U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 7, 1999

Christy O'Connor

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: Yes, I have to say it was a massive jump. I arrived over just the Monday before the Ford Classic and really didn't give myself enough time. And the time change is quite horrific. I didn't sleep at all that week, so I wasn't ready; wasn't settled. And it is kind of hard to say that it is a warm-up week for the week after, it is unfair for the tournament, because it is probably one of the finest tournaments in the States. But I just wasn't ready for the tournament, and it had to be the week after.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: About 24 feet mentally. It was about, I guess, 15 inches, 15, 16 inches. I actually thought the putt was short. I played it to be short of the hole. And when I hit it, I thought it was never going to get there. Then I thought it was going in, and then it just kept rolling and rolling and rolling. And it is quite a dangerous thing to do, because, if a ball spins off the hole, it doubles the pace and would have gone double up that footage past. Thankfully, the end, it rolled right over the right edge. I made it coming back. It is amazing when you start reading putts from fourteen or fifteen inches. I am saying to my caddie, is it left edge or -- actually, there was a break and I had to hit it left half because the green was so slick. A left half putt from any length of footage is not an easy one.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: Well, yes. We have had lots and lots. My home -- my daughter figures that about 135 calls to my house, and telegrams like full of well wishes all over the place. All my friends around the States. I mean, in my locker, guys down here are joking, more stickers on my locker than they have ever seen in their lives. So, yes, it has been great. As you know a very, very special week for me for other reasons. So I suppose really that is where I am getting the enjoyment from more than the tournament almost. It almost feels like a little bit of a goal coming back; the weather is always beautiful, of course, and gives me my card, but it was a very special reason for me to win too, yeah.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: I think the course itself from tee-to-green is one of the finest layouts I have ever seen. It is a magnificent 18 holes of golf to the greens. I think the greens are extremely difficult. I have never seen so much green used as rolls. There are quite a few pin positions but I would imagine somebody who can keep hitting it, if possible, to the lower side, not even on the green this week will do awfully well. But I think those who go for the pin to come in off the banks left and right will suffer incredibly.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: It is going to be the hardest to predict, I think. I won't mind being sitting here at about 2-over, I would say. I would be very, very happy. I'd let the rest of the field play. I think if it blows any, I would be very, very comfortable. They are pretty receptive. But one has to be extremely cautious not to come in from the high side to the hole. You have got to approach it from the lower side, and, like I say, even missing the green on the right side, I think it is the kind of golf course I'd loved to have watch Jack Nicklaus play and written things in my book. He is the kind of man who would have made an incredible different gestures to the way he would play the holes here. I am going to try and go as he plays Augusta, and that is hitting the ball, I don't mind it, far from the hole on the lower side, and that is -- I have watched him do that at Augusta. He 2-putts from 40 feet often from the correct side.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: Born in the same village, just west of Galway City. Right next to the Galway Bay Golf Course. Like he, I practiced on that golf course at nighttime, mostly at nighttime, because that is -- actually, we weren't members there. He used to practice, often pitching to candles at night, lighting a little candle and putting it into a little box, a tin or whatever and pitch and putt to it. There was great professional there called Bob Wallace who was my uncle's mentor. And he took me in hand and sent me off to his son who was a pro in the north of England and spent a couple of years there with him. Then came back to my uncle in Royal Dublin where I spent the next two years practicing and learning the game of golf and of course at that time everybody learned the shop job as well as the teaching and playing. It was all part of the golf game then. Now you come in either as international, you just play the game, or you were a club pro. But then it was all the time all the one type of professional golfer, even the club pros played on the Tour. I went from there to a little course called Carlow, a very, very fine inland golf course in Ireland and I spent ten years there practicing, very, very hard. And really that has put me on the road to where I am today, whatever I have done and I won, I think, five or six tournaments out of Carlow Golf Club and then I became playing pro at Shannon Golf Club, famous Shannon Airport if anybody knows Shannon, from there to Galway again where I built our own golf course, Galway Bay Golf and Country Club, two partners and I built Galway Bay. It is up and flying right now. Actually hosts a Ryder points tournament in about 5 week's time there. I have built 22 golf courses in the last ten years of the regular Tour which I have enjoyed doing too much. I really loved it. And got great pleasure from it. Some of the courses I believe will be quite good courses, I am kind of proud of them. I started practicing when I was about, I guess, 48 again; tried to get back into the -- I always stayed with the hands in the regular Tour, won a tournament in 1992; that was my last the British Masters. I just kept a hand in really and started practicing. My plan was to come here last year about whatever September about, which was the awful month of our lives, which my son lost his life and he was going to come with me to get a scholarship here. I was going to come and try to get my card. My wife, he, and I would live here with my other two children going to a university in Dublin. Naturally that didn't happen. I didn't come to get my card which I couldn't come. So very kindly some sponsors gave me invites. I made enough money to get into tournaments like the Ford Classic and the Vantage and my Ryder Cup exempted me from qualifying here. That is where I am at the moment. I do intend to play a fairly heavy schedule after my trip back to Ireland. I am playing two tournaments over there, the British Seniors and the Wentworth Masters. I then come back here and play hopefully ten tournaments, 8 to 10 tournaments. I need to get in the top 31. That is my main aim now. It will take, I think, about 700,000 or very close to that kind of money I believe to make it. Then I would relocate hopefully next year I would like to spend the year both playing and travelling in America. I played here for many, many years but I know so little about the country and I would like to see some of it and hopefully get around to a lot more cities and towns, States and hopefully play well, of course. So I love playing golf in America. It is one, as I have often said before, one of the greatest wrongdoings; I didn't play more on or tried for the regular Tour over here. Where at home you go from Italy to France to Germany, to Holland, to Sweden, to Finland, Sweden, Denmark, you name it, different week, different cultures, very difficult to get your mind set on -- where over here naturally everybody speaks the same language, same food, same kind of travel really so, I think I will enjoy it. Hopefully will enjoy the next few years playing in America. That is certainly my aim.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: The last like winning?

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: Winning a tournament no matter how small or how big, it is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. Nicest thing to come down the 18th hole and people stand up take their caps off and you have one hole to play and if you don't love that, you don't love golf. That is why we go and give so much I think over the either three or four rounds of tournament golf, if you are winning, believe you, me you are hurting. I think when you come up the 18th hole and you see people who have paid to come and watch you stand on and applaud, I think that is the greatest feeling anybody could ever have, yeah.

CHRISTY O'CONNOR: Well, first question, I do hope to play in Kansas, the sponsors were in touch with me all for the last four, five weeks. They were doing their best. Very difficult thing to get sponsor's invite over here because there are so many people like myself looking for it and one shouldn't feel they are entitled to it. But they have been very, very kind to me. I do believe I will play in Kansas. The Ryder Cup is a horrific nerving type of competition. It is a wonderful, wonderful feeling when the tournament is over but I can tell you the last six weeks before the team is picked and the week of the Ryder Cup, it is something I would not wish my worst enemy to go through. It is a magnificent golf tournament. I think it is a wonderful world fair in that it brings two continents together, almost as I don't like to call it as warfare, I think that is not right, I hope it never turns into a shouting match, but it is a massive golfing conflict, and the pressure from your peers from your family from, your country, and your continent, go that far, is quite unbelievable. Again those people take their time off to come and watch you and save all that year; get their tickets, and their flights to come and watch the Ryder Cup. It is a huge, huge event. I am just wondering if the actual people watching realize within the players minds how difficult when you see players like Tiger Woods, I would have thought, you know, really knocked back -- by it at Valderrama, it is a massive event. I hope it stays that way. I hope like I said, it doesn't get to be warfare, but it becomes -- stays a huge golfing conflict between two great continents. I think the golf is just out of this world and the match play and the foursomes - when you see had foursomes, hardest kind of golf going around, 7, 8-under par, it is just out of this world.