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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPJuly 13, 2012Kirk TriplettLAKE ORION, MICHIGAN KIRK TRIPLETT: Same thing. I got five birdies and three bogeys too. Q. Really? KIRK TRIPLETT: Really. You hit two good shots, make a par. You hit two bad shots, make a par. It's kind of one of those kind of holes that greens have. They have so much slope that it's really hard to convince yourself that putts are going to break as much as they're breaking. And add to that the fact that they're slow and they break early. I mean, I've never seen more 15‑foot putts left low. And not like bottom‑edge, I mean, six or eight inches. By three good tour players. So it's ‑‑ Q.So it's not going to go in? KIRK TRIPLETT: Right, and it's not even close. Three feet off, you're looking at it, and you're going, that's not going in. But it's just we play so much golf that's similar, right, and we're used to the same conditions, and this is different. You have to adjust. Q. How do you make that adjustment? KIRK TRIPLETT: You got to have courage, right? You have to say, okay, look, I have to hit this higher, and I've got to hit it harder. Then the first one you blow by, four feet, you're going what am I thinking? That was‑‑ so it's‑‑ it's less by instinct, and you have to kind of override it a little bit and go okay, hey, look, this is‑‑ you know this putt's slow, but it's not just slow, it's really slow when it's uphill. And it's not because the greens are slow, it's because the slopes are severe. That has more to do with it than anything because you stand on the putting green and putt at a nice speed. Q. You mentioned to Mark, the bunched field. Kite got up there around 9 and fell back. Lance Ten Broeck got in at 6. There is just a range, very narrow range, where there's a lot of guys. KIRK TRIPLETT: I think some of that is because the course is short. And you can hit a lot of short‑‑ you can hit irons off the tees. You can hit 3 woods. And if you don't mind hitting a 6 or a 7 iron most of these, at least for me, and some longer hitters could hit a lot of 3 iron, 8 iron kind of holes. So if you're willing to do that, it's a lot easier to keep the ball in play, but you're not attacking the golf course. So you're making lots and lots of pars, which we've all played enough Majors, enough U.S. Opens to know that lots and lots of pars are good. So now you see Tom Kite yesterday, I think‑‑ you know, playing in the morning yesterday, I got no idea what a good score on this golf course is, right? After two practice rounds, greens were a little firm, looked like they could be a little spicy, right, looked like they could be a little quick and could be real tricky and real dangerous. Then Tom Kite's behind me shooting 28. I make the turn 1 under going, okay, I'm under par in a major. I'm playing great. Then I think you saw guys yesterday afternoon saying course not that hard. So they played more aggressively. I think that's the way you have to play the course. If the wind gets up and the fairways bounce a little bit, the fairways are hard to hit. You have to hit the 3 irons and hybrids and 3 woods. At least when I played on Tuesday, you didn't. You hit driver. Q. What kind of advantage, if any, did you feel you had coming off of the win. A win at Pebble Beach is pretty special. It's not an easy golf course either. KIRK TRIPLETT: No. I mean, to win out here, you're obviously playing well. So you've kind of got that in your back pocket. If you can stay patient and you're playing well, you're probably going to do reasonably well in a hard golf course, give yourself a chance. I made a few mistakes in the middle of the round yesterday, and if I hadn't played well last week, I might have got a little impatient. But instead I was like okay, now you're over par. You've got some chances coming in. I birdied 15, 16, and shot under par. Today, had a lot of birdie chances, didn't make very many of them. Ended up shooting 1 over par. Look up, you're in 12th place, three, four, five back going into the weekend at a major. There you go. So I think having a win and having success and things like that makes it easier to be patient. Q. Very good. Thanks. KIRK TRIPLETT: All right. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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