SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 23, 2001

Allen Doyle

ALLEN DOYLE: Opening thoughts, we got a good golf course here. Hopefully the rain can hold off so we can have some uninterrupted play. I think the facility is going to set up for a good Championship.

ALLEN DOYLE: Oh, I'm playing well. You know, I've been playing well almost every week this year, so, you know, I'm kind of excited to, you know, to get going. I would rather have seen it firm and hard, you know, shape the ball from right-to-left. There are right-to-left holes out there, but, you know, you got to play with what you got and I feel good about my game.

ALLEN DOYLE: Oh, I think it's going to be straight. I don't think the length, you know, you don't find a whole lot of guys who hit it long and straight. So, you know, you got to believe that this, like any place, the woods will be filled with the long hitters. So just to keep it in play, there are going to be some key holes out there where you're going to have to shape your ball, you know, each time you play it the right way every time you play it, like three off the tee. You know, a hole like 9 is going to play real tough. You get to a hole like, even a hole like 14, which, geez, it doesn't show much on the yardage, but we hit a 3-iron in there today, I mean, you get up on the tee, 407, you hear that the trap is 270, and so you don't want to kill a drive down the right side. And when you do, you get up there and you're 40 yards short of it, then 17 certainly is a hole where you're going to have to be shaping that ball the right way. Then there's 18, you know, a hell of a finishing hole. So you're going to have to put it in the fairway, especially if it did firm up. If you were coming out of that rough with some hot balls, you'd really be in trouble. It would be a little easier now, but you're going to have to hit it in the fairway with this damp run.

ALLEN DOYLE: You know, I would like to see them play more, because that's good for me. When I say, "it's good for me," it's good for the whole Tour. If these guys played more and the purses were higher, that just helps everybody. For some reason, they've chosen not to. You know, if you talk to some guys after we get back from L.A. -- no, from Las Vegas, they seem to be thinking these guys were dictating the conditions, but they weren't playing enough where they thought they should be able to. Of course the Tour claimed that they weren't. But, yeah, I think if you get -- you know, it just depends on the health of the individual stop. We've heard a lot this year that the Tour was down a little maybe. But if you went to Burmingham or Tampa or some of the real healthy sites, I don't think they -- I'm not saying they wouldn't rather have a Tom Watson playing and winning to a guy like me, but if you go to the healthy stops and you see the great fan turnout that they have, I'm not so sure it matters if the tournament is healthy in that particular location.

ALLEN DOYLE: Yeah, absolutely. I would have to say if someone -- I'm preparing myself for five-hour rounds because with a big field, you're going to have some guys that may be unprepared to play and are still going to be trying as hard as they can and not going to want to speed up and deny themselves a legitimate chance to make the cut maybe. But, yeah, so that to me would even increase the necessity of you being extremely patient and knowing that Thursday and Friday are going to be two long days, and to be patient, stay focused and stay within yourself and concentrate on what you're doing.

ALLEN DOYLE: I would be one of the guys that would agree that probably five years ago they were too worried about filling up the schedule to 40 weeks or whatever their goal was. And that's a process of -- I mean, it's a healthy process, sometimes when you realize what your weak stops are and you let them go, and you come up -- I don't know what the number is, whether it's 36 or 34 or 32, I personally am of the -- I think that if you had 30 events, that you might get some guys playing a little more because you got your setoff weeks. I think that might be a good thing. If you talk to Dana Quigley, who played 39 weeks last year (laughing), he may think he's getting denied nine paychecks, which I guess, in a way, he is. But like anything, it will play out the way it's supposed to, and the weak ones will not come back. But I don't think there are a lot of them. I think there are maybe a handful at the most. And every place else that you go to, like I said, Burmingham, does an unbelievable job, Tampa turned out like crazy, the L.A. tournaments seem to draw pretty good. Last week was a good venue for fans, so I think we got a whole lot more right than we do wrong.

ALLEN DOYLE: I'll probably play 31, 32 events this year.

ALLEN DOYLE: No. I will go home Sunday night, go up to Nashville late Tuesday, go home again and come up to New Jersey on the following Tuesday.