home jobs contact us
Our Clients:
Browse by Sport
Find us on ASAP sports on Facebook ASAP sports on Twitter
ASAP Sports RSS Subscribe to RSS
Click to go to
Asaptext.com		 ASAPtext.com
ASAP Sports e-Brochure View our
e-Brochure

U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP


July 31, 2004


Hale Irwin


ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

Q. Could you start us off with birdies and bogeys.

HALE IRWIN: Well, let's see. Do I get a good save in there, like No. 10 starting out, good save, layup, short, six-footer for par? Good start.

I did birdie No. 11, hitting an 8-iron to within ten feet of the hole, making that.

Birdied 13, hitting a 6-iron and making an 18-foot putt.

Birdied 14, hit an 8-iron second shot, making it from eight feet.

Bogeyed No. 16 for the second consecutive time, missing about a five-foot par putt.

Birdied 17, making it from nine feet.

4, I knocked it on the green in two and two-putted from about 35 feet.

I missed a couple of putts, but anyway, I didn't hit the ball this round as well as I did the first round, but I certainly made a couple putts that I didn't make Thursday, and the hope was to get into that last group, at least for tomorrow morning's show. I don't know if we're going to re-pair or not, but it would have been nice to get there. I hit the ball well, just didn't make the putts coming in that I needed to.

Q. (Inaudible).

HALE IRWIN: Yeah, I think as D.A. said, tomorrow is a wide-open affair, and to think we're only halfway through at this stage tomorrow, so it's going to be a very difficult day. It's a long golf course, it's a lot of walking and it's a lot of soft walking. Those may not be in as good as shape as others will suffer, but I think we'll all suffer to some degree.

Q. Do you think it was a good decision to play 36? You're one of the fitter guys out here.

HALE IRWIN: I used to think so. We need a resolution on Sunday. It's a difficult decision to make. At the PGA Senior Championship, we didn't have that option. We had to go to Monday. Here we do have the option, and while difficult, it's not impossible, and that will certainly make an interesting finish.

Q. What do you think should be the number one consideration when making that decision, the competition itself or the infrastructure, volunteers and television and everything else?

HALE IRWIN: It's all of the above. It's hard to bring everyone back on Monday. It's very difficult. The volunteers, they have jobs, they've taken time. Television, they want to go on. I'm supposed to be in Salt Lake City on Monday, so there's a lot of factors that go into it.

Q. What do you think should be the most important part of the decision, the competition itself, four rounds, 72 holes, four days?

HALE IRWIN: Well, you can't split it. You're trying to split something that doesn't have a seam to it, and because it's all connected, it's hard to parcel something else because while the competition is important, it's also important to have what we have here. All these people that have come out this week certainly want to see a winner tomorrow, and I think that's very important.

Q. (Inaudible).

HALE IRWIN: How come I don't feel like it was easy? Well, we had perfect playing conditions, the greens are very, very receptive. While I think it will yield some low scores, I don't think we're going to see real -- I don't think you're going to see a 63 or 64. You might, but it's just too hard to get the ball close, and the greens have enough slope and enough difficulty that it's just hard to always get it in the right spot. Rarely do you have a putt that doesn't have some turn of some kind in it. These are big greens, they have some subtleties to them. While they're not big elephant bounds, they're still long and brand and makes for some difficult putts.

Q. You have the record for final two rounds, 65, 65, at Saucon Valley. Can you do that here?

HALE IRWIN: If somebody is going to shoot 65-65 tomorrow, I want to see them walk up the last hole. Somebody is probably going to be carrying them (laughter). That's a pretty low score for this golf course. Saucon Valley wasn't quite as long as this, and the difficulty there was not over a 36-hole finish.

Q. If you look at the leaderboard, there's not a lot of senior major championship winners. This is something all these guys want. Can you elaborate on that?

HALE IRWIN: To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure who's doing what. I guess Jacobsen is at 7 and Stadler is at 7 and D.A. is at 5. No one is at 6. You know, these aren't your run-of-the-mill guys up here. You know, they've played, they've won, they know what they're doing.

I would argue that Stadler does have some hardware. He's got a Masters jacket that may not fit him, but he's got a green jacket.

You know, Peter has always been a good player. I'm surprised Jacobsen hasn't won more, but he won last year at the age of 49 and Craig won at the age of 50, and D.A., he's playing well. Flip a coin, boys. It's going to be a shootout tomorrow. We may run out of bullets at the end (laughter).

End of FastScripts.
About ASAP Sports • FastScripts Archive • Recent Interviews • Captioning • Upcoming Events • Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297