U.S. SENIOR AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 27, 2025

Bob Niger

Oak Hills Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Obviously really long run here into the championship. You had a great performance out there today. You fell down into a little bit of an early hole but bounced back with those three straight holes. Walk me through your round today.

BOB NIGER: The second round you mean? Yeah, oh, gosh, it's all kind of a blur now.

You know, I just have to say, the greens just ate my lunch all week. I three-putted so many times during the whole tournament.

The afternoon today started a little difficult. Lost the first hole, which is the first time I've bogeyed the first hole all week, and thought I hit a good wedge and I plugged it right in the face of the bunker. So bogey there, birdie the next hole.

That third hole, I lost the hole -- oh, I was in the bunker. I hit so many bunkers, and I plugged a couple of them really badly, including that first one, then two more later in the day in that second round.

Between three-putting and plugging it in the bunkers, I just couldn't get any kind of momentum. My opponent played really good. He saved pars every time he got in trouble. Made a lot of nice putts to save pars.

I hit a nice wedge on 8 to make birdie to get one of them back.

Then I hit a really nice shot into 9, and he hit a very poor shot way left on 9, and he didn't get up-and-down, so I won that hole with a par.

Then 10, I knocked it on the green in two, and he was bagging it around in the trees really bad, and I never putted. I had probably a 25-foot eagle putt, and he ended up conceding it to me after he had taken six shots, so I didn't even putt on that hole. So those were the three holes.

Then we come to 11, and I got a little momentum and I dump it in that front bunker and it's plugged. I've got absolutely no shot. It's plugged in the right side of the lip, so it's like kind of downhill plugged to the uphill pin there with no green. I hit a bad shot in there because I was right in the middle of the fairway, and I lost that hole.

Then on 12, I hit it in the left rough, and it was deep in there. I might not have found it except for one of the officials happened to see it and waited for me to show me where it was, and my opponent was in the right trees banging around in there, and he pitched out in the fairway, knocked it on about 15 feet past the hole. I hit it in the front left bunker, which just muscled it out the best I could and hit a great bunker shot to about three feet, and he made the putt and I made the putt. So looking like maybe I could get another one back there, and I didn't.

The par-3, I three-putted for the second time today from the same spot, back left, and it was just so fast coming down there. Even the second time -- the first time we played it, I'm in the back left, and I hit my putt from about 20, 25 feet and rolled it at least 10 feet by the hole. I had the same putt the second time knowing that it's super fast and hit it probably eight feet past the hole trying to hit it easy.

Some of the downhill, downgrain putts were just obscenely quick. If you didn't recognize that you had downhill, downgrain, it's easy to let putts get away from you, and as I said, I had a million three-putts this whole week. I had five the first day of qualifying alone.

So I lost that hole to a par after I hit a little better tee shot than he did. I hit it right over the pin, but he two-putted, I three-putted. I tried to drive the green on that next one because they had the tee up, hit it in the front bunker, he pulled it left, thinned it over the green. I ended up winning the hole, so I think I was back to 2-down.

Then we come to the par-5, I knocked it on the green in two, he was short of the green, pitched up for a gimme, I two-putted, so I'm still 2-down, I believe, and then I hit a poor tee shot on that 15th hole, hit it in the rough over by the bunker in the corner, the dogleg there, and it was just sitting down so deep. I hacked it as hard as I could, and it was in that grass bunker to the left, short left of the pin. Not a great place to be. I tried to hit a little flop shot and didn't get that up-and-down. That was the match.

It was just sloppy. Three-putting and -- yeah, it just wasn't good.

Q. When you look back on the totality of the week, all the way from the beginning, all the way up here to the semifinals, how do you reflect on the previous week and analyze how your week went from start to finish?

BOB NIGER: Yeah, I think generally I hit the ball pretty well until today. I really did not hit it good in either match today. Kind of got away with one in the morning match.

But I felt like I hit the ball pretty well. I felt like mentally I was in good control of my nerves. I kind of went into the week with the idea that I was just going to swing easy and smooth, and I kind of carried that through the whole week, and it was working well until today.

I don't know what happened today. Maybe just running out of gas. I'm 65, so -- I don't want to use that as an excuse, but it's a lot of golf, playing two practice rounds and then all the rounds of the tournament. I don't know how many rounds we played, maybe 10 or something, but it was a lot.

So I tried to just kind of maintain that same relaxed attitude and swinging easy and not trying to force anything, and that served me well up until today. Again, on the whole, I putted really poorly all week. I didn't make a lot of putts. I three-putted a lot. I bet I had seven three-putts in the stroke play, had one in the first match. I didn't have any in the second match. I had a couple in the third match, several today.

I don't know how many three-putts I had. I must have had close to 15 of them in the tournament. It's hard to get to this level and make those kind of mistakes and think you're going to move on.

On the whole, it was a good week. I'm proud of myself for doing what I did. Disappointed that I didn't play better today.

Q. My last question for you, obviously with you making the semis, you're going to be exempt into next year's Senior Amateur. Are you looking to bring anything specific from what you learned this year into next year? Obviously that's a long ways away.

BOB NIGER: Yeah, I think you bring everything you know up until that point, so next year I'll bring everything I've learned over my 53 years of playing golf, just like I did this week. I knew that there would be tension in a big tournament like this, so I had a game plan for that and how to mentally deal with that based on all the big tournaments I've played, and I've played five Senior Opens and I've played some big tournaments. So I tried to rely on that to get myself in a good frame of mind for this tournament.

So yeah, I'll do that again next year. We'll just take whatever we've learned cumulative to that point.