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THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP


July 19, 2012


Paul Lawrie


LYTHAM ST. ANNES, ENGLAND

PAUL LAWRIE:  Very strange start.  Probably the strangest start of my career the first six holes.  I didn't really hit many good shots and I was 3‑under.  Chipped in twice and holed it from off the green.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Did I really?  As many as that?  Amazing.  But obviously we get enough bad luck, it's nice when it goes your way now and again.  But obviously after that I hit some really nice shots and played some solid golf and hit the ball in the right places quite a lot and ended up with a good score.  Sometimes you get lucky.

Q.  Did you use the driver much?
PAUL LAWRIE:  No, I didn't really.  A few times.  I hit my 3‑wood quite a long way.  It's quite a strong 3‑wood.  Easily 280, 275.  So when you've got that driver around these kind of courses, it's not really needed that much.  But drove the ball in the right places and had a chance to attack the golf course a wee bit.  But obviously the weather helps.  It's almost flat calm out there, so I imagine the scoring will be pretty good.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Yeah, well, when the golf course is set up as tough as that you're not going to hit every one.  You're going to have to knock it down the fairway now and again and take your punishment, I suppose.  It's hard to hit every shot right down the middle of the fairway.  But overall I think I drove the ball pretty solid.  I hit the ball in the right place, and again, rolled the ball pretty nice, left a few putts short.  But apart from that rolled the ball pretty good.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Again, where I've hit it off the tee, you're kind of accepting a 5 there in your mind, so it's not a bad thing to get it back in play and give yourself a chance, and holed a nice putt there.  So that was a nice 4.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Well, I'm just a cool dude.  I mean, what do you want me to say?

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Well, I had done my practice swing and I was going to wait and hit and someone said, Kuchar is there, and looked up and here he was walking across, obviously oblivious to the fact that we're there.  It can happen.  I mean, we're in our own wee world most of the time.  These things can happen, but he was quite funny when he put his hands up in the air.  There you go, these things happen.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Yeah, I heard my name quite a lot today, which down in England you can be a wee bit surprised at that, I guess.  It's nice.  It's The Open and everyone is here to support the British players as well as everyone else.  It was nice.  I hit some nice shots for them, which was good.  Hopefully last week just a bit of a blip with the putter and I kind of rolled the ball nicely today.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  18 I hit 7‑iron, I had 169, had a little draw with a 7‑iron, took the pin on and came out perfect.  It was a nice way to finish.  It would have been easy to have played right there and played safe and taken your par, but I kind of was swinging at it lovely and thought we'd try and draw one in there.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Yeah, 3 wasn't lying too good.  It was sitting not in a divot, but it was a wee bit of a scrappy kind of lie.  It came out absolutely perfect.  And the one at 5 was a shocking lie, but again, it just came out absolutely perfect.  Both of them, even though you think you may be a bit lucky, both of them just fell in the hole.  I mean, they were dead pace, and had the pin not been in they would have still gone in.  It's nice when they come out as soft as that.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Spent quite a few hours over the weekend, did quite a lot of work on it.  I putted as poorly as I can ever remember putting on Friday last week at the Scottish Open because you want to put up a reasonable show there, and just putted horrific.  So went home and spent many hours on the indoor.  I've got an indoor green that's a perfect pace, about 12 on the Stimp, so I rolled quite a few putts on the weekend.
I come up and out of it quite a lot.  It's an old habit.  I want to look up too quickly and I just push it quite a lot of the time.  I just worked on staying down and releasing the putt a bit more.

Q.  Your thoughts going into tomorrow?
PAUL LAWRIE:  Well, the weather obviously dictates how you feel and how you play.  And today was a perfect day.  We've had a good playing day, and we've had a good scoring today.  Tomorrow if the weather is a bit different, the mindset is going to be different.  You deal with that one day at a time.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Well, yes and no.  But I think I've won a couple of tournaments when the weather has been particularly nasty, so you can see where that comes from.  But I can play when it's flat calm and I can play when it's nasty.  You've just got to adapt your game and you've got to play all your shots, like all the players can.  Nowadays the bad whether doesn't just suit the British and Scottish players, these American boys and all of them can play in the weather, the wind, it doesn't make any difference.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Well, it's a great start, obviously, this year.  I've been playing really nicely obviously, and gives us a bit of confidence built up over a period of time, over the last couple of years.  So let's hope I can keep going this week.  I mean, no one knows what's going to happen, there's a long way to go.  It's only Thursday.  If you're in this position with nine holes to play on Sunday, then you know you've had a great week.  But this is only Thursday.  So it's a long way to go, and we'll just see what happens.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Well, there was quite a few junior opens back home this week, so both of them wanted to stay and play in them, which is fair enough.  They're both now decent players, and it's all about the point one, you can imagine.  It's a big deal.  They wanted to stay home.  But the courses are shot over there with the rain.  So they've maybe had a bit of a disaster by staying at home.  But they've watched it on the television, I'm sure, at the golf club.  I'm sure they're watching it on the telly.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  Oh, yeah, yeah, all day.  He's a great lad.  We've played quite a few times over the years and we get on pretty well, and we spoke a little bit about Ryder Cup and how he was looking forward to being the captain, and it's a huge honor for him.  Yeah, we chatted all day.

Q.  (Inaudible.)
PAUL LAWRIE:  I would expect that, too, yeah.  No, I mean it's nice of him to say that.  Obviously we've got a little bit of work to do before that happens.  There's still four to five weeks to go.  We're not a guarantee yet.  We need to kind of finish off this week and play as well as we can, and hopefully we can play against his team.  It would be pretty cool.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports




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