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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 27, 2004

Jay Haas

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

RAND JERRIS: It's our pleasure to welcome Jay Haas to the interview area. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to chat with us. Talk a little bit about what it's like to come back home and play in a championship like this.

JAY HAAS: I can recall reading where the USGA had chosen Bellerive for the Senior Open 2004, and I started figuring out, hey, I'll be 50 then. That will be one of the courses when I'm a senior that I'll know, that I've played on before. I think looking at the Champions Tour schedule, there's very few events that I've been to, very few courses that I know on that Tour, so I feel quite like a rookie when I look at those places.

Here I felt like I would be comfortable. Coming here today was my first practice round. I heard Belleville, come on, St. Louis, all these towns from around this area that I've grown up in and played golf in, people that knew my dad and my uncle, and it was fun. I signed a ton of autographs, and all of them knew me personally. It was fun to be here and to be a fan favorite, I guess.

RAND JERRIS: Share with us a few comments about the golf course and how it sets up for your game.

JAY HAAS: I won't say it's a great course for me, although I love playing off the Zoysia fairways. It's awfully long, and as Champions Tour golfers go, I guess I'm one of the longer hitters, but I won't say I set up on every tee and say, boy, this looks great to me. There's a couple holes out there that I'm not real comfortable on, but overall I guess I feel good about being in this area, I guess. I don't know what it is, whether it's the air quality or what, but I just feel comfortable -- I wish it was a little hotter. It was almost sweater weather out there today for us (laughter).

I feel like the course is, again, not perfect for me, but I've had some success here. It's been a long time ago as an amateur, but in '92 I played, didn't play great in the PGA there, but hopefully this time will be different. I know that you really have to drive the ball well, whether it be with a driver or 3-wood laying up, you just have to put the ball in the fairway. The greens are quite large, but it's just tough -- the rough is quite thick right now, so getting the ball to the green from the rough is going to be almost a lucky venture.

Q. You've had a terrific year this year. Have you changed anything? What has led to your success this year?

JAY HAAS: I think more or less it's been the last couple years, two and a half years, that I started to really play well again, and I wish there was one secret other than I've putted a little bit better, and I feel like I do better around the greens. But nothing more than really hard work, just trying to spend a little more time on the range, on the putting green, in the bunker, just working at it a little bit harder. I think there were a couple times in my career where I got a little complacent maybe and didn't work as hard as I needed to.

When I play poorly, I kind of lose my zest or passion for the game, and now that I've started to play better I have a real passion to play, and that as much as anything keeps me going. It's kind of which came first, the passion to go out and practice and play, or the good play, they go hand in hand. For me, the better I play, the more I want to play, the more I want to practice and continue to play that way, so it's kind of a snowball effect.

Last year I played very well, best I've played in ten years, and then doing it again this year, been fairly consistent. But generally speaking, it's just working harder at it.

Q. Every time you tee it up at a champions event, you're going to be the favorite. Are you comfortable with that?

JAY HAAS: I wasn't so comfortable with it at the PGA Seniors at Valhalla. You know, everybody was saying I'm just going to come in and waltz through and all this stuff, and I didn't particularly care for that just because I had never been in that position before. This week I would say -- they're saying I'm one of the favorites, I'm okay with that maybe, and I feel like if I play well, I'll be up there on Sunday, but what I learned at Valhalla was that if I don't play my best, I'm not going to be there. It's not as easy as just showing up for me and going through the motions and playing just fair. I'm going to have to play very well because I played -- I won't say as good as I can play, but darn near as close to as good as I could play at Valhalla, and it wasn't good enough, so I'm going to need to be at the top of my game to do well here.

Q. Because of the things you're trying to accomplish this year, is there a part of you that sort of wishes you were playing the PGA TOUR this week, and the second part of that is if this event wasn't in your home area, would it have been a closer call as to where you would have played this week?

JAY HAAS: I don't think it would have been a closer call. I guess it being the U.S. Senior Open, I felt that this year, looking at my schedule, I was going to do the PGA seniors, do the U.S. Senior Open, and I felt like I was going to play enough events, and if I played well enough, I would qualify for the Ryder Cup. If I didn't, I wasn't going to do it.

I don't feel like I need to add events just to try to get points. I don't think that's the way to play. You need to be fresh, or I do anyway. I feel better when I'm fresh and energetic and have a week off maybe, but, you know, maybe there's a part of me that wishes that wasn't an option to play these events, but that's the way it is. You know, I love Milwaukee. I think that's a great place for me. I've played pretty well there in the past. I probably would have played the Buick Open had it been another week.

It is what it is. I feel like this is an important event, I need to play in this, and I'm going to play next week in the International, I'm going to play at the PGA, and I need to play well both of those weeks or else I'm not going to make it. I don't feel like I'm putting undue pressure on myself, it's just the way it is, and I know that maybe if I was younger, I would feel a little more urgency about it, but I know from past experience that I can't allow that to happen. I just need to play and see what happens.

Q. Talk about as the hometown boy, it's an obvious advantage. You've played the course, played with the weather, but I assume there are some distractions and some negatives, maybe family and friends a little too close or maybe a lot of people you know. Talk about weighing and pros and cons.

JAY HAAS: If you consider those negatives -- I'm somebody that it doesn't bother me a whole lot, close family and friends are very respectful of my time. People that I haven't seen for years come up to me and things like that, that can be bothersome perhaps, but today was fine. I'm excited for the tournament that there's this many people out here on a Tuesday. I think that's wonderful. I think St. Louis is a great spot to play golf. I think the fans have really supported the events in the past that have been here.

You know, I guess I don't think of those distractions, if you will, as a negative, and I think the positives of me being here, knowing the course a little bit, being home, being comfortable with this area certainly outweigh anything that might be considered a negative in that regard.

Q. All the players when they transition to the Champions or Seniors Tour talk about the process of learning the venues. You've talked about the fact that you've only played two, and they're majors. Does that level the playing field for you in that you give way to local knowledge to the rest of the field playing at Valhalla and Bellerive, which is alien to all the rest of them, as well?

JAY HAAS: That could be. Yeah, I think that's maybe in my favor, the fact that a lot of these guys have never played here and a lot of them have never played Valhalla. Thankfully, those are two courses that I had played before in major tournaments. You know, that can be considered a plus for me certainly. I know there are a lot of events that -- I'm asking a lot of Champions Tour guys, what's it like at Grand Rapids, Long Island, what are those courses like. I'm going to have to find out for myself, and that's part of the learning process as a young player coming on the PGA TOUR. It's just something I have to deal with. I think I'm a little better at dealing with it now than I was at maybe 30 years ago, 25 years ago. It's something we all have to work through. Yeah, I'm pleased that I feel like we're all starting from the same or even I might be ahead a little bit by knowing the course a little bit more.

Q. Now that your son Bill has turned pro, do you and he ever talk about matching the feat that the Stadlers pulled off?

JAY HAAS: Not once. I know I've seen a couple magazines and articles and stuff, let's see, Jay and what Craig and Kevin have done and all that stuff. You know, I know what I feel when Bill plays well, so I can't begrudge Craig or Kevin or anybody that. I know how proud Craig had to have felt to see Kevin do well. He's been working at it for a long time. He's played a lot of junior golf, amateur golf, and he's been struggling a little bit, too, so it's great to see him succeed in that area. As a dad, I just can't -- I get chills thinking about watching Bill play and how proud I am of him, and Jay, Jr., so I'm all for Craig and all the dads who have boys that are trying to play.

Q. Your forte is kind of a straight driver of the ball and everything, and you talk about your improved putting. What kind of chances to you give yourself this week?

JAY HAAS: Well, as I said earlier, I need to play very well to succeed here, and it's no secret at a U.S. Open, whether it be a regular Tour or Champions Tour, you've got to put the ball in the fairway. I think if I'm driving the ball well, I feel like that will be a factor. You mentioned two of the most important parts of the game, driving and putting, and if you talk to the Top 10 players this week after it's over, they probably putted pretty well and they probably drove the ball pretty well.

You know, I wish I had a game plan of hitting every fairway and making all 12-footers. It's pretty easy to say that, but if you putt well, if you putt your short putts well, makeable putts, if you make a lot of those, you're probably going to have an opportunity on Sunday.

Q. Bruce talked about how the course has a little bit different feel than it did in '92 because they've taken out a lot of trees on the left side. Did you notice that today, too?

JAY HAAS: I guess I didn't notice it so much. Bruce hits nothing but fades, so he's probably looking at those trees down the left before he even started. I guess I can remember playing here in the '70s and those trees were about a third as tall as they are now. A hole like No. 2, if you didn't get to the corner you could go over those trees, and now you've got to go around them if you don't get to the corner.

For me, I guess I haven't played enough here in the past, even in '92, I played that week, and I played in the mid-70s and probably didn't play much in between there, so I don't really know the course that well or remember it that well other than it's pretty darn long and the greens are big. I never seemed to get a ball real close to the hole today in practice just because we were guessing on pin placements, and I came up short on almost every one of them just because the greens are so much bigger than they appear from the fairway.

RAND JERRIS: Jay, thanks very much for your time. We wish you luck this week.

JAY HAAS: Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

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