CANON GREATER HARTFORD OPEN

June 29, 2001

Jerry Kelly

JERRY KELLY: It was nice seeing the greens as smooth as they are after they got a little crusty last night. Sped up quite a bit. But smooth and fast this morning, the greens were receptive to the short irons, very receptive. So I got the ball in the fairway on the back side, which was my front side and was able to shoot the pins and made some birdies. On the front side, I hit it close the first three holes. Just missed them. Then through a bogey in there, a birdie on par 5, and it was pretty average on the front, but, oh well.

JERRY KELLY: If I knew, I would be through it. You know, I just have to keep on playing my game and I still kind of get off my game at some crucial times, and I don't know why that happens, but I know my game is good enough to win now and I just have to keep playing. I've played all the way through at TPC. I went for something I didn't need to at the 18th at TPC, which caused a double. Other than that I played pretty well all the way through. I know I can be there. I just have to be really patient.

JERRY KELLY: Absolutely. Yeah, I was through college, watching this tournament trying to get in it, coming out to see the guys and saying, "I want to beat you later," and that type of stuff. It would be a big, big thing for me. I mean, it's the kind of pressure that, you know, somebody would associate with a major being your hometown, those types of things. I tend to like playing under those conditions, and you know, I may want it a little too bad sometimes and that may be true of this place, but I'm going to try and stay within myself. That's going to be the theme the next couple of days for me.

JERRY KELLY: College years are kind of a blur. (Laughter.) Actually, I didn't spend, say, all day every day when the tournament was here out here. I really -- I lot of the guys on my team, Freddie Couples, Nick Price and this, I really wanted to beat them, even before I was on TOUR, so I had a hard time idolizing them. I idolized Jack Nicklaus. Other than that, I wanted to play against them so bad. I kind of thought I would be, so I didn't want to, you know, put them up here because I was going to be up with them sometime, and I thought that was healthy back then. The memories of what guys did here, I can only really remember one shot vividly, and that's Norman chipping in on 15 for eagle. But I think I was here that year, so I didn't like it all that much.

JERRY KELLY: No. I missed qualifying by one shot and -- I don't know if it's the same course. Did the Meadow turn into an Orchard or something? What happened?

JERRY KELLY: I couldn't even watch. I couldn't turn it on because I wanted to be here so bad. It was a love/hate relationship. I loved being here and the course hated me. You know, that's -- I think. I don't know if it says in there. Do I have a big goose egg for earnings here? Yeah, I'm 0-for-4. Now I'm 1-for-5. Apparently last year, clearing the slate, worked. I came here with better feelings for this golf course than I had since my rookie year. I'm excited to get on top of the course a little bit. I've still got a lot of respect for it. I've been in the water twice this week already. So I know there's mistakes and things can happen. So just going to try and play my best.

JERRY KELLY: Did Burger win last year?

JERRY KELLY: No, I didn't watch any of it.

JERRY KELLY: Twice on 12 -- third shot yesterday for a double -- 13. 13, par 5. I went bunker to bunker water yesterday and made double. Today I went water off the tee and then on the green, 2-putt for par.

JERRY KELLY: Starting on the back side, No. 10. Birdied 11. Knocked it about eight feet. No. 12. I knocked it about five feet. 8-iron on 11, 9-iron on 12, and a watery par on the par 5. Then 15, driver just front right. Chipped it up there about three, four feet and made it. 17, 2-iron, 6-iron, about an eight-foot breaker from 15 feet, I'd say. 18, driver, 7-iron to six, seven feet. Bogey on 4. Way right. Chunk out. Spin off the green. Up-and-down for bogey. 6, then the next hole, driver, driver, middle of the -- chip, sand wedge to about six feet.

JERRY KELLY: 9? A bunch of the putts tailed off more than I thought today. I think I only left one high through it. I've been playing for speed this week. My speed has been good. You know, they are going to tail off a little bit, if you've got that slower speed, and that's the way I'm going to keep putting them because I'm reading them well that way. I had probably three or four going dead in the jar and just tailing off at the very end. I still putted well even though I didn't make as many.

JERRY KELLY: I just still wanted to get the ball in the fairway. I got the ball in the fairway on 1. Put it about ten feet. 3-wood in the fairway on 2. Knocked it about eight feet. Almost made it on 3 with an 8-iron. It was about, six, eight feet and missed that one. So, I was just playing steady. Then the putts all of the sudden didn't drop. So you start wondering, and then I hit a bad shot. Couldn't recover, and there's your bogey. Yeah, I could have very easily been 3-under instead of 1-over after the first four holes on that side. You know, I shot 5-under on one side and it's tough to say, okay, let's match that up and do another 5. You just have to keep on playing, and whatever the course gives you. I did the same thing yesterday, but opposite. It was an easy 3-under on the front and then I had double-bogey and a bogey on the back and ended up even. So put them together. Play best ball tomorrow0.

JERRY KELLY: I felt like I was trading him shot for shot. I thought I was playing just as well. I wasn't making my putts. I hit the first 17 greens. I looked up at the scoreboard one time and saw some guy was 6-under and leading the tournament and I said somebody must have come from the back of the pack; that's Woods. I didn't realize he was even 6-under at that point. But when you start out birdie, eagle, it will add up pretty quick. He makes such great saves for par, and the par 5s are par 4s. He gets the job done. Bottom line. I've been in position to get the job done a lot of times, and I really haven't done it. I feel like I beat myself more than other people have beat me. That time, I got beat. Most of the other times, that's not true. Although, if I would have made a few putts, I'm still on top of them. So, that's just letting me know that my game is good enough to win.

JERRY KELLY: I thought I came up with a pretty good one. Just like playing in the freeway. You know, you've got carts, you've got security, you've got people. You've got everything. I mean, you're just in the middle of the tournament and you'd better expect it going in there and have a good time with it, and that's what I did. I just -- I had fun being in that position. I hear a lot of people cheering for me, so that was really cool.

JERRY KELLY: Yeah, six years.

JERRY KELLY: It's weird. We've been right next to each other 10, 15 times and never got paired together. When they asked him, you've played with Jerry -- yeah. I came in there afterwards and said no, we haven't played. So he had thought we had played because we had been close to each other so much, standing on the same tee so many times, but just not in the same group. I had six years to wait for it and to know what I was going to expect. Everybody had said, you know, it's so hard, this and that. But you can't have the rabbit ears up when you are playing with Tiger. And he's got such a great concentration game that it can't help but suck you into that good feeling, too.

JERRY KELLY: Yeah, no question. I hear it on almost every hole. Hopefully the bigger the crowds get, the more I hear it.

JERRY KELLY: If it wasn't the 50th anniversary, I guarantee you Petrovic would have got a spot. I'm sure Dave Gunass (ph) tried to qualify. Patty Sheehan is playing the Nike -- sorry, BUY.COM. Then John Parsons is down in Florida Mike Lipnik's down in Florida. So that really, there's four of us from my freshman year team that are still playing some pretty darned good, competitive golf.

JERRY KELLY: No. He's selling golf apparel, I think it is.

JERRY KELLY: Me, myself, Sheehan, Petrovic and Gunass. If you say Gunass just did that, he's playing some pretty darned good golf. Petrovic and Sheehan are both on the BUY.COM. Petrovic is in third place. Sheehan will learn how to do it sooner or late are. He's got to learn how to travel again. He's got a family. He's been in Florida for a long time. Florida mini tours can kill a guy. Can't get used to those two days with carts and stuff like that. You've got to get on the road and go to the Canadian Tour, overseas and things like that, and he started doing that until he got his family. I can understand not traveling with the family on the mini-tours. But he'll play well. He's a good player. I haven't seen him in a while, but he was really the one on the team that I thought would come out and Petrovic has done fantastic. So it was a pretty good team we had.

JERRY KELLY: Yeah, it's a good and bad thing. You know, you make a bogey, you may tense up, you may get really mad. There's nobody to go hit but yourself, so you might get down on yourself a little bit too much, but there's also some fire in there that may get to you make birdie on the next hole. Now you've got to be careful not to, you know, you're down here and all of the sudden you fire up to make birdie and then all of the sudden, you know, you find yourself making bogey, double after that, even after you came back with birdie. So I've learned to use that fire to kind of stay at a level up here and instead of going, "ah, I birdied," and then you come crashing down. I never realized that once I made a bad score and a good score, okay, I'm back to level. But I was still racing, and you have to control that all the way through. So I've learned to control my breathing and my heartbeat and not to go after that guy which happens to be me when I make a bogey.

JERRY KELLY: Center.

JERRY KELLY: I was not very smart. I had a play where I actually -- you know, the winger would cut over. The right wing would cut over and I would be the one going into the boards, picking the puck out. It was an unbelievable play, but I don't expect the right wing to go ahead and hit the boards and bring the puck out to me, but I was fastest one so, the defender didn't know what to do. He was catching one guy going across and I would cut right in front or in back; it didn't matter because he would be spinning and I would get hit an awful lot doing that. What was the question again?

JERRY KELLY: I'm kind of sketchy, just because I try to putt a little bit too much, rather than letting my putting happen. I've had a bad stretch the last couple months, and putting had a lot to do with it. So I'm really just kind of letting myself stroke now and I'm putting great. So hopefully I just keep doing that. But I do a lot of eye-hand stuff. I play pool all the time to make sure my eyes stay good. I play darts all the time. I think it's important to keep that eye/hand coordination and the reads. Try to have a level table, too. I don't have to read my pool balls.