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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 28, 2011

Olin Browne

TOLEDO, OHIO

DAN HUBBARD: We've got Mr. Browne here with us, and some of you may have seen the flash. Let's just start out, I know you started on the back, and you were, as you said, the first ten holes 1-under par. And then things really took off from there. If you could just walk us through your first nine, you had two birdies and one bogey.
OLIN BROWNE: Yeah, I birdied 11. I hit a 3-wood off the tee and a pitching wedge to about three feet. It was nice to get off to a good start early.
And then we played that difficult 12th hole, the par-3. The pin was in an accessible spot today, and I hit another one about three feet, so I was under par early.
And my bogey came on 16. I hit an errant tee shot. I was in the first cut of rough down the left side. It doesn't present a very good angle, and I had a tree in my way. I hit a 3 hybrid from there and it ticked the tree and came town about 77 yards from the pin, where I proceeded to hit it on the green and not make the putt.
It was a fairly commercial back nine. I drove the ball pretty well the rest of the time, and I think got up-and-down out of a couple of sand traps when I needed to to keep the momentum going, but that back nine is a beast.
Making the turn, I parred 1. I actually hit a terrible shot on my second shot, caught a flier and hit it over the green and managed to get it up-and-down and then started hitting some good shots. I hit a quality shot -- the pin was in a difficult place on 2.
But then I birdied 3, hit an 8-iron in there about five or six feet right behind the hole.
Hit a good tee shot on the next hole and had 216 to the pin uphill a little bit crosswind, hit a 3 hybrid about five or six feet, made that putt for my first eagle of the day.
Let's see, what happened after that?
DAN HUBBARD: You parred No. 5.
OLIN BROWNE: Parred No. 5. I birdied 6. Is that the one back down the hill?
DAN HUBBARD: I believe so.
OLIN BROWNE: What's the number on it?
DAN HUBBARD: No. 6, par-4, you had a 3.
OLIN BROWNE: It's one of the other driving holes. I hit a good tee shot down the middle, had 158 to the hole, hit 8-iron about pin high from about let's say nine or ten feet, made that.
Parred the next hole, and then got up on No. 8. I was debating actually whether I should lay up off the tee because I wanted to take the bunkers out of play, but you're really forced to take it past the bunkers and around the corner, otherwise you don't have a good lay-up. So laid up with a 4-iron and had 97 yards to the hole. The key to hitting that shot in was first of all you've got to get super lucky but you've got to hit the right distance, and the wind was up-and-down. I managed to hit it and guess the wind properly and the ball hit behind the ball and then sucked back into it for my second eagle.
I just did the press thing out there, and everybody is figuring out I had a pretty hot round. What I did was I played pretty steady golf and I made two eagles on par-5s, so it's not just how you do it but when you do it that matters.
DAN HUBBARD: 12 through 17, a lot of people have been in here talking about that being a matter of surviving that group of holes.
OLIN BROWNE: Well, they're really long, those holes. 12 is a super challenging par-3. The water is going to come into play all weekend, I'm sure, and then 13, 14, 15 are really hard par-4s. 15 is a super par-3, and 16 and 17 are chop buster par-4s. And then 18 you'd better hit a good tee shot or you're not going to hold that green. It's a challenging back nine.
DAN HUBBARD: Did it almost feel better to you to get that out of the way first? Obviously it did because you scored so well on the second nine. But --
OLIN BROWNE: Well, you have to play them, it doesn't matter when you play them. You just want to make sure you hit a decent shot and you're able to navigate your way through. It was nice to get off the back nine under par today and then have some really cool stuff happen on the front.
DAN HUBBARD: You were very good off the tee today. Can you talk about that, and did you make any adjustments coming into the week regarding your driver that helped you today?
OLIN BROWNE: No, not really. I'm a pretty steady driver of the ball. Don't hit the ball as far as I'd like to, but I hit it straighter than most, so that's a good quality to have at a U.S. Open. This golf course presents some angles off the tees and the wind directions, there's a lot of change in hole directions, so the wind has an impact hole to hole, and you just have to figure that out.
The best thing that you can do is find the short grass, and it doesn't matter whether you've hit it 300 off the tee or 220 off the tee. If you're in the fairway, you can play, and this golf course offers some birdie opportunities. There's some shorter holes that you really need to hit a good shot. But if you don't hit a good shot, you're not going to be able to be aggressive and have a go.
A nice blend of holes. This is a really wonderful venue, and I'm thrilled to be playing it.

Q. The interview you did outside and even in here, you said you played steady golf, but you almost seem kind of nonchalant about your round, not too high about it. Is that because it's still early?
OLIN BROWNE: Are you ready to give me the trophy today?

Q. No.
OLIN BROWNE: That's why.

Q. Talk a little bit about your entire season so far. You got off to a great start, I think five top 10 finishes, and since then it's been --
OLIN BROWNE: It's been ordinary? You can say it; it has. I got off to a great start this season, it's true, and I was putting better than I have been for the last couple months, and I'm not really sure why. Maybe a combination of I'm not hitting the ball as close with my irons. We don't have the statistical stuff out here on the Champions Tour that we have on Tour with the ShotLink and so forth. So it's kind of a best-guess type situation.
But I did get off to a great start. I live in Florida, we started in Florida, and that's kind of a nice thing. It's kind of a home game.
So you know, today I hit -- I didn't make any putts -- I think the longest putt I made was -- I made one from 97 yards, but that doesn't really count, you know? The longest putt I made was probably nine or ten feet. I hit some good quality iron shots, and that's what you have to do. You have to hit it close enough so you've got a good look, and then when you get a good look you've got to take advantage. I suspect I haven't been hitting my irons quite as well as I would have liked, but today I had a nice day with that.

Q. You've played in a lot of majors. You were in the hunt late at Pinehurst in '05 at the regular U.S. Open. How does playing a senior major, this one, feel compared to one on the regular Tour?
OLIN BROWNE: Well, I mean, I think you still have the same -- it's the same formula for playing well. You have to be in control of your game, tee through the green. We saw it at Congressional this year. The guy who played the best really won the tournament. He smoked the field doing it.
And I think that there's an evolution in the course setup philosophy that we've seen over the last few years with a variety in the setup. Drivable par-4s, for example, at Oakmont of all places, and we've experienced that at Crooked Stick, we had a drivable par-4 my first year that I played the Senior Open. I think there are a lot of similarities, it's just scaled down a little bit, a bunch of old guys plodding around trying to survive the tough conditions and the heat and so forth. But it's still golf at the extreme, and that means that you have to be in control of everything, your driving, your iron play, your putting, your short game and your emotions. And so that's what the USGA does is it tests us in that regard.
DAN HUBBARD: Olin, thanks very much for coming by. Good luck the rest of the week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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