U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 3, 1996

Raymond Floyd

RAYMOND FLOYD: Well, it rained on us for about a hole, maybe a hole and a half, but it wasn't bad. We continued to play.

RAYMOND FLOYD: Well, the golf course is in terrific shape. It is perfect as far as conditions. You couldn't ask for better. The fairways and the greens and tees, the roughs are pretty even throughout, so as far as conditions, you can't ask for better. It is perfect.

RAYMOND FLOYD: I just had three birdies and three bogeys in some pretty inclement conditions, and I feel like that was a pretty nice score out there today in weather like that, but I am very satisfied with my game. I was not very happy with the way I have played the last three or four months. I haven't dedicated myself and I haven't done the things necessary to play well and I could feel it going and I knew it was going, but I really put myself on a schedule that didn't allow me to address my golf game very much. And in the last two, three weeks I have addressed it, and I am very pleased now with the result. Often, when you neglect your game, it takes you quite some time to get it back, but fortunately it is only taking - it has only taken about a month, so I am pleased with my results. I feel like I am putting well. I am very satisfied with my playing. And I am looking forward for the rest of the year.

RAYMOND FLOYD: Well, it has been happening all year but it slips because I continued to play enough, it didn't just totally leave me. But it starts slipping a little each week. My putting kind of got in the bad - going on the bad side again and my game started - I started missing more greens. I started missing more fairways, and you have to address that or it will keep getting worse.

RAYMOND FLOYD: Yes. In fact, this time of the year I had scheduled a little more time off, so I have gotten back into a little more normal-type scheduling which allows me to practice and apply myself to my game a little bit more. First six months I had a very hectic schedule with golf course design and corporate work and the Lexus Challenge - the golf tournament that I have - and I have a junior tournament that is next month, so all of these things, we are trying to do, I have got some outstanding things internally - business - internally that some nice things that are happening that are very time consuming and all of that took its toll, but I have got everything, I think, on an even keel, and I am a little more comfortable around the golf course again.

RAYMOND FLOYD: I think we all try to gear up for the Majors. They mean more to us and you start thinking about them a little more in advance. When you have a stretch of tournaments, where you have got three or four months, I don't think of a major where in that portion of the schedule that you may neglect your game as I do. So, yes, you do tend to gear up for the Majors. They mean more to you. However, it may be risky to do that. Sometimes you try to gear up and you can't get it shifted out of neutral.

RAYMOND FLOYD: Well, I think the golf course will reflect that Sunday night. I am sure that it will prove itself a credit to a major championship. I think it will. You have got to go back and look at technology through the years. This is a very old traditional golf course. All of these greens, it is very tilted from back to front. When this golf course was designed, when you mowed greens by hand, I imagine the fastest speed now that we have a thing called a stimpmeter, that you can judge the roll of a ball, I doubt six was a fast green here. Now you have got greens speeds, if you can find a level spot and actually get a true reading, I would guess they are 10 and a half to 11. There is a -- technology is going to keep the scoring up. Because the faster these greens are, the harder it is going to make putts. You are going to have a lot of 3-putting and you just can't get the ball behind the hole. You need to be putting up the hill at the hole.

RAYMOND FLOYD: Well, I think the guy that was in this seat just previous to me has been the best that I have ever seen at doing that. Jack and I are only a couple of years a part, but we always said that he was years -- way beyond his years when he started in his 20s; that he had the ability to be disciplined and play proper and play within himself and not do the wrong thing. It generally doesn't happen to a youngster. It takes experience and you have to get nicked up quite a few times before you learn your lesson, but I have always admired the way Jack had a discipline. He, more or less, set out the way he wanted to play a golf course, and he stuck to his guns and I'd like to think that I do that most of the time. However, you still have bad moments or bad times.

RAYMOND FLOYD: No, because my Tour stop to Tour stop was getting in on Wednesday night trying to play Thursday ProAm and then competing and then being on the road Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday again - that is what happens. I didn't have any time to work at my game. It was only at a golf tournament and that doesn't get it. There is an old saying that if you didn't bring it with you, you are in trouble and I believe that is a good saying because you don't have time on tournament site, in my mind, to turn a game around in a week. It takes a little more discipline and effort than that, or it does for me, let us qualify that. It takes more time for me anyway.

RAYMOND FLOYD: It is a long-term thing. It is not a week. I can't turn around in a week. Maybe I can start it, but it is just -- all the time -- every free moment I have to go to the practice area and the putting green and bunker and pitching and chipping, it's a big process. It is not just any one thing.

RAYMOND FLOYD: Well, the last three holes I guess are as good of a combination of 5, 3, 4 that you will ever find anywhere in the world; I can't imagine a finishing that you have par, the change of par where you have got three better holes. You have got a maybe as good a three shot par 5 as you do anywhere in the country. You have got a very difficult par 3 that is going to dictate a fairway wood or your longest iron to try to get on the green because it plays uphill. And then you have got a straight uphill, even though it is gradual, beautifully designed finishing par 4, that is going to play long. So you are going to be at your best if you can conquer those holes. I think if a fellow can get around there in four days, with those three holes, even par, he is going to have himself a heck of a golf tournament.

RAYMOND FLOYD: We play about a flat 9 speed on the Senior Tour. And that is without slope. These greens are very tilted, so these are much faster and much more severe than the Senior Tour plays.

RAYMOND FLOYD: The game is lost away from the green, but it is won on it. Maybe that will qualify that. How is that?

RAYMOND FLOYD: I don't see anybody having an advantage on the greens, whether -- in age. All of these players can putt fast greens. They have done it all their lives.