U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

August 1, 2008

Mark McNulty

FULLAUDIOINTERVIEW

Q. I don't know where you want to start. You took a long and winding road to stay where you were before. But I'm sure you'd like that last hole back.

MARK McNULTY: Yeah. It was one of those things. I didn't hit the greatest of tee shots, but I didn't really have a very good lie, and came out a little bit left, and it was just a bad chip. I didn't really miss three. I think advanced stage double bogey was in the equation, but mistakes happen in this game and what's past is past.

I still felt that I'm playing okay. I seem to have a pretty good understanding of the golf course. It's very tricky, as most of you all know. The greens are the toughest greens I've seen in championship golf.

And at the beginning of the week if somebody said to me, you'll shoot four 69s, I would have been delighted. So I'm on course for that at the moment, even though the last hole blues.

Q. Talk about the 15th hole. You had a birdie putt, you had some momentum going. Did that kind of kill the momentum?

MARK McNULTY: No. The greens, as I was saying, are so severe. Unless you actually go out there and put yourself in that position, there's no way I can actually go for that putt. And I have to just dribble it down, and I guess I didn't get the ball started on line. And consequently, because I was, in my eyes, really out of position to give the putter a go, a four was a good score.

You know, most holes on this golf course, par is a great score, and you just move on quietly to the next hole.

Q. You know that you went out there and got five birdies today and you're continually saying how hard the greens are. Good confidence.

MARK McNULTY: Yeah. I still feel there are birdies out there, and there are mistakes out

there. So if you balance them out at the beginning of the day, you know, I talked about the 69s.

At the beginning of the day if somebody said you could go out and shoot 70, I would be happy. Obviously I'm not happy because of the last hole, but it's just one of those things.

Q. Can you talk about the stretch between 9 and 10 the three birdies in a row?

MARK McNULTY: Yeah. Sure. The eighth hole today, that's really one of the tough greens. And fortunately today it wasn't playing that tough. It was 8-iron or 9-iron, depending on what the wind was doing, and I left myself a really good makable birdie putt. It was a couple of balls outside the rough, slightly uphill. So that's a putt which I can go for.

9 is a really tough hole to hit the fairway, and I obviously -- didn't obviously, but I went in the right-hand rough and just laid up to try to hit a sand wedge and hit a solid sand wedge a little bit long, about 20 feet, but once again, the putt suited my eye, what I saw, and wasn't particularly fast, and I hit a good putt on line.

No. 10, I was particularly happy with because I had a very good drive and I hit a 6-iron to 20 feet past the flag. Now I'm putting up towards the monument. As you all know, that's supposed to be a slower putt, but on the tenth hole it's a little bit down and across to the back of where that pin was today. And I read the putt well and was reward with a birdie.

So three birdies, I actually, in saying that, that's the first time I really struck my brain that I'd made three birdies in a row, because you're just concentrating so hard to make pars that when you do make birdies, they are a been us and you don't necessarily say, wow, I made a birdie. You just grind away to the next hole.

Q. You said you were concentrating so hard. How taxing is it mentally with all the calculations you have to make based on elevation change and altitude and the greens and the monument? I mean how exhausting is it mentally out there?

MARK McNULTY: Fortunately for me we had a strategy at the beginning of the week where I take about 11 percent off. So I'm playing effectively in meters. The yardage book tells you how far it's uphill or how far it's downhill. So because we're at elevation, I'm normally used to playing in yards.

So I just reverted back to meters. So it's like yards. They're not quite the uphill downhill do you the factor, and it makes it pretty simple. You have a number. Sometimes it looks further than what you're normally accustomed to hitting, but having lived and played a lot of golf in Africa at high altitude, 5,000 feet, in Johannesburg and Zimbabwe, I'm pretty used to it.

Q. The golf course is supposed to be set up firm, fast and fair. It's getting harder. Is it too hard? Is it fair and are you thinking that it's going to be even harder this afternoon?

MARK McNULTY: Well, I think the USGA will have enough sense to realize that they can't let these greens get away from them because they are very severe. And if they do get a little hardened and too fast, some of those balls are not going to stop.

So I think they're on top of it. They've been saying that they're going to beginning the greens during play, which they did yesterday afternoon when we played. So I think they're pretty much on top of it.

We all know that when you play in the morning the fairway is a little bit soft and in the afternoon they get a little hard when the wind starts to blow a little bit. But all in all, at the moment I think it's very fair.

I know the weekend might be a little tougher, but certainly today they had some pretty tricky pins out there and needless to say I'm sure they'll have a couple of more over the weekend.

Q. Was No. 8 the trickiest in your estimation?

MARK McNULTY: There were a couple others. I'd have to actually -- I think 8 -- it just depends where you put yourself at 8. If you go -- it's like I was saying, if you go past the hole on any of these greens, you are faced with a really severe downhill fast putt. And you have to really pay attention.