U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 30, 2001

Allen Doyle

ALLEN DOYLE: Start firing away. Can everybody hear me?

ALLEN DOYLE: I thought it was the whole day -- it seemed the wind didn't pick up -- I don't think the wind was really blowing on this at 1 through 5 or 6 for us. Once we hit I think 7 it was doing crazy things. You'd get through a hole like we played 11 or 12 and it was against. We got to 13 and it was against. And we got to 14, and you thought it would be downwind, it was blowing cross. And it was doing all kinds of crazy things. It reminded me of Thursday playing-wise.

ALLEN DOYLE: Obviously I did a few things better. I certainly putted better. I drove it exceptionally well. I didn't miss a fairway yesterday or today. So if you can go around an Open course and say that you played the last 36 holes, 28 of them driving holes and you didn't miss a fairway, you're going to -- I don't know if you're going to attack the golf course, but you can be a little more defensive or be in a better position to be defensive. Again we, like I said yesterday, we were thinking to the front yardages kind of. So we were hitting short and releasing at the hole as compared to Thursday we had some that we were playing the yardage to the hole. And of course everything is playing 6 to 10 yards shorter because of the firmness of the greens. Obviously, I putted better. I drove it pretty good. So I was in position to hit into the greens with some what I felt was a little bit of authority.

ALLEN DOYLE: I think, yeah, I would imagine the way it's looking now, trying to hold a shot into 17 and see what happens. You can't be displeased if you look at the board and there's one or two red numbers, and everybody else is plus 2 and higher for the day, then you had a good round.

ALLEN DOYLE: Bogeyed 2 and then I birdied 6.

ALLEN DOYLE: Yeah. I look at some smaller things sometimes, too. On 13 I hit a good shot in the air that bounded about 20 feet by. And I'm coming downhill, I think it's going to be good and fast and I leave it about 7 feet short. So I'm staring at bogey there. I make a real good putt for the par, so that saved me a stroke. Then I hit a good railer into 14 about 10 feet and I make that.

ALLEN DOYLE: I had 224 to the hole. If I make good rolls and don't make those two, you're not talking to me, I'm 5-over or something.

ALLEN DOYLE: On the par-3, I hit it just a shade right. The wind, I was playing to the wind being against. I was trying to play it over a little. Normally if the wind is against it's going to turn a little more. The wind kind of switched and blew it to the right to the rough. I hit a pretty good shot and I didn't make it.

ALLEN DOYLE: I hit a 3-wood to the front upslope, so I was probably 12 yards short of the green and had a little 40 foot pitch shot up the hill.

ALLEN DOYLE: I hit a good drive, and I had 118 to the hole, but we were a little downhill, downwind. I hit a sand wedge to about 10 feet.

ALLEN DOYLE: I thought I would because I was on a sidehill lie, and I was trying to get a little more than a sand wedge out of it. So I knocked it down a little.

ALLEN DOYLE: I don't mind that. If that's where I stand. I still believe the most pressure is on the guy that's leading in the last groups. So if I get out there a shade earlier, that's okay, too.

ALLEN DOYLE: No. I'll try to keep doing what I've been doing. I've been driving it great. I missed four fairways on Thursday and none Friday, Saturday. So you want to keep driving it in the fairway to give yourself a chance. If you keep doing that, you can be a little more confident going into the greens.

ALLEN DOYLE: The way the greens have gotten, yeah, probably so.

ALLEN DOYLE: Yeah. That would play into my game. Yeah, but I think with the firmness of the greens, you really aren't trying to hit any. You get certain yardages that you're comfortable with that you figure you can hit it within 10 feet, you're trying to keep it within 25 feet. You don't want it to get long and go over the back. So, yeah, hitting the fairways I think is a little more important than we thought it might be because of the firmness of the greens.

ALLEN DOYLE: Yeah. If someone shoots even, they win probably is the way it seems to be going. You're almost -- I'm not so sure we're playing the same course that I played Tuesday, Wednesday. I can remember hitting into one of the practice rounds a nice 9-iron on 9, and it hitting and kind of spinning forward and left where it only released probably 10 feet. You couldn't buy one out there to stop it within 10 feet. I'm barely making ball marks. There was probably a third of the time that I looked for my ball mark, I couldn't find it. And the rest of the time they were little skid marks. Now, I hit it a little lower than the average guy, but we aren't -- and I think that's what threw some guys off Thursday. We really weren't playing the same course.

ALLEN DOYLE: They are really. I had Jim Barker say to me, he said -- what exactly did he say? He said, I didn't think you had this much of a -- you were this much of a crowd favorite. I said, I'm not. And I told him I was born and raised about 40 miles from here. He said, oh, okay. But they've been great. They really have been great.

ALLEN DOYLE: I changed, yeah. I had to. Finally it dawned on us that Thursday we hit a lot of clubs that carried what I thought was the right yardage, if the greens were receptive to the shots. We were going -- we put ourselves in too many places that we couldn't get up and down or couldn't even 2-putt. Yesterday we started to play front yardages and let the ball release off the club and we started to be in the game. We've been in the game the last two days anyway.