Ogilvy's Press Conference
/Forgive if you read this already, but ASAP was slow to post this and since this is my very own clipping library, I have to put these things up! Plus, he has some more interesting things to say.
STEWART McDOUGALL: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Geoff Ogilvy, thanks for coming across, early in the morning, half past 8:00.
You won the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Tell us how you find the course here compared to the one at Winged Foot.
GEOFF OGILVY: Well, it's about as different as you can get, I guess. It's a little bit wider off the tee, which is nice. It's a lot firmer, it's probably the firmest links course we've played in a long time. And they've only been running 30 yards, and these are 60 yards. It's perfect, which is the way it should be.
The rough is playable. If you hit it in the bunkers, you're going to be in that's a chip out in most cases, but the rough you have to be able to play from. So in some cases you're laying back with really, really short clubs, just to make sure you don't run out to the bunkers, to give yourself longer second shots, but it's better than being in the bunkers, so it's a fun course.
Q. This course has numerous places where there's out of bounds. Could you talk about how much that affects you and how you play this golf course? And also, could you talk about specifically the 18th hole and if that's as hard as it looks with that out of bounds so far on the right?
GEOFF OGILVY: Out of bounds, the two obviously would be the 3rd and the 18th. The 3rd you have to be cautious, because it's draining so much to the left, so it's probably more a play on the second shot, because you're going to have quite a long second shot in sometimes.
18 is a strange it's a funny kind of tee shot, especially if the wind is pushing it that direction, as well. It's the bunkers that you can't really carry. Yesterday you couldn't carry on the left, so you've really got to start it up the middle and it's quite a weird tee shot. It's one of the strangest holes I've seen but actually quite fun to play, I think. It's a fun hole.
We don't have out of bounds on the last hole on many golf courses. It's going to be interesting. I don't know, I've never really played them much. But it's not like last year at St. Andrews, you can poke it down there somewhere, you have to on the second shot, as well. I mean, it's in play with the second shot. Same with the third and 18th, out of bounds is in play, which is interesting. It's funny, somebody could come back with a 3 on the last or an 8 on the last, which is what you want, I guess, at the end of a tournament.
Q. Would you have thought the U.S. Open would have been your first?
GEOFF OGILVY: I thought the U.S. Open would be my last. Everyone has asked me, I don't know why. For my reasoning it didn't make sense. My reasoning is because I don't drive the ball very straight; that's probably the weakest attribute. But the more you play U.S. Opens, the more you realize that nobody hits fairways. Strikers are missing fairways, so people that hit it a bit wide have probably an advantage, because they're used to playing out of the rough. It's just that narrow.
If you look at the guys up there, Monty is a straight driver, but Phil doesn't hit it very straight. I don't hit it very straight. There's a good cross section of people. It doesn't seem to be only strikers that don't do it well. Maybe my reasoning was wrong, but that's the one I would have picked last. This one is the one I would pick first, because there's a large percentage of the field here that doesn't play or hasn't played much links golf. I always said I have played more than a lot of guys.