SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

June 6, 2003

Allen Doyle

ALLEN DOYLE: We started out, made bogey on one. I hit it in the tall stuff for the first time this week, by about a half an inch. You have no chance out of it. I laid up, probably we had 84 yards to the hole. I hit a good shot in there about four feet, didn't make the putt, so didn't -- you know, a particularly good start, but knowing that everybody else would be having the same trouble you just try to tell yourself to be patient and try to make some birdies. I birdied No. 2. We had about 157, hit a 7-iron about 15 feet and made that. And then on 3 we 3-putted for bogey from about 45, 50 feet. The par 5, 6 iron I think we had 179. Hit that to about two, three inches for birdie. 6, the short par 4 I hit a 9-iron from 138, to about five feet and made that. 7 I chunked an 8-iron in the bunker and made bogey. Blasted out about 25 feet and 2-putted for bogey. Laid up hit driver, 3-wood about 20 yards short of the green, chipped to about four, five feet and made that to turn 1-under. Then I think I birdied 13. I had 128, 129. Pitching wedge about six, seven feet, made that. Bogeyed 14, hit one of those part wood, part iron clubs. Short and right pitched to about ten feet, twelve feet and didn't make it. 15 hit a 5-iron from 19 two to about twelve feet, made that for birdie. 16, driver, 3-wood about 20 yards short of the green chipped it six feet, birdie. Then parred the last two holes.

ALLEN DOYLE: I don't think I have -- although I have driven the ball in the fairway without too much problem, I don't feel like I am really -- you know, in you super sync with the driver but I am hitting it in the fairway, so it just seems that I had half my drives come back at me. So your mindset is just drive it in the fairway but I am hitting a lot of good shots and I have rolled the ball -- it isn't that I have rolled the ball great but the putts that you are supposed to make, those 8 to 12-footers I am making, you know, and just trying -- knowing the whole field to be having problems, just trying to hang in there and hit the fairway, make par, go to the next hole, try to do the same thing, but I am playing well.

ALLEN DOYLE: Well, yeah, the way I started out I thought I was going to swap the bogeys for birdies and I had four birdies on the front nine and only turned 1-under. In a way you are kicking yourself because you think you let the birdies slip away and you didn't take full advantage of them. I made some good ones on the back nine. It is probably not realistic, you know, to think that you can go out the next two days and make seven birdies a day, but the key is not so much that, the key is just again drive it in the fairway, because I have yet to see anybody drive it in the tall stuff and make a par. You are only hitting it 100 yards out of it. Then it's hard to get them real close for some short par putts because of the way the greens are soft and it's hard to gauge how far you have got to fly it at the hole. So if someone had told me at the start of the day that they'd give me seven birdies I'd a first questioned what they were saying and then in the next breath taken it.

ALLEN DOYLE: Well, I mean it kind of plays with your mind a little bit. But you have to just pass it off to that very next thing, you said it's a championship golf course and we normally can at least you know, I don't mean me, but normally a lot of the guys can drive it off the fairway and still play the golf course and they can't here. So when I came here it was fine with me. I know when I missed one that I wasn't going to miss two anymore. So I just said, hey, just play your game and you know, if you start to hit fairways you will start to knock a few on the green and you know, it was big when I bogeyed 1, but then birdied two, but then bogeyed 3, but coming back with those birdies on 5 and 6 were big. That almost has to be your mindset. You just got to say, hey, look at the scoreboard and you don't see a whole lot of red numbers. So you know, if you keep it around there you are going to be in pretty good shape.

ALLEN DOYLE: No, mine were all lousy today. (Laughs). Some days you have some good bogeys, but today I didn't.

ALLEN DOYLE: The process was I had to put blinders on and I had to put air plugs in my ears because everyplace I went they'd snicker and they'd scratch their heads and they'd wonder how it happened. I can remember in this event too when I was a rookie the first two rounds I played with Floyd and Nicklaus and I am thinking to myself how did I get stuck in this pairing, my God, I wish -- because I would have rather been stuck with two anonymous guys. But the night before I told myself well, if you look at the stat sheet, I have a better stroke average than they do. I hit more greens than they did. I hit more fairways than they do. My sand save percentage is better. Almost everything I was doing that year in the short period of time that we had played, my statistics were superior to theirs. So I just said just go out and put on your blinkers and putt in your ear plugs so you don't hear or you don't see people turning to people saying what the hell is with this guy, how does he do it, so it didn't take me long because basically what I had to do at every level that I went to, you know, when I went from playing to the state tournaments it was the same thing, playing in regional, playing in national then playing on the Nike, playing on the Tour, it was the same thing, so I had to actually had gone through it three, four times and I knew that the ball didn't know any better. That if I could repeat that swing and make the shots and all the putts, that I didn't know where I'd fall, but I knew I'd give myself the best chance to succeed and I would fall someplace between the top and the bottom -- I just wanted to see more closer to the top.

ALLEN DOYLE: I have not ever seen anybody. There is no one -- I go to the range and I will hit balls and do makeshift things until I get the ball starting to do -- you know, what I historically do with the ball draw it a little, so I have always been able to go to the range and beat balls for a certain period of time to get the ball to do what I want it to and that's, you know, that's the way I have always worked with my swing.

ALLEN DOYLE: Oh, yeah, where I caddied there was an old pro there and all the assistants always were trying to change me, and he would see this process and he grabbed me aside one day, he said two things. One, don't ever take any lessons from someone that can't beat you, because why can't they translate that to themselves to make them better golfers, and then two, if you could drive the ball straight and you could chip and putt, it will shock you how many guys you will be able to beat and how well you will play day after day after day.

ALLEN DOYLE: Hap Malia.

ALLEN DOYLE: To me it hadn't changed any. I live better obviously, I you know, I do some things that I could not ever do before. We own a condo in Panama City Beach. I can do whatever I want when I want, but I haven't, you know, it hasn't affected me much. I don't have the trappings of Mercedes in the driveway, you know, lavish watches or Armani slacks or any -- you know -- I have just kind of felt pretty good that at the end of this, I mean, or where we're at now or where we were at at the end of each particular year that everything had worked out almost as well as it could and that it wasn't so much that I can do anything I wanted, it was the fact that-- I didn't necessarily do it, it was the fact that I could if I wanted to. It would be people that you'd run into that would claim that I have changed. I won't agree with them. I hope I have changed for the better. We all, I guess, can improve, but, you know I'd have to say I am the same guy.

ALLEN DOYLE: I don't think it gives you any advantage. Again, if the weather comes in tomorrow that's going to present a whole new set of problems for everybody. It will be tough to concentrate. It will -- I think you have seen this year particularly on the SENIOR TOUR with all first-time winners, it been a topsy-turvy year. Seems like if a guy gets it in his mind that it's his week, despite the way he's played you know, in the previous weeks and months that seems to be thrown out the window. So I don't think it will be. I hope that if you come to the back nine on Sunday the last few holes maybe having been there before will be a positive, but we got a long way to go before we get there.

ALLEN DOYLE: Be honest with you I hadn't cut grass for a while. But I still go out there. I hadn't picked up balls -- well I hadn't picked up balls for a couple of years now. I hired a guy to get that done. My youngest daughter being through college if there's anything that's going to get grass related why she's going to get her butt on the tractor. So I delegate a little more. But whenever I am off I am down there and I hang out and practice and piddle with clubs and stuff.

ALLEN DOYLE: No, she -- at the beginning of February she went to work for Soft Spikes. So she would have stayed caddying, but we just felt that after two and a half, three years it was probably about time she got out into the real world and found out what rent payments were about, electric payments and all this stuff, so she will be here tomorrow because. She's in Maryland where Soft Spikes is. She had a pretty good two and a half, three-year run.