	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 29, 2009

Loren Roberts

CARMEL, INDIANA

THE MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Loren Roberts to the interview area. Loren is playing in his fifth Senior Open and with us fresh off the victory in the Senior British Open just on Sunday. He's got eight Tour victories and ten Champion Tour victories in his career. Tell us a little bit about the wave of emotion that you are riding right now from one major tournament to the next.
LOREN ROBERTS: Well it's a pretty quick wave. But, yeah, I feel really good, obviously. I had a lot of emotion watching Tom Watson the week before, you know. And I am amazed by the number of people that have congratulated me on the win and everything, and I think it's the direct result of all the notoriety that Tom kind of got for golf, you know, being in contention at Turnberry.
Actually I still feel like we won the tournament. [Laughter]. But I'm pretty excited, obviously. Totally different animal here though compared to Sunnydale. And hopefully we can adjust and be ready to go tomorrow.
THE MODERATOR: What strikes you about it in terms of the difference in the golf course set-up?
LOREN ROBERTS: Obviously, the rough. And just the whole style of the golf course. I mean, obviously, a lot more water. And we're playing a lot more length, too. Played hard and fast today. We'll see what the rain does to it over this evening and tomorrow a little bit. But I think it's going to be a very, very, very good test.
Probably the strongest course that I've seen for the Senior U.S. Open in the five that I've played as far as length and difficulty of shots and, you know, difficulty of greens.

Q. You mentioned in Milwaukee that was probably going to be your last regular Tour event. Watching Watson at the British, does that give you reason to reconsider? If he can do that, why can't you do that?
LOREN ROBERTS: Well, I kind of screwed up because I won the Senior British, and that gets me in the regular British next year, so I got to retract the statement.
[ Laughter ].

Q. Don't you feel you can still be competitive, I mean, be competitive in that tournament? And does Tom's performance, you know, even enhance that a little bit?
LOREN ROBERTS: I would think -- I think I've played two opens at the old course. I would probably say of all the Open rotation, that might be the one that I would possibly, you know, have a chance to play well. I mean, for me to play reasonably well. If it was Carnoustie, that would be another story.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I mean, how could you not look forward to going back to the old course? Because, I mean, that's kinds of where it is for all of us as, you know, golfers.

Q. Loren, you talked about the golf courses are night and day, but how difficult is it just mentally and physically coming off a win over there and, you know, with the jet lag and everything else to be here this week and trying to win again?
LOREN ROBERTS: I feel pretty good, to be honest with you. Somebody asked me that on the golf course today and kind of tongue-and-cheek I just kind of said, "Hey, any day on the golf course is a pretty good day, I don't care where you are at." That's kind of the way I look at it, and that's the way I am going to look at it.
This is a big golf course. I did one of the few things that I don't usually, hardly ever do. And that was I came up here a month ago and played a couple of practice rounds. Because I knew the time frame and I knew that this golf course -- remembered it from '91 as being "tricky" is probably not the term, but there's just a lot to see on this golf course.
The greens have a lot of slopes, and you have to really pay attention to just a lot of little intricacies of this golf course, because there are a lot of them.
I know Pete is always fine tuning things and messing around out here with this golf course. I think it was very, very helpful for me to come up and spend two days up here looking at the golf course.

Q. Loren, interesting hearing that you guys played it 18 years ago when you were young and strong. Could you recall then some of the clubs you might have hit then and what you are hitting now and how equipment and shafts and everything have -- it's good measuring -- place to measure isn't it?
LOREN ROBERTS: Yeah. Oddly enough, I think I'm hitting probably about the same clubs into a lot of the holes that I did back then. Just because of the technology, the fairways are running a little faster. Obviously the ball goes farther.
The one hole that is different for me is the 14th hole with the new tee. I can't hit it over the corner on the left. I've got to go around to the right. And that puts, you know, a 3-iron at best in my hands to a rescue club, maybe even a 3-wood if I happen to bail out to the right some.
Other than that, I think, it's playing about the same as I remember really for me.

Q. Tell us about these greens, are they easy to read, hard to read, how you analyze them.
LOREN ROBERTS: Seems like they're separate totally -- for me separate areas of each green where they're like totally separate greens even though they're all part of the same one. You have a lot of areas where some of the greens really run away from you. You have to be very careful about, you know, getting the ball too aggressively into the middle of the greens because they do run away.
Particularly some of the Par 3s. And you're really playing the spots instead of thinking about, you know, I'm going to run this ball up on this part of the green so I can get over here. You need to really kind of get the ball into the quadrant where the pin is because they have some pretty severe slopes and things you have to negotiate if you don't.

Q. Just following up on that, we were talking earlier about what goes into reading greens, and often wonder when you look at a green, what are you looking at and how do you read a green? What makes a good reader of a green?
LOREN ROBERTS: For me, I've always said it's a combination of what you feel in your feet and what you see. And I always thought that you start reading the green when you are 100 yards away from it, really. Because as you are approaching the green, you are paying attention to, you know, if there's creeks, or you got water flow here or there. You kind of see where the low areas are, see where the water flows an your feeling if you are walking up to the green or walking down to the green.
You really start reading the green when you are not even on it yet, because you're kind of getting a feel for the whole lay of the land around the area. But that is one thing about Pete's designs, that he's not afraid to do a lot of grading and get slopes going the opposite direction that you would think the normal flow of the terrain is.
That's what makes it tough, you know, why his golf courses can be pretty tough sometimes to play. Because he really puts some different things in there that you wouldn't normally see.

Q. Wanted to ask you one other thing about your win last week. You played Milwaukee the week before. You played pretty well there, I think T 20, something like that. Were there things that you found in Milwaukee that you were able to take over there? I mean, did you feel pretty good going there?
LOREN ROBERTS: I did, yeah. I've always had a great feeling about Milwaukee. I love playing there over the years, after they moved to Brown Deer.
I got my putter going in Milwaukee. The greens were absolutely beautiful up there, and I got my putter going. Obviously, you guys know for me I'm usually not going to beat anybody with my ball striking, I'm going to do it with the putter. I got my putter going and that really helped me last week. I mean, that's the reason I did it.
THE MODERATOR: Loren, thank you for your time.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297