THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 18, 2013

Stephen Gallacher

Q. Was this day tough?
STEPHEN GALLACHER: It was brutal, really. The greens were almost ridiculous, to be honest. As stressed as I've ever seen a course play. The difference between Tuesday is unbelievable. You hit it the wrong side, you couldn't get it within five feet.

Q. (Inaudible.)
STEPHEN GALLACHER: Yeah, yeah, compared to how they were -- they were fantastic Tuesday and Wednesday. And the putting green is about eight foot slower.

Q. For the guys that went out in the afternoon (inaudible).
STEPHEN GALLACHER: I don't know. I don't know what it was like this morning. But I know it was tough in the afternoon. You miss it on the wrong side or it was gone.

Q. (Inaudible.)
STEPHEN GALLACHER: You hope you get a little bit of dropping. And the same for the guys in the afternoon, hopefully the course plays the same.

Q. Surprised to see so many American guys near the top?
STEPHEN GALLACHER: The par-5s were okay for birdies and eagles. You could get up in them, but I made a muck of them. You know, by the end they were probably running about 15, 16 on the Stimp, so it was really tough.

Q. Tomorrow, then?
STEPHEN GALLACHER: Just try to save the par-5s, just try and birdie 5, 9 and 17. You're /KRAOD to hitting uphill putts quite firmly on links, and you have to make sure you don't. It's more different than -- it's different-E /O it's a reprogram of the brain thing.

Q. (Inaudible.)
STEPHEN GALLACHER: No, they looked like they could be this way. So they are different from the practice grounds, but just the normal Wednesday, Thursday progression.

Q. The R&A were speaking about it earlier, some have shot good rounds, have said -- do you think they're aiming to do something over the night?
STEPHEN GALLACHER: That's the conundrum, for us out of the draw, if tomorrow arch's players didn't see what we saw. It will be disappointing. You just want it the same. As I said it's not that crazy, it's just not what we're used to on a links. So we just -- and you don't want to see one pin get silly. There was nothing silly there, it was just really fast. So hopefully it's the same tomorrow as it was today.

Q. Some of the guys were saying some of the pins are a bit nasty?
STEPHEN GALLACHER: I hit 3-wood -- the second shot was the best shot I had all day. And I had 12 feet, if I did I was going to have a ten foot par-putt. You can see how it breaks. It breaks a lot. Normally on links when they one at 10, that's fine. 8 doesn't look at tricky as it did. Harris hit a putt in the group that basically stopped ^ it never stopped. It's tricky, as I said, more of a reprogramming for us, because we don't see this very often out here.

Q. You said after tomorrow --
STEPHEN GALLACHER: It's not horrible, if there's a little bit of color in the green tomorrow morning, we can hit a few good shots. Hopefully I can make some birdies. There's a few red numbers, I think most of them were early. I don't know two or three or 4-under tomorrow, you're not going to have to be many under par on Sunday to win. It makes it more difficult when you go a few over on the first day, but you're not out of it.