home

jobs

	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 6, 2006

Graham Marsh

HUTCHINSON, KANSAS

Q. Seems like the 2 under par was tougher to get than maybe the 3 under par this morning.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, I didn't get out here until quite late, so I don't know what the conditions were this morning. But I guess it was a bit blowy out here this morning, wasn't it? It certainly blew the last couple of holes we played.

But the old story, you know, when you grow rough this long you start missing fairways; it's a chip out job. And I guess that's what kept the scores where they are today.

There are a couple of really very tight pin placements, but overall I thought that that's not where the difficulty of the golf course lay today. Now, if you hit it on the wrong side of the hole it did, obviously. But that rough is brutal. You can hit it in there and you sometimes I mean, just that once you miss that fairway there, edge cut.

I mean, boy, it's just sand wedge or pitching wedge back on the fairway. And then you can't advance it. You got holes out there the long par 4s are 450, 470, and you take a pitching wedge. You're still going to have 140 yards back into it. And of course if you fly it in the rough it's sort of brings the field back to being very equal.

Because when you hit it in that rough it doesn't run. It just goes thud. So it's just a total carry. And I think that's where the difficulty of the course lay.

Q. Talk about how the course sort of plays into your strength. At least from U.S. Senior Opens before.

GRAHAM MARSH: I've always done pretty well on the Senior. Certainly when I was in my 50s I played well. I think I had a second and a third and a fourth and a win, and I so I always played well on that and on golf courses that have probably favored me or been similar to this.

If you are looking for winners based on track records and the TOUR, you got to you can't go much further than people like Jay Haas and Fred Funk. They have got the track record. They're long enough, obviously. They're great putters. They just come off a full playing career on the Regular Tour. Freddie still has one there and so does Jay. So I mean, they're your obvious favorites around a golf course like this.

Q. Talk about getting a birdie on a hole, on the ninth hole, to finish on a hole that's only given up four so far all day.

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, is that right? Well, I nearly had a skin, didn't I? Well, oh, yeah, I drove it down there, had 202 to the hole. My drive went through the old humpty dumps down there on the fairway, the same that you have on 8 going around the bend. But pinched into the fairways on one of those, popped up, and I had a relatively level lie, which is kind of nice when you got 200 yards left with a pin tucked over there on the right.

Just blasted a 2 iron up there about 35 feet and left and past the hole. Right where I wanted to hit it. It was probably the best shot I hit all day, the second shot. And drained it. And so you know, it was a bonus.

Q. What kind of putt did you have on that?

GRAHAM MARSH: Well, it was one of those. It was a double breaker. But I probably hit it a little firmer than I should have, and it kind of rattled the back of the cup when it went in. So it's, as I said, a bonus.

Q. The other three birdies on your card, yardages, and clubs?

GRAHAM MARSH: The other three? I can't remember what my yardages were, but I birdied the first one; I birdied right off I teed off 10, so the dogleg around the corner, yeah, 14. I pitched it in there about four feet with a 52, a wedge there.

The next was hit a beautiful 4 iron in there about 15, 18 feet left of the hole. Right of the hole there. On the par 3. 15 there.

And then the other birdie came at the 7th hole. I hit a driver and a 5 iron on the green and 3 putted that. So those were my four birdies. The two bogeys were the 16th. Drove it in the rough, chip out. Actually I hit a beautiful pitching wedge there about 8 foot and missed that.

And then the other bogey was on the probably somewhat of a lucky bogey. I missed the green to the right and I was behind a yucca bush, but in a reasonable lie. And the lie was good enough, sitting up enough in the grass where I could knock it up. I mean, it was only within inches of going into the yucca bush. Hit it up over that about 15 feet and 3 putted that for a bogey.

Q. Actually, Graham, how do you assess this course?

GRAHAM MARSH: Very highly. Very highly. I mean, it's you could almost you would have to regard this almost as a national treasure in terms of golf courses in this country. And it should be preserved as such. Which, as I've said earlier on this week, I mean, I think there's a real argument for a heritage listing of famous golf courses like this that they can't be touched and can't be dug up for residential or anything else in the future. Because they represent such a huge part of history in the game of golf in this country.

So I rate it very, very highly, and you can only sit back and admire what these guys did so many years ago and the creativity that they had there without the massive machinery and just their capacity to be able to produce something like this that has stood the test of time.

Q. Do you think the high rough is essential to have this week?

GRAHAM MARSH: I think it is. This time of the year, I would suggest that in Kansas where you're always going to have I mean, these are traditionally not quite as fast as what we would be playing on in the United States Open. We played on much faster. When I won at Olympia Fields, those greens were the only other greens I ever putted on that were faster than those greens were Royal Melbourne. And they can be, the glass top surfaces there.

So I think that in defense of this golf course, they didn't and because of the greens and they were built probably for 8 on the Stimp back then, I mean, they never even foresaw that you were going to have the machinery to cut greens like they do today. But this time of the year, given the heat, given the fact that we ever got the bent grass on the greens, I don't think they can let them get away from them here.

So they're not quite as fast, and so the other defense is the rough. It's getting the thing in. And of course, what you have is you have on this golf course, which cleverly is the angles that he has placed with these fairways. So even though you see the fairway out there, if you pick that wrong line and you run out of room very, very quickly, or you don't get to the position that you wanted to get to because of the angles of those fairways.

So that's what causes you don't have to be that far off line with your tee shot to get yourself into trouble on a number of these holes. Some players might like that. They don't like it. Architects do that today, but they tend to make the angles much or the fairways much broader so that there is more of an opportunity to get on the fairway.

But these are when you put all that, assess all that, I mean, they're pretty narrow.

Q. You mentioned Royal Melbourne. Does this course compare geographically with the courses in the sand belt around there?

GRAHAM MARSH: Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I'm probably biased. I think that some of the courses there I think our finest golf course in Australia is Kingston Heath Golf Club. Royal Melbourne is just a wonderful course. Both the individual ones are as well.

But as we would say, you know, unfortunately, technology has outraised those golf courses and there is no room to extend. I haven't applied my mind to look whether you could extend this golf course or not, but I would suggest that given the property that they have here that they probably could in time.

That's not the case at Royal Melbourne and some of the other great classic sand belt golf courses. And so they if we keep going the way we're going now, they will be in trouble, serious trouble. This one looks or the property looks like it could go a little more distance, I would suggest.

Q. There were a number of guys in their 60s who shot 71 or better today. Do you think that speaks to the course or just the yardage of the course or what?

GRAHAM MARSH: I played well, man. That's what it spoke for. I had a good day.

(Laughter.)

Q. Do you think there was any reason for that though?

GRAHAM MARSH: Oh, I mean, there are a lot of good players that didn't get under par, and there were a lot of good players that went over par. Look, let's be honest. This is the type of golf course that if you're a little bit off your game it is going to absolutely devour you. So I hold no you know, I'm not proud to say you can hit two shots here. One is going to finish six foot, the other one could finish 45 feet from the hole.

And you're coming over an elephant's back. So they're just the same as there's a fine line between madness and genius. There's a fine line here between something that is good or very bad. So you've got to take a good day. Everyone's going to have, I would suggest, an ordinary day around here. Everyone is going to make bogeys around here, and possibly higher on some holes. You play a golf course like this, you just take what you can get.

And I'm I mean, I've been playing quite well. It doesn't show it last week, but this is much more my cup of tea, where the premium is not on brute strength. Because I don't care how strong you are, you're not going to advance that ball out of that rough more than a hundred yards. And so brute strength is not what's going to do it here.

Positional play is what's going to do it, and that's why I go back to what I originally said. You would have to look at your favorites from Fred Funk and those guys. Over the years my career has been more traditional play than it has been brute strength. I'm just a scrawny little guy, so that's it.

End of FastScripts.

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297