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FORD SENIOR PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP


July 10, 2003


Allen Doyle


DEARBORN, MICHIGAN

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Ford Senior Players Champion, Allen Doyle, with a 6-under 66. Your low round ever here at TPC Michigan, very nice. 31 on the back always helps. Maybe just some general thoughts about the round and we'll have you go through the birdies and bogeys.

ALLEN DOYLE: I just had a good, solid round. Drove the ball good. I hit everything good, put myself in position for the birdies. And I had not a lot of 8-, 10-, 12-footers, but the ones I had, I made. I drove the ball good. Just missed one fairway and that was in the short cut, so I kept everything in front of me. Hit the shots I was supposed to hit. I hit 16 greens, so I did a lot right today. Showed up in the score.

3, I hit a sand wedge about four feet and made that.

Bogeyed 4, hit a full 4-iron in the left bunker and hit it by about ten feet it, didn't make it.

Then birdied 5. Hit a pitching wedge from 128 to about eight, nine feet and made that.

Birdied 6. Had 102 yards. Hit a gap wedge about ten feet and made that.

We both bogeyed 7. We had about 104 to the hole, and in the short cut and hit it a little long on the back trap that kind of flew on me a little and couldn't get up-and-down.

Then on 10, I hit an 8-iron from -- we were against the wind from about 138, about 12 feet behind the hole and made that for birdie.

11, we had 111 yards, hit a gap wedge about four feet and made that.

On 14, I hit a 7-iron and hit it to about 40 feet and made the long one there for birdie.

16, had 139, hitting a 9-iron about eight or nine feet and made that.

17, we had 83 yards, I hit a sand wedge about two feet.

Q. The front seemed kind of up-and-down, bogey, birdie, but the back you were really in control. Did something feel different on the back?

ALLEN DOYLE: No. Just one of those things, I felt I hit the ball very good the front. It's just, you know, I kept putting myself in good spots. It seemed maybe just the way you hit certain shots. On 8, I hit a good 7-iron, but that pin is tucked right behind that little side slope in the middle right of that green and I hit it right on the pin, but it kind of caught the top of it; and instead of having a decent birdie putt, I'm trying to 2-putt from 30 feet. So, just that kind of stuff.

Q. Everybody every year says the same thing, this course isn't that easy, can't understand how everybody is going low. And then of course this year, there's a bunch of 6s, a bunch of 5s, a bunch of 4s, do you have a theory as to why everybody goes so low on a golf course nobody considers easy?

ALLEN DOYLE: I mean, there's never a golf course -- well maybe, how should I put it.

I don't know if I would ever say I played in too easy a golf course. But I think when you look at the golf course itself, you just have too much room in the fairways. I've said many a time, I think what a great hole 2 would be if that bunker was 20 yards to the left and you had some severe rough on the right; instead of having an 80-yard wide fairway, you had even a 40-yard wide fairway. Now envision that hole, a lot of guys being right in the bunker in the rough and now trying to go over that water. Totally changes the hole.

I think you can come up with, you know, things like that on a lot of the holes. And so I don't think -- I don't even think the bad drivers of the ball could get up on a lot of tees and worry about missing too many fairways.

You know, that being the case, you're always going to have guys that, I mean, even guys that if you look at the statistics said they are not good drivers of the ball, you probably wouldn't say that about their iron play. You would probably say, you know, that they are pretty good iron players.

So, you widen those fairways and you give -- the huge majority of the field are going to hit more fairways than they normally hit, and that's why I think you see the lower score. And I think that that would be okay, I think, if they would get the greens to a lightning pace, it would still be okay.

And they are quick, but they are just not -- a little quicker would be huge.

Q. Is that what makes this event, compared to the first two majors, where the course conditions, generally since they moved it from Florida, are so much different?

ALLEN DOYLE: Yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at the PGA Senior, the narrow, narrow fairways, I don't think they ever got their green speeds up to what they maybe were hoping for, because of all the rain, but you still had the uncertain greens. You couldn't miss in certain spots.

And especially the Senior Open, that was a classic where the speed of the greens were probably running two feet more than these. You know, I thought the fairways of the Senior Open were not too tight, mainly because a lot of guys were hitting 3-woods and irons off the tee. But it just seems here we need to tighten things up, and, you know, make a determination that, you know what, if someone shoots 4- or 5-under this week, they will win the golf tournament.

End of FastScripts....

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