WEETABIX WOMEN'S BRITISH OPEN

August 4, 2001

Lora Fairclough

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: My play was pretty steady, really. No fireworks. Just didn't really make a couple of putts. I was disappointed with that. On the 2nd I knocked it to five feet and missed it for a three. But I just plugged along and enjoyed it. Kept my head. I've got my dad with me, so that was good. Good calmer.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Gerald.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Yeah.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Yeah, that was with Nancy Lopez, the first time she had been over for, I think it was 17, 18 years. That was a thrill. Yeah. But I'll take it.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: I didn't bother going back in '99, I just let my status lapse. But I'm going back in a couple weeks to try and qualify. Try and get my card.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Well, to be honest with you, my golf, you can't be there when you're struggling. And the last couple of years I have been struggling. So I've had to work very hard at some basic fundamentals. Just so that I can stand up under average pressure. You need to compete. You need to be playing week in, week out to try and get in a rhythm.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: It is tough, but it's easy with this wind. I only hit an 8-iron into the last today. So I know it's horrendous now, with the rain. But the wind is in the right direction playing the last three, which those are tough holes. But, yeah, I guess it's good to be in on 8-under. Yes. Drinking a cup of tea.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: I live 220 miles up north. North of Manchester.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: No, I'm not. No. Can't afford a helicopter.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: I think I probably have always had some basic, not very wrong things in my swing, but I could live with it. And I've had them since I was 14, that I've got on footage anyway. And then I've got slightly exaggerated and slightly worse, the golf became exaggeratedly worse as well. It was basically my head, the way I look at the ball, I look at it and only see one way and that's to the right. So I have mastered aiming the ball to the right. So then I only ever see a hook. So all of a sudden -- I only started to do it in April -- I'm looking at the ball and it's a totally different way. So I now have a vision of straight and left as well. So which has been really difficult for me to do. It's like trying to write left handed when I've always done it the other way. But I had to do it because I couldn't carry on the way I was.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: I would go into the ball and I still go into it like that, so my eye line is always over there instead of going into it like that. I go like that. Under pressure it got worse and worse and worse. So there's always the pressure and trying to play. So I go in like that, instead of going in like that. And it's been so easy when I do it properly.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Catriona? I'm only in control of my own golf. I pay no attention really to that or anybody else. I'm just in control of my own golf. And I just enjoy it and give it my best, really. It's just nice. Count my blessings. I got my dad on my golf bag and things. That's very fortunate.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: I'm seeing my old coach who I was with for five or six years, Jane Forrest, I've just gone back to Jane and Eddie Birchnuff from Royal Lytham.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Basically. In a sense I'm not doing, I'm not setting up to the ball wrong, I'm just setting up to how I see it. So it's straightened things out, yeah.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: No, it's just something that I've packed through it. I've always had it there. And I would think of lots of different things what it could be. I've gone all around house when really the root of the problem was this. And I made the decision to try and alter it. I still do it in my putting, but my putting has always been reasonably all right. So I just got to keep a checkup on everything, really. I just stopped to really concentrate hard on good fundamentals. And you can't do that.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: It's wonderful. Yeah, it's fantastic. They're always up there anyway in America. So no disrespect to the Americans, but I'm sure that a European will win it.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: You mean have been in junior golf?

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: I would hope that, but I think that that's got to come more from the clubs, from your local golf clubs where some times they're not treating the juniors and giving them the best opportunities that they could do. It still happens. I mean it always will do, I guess. But I think that, yeah, it would be huge boost, yeah.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Second, I used a 5-wood. Distance was about 230.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Five feet. I missed it right.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Yeah, I knocked a 9-iron to about two feet and holed that.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Yeah.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Number 10, knocked a 5-wood through the green, but I putted it to about 10 feet knocked it in from there.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: 11 just pitched on to about 15 feet, knocked that in.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Wedged it to about a foot.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Yeah. A foot.

LORA FAIRCLOUGH: Thank you.