U.S. WOMEN'S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

May 30, 1996

Beth Daniel

BETH DANIEL: Well, my golf swing has been feeling very good as of late. After my injuries and the five weeks off, when I was first able to hit balls again, I went to see Jack Lumpkin, who is my teacher, and figured that I would start out on the right track and get some good thoughts in my mind. And we had a very good session. And I've just been working on those things the last three weeks that he told me. And I felt like this past weekend in the Skins game, felt like I hit the ball extremely well and under pressure hit some really good shots, and that's always good to have that feeling, especially coming into a U.S. Open. The one thing that I thought had not quite come around, oddly enough, is my putting and chipping. But when I had the five weeks off, my doctors didn't allow me to even putt or chip. So basically I had five weeks of nothing but rehab and sitting in front of the TV. I hit the ball great, and I started out today hitting the ball very well and very close to the hole. That takes a lot of pressure off of you when you start a tournament that way.

BETH DANIEL: The golf course, well, it started out a little tricky with the wind, and then as the day went on, the greens started out holding. And as the day went on, the greens got firmer and firmer. So towards the end of the day, you're just trying to hit the ball or pitch it on the front of the green and try to let it roll out to the middle of the green. The golf course changed during the course of the day. But that's not typical of a U.S. Open golf course or of a five-hour-and-20-minute round of golf which can -- I think you have to expect it to change a little bit during that time.

BETH DANIEL: Started the first hole, I hit a sand wedge to 3 feet, made birdie there.

BETH DANIEL: 7 was a bogey. Actually, that's a tough driving hole for me. I caught the edge of the pine tree and the ball fell straight down. I then just advanced it up to the normal driving area and hit it on the green and two-putted for bogey. The 9th hole I drove it just in the edge of the right rough, had a terrible lie, was only able to advance the ball just short of the green, also in the rough; pitched it to about 11 feet and missed that. So I made bogey there. 12, I hit a sand wedge to about 6 feet, made that for birdie. 14, I hit 5-iron to about 8 feet, made that for birdie.

BETH DANIEL: 17, I made bogey there. I was actually going for -- just trying to pitch it on the front of the green with a 5-iron and pulled it into the front left bunker, didn't hit a great bunker shot, left myself about 14 feet and missed that. So made bogey there, but followed it up with a birdie on 18. I hit a big drive and only hit an 8-iron in, made a 15-footer for birdie.

BETH DANIEL: I'm not sure what to say about the pace of play except that we walked off the first green and there were three groups on the second tee, and it was a par 5 going to a par 4. That doesn't happen very often. I like to play fast, and over five hours of golf is not exactly what I would call ideal, so... But I think you go into the U.S. Opens expecting these things, and you just deal with it. It's part of what makes a U.S. Open different from any other golf tournament.

BETH DANIEL: Yeah. Since my injury I carry a donut -- not like a crispy cream donut, a donut you put on your club, a weight. And I use that in the mornings before I hit balls. I swing the donut, similar to how a baseball player loosens up before he goes to bat. And I was actually sitting on the bag talking to Jane Geddes who was in the group behind me, and we both were going to do that, because Jane does that, too. We'd been sitting there for quite a while, and I said, maybe we better ask. And we asked and they said, no, you can't use it. So it's a good thing we asked about it, because I'm not sure what the penalty is, but the rules official that was with our group said she thought it was possibly disqualification. So --

BETH DANIEL: It's been a long time since I've been in the lead in a tournament. It's been a while since I played competitive golf. I'm going to try and approach it the same way that I approached today. I'm going to try and just basically focus and play one shot at a time and just try to deal with it. I did a very good job of it today. Patience has not always been one of my greatest assets. For me to have patience four days in a row could be impossible, but we'll see.

BETH DANIEL: Well, any time you have an injury and you can't play and you want to play, it's pretty tough. But I literally could not turn my torso to the left. So golf was impossible. For that reason, it wasn't that hard to sit around because I couldn't move. But the injury happened last year in Nashville. I can tell you exactly, I was hitting a drive in the Pro Am Day, and my right foot slipped, and I popped a rib head out of socket in my middle back, where the rib head attaches to the spine, the joint of the spine. I withdrew from Nashville and then played -- I felt like I had to play, because the next week was McDonald's, and the next two weeks I was defending. So I had to play the next three weeks. It probably wasn't the best thing physically for me to have done, but I didn't really have much choice. So I just kind of did therapy and some rehab and sort of played around it last year. And then this year in Phoenix, after the round on Friday, I was out hitting balls and I hit a drive, and I felt it go again. And I immediately went into spasms, went into the Healthsouth trailer and they worked on me. And stubbornly, I kind of tried to play on the weekend, and couldn't really swing at it. And then by the time I got to Dinah Shore, I literally could not turn my body to the left. So I took time off thinking that it would be a couple of weeks, and it turned out it was five weeks. I tried to come back at Sprint, didn't hit the ball very well, didn't play well at all. And at McDonald's I played a little bit better. The mid-back feels better now. Now the problem is I have bursitis in my left shoulder, and that's from compensating for the rib injury. So the shoulder -- the bursitis in the shoulder bothers me more than anything else now. I was telling Rhonda earlier, I'm staying in a house this week and I have two doctors in the house, and they've been working on me in the morning and at night, and I actually am feeling -- felt pretty decent today.

BETH DANIEL: I hit the ball well last weekend. I was feeling pretty good last weekend and hit the ball fairly well. Obviously I have limitations. I don't have a great deal of strength in my left shoulder right now. If I hit the ball in the rough or hit it in an odd lie or something like that, it's kind of tough. But it's my decision to play, and you play with it. Today I kept the ball in play for the most part and hit my irons really well. I don't know if it will hold up for four days, but we'll see.

BETH DANIEL: Well, I mean, that's tough, because it breaks any kind of momentum that you have. But obviously I dealt with it. It didn't bother me today, it didn't bother me at all. I just said deal with it, sit around and wait and deal with it. And I think that's how you have to approach it.

BETH DANIEL: I don't know. I don't know what the solution is. If I knew what the solution was, then maybe I'd be president of the USGA. But they haven't asked me, and I don't have any solutions. The only opinion that I have basically is that something is happening at the beginning of the day that forces the rest of the field to back up. And I think that any time you have a golf tournament where you have -- how many are in this field, 150? 150 players going off one tee, if you have one player that needs a ruling early in the morning, it's going to back things up. And that's just what happens. On our tour, we play 144, we go two tees. That makes it flow a little better. The USGA wants to go off one tee. So, I don't know, I don't have opinions anymore.

BETH DANIEL: Yeah.

BETH DANIEL: Actually, I missed a few. I was surprised. I think I only hit 8 fairways. And the fairways that I missed, I did not miss by much. But I think -- I hit 8 fairways, so that's not exceptional, at all.

BETH DANIEL: Yeah, that's why I said on 17 I should be playing hand grenades. But you go through that with putting, and with the tee time that I had at 2:50 in the afternoon, there are a lot of spike marks out there. I don't know, I just felt like I gave it the best run I could give it, and some went in the hole and some didn't.

BETH DANIEL: I know Nina Foust has the same thing, and Dottie Pepper has a similar injury, so maybe it is more common than we think. I don't know, all I can tell you is it doesn't feel very good.

BETH DANIEL: No. It's what happens when you're getting ready to turn 40. I'm a lot different person than I was when you used to cover me when I was an amateur.

BETH DANIEL: When I win on Sunday, will that lift the burden of the Hall of Fame? I think that question answers itself. Then it's over.

BETH DANIEL: Yeah, I think it is a burden. You know, it is and it isn't. It's a nice position to be in. I'd rather be on the threshold of entering the Hall of Fame than not being on the threshold of entering the Hall of Fame. But the way I feel about it now is that I have X number of wins, and no one can take those away from me. No matter what I do at this point, no one's ever going to take those away from me, and that's something that I'm very proud of. And if I do make the Hall of Fame, I'll be very proud of that. But if I don't make it, that doesn't make me any less proud of what I've done in golf.

BETH DANIEL: In '91?

BETH DANIEL: '81, yeah. Well, I was a lot younger then and dealt with things a lot differently than I do now. In 1981 I pretty much thought that I should win every golf tournament I entered. I know that's not realistic now. And I also know that I'm probably not at the prime of my career right now, I'm probably a little bit past that now. Although, I can still play golf.

BETH DANIEL: Jane and I are always in an animated conversation. I can't remember -- we were talking a little bit about -- because you had given me the working media badge that I had on -- I was wearing for a while, and we were talking a little bit about working for the Golf Channel as commentators and how the players won't talk to us when we're commentating because we're media, and all of a sudden they won't tell us their deep, dark secrets or things that happened to them on the golf course today. And when we're players they tell us all these things. I think that's -- we were just talking about the difference between being a player and a commentator.