U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 1, 2001

Allen Doyle

ALLEN DOYLE: I was playing at the right, about a half ball outside right. And it actually broke a little right. So we missed it by a ball and a half probably.

ALLEN DOYLE: I needed that, but if I get 18, you never know what happens. That I needed. And I needed 16, 18, 17-18, 16-18.

ALLEN DOYLE: I wasn't that close to eagle. I was glad to make 4. I had an uphill lie going into the green against the wind, and it kind of shot up on me.

ALLEN DOYLE: My 5-wood.

ALLEN DOYLE: I appealed to the committee to drop Thursday and we just count Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

ALLEN DOYLE: They said no. I just had a lousy start. Some weeks you can come back from it. Some weeks you can't. I said I just had a bad Thursday. Other than that I played great.

ALLEN DOYLE: You'd think that, but I only would use that to prepare me for the next time that you have a four-round tournament or that -- I just didn't -- for some reason the course changed that drastically from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday. And we got caught napping.

ALLEN DOYLE: It was huge. Now you can go into the greens with the certainty that if you hit the right distance shot, that you didn't have to worry if it was going to go 12 yards further or 16 yards further or 20 yards further. You could hit into the green and you knew that the ball was going to release just a certain amount or even spin back.

ALLEN DOYLE: It wasn't quite darts. But compared to the first three days, it was like darts.

ALLEN DOYLE: The whole back 9, if I'd have got to 2 or 1 a little sooner, then we'd have had a shot at it.

ALLEN DOYLE: No cousins, but some old friends I knew I didn't have.

ALLEN DOYLE: On 3, I hit a good 9-iron into 3, about five feet. In fact, Jay was in the same spot. His ball spun back and nudged my ball. And he got a little too high right. And then I tried to hit it with some speed kind of right center and it broke on me. I didn't make it. Then I didn't get up and down on 7 from about 20 feet short of the green. I hit it up there about 5 feet and was playing it straight and it broke a little right and lipped out on me. So I had the opportunities, not a lot of them, but just those two in themselves, little 5-, 6-footers, that would have been huge.

ALLEN DOYLE: I thought if I shot 3- or 4-under, I'd have a chance to win, no matter how the course played, assuming it wasn't going to play easy. Assuming still it was going to play close to -- I would have thought there would have been a few more lower scores today. But they had some tough pins. You still didn't want to go too far. You'd go off the back crowns. They still had some tough pins, even with the greens soft, you had to be careful not to go long or go right or go left.

ALLEN DOYLE: That was ridiculous. The guy who set it is not around to own up to it. Whoever their tournament chairman is. That was ludicrous. That goes beyond -- I'm sure if you polled the players, they would agree that hard is hard and tough is tough, but when you've got that pin on that hole, then you've gone into some other zone, whatever zone you want to call it.

ALLEN DOYLE: We looked and saw the pin. We rolled our eyes and said, "Can you believe this?" It was the same for everybody. So I made birdie. I made 3. So I can't complain.

ALLEN DOYLE: The firmness of the greens, the type of greens they are. When you get a green like 8, you go over green after green after green. 2 and 17, because they played, par-4's, played brutally tough. 17's green was as hard as that cement right there for the first three days. It's got new grass on it, so it's firm as all get out. So we really were playing probably a par 72 course that they were playing as a par 70. So right there if you played a 71, 72, now scores get a little more realistic to par. Just the severity and firmness of the greens. You could never get really close until today.

ALLEN DOYLE: He would have overcome everything. Today the wind was -- you didn't know which way the wind was going. We start off it's down 1, it's against on 2, and then it's kind of helping on 3, and then it's cross on 4, the opposite way from what it was on 3. So all day the wind was just swirling. The guy that shot par, assuming that will win, a 1-under had a hell of a week. As I say, if you total up who won Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they don't, but -- I've got something to fall back on.