May 20, 2009
AN INTERVIEW WITH:
JAY HAAS
KELLY ELBIN: Jay Haas, ladies and
gentlemen, two time and defending Senior PGA
Champion joining us at the 70th Senior PGA
Championship at Canterbury Golf Club. Jay, this
will be your sixth Senior PGA Championship, you
had three Top-10 finishes in 2009 on the
Champions Tour, talk a little bit please about the
state of your game and coming in here as the
defending champion.
JAY HAAS: Well, it's a pleasure to be the
defender. The state of my game is not quite as
good as it was at this time last year. But I've been
fairly close, I guess, just haven't put everything
together. I had a couple chances in my mind to
win or come pretty close, but haven't done it for
whatever reason or another.
But I've had good practice sessions here
so far this week, I really like the golf course, I like
the way it's set up, I like the way it's playing. And
in the past I've had good luck at the PGA
Championship and Senior PGA Championship. So
hopefully this week will hold true and I would love
to have a chance coming down the stretch.
KELLY ELBIN: A lot of talk among the
guys in terms of being able to get the ball in play
here off the tee and obviously keeping the ball
below the pin on a lot of holes. Is that kind of your
feeling as well?
JAY HAAS: Yeah, I don't think there's any
surprises there. The way they have got the course
set up right now it's probably, it could not be any
better condition-wise. The grass, the firmness of it,
the weather, what we're expecting, they probably,
they could probably play, make it darn near
impossible for us, I think, if they got crazy with the
pin placements and sped up the greens a little bit.
Right now they're about what all we need
speed-wise.
But I think that the greens are the teeth of
the golf course, it's not a back breaker in length,
but there's a good bit of rough, and if you don't
drive it in the fairway, then you're not going to have
a great opportunity to get it underneath the hole on
the green.
So that's number one priority. You have to
have all facets of your game working here. You
can't fake it around here, you can't drive it poorly, I
don't think for any number of holes and expect to
do well here. You just got to, you put the ball in
the fairway and take a chance here and there, but
if you're not under the hole, you're not going to
have a very good opportunity to make a birdie.
KELLY ELBIN: Open it up for questions,
please.
Q.
I understand that 16-time club
champion Bob Fairchild was advising you
about the course. Usually it's the other way
around.
JAY HAAS: He told me he was like the
34-time champion. No, just kidding.
(Laughter.)
Q. That would sound like Bob. But he's
a pretty good amateur player, what did he tell
you that was helpful?
JAY HAAS:
Just a couple little
observations. A lot of the things that -- my caddie
Tom is from Cleveland and caddied here and he
knows the course awfully well too.
And it's funny, Bob, I think play as little bit
right-to-left. And I kind of like to play left-to-right
with my tee ball. And maybe right-to-left with my
irons a little bit. But so it's funny the different
perspective that we have on certain holes, certain
views of it.
But he didn't tell me a whole lot that I didn't
already know or didn't, and Tommy didn't know,
there were a couple greens that he talked about
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certain positions that the ball might break a little
oddly, that you might not expect it to move left or
move right, whatever. And he just said it's pretty
obvious, keep the ball below the hole and putts
from the sides of greens, a lot of times like pin high
right or left, is really going to break.
And this last couple days I kind of figured
that out. I hit a lot of putts today, I spent a lot of
time on the greens today, and knowing all that stuff
and then putting it to work, you better still hit it well,
you know. You can know it like the back of your
hand, but if you don't play well and if you're not
able to put the ball where you want it, then you're
kind of out of luck.
But there's some greens out there that you
almost, I mean there's one little quadrant that you
can put the ball in and have a decent putt at it. If
you don't, then you're in deep trouble.
Q. You said that you had a chance to
play well at times this year and win, but
haven't. Is there one part of your game that
just hasn't come around or kind of a variety of
things?
JAY HAAS:
One thing or another,
probably my iron game has not been as sharp as I
would like it to be. Without question if any, if I play
well, if I score well, I've putted well. That seems to
be the barometer for most players. If we putt well,
if we had shot a good score, you can bet we made
some putts. And at any level if you watch the guy
holding the trophy at the end of the day, he's
probably holed a few putts that he maybe wouldn't
expect to make, chipped one in, making all your
short putts and I think that's just been a little bit
holding me back.
My stats don't show that so much, but I
think it's because my irons haven't been great. So
if I could point to one thing, I would really like to get
that a little bit sharper, my iron game.
Q. A little follow-up, you played Media
Day, Tommy wasn't here, but now this week he
was here, did anything change when you got
his second set of eyes as far as the golf
course?
JAY HAAS: Definitely. Yeah, he's brought
out some really good observations just to certain
pins, you can't really shoot at those pins, watch
some of the runoffs here and there. There's some
greens that it's almost better to be short of the
green, short of the pin. And I tell you what, the
fairways, I putted on greens much worse than the
fairways when I was growing up. So they don't
need to be cut too much shorter and they would
just cut a cup somewhere and you could play on
them on the fairways as greens.
So sometimes what you think is not a great
shot turns out to be a pretty good shot, because
you're underneath the hole. I've hit some putts
from six, eight, ten yards off the green thinking this
isn't a bad spot to miss. And then there's others
that kind of have a false front where they will roll
down, 10, 20, 50 yards down the hill. You
obviously don't want that to happen.
So some of those things that I didn't really
see at Media Day, didn't really notice, the greens
weren't as fast either back then, everything's a little
bit speedier right now. So there's probably a
couple things that I'm probably going to rely on him
much more than I usually do from tee to green.
And then certainly on the greens I have
kind of gotten in a mode of kind of going my own
way and not thinking, not asking him too much to
get confused and blame him when I hit a bad shot
or whatever. But I think this week I'll rely on him a
heck of a lot more than I normally do.
KELLY ELBIN: You won last year at Oak
Hill on a very penal golf course 7-over par. How
does this golf course, is there any comparisons
you can draw to this layout, the rough, etcetera, to
last year?
JAY HAAS: Yeah, I don't think the rough's
quite as thick as it was last year. Certainly we
have better weather. The greens speed I think is
pretty comparable. I think some of these greens
are probably more treacherous than Oak Hill's.
Oak Hill's golf course is longer than this golf
course.
It's going to be interesting to see what the
scores end up being. I think they will be there will
be individual really good scores during the week, I
don't know that collectively one player's going to go
nuts here. I would, I couldn't predict a score. I
would think somebody would maybe be under par
by the end of the week and who knows, maybe a
dozen guys will be, but I don't think so. It's not a
pushover.
We have had, we have been playing
practice here and the pro-ams with the pins pretty
much in pretty simple locations and Tommy put
some tees down today where he thinks maybe pins
might be and I keep going, he's not going to put
one there, and so they probably won't put it there
until tomorrow. But it's hard to predict. I have not
played a tournament here. The last time -- what
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was the winning score? What did Dave Stockton
to know shoot? '96? Anybody know that?
Q. 12-under.
JAY HAAS: 2-over? 12-under? For the
week? Come on.
KELLY ELBIN: It was par 72.
JAY HAAS:
Well that makes a big
difference right there.
So take eight away,
4-under. It had to be softer too. I don't know.
4-under? I'd sit right here with you guys and
interview whoever comes in and let them come at
me.
(Laughter.)
KELLY ELBIN: Defending champion Jay
Haas, thank you very much.
JAY HAAS: Okay. Thank you very much.
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