U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 21, 1998

Hale Irwin

HALE IRWIN: I don't like to ever consider myself in that vein. I simply like to think that I have been playing well, as these statistics indicate, but those are numbers. The fact that I have had an exceptional year once again and that my desire to play well in this Championship does not always equal being the favorite. Favorites are, I think, for you folks out here. In my mind, I like to think of myself as -- other players have just as good a chance as I. And the fact that I have been playing well gives me some confidence coming into this event, but even if I wasn't playing well, I'd like to think that my Open experience would raise my level of play some. So I just like to go into a tournament with the idea in mind that I have as good a chance as anybody else and on this golf course where I have had some success and I have been playing well of late, does give me that opportunity to maybe have another good chance at winning a U.S. Senior Open Championship which is one of the goals of my career that I have yet to fulfill.

HALE IRWIN: Probably the talk of the week, as far as I am concerned, will be the changed condition of the greens from when I played here last. I played in the PGA when it was here. We did not see the greens as nicely grown-in then as we see them now. They are very fast, faster than what the SENIOR TOUR would generally hold the line on. They are firm. Even though they are deceptively firm because you fix a ball mark and you can actually get into the turf, but the ball releases and rolls and rolls. I would say the greens will be the big focus. There is also talk about the kikuyu rough. That is true. The kikuyu rough is very difficult. If the greens were soft and the greens were slow, pitching to those kikuyu greens won't be as difficult. But that is why I think the big problem for most of us this week will be around the greens, keeping the ball on the greens, getting the right pace to the putts. Awful lot of 3, 4, 5, 6-foot par putts this week even if you hit the greens. So there are no surprises on the golf course tee-to-green. It is there. It has been there. It hasn't changed in years. There is no hidden monsters out there anywhere. Nothing that you have to worry about that you haven't seen before. So there is some comfort level in that. However, we have not seen greens quite like this at Riviera since I have been playing here. So that to me is going to be the critical issue this week.

HALE IRWIN: Well, no. You have to get there. You have to hit the ball in the fairway and you have to hit the greens but I think it is going to be even more difficult to hit these greens. Landing them -- just take a good example of the 4th green today -- excuse me, the third green. There was a shot I saw shot played into there today, a nice high 5-iron that landed about eight feet short of the hole, which maybe put ten feet on the green and it didn't hesitate in going over the green. Now, you stop and think, well, how am I going to play this hole? Because if you all are familiar with this golf course, you know that there is a big bunker in the front that is a good part of that green. The only way really to keep it on the green at all is to land it over there on the front left of the green, try to fade it, just keep it on the green somewhere. Regardless of where the pin is, it doesn't matter. So at least in years past you have been able -- if the pin was on the right, you can hit it high and land it over there, probably keep it on the green. This year, at least the way we are seeing the course now, unless they change the course, that will be an impossibility. So I don't know how you interpret that. You are going to have to position your ball off the tee to get an angle into the green but then your angle into the green is sort of negated by the firmness of the greens. But I think Riviera is just a straightforward golf course. It is just a straightforward playing golf course. You have got to putt the ball in the fairway. You have got to find your way into the middle of these greens somehow and then you have got to have the good pace on the putts to come away with par. I think par is going to be a very good score this week. I don't know that it will be a winning score, but shooting four 71s or four 70s is going to be a very good week.

HALE IRWIN: Gil has a 10-shot lead because he has won it twice (laughs). Dave and I are even because he has won here, as well. I don't know if that -- just because we are playing Riviera, there are many other players that have played here as well. This is the U.S. Senior Open. This is not a Senior -- regular SENIOR TOUR event. It is prepared for a little more precision than what we would normally see. If you are expecting something different then you have made the wrong turn. Open Championships are made to exact some precision from the players and a player that comes in here thinking he can have just an okay game and do all right is badly mistaken. I don't disagree with the way it is prepared. It is going to exact its toll. But that is okay. I am not a person that says that we should go out and birdie every hole. I think par is -- has some value and we are just seeing so many courses now, so many under par that I think it is okay for a golf course to win. And it is okay for us to take par as a good score. That has just sort of been my basic philosophy for years and years. That is why I have always been such a proponent for the conditions that exacted that kind of play from the players.

HALE IRWIN: Well, ever since we first played Riviera -- the L.A. Open here.

HALE IRWIN: Quite a few times.

HALE IRWIN: Well, that is sort of -- says to some of the other courses they are not worthy of that and I don't want to jump into that. Let's just say that this course is -- might be as difficult as we have seen. Olympic Fields last year was a nice golf course and they are going to have the U.S. Open there. So it is not a bad golf course by any means, but this is a different kind and just as -- so much of Riviera depends on the kikuyu grass; how it bounces, where it bounces, what kind of lie you get around the greens. You can get a lie on there it could be six inches off the ground and you can get a lie that if it is somehow drops down in a nest, you are going to need a stick of dynamite to get it out. So it really is up in the air as to what you are going to get. When you play other kinds of grass, they are more predictable. Bermuda grass is tough, it is thick, but you can kind of play from it. The bent grasses you can kind of play from those, but this stuff, it is really hard to figure out.

HALE IRWIN: No, and the course is going to play much longer. 250-yard drive normally would be okay. Here it is going to be pretty darn long so we are going to see some -- plus we are playing practice rounds with the tees as far back as they can put them. I don't know that we are going to see them that during the tournament. They are small tees and they are not going to move them up 30 yards. We are going to see pretty much the same kind of golf course as we should. This is a very nice golf course; got a lot of tradition, and this is a U.S. Senior Open Championship which should be contested with bringing out the skills of the players.

HALE IRWIN: I think you have this thing bent all the wrong way. Ball is up; ball is down; you play it a different way. You have got to have the skills to play both shots. You are inferring that this is going to be a luckier venue than another one. Say, if you look at it it from your vantage point, but if you look at it from the other vantage point, one is down; one is up; you can play it that way instead of having the one single swing or one single shot with the one single club. Maybe you have to play it different way. To me, that exacts more skills than referring to it as luck. I am not going to get into the luck thing. To me you go out and create your luck. If you are relying on luck to get you through, then I think you have -- again, you got on the wrong bus. I think you come out here and play these golf courses with the skills you have and use those skills to create your own good scoring opportunities.

HALE IRWIN: Well, I think let's lay to rest if there is any thought that Gil and I have some sort of adversarial relationship. It's far from it. Larry and Gil are two of the nicest guys you you'd ever want to meet. I have the utmost respect, and hopefully their friendship. So in that sense there is if there is a rivalry as you -- it has been called -- it is certainly is a friendly rivalry and competitive one and one in which I think all of us are thriving and enjoying. The domination part I am not so sure that I -- again I am not going to agree with the domination other than I think we are both playing very well. Witnessed last week: Larry is playing well. There is -- are some other players that are playing well, maybe not at quite at the level that we are, overall, I think the entire Senior Tour has been pulled along with the higher standards of play. I am seeing players in the short time I have been on the Senior Tour playing better now than they did two and three years ago. I think it is just because they are practicing more. They are seeing what they have to do to push that envelope, to push their own skills and it is going to continue that way with the players coming onto the SENIOR TOUR. We keep talking about the Watsons and the Kites and all that. I think if you notice lately Doug Tewell has been posting some pretty low scores on the regular Tour and Bruce Lietzke is going to be coming on. These guys can play. It is not going to get easier. These dominant players, if you wish, you are just good players. And their skills are going to make others work that much harder. And if you are not willing to work, then you are not going to keep up.

HALE IRWIN: Well, I don't know if he is playing the same style. If you consider he is hitting it longer and farther and putting it better, then I would say he is doing much better. If Gil had played, in my humble estimation, if Gil had played at the level he is now while he was on the regular Tour, he would have won more tournaments and done much better. I think his -- he is swinging at the ball technically better than I have ever seen him and I know he is putting better. He will admit to that, I believe. He is just got the club in a better plane and better position, and putting-wise he looks very comfortable.

HALE IRWIN: Yeah, but those guys end up in jail, yeah. But eventually end up in jail if you are going to be doing that. I have played well, yes. I don't -- hopefully my confidence is controlled. It is within me. It is not a chest-thumping confidence. I am not going to go out and beat my virtues. I hope to contain those, use them to my advantage. I have been in sports too long and I have seen what over-confidence can do to people and I have seen that it can motivate the other team or the other individual to have better performances. So why do I want to go out and have that either happen to myself. So I just try to keep myself playing well, do what I do and just let the scoring, let everything else speak for itself and not get into that other stuff. It is not a game of in-your-face kind of attitude. I would leave it if it became that.

HALE IRWIN: Sure. The Ford Seniors was disappointing only in the sense that I just putted poorly. Had I putted the kind -- the putting tournament that I had hoped to have, I would have been right there with Gil. At 21 under par which he shot, is an extraordinary score. The 18-under which I shot also is pretty extraordinary. In fact, I think would it have won all other Ford Senior Championships except for that one that Gil had. The course played short; short in that it got dry and we were hitting the ball so much farther out there. But I played very, very well. I have no complaints about the way I played. So disappointing, not really because I am not going to win every event and there are other players that can play -- play that particular day or week can play better. So but that is long behind me. I have put last week behind me. I am just trying to get myself ready for this week and this week only.

HALE IRWIN: I don't know there is that much difference really. When I say comparing Gil's game, I am comparing it the way he is playing now in terms of his ability to rise to the top any week; versus his ability as a regular Tour player to rise to the top -- he was a good player, don't get me wrong. I am not saying he wasn't. I am just saying he is a better player and hits more shots now because he has got the club in a better position to hit those shots. As for myself, I think I have still maintained that I am still learning to play. I am still learning how to understand my game. I am still learning how to accommodate different situations and using the experience that I have had through the years and while I am still physically capable of doing that. There is lots of experience that has gone on between my ears. I have got a lot of experience up there. Can I use that to help myself? Yeah, well, I think I am using that. The fact that I have won 20 events on the regular Tour, including three U.S. Opens, I think indicates that I played pretty well. I had a good career. I have sort of tried as best I could to continue that into the SENIOR TOUR where I have played very well. So did I suddenly have a miraculous wake-up in the morning turn and -- no. I think it has been a fairly straightforward continuance after pretty good career.

HALE IRWIN: Probably not. I am working harder but it is not necessarily on my game. It is everything else. I don't have as much time to practice as I once did. But my game has been predicated a lot on how I think, how -- I play a lot of shots in my head, the old mental preparation thing, I am that. I may not be swinging at the ball well, but I think I know what I want to do and I may not get it done but at least I think I know what I want to do. That is more important to me. It has proven for me to be the best practice session. I spent maybe 20 or 25 minutes down there hitting balls a while ago and it was sort of uninspiring practice, so I quit. I just wasn't in it. Too much conversation going on around me. Too many people wanting to talk and when was I going to do the press interview, just -- so, it is better to just walk away from it; think about what I need to do and tomorrow I will be better off than spending two or three hours on the practice tee. That has just been the way I have done it. When I do have the opportunity, yes, I do work at it just as hard as I have have and probably apply myself better in those shorter stints every time I probably -- probably apply myself more intensely. More proactive towards results than I might have ever been than 20 years ago.