U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 28, 1997

Graham Marsh

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, I must say that I'm delighted with the position. Certainly the start of the week we talked about even par being the potential winning score, and we've managed to get a little lower than that at this stage of the tournament, and I would suspect tomorrow that we'll probably have to go a little lower if I want to win the championship. Certainly 67 today was another very good round to follow up with, and I just, obviously, would dearly love to keep that momentum going into tomorrow.

GRAHAM MARSH: Okay. First, I drove it in the fairway bunker, 9-iron out and hit a 9-iron about 3-foot behind the hole from 133 yards. The third, in between clubs, I hit a 7-iron, backed off a 7-iron and left it in the front trap and just got -- didn't get it up-and-down. 7th -- or two nice shots at 7, 8-iron about 15 feet behind the hole and made that. And then probably a key point in the round was the 8th hole, tough par 3, as you all know, and the pin was on the front right today, so to try and go for that pin was not in my mind, not in my thinking. I was just looking to put it in the center of the green. I put it in the center of the green, but almost on the back of it and to get up-and-down from there, two putts was some effort. So that really kept the momentum going. Just in the right rough at 9 with a 9-iron to about 3 feet for another birdie. 10, I hit a 5-iron about 20-feet above the hole, and made that. That was just a nice putt. And 12, I've had trouble with that all week. Bogeyed the first day, birdied the second day and bogey again today. I keep getting it in that left-hand rough. So, I had a shot. Probably could have carried the ball there, but I decided to lay up, take my medicine, hit a 9-iron in there and 2-putted to make a bogey. 13, finally got it on the fairway off the tee. 4-wood down there and a pitching wedge to about 18, 20-feet above the hole. And big swing right-to-left. Wargo had putted and I hit mine and I thought I may have missed it just left and the thing went in. So that was a nice bonus. And then a great par at the next. I hit it back right of the green, difficult position, little hump in front, really fast coming down the hill. Ran it about 15 foot, but I made that for 3. And then two putts from quite some distance at 16 and 17. At 18, I hit it in there reasonably close and couldn't get it to the hole. I think I'd run out of putts by then.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, I think many Majors -- probably a Major on the Senior Tour but certainly there's no doubt that this U.S. Senior Open is the premier event of World Senior Golf. There's no doubt about that. And winning it would be something very special, probably one of the most important days in my golfing career. Tomorrow, I have to go out and see what I can do with it. I would suggest that's the same for John Bland and for Dave Eichelberger and anybody else that's within 6 or 8 shots of the lead. So that's the importance we place on this event. And I would dearly love to win it, but there's a bunch of other guys out there that would like to do that just as much as I would.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, John's my mate for start. I mean, he's a wonderful person. He's the kind of guy that, you know, makes up the Tour. He has a great sense of humor. We share a tremendous amount on those lines in terms of the way we joke and carry on. And clearly, the very close relationship that we have had over the years and the good friendship that we've developed over the years, was obviously important to us. And John has been around. He's probably one of the most underrated players in the world. The guy has a wonderful touch around the greens. Anybody that goes out and followed the Senior Tour the last couple of years and hasn't paid attention to John's ability from 100 yards in, has been walking around with their eyes closed. The guy is a genius. His record -- you can't have a record like he has without that. Probably, this golf course - certainly earlier on in the week - is one of my tips of the week for a winner, and he's right there, and that doesn't surprise me one iota, to be right there at the lead -- near the lead. So, it will be fun playing with him tomorrow. We will have a good round. We have a very a good relationship, and we'll tough it out. But, you know, we're not the only two that have the potential to win this Championship.

GRAHAM MARSH: You'd have to go back to the records. I can't remember the year, but we were hitting along there... The Benson & Hedges, it was a short par 4, and we'd been nip-and-tuck all day, and I had it from about 80 yards and John had hit quite a good shot in there, about 10 or 15 feet behind the hole, and I popped it in the hole for two. Well, he's never let me forget that, and it's been -- it's been one of our talking points over the years, but those kinds of things happen. It just happened to be my week on that week.

GRAHAM MARSH: Number of victories where? On the regular Tour or the Senior Tour?

GRAHAM MARSH: No, I'm not surprised. The competition here in the United States is extremely fierce. When I first came here in my rookie year, I won at Heritage. I played about 19 tournaments, and I finished in the top 20 money winners. I didn't -- that was a poor performance. The other years, I played no more than 7 or 8 events, as I recall. So, you know, to be able to come in and just feed off one or two victories in that period of time is not something that you would expect to do. On the Senior Tour, well, four victories in -- this is my fourth year. I've had a number of chances. I finished second a number of times, but, again, I think it reflects also the quality of play that's out here. I don't believe that we've had guys come out. I mean, I think Peter Thomson won nine times in one year. Other guys have won seven or eight. Hale Irwin was nearly leading money winner, and he had only won twice. So, this is not a Tour where people are going to fall over for you, and I'm -- I think that I've had my fair share. I would have liked to have won more, but so would everybody else.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, it has to do things for your attitude when you've just won a golf tournament. I handled myself well last week in carrying the lead against the best senior player in the world, Hale Irwin, and one of the other leaders on the Senior Tour, Bob Murphy, so that went well for me. But, tomorrow's a completely different day. You have to go out, and you're only as good as your last victory. In this game, you have to front up and do it all again tomorrow. That's what tests you. But, I'm on a bit of a roll right now. Some of the things are working in my favor. I've had a few good breaks, but this golf course is the kind of golf course that is just going to test your patience to the absolute limits. And I'll stay with my gameplan of just being conservative, trying to get it in the right places, and take my opportunities when they come along.

GRAHAM MARSH: I think it's done that, but I think that's happened pretty much over the last few years with the success on the European team. The Ryder Cup has certainly brought back into focus that there is golf out there in the world. When I first started, back in the '70s, there really was only one place to play, and that was the United States. That was the one big circuit. But in my time, I saw the European Tour develop, I saw the Japanese Tour develop and some of the Australian Tour and the South African Tour just become stronger. But when it gets down to senior golf, there really is only one senior circuit in the world, that you could say is world class, and that is what's here in the United States. And, I think that the fact that there are probably, what, something like eight or ten foreign players playing here on the Senior Tour, that are exempt inside that top 78, indicates just the strength of world golf even back then. I certainly think that we probably, in the '70s, had a mental thing about playing against American players. We thought they were better, and the results reflected that. The only players that were really successful in the '70s and early '80s against the Americans, in America, were the ones that came and lived here and played here full time.

GRAHAM MARSH: Yeah, it makes -- I certainly have regrets. I would dearly have loved to have played more on the regular Tour. I didn't for my family and for some other personal reasons. As far as a home here, I don't have a home in the United States because I'm playing about 24 or 25 tournaments here a year. I travel back and forth, my family comes over during school holidays, and I have a son here at Wake Forest, who's teaching at Wake Forest University now. So I don't have a home here because when I'm here, I just play, and that's what I come for. I don't come to take a week off and rest in the United States. With my golf design business in Southeast Asia any week -- any spare week that I have, I have to be back over there taking care of those issues.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, I never said it was a long-hitters' course. Somebody else may have said that. That was never my suggestion that it was a long-hitters' golf course. I always thought it was a positional golf course off the tees. You had to get the ball in the fairway and give yourself the best opportunity to keep it under the hole and get it in the prime position on the green where you could -- where you had your best opportunities to make birdies from and not make bogeys. That's part of the game on this golf course is just not making bogeys.

GRAHAM MARSH: No, not that I can recall. Remember that John played only in the European -- only on the European Tour and in South Africa. I used to make a number of trips to Europe. I would probably play about eight or ten tournaments a year in Europe. I was predominately playing in Japan. I was spending more time in Japan and then a few tournaments over here and in Australia. So that relationship has developed over the years. It's not that we've been seeing one another on a weekly basis. It's something that's been over a long period of years where we've rubbed shoulders. Certainly, for me, it was in the '70s and early '80s. Even towards the mid-'80s or latter '80s and '90s, I stopped going to Europe. I just concentrated on playing in Japan and in Australia.

GRAHAM MARSH: The reason for it was we were under the gun. We were warned for slow play. Had a timing out there at No. 11 and checked the time, and we were sort of playing about 12 minutes a hole. So -- then I asked a USGA official that was with us, what was the time allotted and he said 3 hours and 48 minutes. That's the time, and I guess we were behind that time. So they put the clock on us for a couple of holes, so we really had to make a bit of a move, which we did. And, we were back into position within a matter of a couple of holes.

GRAHAM MARSH: I'm not thinking about final scores. I will go out and play the golf course. In a situation like this, you have to overcome your own emotions, and you have to beat the golf course. That's the only two things that I have to take care of tomorrow. If I do that, it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to win, even if I do both of those things. I can't think about putting any number on the board. I never think about just going out there and saying right, well, it's 67 today or 68 today. You have to take what comes. If you're out there and we have a 13-mile-an-hour wind blowing tomorrow, 73 might be a good score. So, it's all about emotions. It's all about playing the golf course, handling yourself out there under the conditions that you face on a given day, and whatever comes along, comes along. You just can't think about a number.