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SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 28, 2006

Gil Morgan

EDMOND, OKLAHOMA

KELLY ELBIN: Gil Morgan, ladies and gentlemen, finishing the 67th Senior PGA Championship today with a 3 over par 74. For a 281 total. That's 3 under par and alone in third place.

Gil, please comments on your play today in the final round.

GIL MORGAN: Well, basically I kind of got out of sync, I think the front nine there. And I think that was the story of my round today.

I played very poorly for about four or five holes on the front. And then wasn't able to muster anything on the back.

KELLY ELBIN: Would you mind running through the birdies and bogeys, please.

GIL MORGAN: Okay. Let's see, I bogeyed the third hole. Missed the green to the left and chipped up about eight feet past and missed that putt.

4 I hit it in the water with a 6 iron and then dropped and hit it up there about three feet and made that for four.

On the fourth hole I really or I mean on the fifth hole I didn't hit a very good drive and I laid up and then I hit a pitching wedge in there about 15 feet and made that for birdie.

6, I hit a pretty good drive and misclubbed a little bit and it plugged in the lip of the bunker. I tried to explode it out of there and it hit the lip, came back down in the bunker. And then I blasted out to about six feet and made that for five.

At 7 I had a I hit a 3 wood off the tee and was able to hit the putt in there and shot in there with an I think it was with pitching wedge. I hit it about 15 feet and made that.

8, I hit 8 iron out to the right and just kind of back into the wind, left it about four feet short and then missed that putt.

Then at 9 I hit a pretty good drive right in the middle of the fairway and under clubbed again a little bit and it came back down in the hollow and I couldn't get that one up and down either.

12, I didn't hit my drive quite far enough. I think it was a little bit soft out there or something, and it really wasn't very far. And I hit 5 iron just over the edge of the green. I had kind of a funky lie, it was nestled down in a little hollow, didn't know whether to chip it or putt it. I tried to putt it and it came out about 10 feet short and missed that.

At 16 I hit driver left, 5 wood up by the green, pitched up to about four or five inches and tapped that in for birdie. And that was the end of it for me.

KELLY ELBIN: Questions?

Q. How much pressure did you feel playing at supposedly your home course with so many friends here?

GIL MORGAN: I think that all week there was quite a bit of pressure on me to play well. The first part of the week obviously I played a little bit better, maybe I handled it a little bit better, I don't know.

Just all the things that were involved probably created a little bit more stress, especially for this concluding round. And I wasn't able to play at the level that I would like to and that's probably because of that somewhat.

Q. Did you feel any pressure?

GIL MORGAN: I feel pressure every day to kind of play, kind of. And I think any time you're in a Major championship, any time you're playing at home, all those things are creating a little bit of additional pressure that you wouldn't have on the road.

Q. But the pressure, it wasn't as though you wilted under the pressure in terms of coming home, because you played well coming home, it was going out that you didn't play as well.

GIL MORGAN: That's very true. I just, I don't know exactly what happened. On the third hole I put myself in a position where I couldn't get far enough down the fairway and I had to hit a long iron into the third green with across wind and I missed the green there. But a pretty good chip, but I couldn't make the putt. And then the next hole, I don't know what happened. I felt like I got tied up a little bit and I mishit the shot at the fourth hole and hit it in the water.

Then at six I just under clubbed. At nine I under clubbed back into the wind and I got beat up pretty badly for both of those.

So I don't know. It doesn't take very much to be off. If you can't make the putts, you can't salvage anything. Loren was able to salvage a lot of putts. He made some mistakes but he is such a good putter that he was able to recover from those, and I just, you know, I never all my career I have never been able to do that very efficiently. So most of the time I had to play at a little bit higher level than my competition to be able to compete effectively with them. And then when I don't do that, then I can't recover enough putting to make up for those mistakes is the way, kind of the way my career's fallen out.

Q. Do you make it a conscious point to look at leader boards throughout the round and if you did, do you have any reaction, did you notice that Jay had made up what was a six shot deficit in maybe an hour, hour and 15 minutes?

GIL MORGAN: Well, I wasn't really keeping time out there, but at the same time I did notice that I was playing poorly and he was playing very well. So I try to keep up with the score boards, I think that's the only way you know where you stand out there. It would be kind of like playing a basketball game and not having a scoreboard, you know, you might not be able to keep up. So I'm very conscious of the scoreboard and even coming down the stretch I still felt like I had an outside opportunity, if I could make a couple of putts here and there. I didn't do that. I had a pretty good opportunity at 10 and 11 to make putts. And then I made a mistake at 12. You take about three or four mistake as way and I'm in pretty good shape. If I would have just made pars at a couple of those holes and not hit it in the water, you know, I would have still been in contention. So it was my bad play that created it. He obviously played well, but at the same time I gave him the opportunity.

Q. Talk about the hole whole week. How did Oak Tree do as far as the tournament is concerned for the whole week?

GIL MORGAN: I think it played very difficult and I think that's what they anticipated, obviously the conditions were a factor in the scoring to some point, but at the same time it's such a challenging, demanding golf course that I think it stood up well. We had only five people under par for the whole tournament. That's about as good as it gets as far as tournament play most of the time.

And this type of championship, you know, they're looking for single digit winners and that's exactly what they got.

Q. How about the gallery and the crowd?

GIL MORGAN: I think the fan support was tremendous this week. With all the pre sell that they did for the tournament and then obviously they had a great crowd today, with all the people out there and I just think it was a tremendous success for the community and for the whole state and obviously Oak Tree showed itself very well in as far as a Major player in Major championship type play.

Q. Do you know of any other states that Oklahoma has Southern Hills and this, sort of have two premier courses that are quite different. Kind of make it's unique, doesn't it?

GIL MORGAN: Well, I think, you know, Southern Hills has always been a great golf course, been in the rotation for both the U. S. Open and the PGA Championship. And then also Major amateur events throughout time. It's an old traditional standard golf course. A great golf course. And I think Oak Tree is kind of a one of the new generation type golf courses that fit kind of that same category, not exactly the same type of golf course, but has the same quality of difficulty.

So I think that it's great to be able to have a couple of those courses in our state and it gets everybody coming back here, what, they're going to have The Open next year at Southern Hills: And that will be another plus for our community.

KELLY ELBIN: Gil Morgan, thank you very much.

GIL MORGAN: All right. Thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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