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THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 14, 2009

Sandy Lyle

TURNBERRY, SCOTLAND

MALCOLM BOOTH: Ladies and gentlemen, we're joined by Sandy Lyle. Sandy?
SANDY LYLE: Good afternoon. Due to the extensive media coverage of the statements I made at last week's Scottish Open, I feel the need to make this statement. First, I want to be clear that I regret bringing up the 2005 incident in Jakarta. Colin Montgomerie and I are not at war. Colin is a great champion and a good friend.
In my own bid for Ryder Cup captaincy, he was always one of my biggest supporters. Though I was personally disappointed by the decision of last February, I also always supported Colin as a Ryder Cup captain, and I will continue to offer my support.
In my frustration over continually being asked about the incident at last year's Open Championship, I regretfully brought up another old incident, one that happened over four years ago, and has long since been resolved. I was trying to make the point by comparison that neither of these incidents had anything to do with the selection of the current Ryder Cup captain.
I deeply regret making this comparison and apologise to Colin for involving him in my own issue. I feel especially bad if I have jeopardised his preparation for The Open Championship.
It has now been fairly well documented that my withdrawal from last year's Open was, in fact, due to injury. My real mistake last year was not explaining the injury when I retired. It was my belief that last year's incident had nothing to do with the selection of the current Ryder Cup captain.
I sincerely hope that nothing more will be made of this issue. This is my final statement on my withdrawal from last year's Open, as well as Colin Montgomerie's, and selection of the 2010 Ryder Cup captain. Thank you for all waiting around for my statement. I hope you all have a wonderful dinner tonight.

Q. Have you spoken to Colin about your comments?
SANDY LYLE: No, I haven't. He's kept behind the scene at the moment. I did try but not succeeded. A bit of a rude awakening this morning when the bells are ringing about half past 7:00 this morning. I had never had any thought about jeopardising his chances of the buildup to The Open Championship. So I hope our friendship is still there.

Q. Will you speak to him tomorrow and talk to him?
SANDY LYLE: I will speak to him when I can, yes. If it's later on today, if he's here. I don't even know if he's here right now. I was taking it easy the last -- supposedly today, anyway. But I will see him at some stage, yes.

Q. Sandy, I guess I don't understand the way you feel now in your statement. What were you thinking then, back then, when you made these comments, and what did you think the comments were going to reveal when they finally came out?
SANDY LYLE: Well, how it all sort of came out was that I was continually asked about retiring from The Open last year and also captaincy and everything else, and did it jeopardise my chance of being a captain. I said, well, we're not all -- we've not all got clean sheets. You've got the incident of Colin, who might be brought up in the committee meeting, the situation, and that might jeopardise his chances to be captain. And that was basically what I was doing.
But we still don't know in some ways, even though the committee made their mind up, of what the real reason why they chose Colin as the main captain, when he was really sort of down, marked for the 2014, I think it is, for Gleneagles.

Q. Do you think that these statements and everything that's happened to this is going to jeopardise any chance for you to be a captain down the road?
SANDY LYLE: Could well do, if it keeps being brought up. I'll just have to take it on the chin and get on with it. From now on really, I'll just let my clubs do the talking.

Q. Colin said at the Scottish Open last week that you'd met and had a chat.
SANDY LYLE: Yes.

Q. What did you talk about?
SANDY LYLE: I just congratulated him, because I hadn't seen him personally. He was standing on the range, near the range, and we had a quick chat for a few minutes as I was passing by. I congratulated him on his Ryder Cup selection. He took it all in the right way, and there was no problem.
I've got no vendetta against Colin at all. I'm all for him. And the last thing I want to do is try and jeopardise -- the last thing he wants right now is having all this baloney going on right now before he tees off this week.

Q. You mentioned jeopardising Colin's preparations, but what about yourself? How do you feel going into this Open Championship, with all the fury and upset that's in front of you?
SANDY LYLE: It is. I was obviously very upset this morning when I found out all this was brought to the front, here. But I played here on Saturday, so I've had one practise round. And then I was going to stay away for a few days and then get down here on Wednesday morning.
But I'm obviously here early to try and clear things up, and hopefully it will all be laid to rest after now. But my preparation, I'll get on with it. I'm not a main contender here this week. Obviously my challenge really is to get past the 9th hole and go from there. (Laughter.)

Q. You sort of just answered this, but how did you feel when you picked up a newspaper this morning? Did you pick it up before breakfast or at breakfast?
SANDY LYLE: My house is too far away from the newspapers in the morning. No, I've got laptops and computers, so the bells are ringing, so I had to look at all the info that was in the papers this morning.

Q. How did you feel?
SANDY LYLE: I felt a bit gutted. I think that literally the big lines of calling Colin a cheat, I think that is totally out of context. It's all been well documented. It's all on video. It's not like I'm prefabricating.
I just hope the games will begin.

Q. You might want this to be the end of the matter, but I would imagine the European Tour are probably going to take action against you.
SANDY LYLE: Well, whatever I might have said, it's not prefabricated. And it's all been well documented, and it's been brought to the light obviously this week or today, not in bad taste, but it just worked out that way. But we'll get on with it.
If the European Tour take on any action, I'll be very surprised.

Q. You said you regret bringing up the Jakarta incident. Is it still your opinion that what Colin Montgomerie did in Jakarta could be seen as a form of cheating?
SANDY LYLE: Well, it was all there to be seen. I didn't prefabricate this thing. We all have our own decisions, and I was quite happy that decision was made at that point, and then it was a very crucial time to Colin, being the top 50 and this and that and getting to the U.S. Opens, and all these sort of things. It was a very important time. I wasn't there to be seen.
But I'm only going from what other people have said, and it was a pretty poor drop. And it was one of his mistakes. I didn't make him do that mistake, it was his mistake. And it will probably live with him for the rest of his life; it'll be cropping up. I can't do anything against that.
I'm only trying to protect myself when I get called a quitter and walking off the golf course, when I've got a legitimate hand injury at the time that I hadn't really complained about, and it was come to light when I had the poor shots on the first few holes, plus the weather conditions didn't help. And I can't feel anything -- I was told I was in a bad mood, I was so many over par and I rushed off the golf course in a tiz.
I made the decision that it wasn't worth carrying on the round because I was 11-over par and my right hand was virtually ready to drop off. So I'm trying to protect myself as well. My decision was legit, and I've got x-rays at home to prove that I have -- there was actually no injury, there was no arthritis that I was looking for in the bone structure, but it was just due to a poor angle I was creating on the downswing on the golf swing.

Q. I'm just not clear about if you were playing with Colin Montgomerie at that time, would you have called a penalty against him or would you have alerted a rules official?
SANDY LYLE: In Jakarta?

Q. Yes, in Jakarta.
SANDY LYLE: When you've got your own problems around the golf course, you're not always watching behind your back about what the other person is doing. Obviously there was a rain delay, they stopped play because of bad light, and they returned the next morning. And apparently he was in an extremely bad position. You've all seen it, anyway. So I don't think you need me to say it, but the problem was -- the drop wasn't close to where it should be. And of course on TV it doesn't lie.

Q. Among the calls you received this morning, did you hear anything from Colin's management company calling for apology or explanation?
SANDY LYLE: I think they wanted to know what was going on, yes. And my first thought in my mind was when I get the phone going I'll speak to Colin personally, because he's the one that I need to speak to. He's the one I've hurt.
And he's obviously pretty cheesed off right now. And that's not my intentions to do that at all. I had no problem with the Ryder Cup captaincy; that's been dealt with. And we'll get on it.
But that was my first thought about half past 8:00 was to ring up Colin, but the number I have in my mobile has now been wiped out, so I couldn't get in contact with him.

Q. How can this matter be laid to rest, then? Should Colin resign as Ryder Cup captain?
SANDY LYLE: No, I don't think so, no. I'm in full support of him being Ryder Cup captain, and I don't think he should jeopardise his Ryder Cup position right now. It's just something that will be history in a few more days' time and the game of golf will grow stronger.
MALCOLM BOOTH: Sandy, thank you.

End of FastScripts

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