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SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 29, 2010

Jay Don Blake

DENVER, COLORADO

KELLY ELBIN: Jay Don Blake, co-leader after three rounds of the 71st Senior PGA Championship here at Colorado Golf Club in with a 70 today, 2-under par, tied with Tom Lehman at 6-under par for the championship. Jay Don, comments on the round today, please, as well as being tied for first going into the final round of the first senior Major of the year.
JAY DON BLAKE: The round was started off pretty exciting, I birdied the first couple holes and that kind of got things kind of going. And I hit a lot of pretty good shots out there. Played pretty solid golf. Hit a lot of the fairways, hit most of the greens.
Just got later on in the round where the wind started blowing so hard that you really had a hard time being aggressive towards hitting the putts. The winds were, you had to allow for the wind blowing the ball, for the breaks, so it got tough making putts out there. And the course played a totally different direction of wind, so we have had every direction so far this whole week. And it's, it was tough out there today.
KELLY ELBIN: How about your feeling going into the final round as the co-leader.
JAY DON BLAKE: I guess I'm excited about it. It's been awhile. They asked me earlier how long it's been since I've been in the lead going into the last day and I couldn't remember. I have no idea when it was.
So I'm very excited that -- I feel like my game's pretty good and not that it was that unexpected to be here, I felt like I had played well and I've hit the ball well all week, so I'm glad I'm up on top, co-leader and looking forward to tomorrow's round and just go out and play the same game.
KELLY ELBIN: Open it up for questions.

Q. I'm wondering if you've done anything exceptionally well this week that puts you in the position that you're in right now.
JAY DON BLAKE: I've probably driven the ball real well. It's very penalizing to miss the fairways and I've really executed very well with the driver.
And I've missed a few fairways, like 18, you miss that four feet off the fairway and I can't even advance it 150 yards. So that's been a good part of my game is just keeping the ball in play.
KELLY ELBIN: For the record Jay Don has hit 35 of 42 fairways.

Q. Talk about what you learned the course over the last three days, how has that helped you in the last three days?
JAY DON BLAKE: We honestly didn't get a good chance to really get a good preparation for the course. We came out Monday and I mean you couldn't stand up. Me and a buddy of mine, Jim Rutledge, I don't know if we were pretty much idiots going out there, but we tried to attempt to go play and it was, we just wanted to go walk. Just go out and kind of see it. We thought, well, if we're going to go, let's take the clubs and just mess around. And that turned out to not even be fun. We quit after six holes. We seen the family dining and the food. So we headed up there.
(Laughter.)
Tuesday was, we played nine holes in the morning, they had the pro-am and that's pretty tough to get up in the afternoon and, so we came out early in the morning on Wednesday to play 18 holes and it took six hours to play that. So normally you get to play three times, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or at least twice, good solid rounds, but it seemed like that we only got about one good solid round and every day the wind's blown different, so it's been a different course every time we walked around it almost.

Q. What about the last three days though? How has the course played differently in competition the last three days?
JAY DON BLAKE: The first two days seemed about the same. The wind direction was pretty close to the same. I had a late tee time on Thursday and the greens got baked out. They had some pin placements up front, you're hitting 70 yard sand wedges and they're going 40 feet by when they land right by the pin. And so it was very patient golf on Thursday. Fairways were very fast and firm.
Played it in the morning yesterday and I got off to a slow start, but I could see where the golf course could be a little bit more getable on a morning day where the greens were receptive, you could hit shots and kind of stop them.
And the same thing with today. The shots weren't really holding on greens, you weren't making a ball mark, just making a skid on the green, so the balls were always bouncing 15, 20 feet and then trying to check, but they would still kind of roll. So it was tough. Then adding the wind to it was even harder.

Q. Given the conditions today, I know you said that wind direction changed, are you surprised by all the low numbers that went up, David Frost had a course record, O'Meara had a 67, a lot of guys at the top played well.
JAY DON BLAKE: Well I was on the practice greens, I think I seen Frost come you up from 15 green up to the clubhouse, he didn't play the last three, I don't think.
(Laughter.)
So, no, that's a great round that he put up. I mean I seen that out there later in the day and we kind of just got started and I seen 7-under. And I'm like, wow, that's a great score. I mean, even if it was calm, soft greens, I mean that's, on this golf course it's, that's a really good score.
I don't know. I know the winds weren't -- I think the tent's going to fall down it's blowing so hard. I don't think the wind was blowing that hard this morning.
Like I said, you can go out there, par-5s, you know, they're reachable, so you can, some of the par-4s people are driving. So there's some birdie opportunities, you get things going well -- yesterday I shot 5-under on the first nine. So I mean you can put some birdies up there.
So you can kind of see some scores out there, but then as touch as the wind blows, I mean that's like you just got to be patient, play real good golf.

Q. Tell us what your status is on the Champions Tour this year.
JAY DON BLAKE: I would like to know what my status is also.
(Laughter.)
I really don't know what my status is. I call the PGA TOUR office and they don't know what my status is. They just punched my number, name in the computer and then that tells them to tell me what I am.
So as that, I've just got one TOUR victory that gives some status. But it's down the list quite aways. So like going into next week I'm 20, 21st alternate. So I'm not even in the tournament.
I've been going to the Monday qualifying, that's about all, the only way I can get in the tournament is by doing that. And even the two tournaments I played I finished in the top-10 twice and we thought there was a rule finish in the top-10 you automatically go to the next tournament, but we quickly found out that they take only one player out of the top-10 and it's the lowest player.
And so I mean it's tough to get your foot in the door. So I mean, so status-wise I just have to do Monday qualifying and I thought, hope to finish in the top-10s and advancing on and keep plugging on and maybe win one of these things and get my foot in there.

Q. Given that, what would wining here if you were fortunate enough to win mean to you?
JAY DON BLAKE: I know it would bring a lot of tears. It would mean quite a bit.

Q. How many Majors had you played in in your career and have you ever been close to this position going into the final round of a Major Championship?
JAY DON BLAKE: I know Pebble Beach one year that wind blew crazy, the one that Tom Kite won. I was a little earlier in the day, kind of the middle of the pack and I come out and I got 4-under, 4- or 5-under, and everybody was kind of backing up. And I just needed to kind of hold on myself. But I ended up bogeying the last three holes myself, and ended up finishing sixth place there. Just a, I think two or three shots out of the lead. So make a couple pars, put a number up there, and you know.
So and then I played one of the New York, Curtis Strange won that one. I can't remember the name of the golf course. Oak Hill. I actually had the lead for 69 of the holes, the last three holes I finished bogey, double bogey and finished like 14th. So but I had the lead then, but didn't finish well. You got to finish them off.

Q. As a follow-up to that, what do you anticipate tonight being like and the morning and how are you going to handle that?
JAY DON BLAKE: Probably won't sleep a whole lot. A lot of nerves. Be a lot of thoughts. Trying to calm my like right now my emotions. I've got my family here with me to support me, so we're going to go give it my best.

Q. You talked about patience, you talked about a quick start today, kind of slow start yesterday, but you saw a lot today of the field jostling around. I mean just when it looked like someone would break clear, you know, there's some trouble out there. Talk about how the golf course works with your emotions and your patience and how you kind of just play your way through when things are up-and-down all around you.
JAY DON BLAKE: Like you say, on a golf course that's kind of like that, you've got to be patient and take what you can get. And when you start making two or three birdies, the first few holes, I mean you don't try to think, oh, I'm going to go shoot 60 out there, because you never know what's coming around on the next hole. And so you just got to, I just tried to execute one shot at a time. And just tried to get a game plan out there for each hole when you walk to the tee.
I mean sometimes you can prepare Tuesday and Wednesday of how you're going to play a hole, because every day kind of the winds are the same, the course stays the same. But here you can't because the wind s have been a different direction every day and you're hitting different shots off the tees. And so you just can't really get too far ahead of yourself. And you know that if you don't watch out, you can back up pretty quick. So you just got to stay within your own game and execute one shot at a time.

Q. Are you a very emotional guy normally or is this unusual?
JAY DON BLAKE: I never thought I was. For some reason probably the last ten years I've been very emotional. I don't know what's changed, but maybe just a comfort in my life.
KELLY ELBIN: Jay Don Blake, co-leader going to the final round of the Senior PGA Championship.

End of FastScripts

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