategy for playing the golf course --
CAPTAIN BUDDY MARUCCI: Well, I think there are many theories about that. I think our feeling was that especially on a golf course this demanding, if you keep the ball in play off the tee, and somewhere around the green; we had very good short game players. And our chipping and putting on this team is probably as good as any team I've seen in a while. We thought if we could at least get the ball around the green in regulation, we could play pretty competitively.
We didn't think there would be a lot of birdies made. In other words, we didn't think there would be 6- or 7-under par on this kind of a golf course. I think that's probably turned out to be the case. I haven't seen the hole-by-hole scores, but I think that's the way it turned out.
We played the game along the ground a little bit. We played it to get around the greens and just, we putted the ball quite a bit from off the green. We have some guys like Rickie, you know, that have a great touch. And he might chip the ball a little bit, but most of the time we kept it on the ground. I think it was just to kind of stay in there and not give the opposing team holes, just stay around the greens and go from there.

Q. From one Trojan to another, congratulations. Were you aware of the status of the overall singles during your match? You were the only one with a red flag for a long time, and were you aware of that during the match and how did you react to that?
JAMIE LOVEMARK: Yeah, I was definitely aware. There's tons of scoreboards out there. The first time I saw one was after No. 4. I made a nice little double there to go back to even for the match, and there's so many roars around the golf course that you can hear, and you knew exactly what was going on.
The fans here would clap for us, but they would roar for their own team. It's hard not to hear that. I had to back off from a few shots today because of that. You know, I knew that we were struggling. A couple of us towards the end were winning or all-square or even one or two down; even 2-down back in a match is not insurmountable.
You know, I tried my hardest to just stay focused and keep my intensity as high as possible. I knew I was hitting it as well as anybody out there. You know, I'm a fighter. I hate losing; I just hate it.

Q. Buddy, you know, after the morning session and having such success and then coming out and obviously there was a lot of blue on the leaderboard early, how nerve-wracking was it watching this, and realising that it was obviously going to be a hard fight in the afternoon?
CAPTAIN BUDDY MARUCCI: Well, just ask my teammates. I think they know it was nerve-wracking. It's hard. I mean, it's very hard to be out there watching and wondering whether you have one guy in the right spot or somebody else in another spot.
We pretty much made up our mind that we wanted to play a certain group in the morning and a certain group in the afternoon. We knew it would be tight.
I'm not so sure we looked at it as individual morning and afternoon. I think we looked at it globally as the day, who do we want to represent for the day. When we won the morning the way we did, I was pretty candid with these fellows. On the first tee I told them all, "This is going to be a dogfight and they are going to play hard," and they did.
So watching it was very difficult. So answer your question directly, it was very nerve-wracking watching.

Q. Was there any stage in the afternoon when you thought you were not going to get your hands on the trophy?
CAPTAIN BUDDY MARUCCI: Well, I tried not to think about that really. I mean that seriously. What I tried to do was focus on, you know, who was playing where, how they stood in their match, the overall; was there any help I could give anybody out there, whether through encouragement or whatever I'm allowed to do as a captain, you know, information. Any, just encouragement. I can't teach these guys anything. They are so good, you don't need to.
But really it's more about that, staying focused, keeping them level, keeping them organised, making sure that they didn't get too far ahead of themselves, and to just stay in the moment. I think Jamie's words were great. I mean, to stay focused, try not to look ahead.
That was mainly the encouragement we talked about in the afternoon. Just stay here, stay in the moment, stay in the hole, and let just play the best we can and we'll see what happens.

Q. Jonathan, what does it mean to you to kind of close out your amateur career the way you have today, making that putt to win the Walker Cup, and how nervous were you standing over that putt knowing what was on the line?
JONATHAN MOORE: Yeah, I wouldn't wish that putt upon my worst enemy, really. It's either you're going to be the man or you're going to be the goat, one of the two. I tried with some rulers I had been using since I was 11 years old, and I did the same thing one other time in a tournament. I tried to picture myself being on those and thinking this is why I've practised all of these putts all these years. I pushed it a little bit, but it got the corner and it went in. (Laughing).
But you're just trying to get the thing moving back. That's all you're trying to do. It's pretty hard.
STEWART McDOUGAL: Congratulations and thank you to Buddy, Jonathan, Trip and Jamie.

End of FastScripts
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