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U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPJune 17, 2010Ian PoulterPEBBLE BEACH, CALIFORNIA Q. Tell us about that last one? IAN POULTER: Well, I mean I pushed it a little right, but I hit it solid. It was goings for finish in that right hand bunker. Good bunker shot that moved a little left on me. I was in someone's rake marks, where someone has been in that exact spot and the ball was sitting down. And if you're gunning from 99 yards and the ball is sitting down, it's not leaving you a nice shot. I hit it a little heavy, tried to dig at it, and made a good up and down. Q. What was the secret of your round today? IAN POULTER: I just played real solid. I didn't miss many greens. I drove it really well. I gave myself, you know, plenty of looks from kind of the right side of the pin. And you have to do that around this golf course. I said it the other day that it's all about distance control with your irons. If you can drive it well and have a few looks at birdie, then I think you can put a score together around this golf course. Level par, 1-under par is a great score today. Q. You said the other day that you felt like you really had lost your game a bit and that you were hoping to find it here. Obviously you found it out there today. But were harbingers or things that you felt in the practice rounds that you were beginning to get your form back? IAN POULTER: I just think it's the fact of loving the golf course. This is the first time I've ever been here this week. And I love it. I love the fact that you don't have to hit driver on an awful lot of holes. It's positional play. I like that kind of golf. I like the fact of it being small greens. And tricky around the greens. So therefore my short game can come into play when needed and it did today a couple of times. So, you know, I worked hard this week. I just changed a little something in my swing to find the club head back on line and it feels good. Q. We were hearing that maybe par could win this tournament. In order to make par you're going to have to make birdies out there. So going in you've got three rounds to go and you know you can go out there and make birdies, is that a good feeling? IAN POULTER: Yeah, I made two bogeys today. If you're going to limit your bogeys to kind of two a day, you know, there was a soft one at 2. It was an easy bunker shot for me, I would probably say it was 9 out of 10 up and down. I didn't get that one up and down. But I managed to make a very difficult up and down on the last. So two bogeys, yeah, if you're going to limit yourself to that around this golf course, you're going to have a lot of shortish iron shots. Obviously you've got 7, you've got the par-5, 6. Providing you put it in play, you should be able to get around that green. And I think that's probably five or six chances out there. Q. It's one thing to physically be able to do that when shots go awry and still save par, but at a U.S. Open when shots are very important, how important is it for you to be able to save par on a hole like that? IAN POULTER: You need to make up and down at the right time. When you hit what I would say is probably one of my best shots I've hit into 17 today to kind of 12 feet and leave it short in the middle, and then had a walked off 18 making bogey I would have been frustrated. But as it happened, I knew you can still hole a 15, 18 foot for par and walk off 18 and be happy. Q. Can you talk about the save on 12 and what that did for your attitude? IAN POULTER: I felt it was quite an easy bunker shot, to be honest. It might not have looked it. But the green -- well, the ball wasn't necessarily on the downslope. It was just slightly on the upslope. It was a good lie in the trap and I had probably 20 feet of green to work with. So it might looked tricky because the pin was at the back and I missed the pin to the right. I played a normal bunker shot which came out stiff. Q. What are doing to stay patient? IAN POULTER: I'm not doing anything. You have to stay patient or you're going to be going home pretty quickly around this place. Ikeda, the Japanese guy we were playing with today was playing lovely. And it shows if you get a little impatient, he hit it long through the back of that green and tried to play the perfect shot and then tried to play another perfect shot and you make triple bogey very quickly. You have to be patient otherwise you can do that very quick. Q. Do you think par is enough? IAN POULTER: I don't know. I don't even want to think about it. I'm not interested on the score. I'm just focusing in, play golf. It will be dependent on the greens drying out and how windy it's going to get through Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It's irrelevant to me what score wins as long as I'm one better than everybody else, I don't really care. Q. How were the greens today? IAN POULTER: They're drying out. But I've got to say they were softer today than they've been all week. But there are areas on a few greens which are very soft. And there's areas where I couldn't get a tee peg into repair a pitch mark. I would say they're patchy, just because areas are patchy soft, and areas are patchy rock solid. So I guess it's hard to walk water them evenly, but that's this type of grass and that's this type of golf course. End of FastScripts |
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