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U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 26, 2005

Dillon Dougherty

ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA

CRAIG SMITH: Dillon Dougherty, defeating Ryan Yip, 4 & 2. Dillon, I don't know, let's start with just getting that lead early and how that must feel in contrast to trying to come back. You've done it both ways.

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Well, I've had the lead early in pretty much every match, and I got off to a terrible start the first hole. I just hit an awful tee shot. I guess I was a little nervous, I don't know, so I got 1 down.

Then when I squared it up and took the lead on 4. I think I made birdie to take a 1 up lead. Just getting that lead early is key, especially out here because as long as you have the lead, you can keep making pars, you're in pretty good shape.

CRAIG SMITH: If you make pars and get that occasional birdie, you should be okay.

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Yeah, you don't even necessarily need the occasional birdie. But if you keep making pars, your opponent is probably going to make a bogey or two at some point. Every match I've played, I've pretty much got an early lead and just tried to make par.

CRAIG SMITH: Northwestern is not noted; you've got Luke Donald, but are you surprising yourself?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: I don't think I'm surprising myself. Probably surprising a lot of people. But I've been playing pretty well this summer. I came in here with some expectations of playing well.

CRAIG SMITH: I understand you have a pretty good caddie.

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Oh, my caddie is great. We haven't argued yet. He miscalculates yardages every once in awhile. But it's my dad here, Dan. He's made the trip out here this week.

Q. Your putting has been great all week. How have you been able to figure out the greens here so successfully? A lot of people have struggled from time to time, but all of your first putts have been close.

DILLON DOUGHERTY: I love quick, undulating greens. That's just those are the greens I like to putt. You see the break for me, I see the break a lot better. I see where I need to hit putts and for some reason, that's just the type of greens I like to putt. I would much prefer to putt on these greens versus flat, slow greens. It's a little bit natural. It's something I do well.

Q. The putt you had at 8 didn't go in but you got a halve out of that one and looked like you were about to lose the hole. What was that, about 40 feet?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: 8, I don't know how long the putt was, but the pin is front right and I'm back left. It's breaking, you know, ten or 15 feet or something like that, and it's downhill all the way. So I'm just trying to get it close so that he has to putt first, because I don't want to, you know, make bogey and have him have a 2 putt to win.

So I'm trying to get it close, and four feet from the hole, I think it's in the hole. Just misses on the high edge, and, you know, then it putts the pressure on him to make his birdie putt to win the hole; whereas, he's probably walking up there thinking, I'm having a tough time 2 putting. There's a few times where that happened where I hit a few good shots or made a putt, and all of a sudden, where he thought he was in a good position, the pressure turned on him a little bit.

Q. That was key, and I guess the chip in on 13?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: The chip in on 13 was pretty big. It was looking like the match was going back to square, and I'm sure he was thinking about that. He hit it in there tight right off the tee. When we got up there and saw my ball was short, we didn't really know where my ball was from the tee. I thought it could have been real close but it ended up being short.

So he's thinking, you know, the match is going back to all square and then I hole that. All of a sudden, pressure is on him to make his little curler just to halve the hole. That's the way match play works. All of a sudden he was in a good spot and now he has to make the putt to halve the hole.

Q. How was your lie and how far away were you on the chip?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: The chip wasn't very far. I was only trying to hit it maybe five feet. It's pretty much straight downhill to the hole where I was.

The lie was okay. The rough's pretty long, but if it's not trampled down, it's not that bad. When it gets trampled down or you're into the grain or have a sort of awkward lie, it's really difficult. You have no idea what it's going to do.

When it's real long and it's not that bad, you can expect it to come out nice and soft. I was looking at it thinking I could make it, figured I probably needed to make it because he only had five or six feet. I landed it right where I was trying to and it ended up being perfect.

Q. How special is this with your father on your bag, and has he done this for you before, be your caddie?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: He's caddied for me a few times before, with some success, some failure. I'd like to say I've matured a little bit, so we get along a little better. But it's been a great experience. As soon as I qualified, I wanted him to come back here and caddie for me and enjoy it together.

I felt my game was really good on the last few weeks, so I was hoping it to be a special event for us.

Q. You said a couple of times that you felt pretty good coming in and your game has been improving and whatnot. Anything specific over the summer, swing change, equipment change, new girlfriend, something like that?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: I think it's been a combination of a lot of work starting in the spring. I did some work unfortunately I didn't play very well in our college season, and Coach wasn't too happy about that, but I was working on a lot of stuff and my game was getting better.

Then I got home for the summer and I was able to practice a lot. I worked on some stuff pretty hard. I played probably two real good events, got some confidence going, and then

Q. Which events?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: I played the Western Am and finished 24th, missed the match play by two, which making match play at the Western is pretty good. So I felt like that was a good performance.

Then maybe two weeks ago at the Scratch Players, I think I finished fourth and I felt like with both of those events that I could have played a lot better. So that gave me a lot of confidence.

Q. You said you were working on "stuff," what stuff? What specifically were you working onto try to get that game back into shape?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Mainly swing stuff. My coach and I, Pat Goss, we work on a lot of swing stuff. For me it's always usually the same things and it's just you work on them over and over and over, and you know, they always come back when you're hitting it bad or you're struggling. It's always the same things.

So it was just constant work on trying to get better and better. And I finally feel like right now, I don't have to worry about it that much. I can just hit shots. And my bad shots when I hit them, I know it's because I've done one or two things in my swing. But I haven't been thinking about it, I've just been making golf shots.

Q. Do you know what a win tomorrow means?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Yes, I do. (Laughter).

Q. Going to leave it right there?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: I realize if I win tomorrow, I'm in the Masters, the Open, that stuff. That's kind of a cool feeling. It's a little bit frightening, but, you know, tomorrow I'm going to try not to think about it at all. I'm sure at some point during the round I will, but with a lot of effort I'll try not to think about it.

Q. Is Pat the main guy that you work with on your golf swing or do you have somebody back home?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: I work with Pat pretty much whenever I'm at school. And then I've really never been at school during the summer.

So in the summer I've worked with a few different guys, I've worked with someone down in Palm Springs every once in awhile. Lately, actually, my brothers, they are 16 and they have started working with David Sutherland, who he's been on the Tour for 11 years or something and he's injured right now so he's been doing some golf work in Sacramento. So my brothers have been going to him and I've gone over there with them. He and I, more than working on golf swing stuff have worked on different shots to hit and just talked to me about competing and high level. He's given me a lot of confidence telling me that, you know, that I have the game to compete at the top where I am right now and beyond.

Q. What prompted you to go from California to Chicago?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Honestly I had never heard of Northwestern until one of my buddies, who is a year older than me, we played golf together all through junior golf, Tom Johnson, he went to Northwestern, and I played a lot of golf with him right before he left. I talked to him after he got there and he just loved it. He raved about Pat and he raved about the facilities. Everything seemed to be great. So that's how I started talking to Northwestern because of that. Tom wanted me to go there because he thought, I played with him before, thought I was a good player and we got along real well. So that's how I got in at Northwestern.

Q. Are you too far ahead of where Luke Donald was that you have not played together?

DILLON DOUGHERTY: Actually, let's see, Luke left the year before I came. So on my recruiting trip I stayed with him. Then the guys there were four freshman, well, sophomores, my freshman year that all played with Luke and they are all my best friends and they are real good friends with Luke. So I kind of got to know Luke through them.

And now everyone is kind of gone, Luke still lives in Evanston, so whenever he's in town, we go play or we'll hang out a little bit and just playing with him, watching him play, we have, you know, we have matches and I don't usually win, but it's nice playing with him and seeing what a top player in the world is like.

End of FastScripts.

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