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BMO FINANCIAL GROUP CANADIAN WOMEN'S OPEN

July 9, 2004

Meg Mallon

NIAGARA FALLS, ONTARIO

PAUL ROVNAK: Meg, thanks for coming in and speaking with us again. It's becoming a habit here. 9 under, two shot lead, pretty comfortable feeling. Tell us about the day and we'll take questions.

MEG MALLON: I started out kind of rough in my round today, didn't hit the ball well in my first five or six holes. Made a bogey on No. 12, I guess, and I turned to John, my caddie, I said, when was the last time I made a bogey. And he said No. 11 on Saturday. So it was kind of cool, it was a long streak of not making a bogey, and just to add to it I bogeyed the next hole, just to feel better about it.

After that I started getting control of my game. I started hitting greens and then I started hitting it closer coming in. I played really well on my back side, the last few holes, and had some opportunities and made a couple of them. A nice way to finish the day.

Q. Meg, the second bogey, when you look back at that tree branch you were ready to saw it down. What happened there?

MEG MALLON: Two sets of emotions there. First of all, I couldn't believe the ball jumped out of that thick grass that high, because I didn't think the branches would be a problem at all and it actually hit the middle of the tree. And second emotion was, thank God it went where it went, because it could have gone to several bad places at that point in time, so I'll take a bogey there after that shot.

Q. How did you keep your composure after two bogeys, and specifically that last one and be able to turn your game around? It seemed after making it look easy to us the last couple of rounds, you made it look difficult and you're still in the lead.

MEG MALLON: I did. I started out poorly, not swinging well and not having control of my game. If you were out there, you saw Laura and I had plenty of time to think about what was going on. We waited, seriously, 10, 15 minutes on every tee box. It was painful being a two some at the back of field and he we played in 5 hours, that was the hardest part of the whole day, was just keeping concentration. And also your body starts to stiffen up on every single hole. I was just happy that I could develop some sort of rhythm out there with a round that absolutely had no momentum whatsoever.

Q. Gloria talked about because this course is new to her, she played on the conservative side. Do you find yourself doing the same thing?

MEG MALLON: Usually a golf course you play over and over again, you're like, okay, this is the quadrant I hit it in, I know there is a fall off here. There are so many breakaways, fallaways on these greens that you don't know about. Sometimes that's good because you're not worrying about it, then all of a sudden you feel like you hit a good golf shot and you get a runaway.

It's a challenge, definitely, a visual challenge, until you've played it several times, and the greens are so big that they can make pin placements to make the holes play completely differently. It's a good test, for sure.

Q. Do you think by surviving in some sense this day with all the adversity you faced with the bogeys and the two person group, then to see a 9 up there on the leaderboard, that's got to be a sense of relief, wow, maybe the worst part is behind me?

MEG MALLON: It was a good day today. It was a good test. I had a good solid round yesterday, and it's hard to follow another one that smoothly, specifically when you start out as poorly as I did. It was great to get that back and get it back under par again.

Q. What do you know about Aree Song? Do you play with her very much? I read somewhere she played with you when she was 13 at the Nabisco.

MEG MALLON: We may have played at the Nabisco at that time, plus we also played the first two rounds of the Open last week together. I love both those kids. They are great kids. Aree has a wonderful attitude, a good golf game. No one works harder than she does, and she's very dedicated to become a great player and I think she will. I think she has the right mental framework, as well. She has a good attitude out there and she keeps smiling, and I like that.

Q. She doesn't work with a sports psychologist.

MEG MALLON: I don't either. I've managed so survive all these years without one.

Q. How do you approach tomorrow now, knowing what you've done the past 2 days?

MEG MALLON: You know, I'd like to bring the game that I had the last eight or nine holes into the weekend, because I feel like I'll play really well if I do that. Really, it's the same thing, going out there and finding my golf swing and making those putts again. We'll see what happens. It's going to be a fun weekend. This course can change so easily from the wind, the way the wind plays and where the pin placements are, a lot of interesting things can happen.

Q. What got you through today?

MEG MALLON: An awful lot of patience. Truly, that waiting was, as I said, painful, at best, waiting around like that.

Q. Why were you guys in a group of two?

MEG MALLON: Our third didn't show up today, Soo Yun Kang. I'm not sure what the reason was, but she didn't even come out to the golf course today. And unfortunately we were the last group of the morning, so we were behind the field. It was incredibly slow.

Q. Sometimes when you play an odd number, a single

MEG MALLON: Yes, you can get a marker when you're a single, but I've never heard of that with a two some.

Q. Is there a benefit with a two some to have somebody like Laura?

MEG MALLON: Yes, I thanked her. I said, I am so glad it was you I was playing with. We just tried to chat and have a pleasant day and walk as slowly as we could. It certainly helped having her to play with. Although 99 percent of the players out here I wouldn't have a problem with that either. Laura was a trooper because she was struggling today. She was grinding really hard, and I'm sure that had to have been really hard on her too.

Q. Did you think about trying to play through?

MEG MALLON: We were asking quite a bit. They may not even noticed had we gone around them. Unfortunately, you can't go through anybody because they're all backed up all the way. Hopefully this weekend will be a little smoother than that.

Q. Going into the weekend, is it much of a factor that today you played off the 10th tee first, playing the course backwards?

MEG MALLON: Well, you feel like the front nine you can get some momentum on. There are a couple of holes that you feel like are birdie holes out there. Like yesterday, I got going early and birdied some holes and then it carried into the back side where the degree of difficulty is maybe one or two shots higher on the back side.

Starting out on the back side, and not starting out very well, I wasn't too worried because I felt I could get the front side and try to take advantage of it, and that's what happened.

Q. You said you wanted to carry those last holes into the weekend, so you're going to start out that way and hopefully you put up a few numbers and everyone has to chase you?

MEG MALLON: I like that. Sounds like a plan.

PAUL ROVNAK: No more questions?

MEG MALLON: Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

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