FORD SENIOR PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

June 24, 1999

Graham Marsh

GRAHAM MARSH: It does.

GRAHAM MARSH: On that basis of that, it must have been reasonably well, I suppose. But I think I've had 67 here in the past, and several other rounds under 70. But I have felt like I've been on the verge of playing reasonably well the last two or three weeks. And it just hasn't come together for one reason or another. And today, it did. I must say, I was reasonably happy with the timing of that. But the golf course played well. It was friendly this morning, friendly than what we've known it in the past when the fairways were becoming extremely hard and bouncy, and you'd have to be extremely careful where you position the ball from the tee. But today, you could take the driver with more confidence and get it out there because the fairways are just that little bit softer. And also, the advantage of starting early, the greens were a little softer, so you have more opportunity to get at some of the flag positions. But I guess the real turn -- not a turning point, but a key to the round for me was birdieing three of the four par 3s. You make three 2s out here with tight pin placements, then you've done extremely well. There were pin placements that you could well be excused from for playing conservatively. But I just felt like I had the right club in my hand each time, which is important when you're on a par 3 to know that you have the right club in your hand. So, often you can be in between clubs. And I was able to make a free and easy swing. 12th, I hit it about four foot behind the hole. At 8, about eight feet from the hole was a very good shot and at 15, with the pin way in the back right, I was able to get it in there about 15 feet behind the hole. So that was the key to scoring well because I didn't do any damage on the par 5s. I was never in a position where I could go at any of the par 5s today. And the only birdie that I made on the par 5 was at 17. So as I said, a couple on the par -- the par 4s which you might well expect around here.

GRAHAM MARSH: First, I hit a poor second shot with a 9-iron and came up short of the green. Had a difficult chip. Pitched it up about six feet and made that for a par. That was a nice, sort of start to the day. Birdie at 4 from about 15 feet behind the hole. Next hole, I hit an 8-iron there, and actually hit the back and finished two feet away and made that for a three. And the other birdie at 8, where I hit a 5-iron about six feet from the hole. The rest were pretty ordinary. And then I finished with a rush, the one at 15, about 12, 15 feet behind the hole, 4-iron again. Then at 16, I hit an 8-iron about eight feet short of the hole and made that. And a sand wedge at 17, about eight feet from the hole -- behind the hole; so, no bogeys. The only time I really looked like making a birdie was at the 1st, and the other time I could have gotten into trouble was 13. I had a 4-iron -- I was in between clubs with my second shot, and nearly hit it in the water hazard with my second shot, scrambled -- scrambled over the water and over the green, chipped it about eight feet and made that for par.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, you don't -- I think if you looked at this golf course, you really do have four very good par 3s. Some golf courses you might have one long one and a couple short ones and you sort of -- at the end of the week you're saying to yourself: If I could play the par 3s say in a four-round tournament 5-, or 6-under par, you'd be reasonably happy. Here, so many of the par 3s are very tight shots. And the other one, well, even 15 is not an easy shot to that green. Probably, the most difficult green of the whole lot of them. But they are all potential bogies or double -- and the water holes, potential double-bogey material. So, you're right on a fine edge with two of them here. And quite honestly, I think if you go back and check the records of par 3s, they are usually the holes -- unless they are short and easy, on a championship golf course, they are the ones that you've really got to -- you find that you don't shoot a lot of low numbers on. You're lucky if you play those at the end of the week more than 4-under par or something like that.

GRAHAM MARSH: I would say so, yeah. As a group, they are.

GRAHAM MARSH: I know some of them I've played appalling with my doubles. I think I've made a triple some years on one hole. But you can do that. Any time you've got water, difficult greens, say for example, like the 12th hole here. If you started to lose it there, you could be there all day on that hole, when they get the pin up on the back right and you get into the wind and you're forced to go with a 3- or 4-iron. And the same could apply at 8. 8's a nasty little hole. You've just got to be right short of it if you have the right club. If you're a little bit too long, saving par off that back bank is extremely difficult.

GRAHAM MARSH: The thing that always surprises me is how low the numbers are on this golf course. When you stand out there and you have a look at the golf course and you play it for the first time and you see the potential trouble out there. And in the past, you know, we've had hard fairways, and you're always faced with a little bit of breeze around here. Rarely do you get a chance on this golf course and you see the numbers that they put up there, 16-under par, 20 under par. I've never thought the golf course was that easy. And I guess this year I was just -- and I could say the same about the Tradition, for that matter, too. Some of the scores that they have been shooting at the Tradition have been just incredible. And, I guess this year I've made up my mind that you have to be somewhat aggressive around here and just get into a frame of mind where you have to think low. And it's a little bit unusual to do that when you're playing in a major because usually what happens is the reverse. Usually, you're thinking about saving pars. But, that certainly hasn't been the case on this golf course in the past. I don't know -- I don't know how many years they played here now. I think, ten. If you look back and averaged out what the scores were over those ten, it's got to be something like 15- or 16-under par, I would have thought.

GRAHAM MARSH: You're going to ask it anyway, right?

GRAHAM MARSH: I don't play with a wristwatch on.

GRAHAM MARSH: I never play with a watch on, and I've never done that. And the other thing is just a magnet.

GRAHAM MARSH: I always carry something in my pocket.

GRAHAM MARSH: Just the minimum. A few coins and some tees and a handkerchief.

GRAHAM MARSH: No. I don't carry the bank with me. A carry a couple, a few here and there.

GRAHAM MARSH: I think what I did was I've tried to make adjustments with my game over the last few years to try and get a higher flight on the golf ball, and to try and get a little more spin. And in most cases, high trajectory is related to spin anyway. So the two go hand in hand. Yes, I've made a conscious effort to try and modify my game. As an international player, and certainly where I came from in Perth, we played in a tremendous amount of wind and you had to hit the ball low. If you don't hit the ball low, you certainly didn't win amateur games. You could not hit your way around the golf course. And that was even with a small ball which we were brought up on. And as a result of that, that's been the pattern. And then playing in Europe and playing in Japan, you learn to hit the ball low. That's the first priority. I think in the United States, the first priority is to carry the ball over a long distance and learn to hit the ball high. Now, I think it's probably been harder for -- but I do believe that players that have learnt to do that, quality players that have learnt to do that can also learn to knock the ball down. I think it's harder to go the other way to learn to hit the ball high or get the ball airborne when you've been brought up by hitting the ball very low. I believe that would be the case.

GRAHAM MARSH: Because the style of golf courses you play. You play -- I've described the par 3s here where there is only one way to get is it on the green and that's to hit it on the green. Now, par 3s in other parts of the world there would not be water -- nowadays, of course, design is changing those other parts of the world. But the old traditional golf course, they would not have been that kind of hazard in front of the par 3. And you could always bounce the ball on. You could run the ball on the green. Being precise with the club wasn't as important. And the other thing is the greens, the configuration of the greens. You didn't have the angles in the green setup that you now have on modern golf courses. The greens were either slightly angled or they might have been round or they could have been oblong, peanut-shaped or different shaped. But if you look at some of the different complexes out there they set them up so as to create difficult pin positions to get at. And that has changed. It's changed in the last 20 years. There's no question about that.

GRAHAM MARSH: I think most Nicklaus courses have similarities. I don't think there's any secret with that. I think probably some of his modern design that I've seen is probably a little different, but certainly when these golf courses were being created, there's a great deal of similarity between the design.

GRAHAM MARSH: It didn't take me a long time to decide to do it. It took me longer to achieve it. I always knew that I was -- I was always working on getting the ball higher when I decided to come and play The SENIOR TOUR over here and I've been working on that consistently. And perhaps it's started to payoff. There's been some down periods along the way while is the it's been happening, of course. It's not been easy to make the switches, as I said, it's much harder to go from hitting the ball low to hitting it higher in the air. When you're a lowball hitter, that's the instinct. And I still hit it low compared to a lot of players, but not as low as what I used to.

GRAHAM MARSH: In my mind, I believe the reason for that is that you have a situation, but go to this type of design where it's do-or-die. You either make a conscious decision here to aim at those type pins, or you aim away from them. If you start aiming at them and it comes off, you don't have lot of long birdie putts. You're close. The center of the green that you aim into it is relatively small. And relatively -- relatively flat. So if you start to -- if you're on with that part of the game, you're going to have a tremendous number of short birdie putts in the course of a round. Now this is a style of golf. You can theorize about this forever. The other thing that Jack has always done, he's always liked to give the guy a chance to get on the par 5 in 2. So if you get the long hitters around here that are on their game again with their driver, and they want to attack at these greens, there's a great number of birdies for them. A huge number of birdie opportunities for them if they are getting it somewhere near, they are going at the green. So you can -- all of the sudden, these numbers start to get low because the guys are getting a huge number of relatively short birdie putts. You're not going to make a great number of long birdies putts around here, because you've got doom zones where you've got the great big sweeping, swinging between one zone and the other. For example, a hole like 12, and you follow with a hole like 13. If you get in the wrong part of the green, you've got the noose around your neck to 2-putt, let alone worrying about making it, and that's the reason I think it happens.

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