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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

August 2, 2009

Joey Sindelar

CARMEL, INDIANA

THE MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Joey Sindelar to the interview room. At 14-under par, Joey finished in second place runner-up at the 2009 U.S. Senior Open Championship. Are you still having fun? What was it like out there today?
JOEY SINDELAR: How could you not?
May I say, I don't have rabbit ears, but I do listen to what folks say, and what I learned in here yesterday was that I needed to do play the par 5s better, and I probably shouldn't shank. I played the par 5s better, and I didn't shank and Fred still whooped me, bad! It was awesome.
You know, he's that kind of golfer. He's feisty. He's really good. He doesn't show weaknesses. I don't think he had a bogey today, from what I could tell by the board. He just doesn't -- he rarely goes backwards, and that's why you always see his name there. So, first of all, congratulations to him.
I did have an enormously good time this week. It was -- I don't know if it felt -- anytime we play golf -- I'm going to call this the North, I hope I'm not offending anyone. Anytime we play North, it feels like home. Maybe it's being a Buckeye 150 miles down the road. The people were fantastic. The energy was scary.
Adrenaline in other sports is a great thing, but you've got to watch it with golf because there are lots of penalty strokes behind greens, so you've got to watch yourself and not get to amped up.
I wish it would have been more of a contest coming in but Fred played too well, so hats off to him.

Q. Joey, with him starting off strong like he did, did it seem like an uphill battle given he was playing so well from the start?
JOEY SINDELAR: Yeah, and I -- and I thought, leading -- was that Fred's first Major by the way?

Q. Second, he won Jeld-WEN.
JOEY SINDELAR: He did? Shows you what I know. I thought he may be battling the nerves. He got to 3 or 4 quickly there on the back nine, and I said to my caddy, John, I know what I would feel like if I was four shots clear, maybe it will be nerve-wracking for him out there -- bang, bang, bang, birdies, he leads by however many more. He must have been flawless today. I heard he stumbled a little just now around 7 or 8 but he couldn't have done much after that. It was awesome stuff. So your question was, Bill?

Q. That was it.
JOEY SINDELAR: Did I get it? Sorry about that.

Q. Would you say this is the best you've played in a while?
JOEY SINDELAR: Um, a lot of it was. I putted better than I have in recent weeks.
It's been a funny year. I played well early, which is unusual for me, because I don't play a lot of golf in the winter. I went to sleep there for a couple of weeks, and then I got sick there for a couple of weeks. Iron game was awesome but my driver wasn't great, and usually my driver is my "go-to" club. That got me in the hole on the par 5s early in the week, that I didn't have the birdies that I wanted there.
It was a good, solid tournament. When your game holds up with that, my eyeballs staring at you for this big of a prize, you got to be happy. I'm happy, it wasn't the greatest golf I've ever played or anything like that, but it sure was satisfying.

Q. Given the way you handled the golf course this week, what do they need to do to make it a challenging course for the PGA guys when they come in here in 2012?
JOEY SINDELAR: Keep in mind we didn't see the back tees on a lot of holes so there was yardage there. The turf was interesting to me.
I don't know the reasons but I think if the turf changes -- it was a little bit -- it was quite soft, to a point. If the turf comes in to a point where they can make 'em firm it's going to change everything. We did not see -- we didn't see a lot of wind, and we didn't see firm greens and we didn't see the entire golf course so -- don't the locals get all whacked out about that.
This was a great test. The fairways were wider than any regular Major Tour to be. Again, I have not been out here long enough to know the philosophy, senior events versus regular for the USGA bullet, I would expect they would rachet the fairways down a bit. And every time you do a few tees back, more wind, longer tees, narrower fairways, this is golf.
Probably No. 9; maybe a new tee on 9 or something, because you don't want guys whistling 6 or 7-irons into a hole like that. This is amazing golf here, don't worry about it.
THE MODERATOR: Joey thank you for your time.
JOEY SINDELAR: My pleasure.

End of FastScripts

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