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U.S. SENIOR OPEN

July 1, 2017

Marco Dawson

Peabody, Massachusetts

Q. Bogey on the 1st hole, and also you made birdie, eagle on back-to-back holes. Tell us about that.
MARCO DAWSON: Par 3, hit a pretty good shot, and, you know, got the right speed. You can't miss all the putts, so I missed my share so far this week. But hit a good one there, and then the next hole hit two good shots. Well, three good shots, but two good shots right in front of the green and chipped it in.

Q. How far away were you?
MARCO DAWSON: I was probably four steps off the green, so the pin was, I think, eight on, so 25 feet, 30 feet.

Q. How much different did the rain affect the golf course?
MARCO DAWSON: Well, it wasn't too bad. I had a couple of, not mudballs, but I could tell that it wasn't running out like yesterday, and I did have a couple times where I did have some, not clumps of mud, but you could tell it was dirty, like it had broken the surface of the grass.

I did -- I did have a squirter on the 11th hole. That was where it was really wet on the 11th hole. So I had a little bit of mud on that ball. But it turned out okay.

Q. The greens still --
MARCO DAWSON: Greens are good, yeah, they're fine. Yeah, it's -- the course is taking the water well, I think. There's always spots here and there that are always going to be wet. But I -- you know, the other day, after the rain -- I think it was the practice round, and the next day, we came out, and I thought, ah, the course is taking the water pretty well.

Then, again, rain last night, and so the course is doing well with the water. I think it's holding up really well.

Q. A little move on moving day. How much more do you think you can put out?
MARCO DAWSON: Yesterday could have been just as easily as good. The first day, I didn't drive it quite as well, but I think I missed one or two fair -- one fairway today, one or two fairways maybe. Yesterday, same thing. The first day, I missed a few more fairways.

But, you know, the way things are going, you know, could have been a real low round yesterday and a low one today as well. It's just a matter of how many more putts can you make.

So you know, you just try and make the putts, hit it close. That helps, especially on this course, if you can get -- the closer that you can hit it, it seems that -- I know that sounds redundant on every course, but it seems that longer putts are tougher to make here than most other courses because there's so much slope in the greens.

And there's a couple of the greens, like 9 and 18 are pretty severe. 18 is probably the most severe green out here.

Q. Mike Collins said you made a great read on 18 today.
MARCO DAWSON: Yeah. I think I played 20 feet of break and -- or maybe more, and I -- you know, it was like this, but it was funny. We were joking, I read it a foot too far, too high.

But, yeah, at the gym, my partner, playing partner, was standing in my line, and he was 20 or 30 feet away from the hole, and I said I'm coming right at you. He just shrugged his shoulders. Then when he saw the putt, he laughed and said something to me on the way down, he said, I just couldn't believe you had to play that much break.

I said, yeah, get it up here and let it go sideways. Yeah, it was kind of fun. I told my caddie, this is going to be a fun putt.

Q. That's what they say. You're above the hole here --
MARCO DAWSON: Yeah, well, it's nice that -- obviously, you can't get the greens the speed that past U.S. Opens have been, but that's just the nature of the course and the greens. So I think the USGA has done a really fine job this week setting up the course and the green speeds.

I think they're really good. The rough's good. It's not too high, not too penalizing, but you get a fly or lie. To me, that's the hardest shot is a fly or lie. Anybody can hit it out of the deep rough from 100 yards. 10-handicap professional is going to hit it out the same distance. But the tough shot is the fly or lie because then you start mentally thinking, well, I can get this on the green. Then once you're over the green, then the high scores come in.

So that's where the exciting part, I think that's where the USGA has done a better job over the last so many years is giving the guys the more opportunity to hit out of the rough to either hit great shots or watch them make high scores.

So I think that's more fun. It's been a lot more fun over the years to watch U.S. Open, U.S. Senior Opens, all that, because of that.

Q. Great play.
MARCO DAWSON: Thanks, appreciate it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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