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U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 25, 2005

Mark Leon

ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA

PETE KOWALSKI: We'd like to welcome Mark Leon on from Canada. Connected locally by being a student at Penn State; we're in Pennsylvania. I guess the punctuation on the match was your putt on 18, but talk a little about how you got to the point where you were able to win the match when you were on 18; you were down three.

MARK LEON: I was 3 down. Yeah, last week playing in the Canadian Am, I was in exactly the same situation, but way worse. I was 3 down with five to play in my second match and I came back to win on the 19th hole. And then I think even bigger than that was my very next match the same day I was 4 down with I think five to play, and I was tied going into 18.

And I lost on the 18th hole. But just I just knew that I could come back. It was just a matter of hitting good shots. He was just playing so much better than I was, and when he would give me an opportunity, would I give the hole away. I'd hit a stupid shot, and it's not that I wasn't trying, things just weren't going my way.

I caught a good break well, actually, I caught a terrible break on 12 and just managed to hit two good shots to make bogey.

And on 13, when he bladed it over the green, that was a huge opening.

And then 14, though, I really thought the match was kind of swinging in his favor. He drained about a 15 footer, 12 or 15 footer for par and I thought, "I can't get this guy to go away."

On 17, that up and down was huge. And once again I thought he was going to make double for sure. He bladed another bunker shot into the back bunker and left himself a ridiculously difficult bunker shot, 12 footer, rolled it in again.

I don't know, the main thing with match play; one, you've got to just go ahead and play well. But two, you've just got to hang in there and keep fighting, you never know what the other guy is going to do. If you keep hitting good shots, you just apply the pressure, and all it takes is one hole from 3 down, all it's got to take is one hole for his head to just start spinning a little bit and think, oh, you know, I'm giving this away here. I don't know.

PETE KOWALSKI: You're a quarterfinalist in the U.S. Amateur.

MARK LEON: Wow.

PETE KOWALSKI: And the Canadian flag is waving high here on the leaderboard.

MARK LEON: I know.

PETE KOWALSKI: Talk about your buddies from home that are having success. You've got three guys right now.

MARK LEON: It's pretty awesome. I'm sure if you said there would be three Canadians I would have thought one of them would be James Lepp, just going bonkers in stroke play. Both these guys are great player.

Unfortunately have to play one of them tomorrow; I'm playing J.C. We had a match for the ages a couple years ago at the Canadian Am, once again. I don't know, golf in Canada, it's just getting better and better, and the players are getting better and better. I think if you look at the players playing for the Canadian players playing at schools down here in the States, Richard Scott was a national champion this year with Georgia. Obviously James winning the NCAAs. There's a lot of good golf up there. I think with a lot of the programs that are in place back in Canada, and just an interest in junior golf, it's only going to get better. So it's great.

PETE KOWALSKI: Ryan mentioned the national team that was just formed.

MARK LEON: Yeah.

PETE KOWALSKI: Are you a member of that team?

MARK LEON: I'm actually not. I was saying to Ryan last summer, right after NCAAs, hurt my wrist, so I didn't have the opportunity to play golf other than the Canadian Amateur at the end of the summer. Basically there's all of these ranking points that you accumulate throughout your summer events and I probably accumulated nothing, other than the Canadian Am. So I didn't get picked to that team.

But there is obviously a good reason behind it. The guys that are all on it are great players, and Ryan is actually a member of that team, so he's representing them. But, you know, the coaches on that team, they are cheering for all of us, it's just great for Canadian golf.

Q. I guess just a quick follow up to the Canadian question, what do you make of all of the international players who have gone as far as they have in this championship? There are quite a few that are coming up in the next round, as well.

MARK LEON: Like the British guys? There's the South African, Van Der Walt.

Q. Molinari from Italy.

MARK LEON: God, I don't know what to make of that. If you had said there are a lot of internationals doing well, I would just assume they would be Walker Cuppers, you know. They basically get a free pass into here and obviously I watched a few of them play and they are awesome.

I think the bottom line is, the U.S. Amateur, it's above and beyond any of the four majors and professional golf, in amateur golf. Like in professional golf what I mean is you could argue that the Masters is the best or the U.S. Open is the best or the British Open is the best. This is like a World Amateur. I mean, this is by far the biggest amateur event, just by virtue of the strength of field. You have these European guys, they want to play in this tournament. The Canadian guys want to play in this tournament. The fact that you get if you win, you get invites to three of the professional majors next year, how is that not the greatest amateur tournament going? How can you make the finals and lose? That's the best consolation prize in the universe; you get to play in the Masters.

Q. What was going through your head coming down the stretch, those three with the last five holes coming up, you know they are tough holes?

MARK LEON: I was happy they were tough holes. I was thinking maybe if I just hit some good shots, I won't have to make birdies. That's the problem with this course. You can't press on it. You can't be firing at all of the flags. And like we were talking to one of the pros, he said, if "You shoot even par, you're probably going to win every match you play."

And all of the people that talk about how the course is outdated and all that, that's garbage. This course is so hard. It's only getting harder. The greens are firming up. Yeah, I was just thrilled that those were the stretch of holes that I had left to play because maybe I would have a chance against the guy that's playing that well, he maybe he could get a couple of bad breaks and maybe Merion could have its way with him.

Q. The long putt that you made at the Canadian Am, was that against your opponent you're playing tomorrow?

MARK LEON: Yeah, it was. (Laughter).

Q. What year was that?

MARK LEON: It was two years ago, in 2003.

J.C. DEACON: I remember it, Mark.

MARK LEON: I know you do, J.C. (laughter).

Q. Is this the toughest course you've ever played?

MARK LEON: Oh, that's a great question. It very well might be. And you know, the biggest thing about it is, it's not even playing nearly as tough as it could.

We played a couple years ago the NCAA Regionals was as Yale, all remember that about that course, even if you had a wedge, the ball would bounce 20 feet before it could spin. Even if you were in the rough you had no chance. The greens here, they are firm but they are not super firm. Like you can still hole the ball out of the rough. My opponent did it multiple times today, and I think that would be the biggest thing. If the greens were firm, like seriously firm, I think the course would just be unreal.

But you have a couple of greens out there that would be almost unplayable, like 15 is teetering on not 15, was it 12? 12, to have my chipped a ball, I hit it exactly where I wanted to and it went down into the front bunker. It's just a really difficult, demanding green, and it could get nasty in the next couple of days there.

Q. Are there any courses that compare to this that you've played?

MARK LEON: No. It's so different than anything that I've seen, just because you have to think out there. It's not just bomb's away golf. You know, you do have some holes that are bomb's away golf, likes 18, if you can wump, you've got a huge advantage there. 5, 6; same.

But for the guy that's not super long, he gets his chance to come back. Like you have holes like 7, you have 8, 10,11. Just holes where you have to think. There's some strategy involved and that's what's so great about it. I mean, you want to talk about like technological advances in golf; well, it takes that out of it a little bit. It puts some thinking back into golf, which is what it's all about.

PETE KOWALSKI: Thank you, Mark. Congratulations.

End of FastScripts.

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