BRITISH OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 21, 2002

Stuart Appleby

STEWART McDOUGAL: Stuart Appleby 65 today for 278, 6 under par and leading in the club house. How does it feel?

STUART APPLEBY: It feels good to be in the position to be in the media tent for a change. That's nice. But pretty easy day out there. I don't know what the low score is for the day, but certainly 65 is a number. 65 was going to be on the card, so it was a matter of who was going to shoot that sort of score being no more than 5, 6 shots away to try and sneak up or scare the leaders, so I was having a good day really. I was feeling nervous from the very first hole, nervous all day, but I guess good nerves, more a stimulus than anything else, sharpening your focus. I made putts today. I hadn't made any all week, so it was nice.

Q. You have to catch some breaks to contend in a Championship. You caught a break with the weather yesterday. Can you talk about that and how important is it to hang in there with those situations?

STUART APPLEBY: Yesterday was a bit of a freak of nature. In the British Open, certainly at least this week we've seen every amount of weather possible. Yesterday was really unruly, what we had, what the players had to go through. I certainly got a good luck of the draw, like you said. That did make a huge difference. To see what Ernie shot yesterday, under the conditions, even though it got easier the last part of his day, was a fantastic score. There were a few good hang-on scores out there. There were only a few guys that really didn't shoot themselves. They weathered the storm. I didn't have to go through that so it made it easier. Basic on even ground coming in today, whether the guys that played through that brutal wind yesterday were still emotionally weathered from that storm and that was going to affect today's round, being the opposite almost perfect weather, I don't know, for me it wasn't a huge difference because I never played in really bad weather here. How many shots was that storm worth, certainly 2 or 3.

Q. Can you look back on it all and think maybe I could have --

STUART APPLEBY: There's no such thing as a perfect 72 round. Certainly this is the hardest tournament to have a perfect 72 holes. Even though this is the greatest British Open with respect to the weather, no wind, not too bouncey, the British Open is normally traditionally the luck of the golfing gods when it comes to bouncing balls and all sorts of things and slopes to hit and everything like that. Today, I missed a short putt in the middle of the nine holes, back nine, but like I said, I didn't make anything earlier in the week. I had some good quality putts, that's what I'm trying to do, quality putts, if it goes in, it goes in; if it doesn't, it doesn't. Not say that I need to make this, forcing this and just hit quality. Quality works. Everybody out here this week would have said, oh, I lost three, four, five shots. To answer your question, there are still a lot of shots out there I left out.

Q. (Inaudible)?

STUART APPLEBY: I played well in the Western tournament a few weeks ago, which was the only tournament that I could base myself getting into this, outside of qualifying just down the road. I didn't want to have to come across the pond and try and have a one-hit wonder for two rounds and try to get in with pretty much a dog fight. It was pretty much a dog fight. I wanted to keep the tradition personally that I'd played every major since '97, I think it's 22, I think. That was certainly a goal of mine. I've been playing through qualify at the Western, Top 5 finish there. Still had to adjust to the British Open greens, which are very slow and very breaky but as an Australian, we certainly have an affiliation with this tournament for many many years and we do like the Americans have with the U.S. Open. We probably have a stronger hold outside of the Europeans or emotionally with the British Open as anybody.

Q. Did you look at the score board and did you think to yourself how much you were going to need to try and --

STUART APPLEBY: Not at all. I didn't really need to. I guess if you can compare it to racing terms, I was certainly a few laps behind and I had to put the foot to the floor and go, I didn't have time to look behind me and see what was going on. I didn't see the purpose of that. I was really running out a haul (sic), knowing the leaders had birdie chances ahead of them that I needed to really keep going. So there was no inclination for me to look. I knew I was playing well. I really had no idea what position I was in in the tournament. I was thinking Stuart Appleby is playing nice, he's hitting the ball well, he's putting all right. What do I need to do. I'm not in a position to assess where I'm going. I just have to keep charging ahead.

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