FULL INTERVIEW WITH ADA O'SULLIVAN
FROM THE CURTIS CUP PRESS CENTRE
AT BANDON DUNES, OREGON
Craig Smith, USGA Press Officer, is the interviewer.
CRAIG SMITH: Ada, I guess let me start by asking you, I imagine that you're not at all very pleased and nor do you think your team played to its potential. So let's start there. I mean, you're obviously
ADA O'SULLIVAN: No, I was obviously we are disappointed and 7 2, after today's play, I was able to 7 2, after today's play, basically when the Americans outplayed us and there's no two or words to describe it. We didn't play to our full potential. Analyzing the American scores this afternoon, we were looking at most of the players and you're talking about that you had Paige who was 4 under par for her round. Jane Park and Taylor were both 2 under par for their round. And credit to the Americans. They produced that score on a golf course of this quality.
The other side, our best score was Melissa Reid this afternoon, plus one. So I mean we were simply outclassed and outplayed this afternoon. This morning was a big disappointment. Everything, the stillness of the morning, the no wind definitely caught us with regards to the clubbing.
In fairness to the Americans, when they came here for practice a few weeks ago they had no wind, but obviously it was to their advantage this morning. We found clubbing extremely difficult. Made a lot of judgmental errors earlier on and we tried to come back at them and we did on the back nine, but at the same time it wasn't enough, it just wasn't enough.
CRAIG SMITH: With it being so still your players didn't have to execute a lot of the American players didn't have to execute a lot of links type shots.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, well, we had been practicing all week and obviously not just this week, but in our preparations, a lot of punch shots thinking that the wind was going to get up and with the weather here, for Bandon Dunes, but obviously that just didn't happen.
CRAIG SMITH: Kiran, being the youngest on your team, and Breanne, how does it feel to sit where you are individually, you got your points and that's what coach had said, concentrate on your match.
KIRAN MATHARU: Well, that's all I tried to do when I went out, just concentrate on my own match and try and play the best I could. And I did play quite well, so I did what I could.
BREANNE LOUCKS: Yeah, it was a bit different this afternoon. Obviously, I didn't play this morning so it was good out there and seeing what it's like. All the girls had told me what it was like. And the main thing was to just stick to your game plan and go out there and just knuckle down and keep it straight down the fairway on the green and two putts. So that's what I did.
Q. Ada, what it's such a huge gap to pull back, I mean, what do you say to your team, what did you say to them initially after the close of the singles and what do you do this evening to rally them?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Answering your first question, yeah, it is a huge task, but it's not over. There's still nine matches out there tomorrow. It's certainly something we might be in dream world thinking you could win nine. Technically what we need to win is seven and a half matches. And that is possible. Also there's nine matches out there, we'll be out there to fight every match. We're going to go back and analyze our scoring, we haven't had an opportunity to do that yet. We had to do a photo shoot. Which obviously no one is in any humor for it, but it had to be done. But it was actually good team bonding because people were able to chill out a little bit without people distracting them and that as well. But tomorrow is going to be another day we're going to come out fighting with all guns. Obviously every one is very disappointed to have such a margin say of 7 2. And some asked me the turning point, I think one of the big ones was our third foursomes match. If that had been a 2 1, I think that would have put it into perspective on everything. But at one stage it was looking we might even get one and a half.
But we we'll analyze everything, go through everything and that's the beauty of this spot, there's nothing hidden, everything is discussed in detail. And people will criticize one another, so that's the beauty that's there as well. So there will be a lot of get up and go and we have got a team song there, "I get knocked down and I get up again". And I think that's going to be played plenty of times this evening as well. So everything we'll go through everything from start to finish this evening, from the start of play from the foursomes to the start of play and we'll go through the stat sheets and see where we can improve tomorrow.
Q. Assuming that you can improve on tomorrow with your team, obviously golf is not one where you can play defense, and you can just kind of outline how the U. S. Team played so well, do you really feel that your team can match up with their team over tomorrow's nine points?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Absolutely. I do. I feel that we can play an awful lot better. I don't know if the Americans will actually produce the same golf. And I'm not taking it from the quality of their players, I don't know what tomorrow's forecast is like, but I know it's not going to be windy, but we're going to have to adjust to that type of play. But at the same time I have great belief in my players and I really do. They just didn't reach their full potential today and they owe it to themselves to actually reach their full potential.
Q. Claire is one of your team leaders and didn't have a very good day today, and had a few squirrely shots out there actually. And is this, is it, would you consider sitting her or is that or do you want her to be up to the challenge and try to bounce back?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Well, I don't know if you got a copy of tomorrow's foursomes or not or what time that's
CRAIG SMITH: It's fair to say.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: I can comment on that, can I. Yeah, Claire will not be played, not playing in the foursomes in the morning. We have got two different foursomes combinations going out tomorrow morning. Just something else you have to try because it wasn't working today. Claire wasn't firing on all cylinders today and this is about a team. Claire was actually the type of person who came up to me and said, look, I would actually prefer not to be playing in the morning. And my mind was already made up anyway, but that's the type of person that she is. Same with one or two others who said, if you want me to sit out there's not a problem there, I didn't reach my potential today. So the openness and the honesty of this particular team.
CRAIG SMITH: Breanne, if you want to pick on one real bright spot for you, you took on someone who tied for tenth in the Women's Open and made it a very easy, one sided match.
BREANNE LOUCKS: Yeah, just played pretty boring golf today. Just not many bogeys and just a birdie, really. I just kept it down the middle, on the green, 2 putt, just par golf. I think we decided that hopefully that was going to beat the girls or whatever, but obviously they came a bit better than that in the other matches. But I just played boring golf and just down the middle, on the green and two putts. But I was really happy. It was really I was having lots of fun out there. It was really good, I enjoyed it.
CRAIG SMITH: Ada, are pars still winning scores for you tomorrow when you go back and assess or do you have to get more aggressive?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: I have to check to see what the weather conditions are going to be first. But, no, I think we definitely have to shoot par or better tomorrow. There's no doubt about that. That's, if we're to secure a win. I don't think par golf or bogey golf certainly is not going to do it.
CRAIG SMITH: And I'm hearing the tone of your voice that there is no consolation prize tomorrow, you wouldn't be happy if you just got more points than the USA tomorrow, that's not what you're after.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: No, no, no, no. We are here with one purpose and that's to win the Curtis Cup. And we're not interested in coming and say having second place, no.
Q. I guess for your two players, how difficult is that to basically change the philosophy that you've been talking about for months and now have to turn it around and go after birdies than when you talked about just making par?
BREANNE LOUCKS: Oh, well at the end of the day, you know, any tournament we play we go out and we all want to shoot under par, so we're just going to go out there, go for pins, go middle of the green or whatever and go for some putts. We got to be a bit more positive and get out there.
KIRAN MATHARU: Yeah, I think that a lot of us didn't have quite a few birdies today, but we made too many bogeys. So we got to try and keep it on the green and when you got a chance to make a birdie, make it. And if not, make par.
Q. Do you think the bogeys you made were more because of the clubbing issue or was it something else?
KIRAN MATHARU: Probably, yeah, on the morning foursomes the bogeys were because of clubbing. At the beginning of the round. And, but you hit bad shots and miss the green, you might not get up and down, so.
BREANNE LOUCKS: There was a couple of up and downs out there today that were nearly impossible. Some of the pin positions are very tricky. For instance on the 13th there I was right at the back of the green and it was near enough an impossible shot. So sometimes you can't really do anything about it. You got to try your hardest to get the par. If you don't get it, it happens.
Q. Ada, just for you now, if your team goes down loses 7 more points tomorrow, but they go after it and try to win, even though maybe it just doesn't happen, is that what you would rather see than them get four or five points and never really have a chance?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: I haven't really thought about that one. We're going out there tomorrow and you're talking about to win every point by how we go about it, it's as we said already, we're not interested in coming second. And not interested in saying necessarily, well, we lost by two points or three points, I mean, in years to come people are not going to remember what the point margin, they won't remember that, it's whether you won the Curtis Cup or lost it. In most cases they don't even remember who played, don't even remember who was the captain. They remember the captain if they won. If they lose, it's not going to I don't think the point issue won't worry me in the sense that if we lose points, because we're going, but we'll be going out there tomorrow to attack. We have to attack and as we said, there's no second place and we are here to win.
Q. You mentioned at one point it looked like even you might get a point and a half in the foursomes and it obviously didn't go that way. How big a psychological scar do you think that was on the team going into the afternoon then?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Something I haven't discussed with the team, obviously some people asked me during the afternoon round, obviously heads were down and the morale was low, but we tried to make the comparison to Formby of two years ago and when the Americans, when we had beaten the Americans three nil in the foursomes match in the morning and as I said Martha Kirouac came up to me, the captain who was that same time, and just said, "Formby", and there's a long way to go. I said, I'm fully aware of it. But I do feel it has an effect on people, I would be foolish to say it didn't.
In some ways the players went out saying, yeah, we're going to show them. And we had quite a good start. Scoring was good at the start of the round, but in the middle we seemed to waver that a little bit. Par 3s definitely looking at the stats seemed to cause us dearly, the Americans made a lot of birdies on those where we made bogeys, so that's something we're going to have to address tomorrow.
CRAIG SMITH: Ada, if you could order up your own specific weather, from the weatherman, what would you want tomorrow.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: You're looking at somewhere between 30 to 40 knots. That's what we're looking for out there tomorrow. That's not going to happen, I know, but we won't live in the dream world. But this afternoon was lovely. It was a little bit of wind there this afternoon, obviously we got to have more than that, we got to have more than that. But it's up to the Gods now, let's put it that way.
Q. Are the Americans better wind players than you would have given them credit for maybe at the beginning of the week?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: We haven't really seen them in the wind to be honest about it. We haven't seen them in the wind. We'll have to wait. We might not see it tomorrow either. That's it.
AT BANDON DUNES, OREGON
Craig Smith, USGA Press Officer, is the interviewer.
CRAIG SMITH: Ada, I guess let me start by asking you, I imagine that you're not at all very pleased and nor do you think your team played to its potential. So let's start there. I mean, you're obviously
ADA O'SULLIVAN: No, I was obviously we are disappointed and 7 2, after today's play, I was able to 7 2, after today's play, basically when the Americans outplayed us and there's no two or words to describe it. We didn't play to our full potential. Analyzing the American scores this afternoon, we were looking at most of the players and you're talking about that you had Paige who was 4 under par for her round. Jane Park and Taylor were both 2 under par for their round. And credit to the Americans. They produced that score on a golf course of this quality.
The other side, our best score was Melissa Reid this afternoon, plus one. So I mean we were simply outclassed and outplayed this afternoon. This morning was a big disappointment. Everything, the stillness of the morning, the no wind definitely caught us with regards to the clubbing.
In fairness to the Americans, when they came here for practice a few weeks ago they had no wind, but obviously it was to their advantage this morning. We found clubbing extremely difficult. Made a lot of judgmental errors earlier on and we tried to come back at them and we did on the back nine, but at the same time it wasn't enough, it just wasn't enough.
CRAIG SMITH: With it being so still your players didn't have to execute a lot of the American players didn't have to execute a lot of links type shots.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, well, we had been practicing all week and obviously not just this week, but in our preparations, a lot of punch shots thinking that the wind was going to get up and with the weather here, for Bandon Dunes, but obviously that just didn't happen.
CRAIG SMITH: Kiran, being the youngest on your team, and Breanne, how does it feel to sit where you are individually, you got your points and that's what coach had said, concentrate on your match.
KIRAN MATHARU: Well, that's all I tried to do when I went out, just concentrate on my own match and try and play the best I could. And I did play quite well, so I did what I could.
BREANNE LOUCKS: Yeah, it was a bit different this afternoon. Obviously, I didn't play this morning so it was good out there and seeing what it's like. All the girls had told me what it was like. And the main thing was to just stick to your game plan and go out there and just knuckle down and keep it straight down the fairway on the green and two putts. So that's what I did.
Q. Ada, what it's such a huge gap to pull back, I mean, what do you say to your team, what did you say to them initially after the close of the singles and what do you do this evening to rally them?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Answering your first question, yeah, it is a huge task, but it's not over. There's still nine matches out there tomorrow. It's certainly something we might be in dream world thinking you could win nine. Technically what we need to win is seven and a half matches. And that is possible. Also there's nine matches out there, we'll be out there to fight every match. We're going to go back and analyze our scoring, we haven't had an opportunity to do that yet. We had to do a photo shoot. Which obviously no one is in any humor for it, but it had to be done. But it was actually good team bonding because people were able to chill out a little bit without people distracting them and that as well. But tomorrow is going to be another day we're going to come out fighting with all guns. Obviously every one is very disappointed to have such a margin say of 7 2. And some asked me the turning point, I think one of the big ones was our third foursomes match. If that had been a 2 1, I think that would have put it into perspective on everything. But at one stage it was looking we might even get one and a half.
But we we'll analyze everything, go through everything and that's the beauty of this spot, there's nothing hidden, everything is discussed in detail. And people will criticize one another, so that's the beauty that's there as well. So there will be a lot of get up and go and we have got a team song there, "I get knocked down and I get up again". And I think that's going to be played plenty of times this evening as well. So everything we'll go through everything from start to finish this evening, from the start of play from the foursomes to the start of play and we'll go through the stat sheets and see where we can improve tomorrow.
Q. Assuming that you can improve on tomorrow with your team, obviously golf is not one where you can play defense, and you can just kind of outline how the U. S. Team played so well, do you really feel that your team can match up with their team over tomorrow's nine points?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Absolutely. I do. I feel that we can play an awful lot better. I don't know if the Americans will actually produce the same golf. And I'm not taking it from the quality of their players, I don't know what tomorrow's forecast is like, but I know it's not going to be windy, but we're going to have to adjust to that type of play. But at the same time I have great belief in my players and I really do. They just didn't reach their full potential today and they owe it to themselves to actually reach their full potential.
Q. Claire is one of your team leaders and didn't have a very good day today, and had a few squirrely shots out there actually. And is this, is it, would you consider sitting her or is that or do you want her to be up to the challenge and try to bounce back?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Well, I don't know if you got a copy of tomorrow's foursomes or not or what time that's
CRAIG SMITH: It's fair to say.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: I can comment on that, can I. Yeah, Claire will not be played, not playing in the foursomes in the morning. We have got two different foursomes combinations going out tomorrow morning. Just something else you have to try because it wasn't working today. Claire wasn't firing on all cylinders today and this is about a team. Claire was actually the type of person who came up to me and said, look, I would actually prefer not to be playing in the morning. And my mind was already made up anyway, but that's the type of person that she is. Same with one or two others who said, if you want me to sit out there's not a problem there, I didn't reach my potential today. So the openness and the honesty of this particular team.
CRAIG SMITH: Breanne, if you want to pick on one real bright spot for you, you took on someone who tied for tenth in the Women's Open and made it a very easy, one sided match.
BREANNE LOUCKS: Yeah, just played pretty boring golf today. Just not many bogeys and just a birdie, really. I just kept it down the middle, on the green, 2 putt, just par golf. I think we decided that hopefully that was going to beat the girls or whatever, but obviously they came a bit better than that in the other matches. But I just played boring golf and just down the middle, on the green and two putts. But I was really happy. It was really I was having lots of fun out there. It was really good, I enjoyed it.
CRAIG SMITH: Ada, are pars still winning scores for you tomorrow when you go back and assess or do you have to get more aggressive?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: I have to check to see what the weather conditions are going to be first. But, no, I think we definitely have to shoot par or better tomorrow. There's no doubt about that. That's, if we're to secure a win. I don't think par golf or bogey golf certainly is not going to do it.
CRAIG SMITH: And I'm hearing the tone of your voice that there is no consolation prize tomorrow, you wouldn't be happy if you just got more points than the USA tomorrow, that's not what you're after.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: No, no, no, no. We are here with one purpose and that's to win the Curtis Cup. And we're not interested in coming and say having second place, no.
Q. I guess for your two players, how difficult is that to basically change the philosophy that you've been talking about for months and now have to turn it around and go after birdies than when you talked about just making par?
BREANNE LOUCKS: Oh, well at the end of the day, you know, any tournament we play we go out and we all want to shoot under par, so we're just going to go out there, go for pins, go middle of the green or whatever and go for some putts. We got to be a bit more positive and get out there.
KIRAN MATHARU: Yeah, I think that a lot of us didn't have quite a few birdies today, but we made too many bogeys. So we got to try and keep it on the green and when you got a chance to make a birdie, make it. And if not, make par.
Q. Do you think the bogeys you made were more because of the clubbing issue or was it something else?
KIRAN MATHARU: Probably, yeah, on the morning foursomes the bogeys were because of clubbing. At the beginning of the round. And, but you hit bad shots and miss the green, you might not get up and down, so.
BREANNE LOUCKS: There was a couple of up and downs out there today that were nearly impossible. Some of the pin positions are very tricky. For instance on the 13th there I was right at the back of the green and it was near enough an impossible shot. So sometimes you can't really do anything about it. You got to try your hardest to get the par. If you don't get it, it happens.
Q. Ada, just for you now, if your team goes down loses 7 more points tomorrow, but they go after it and try to win, even though maybe it just doesn't happen, is that what you would rather see than them get four or five points and never really have a chance?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: I haven't really thought about that one. We're going out there tomorrow and you're talking about to win every point by how we go about it, it's as we said already, we're not interested in coming second. And not interested in saying necessarily, well, we lost by two points or three points, I mean, in years to come people are not going to remember what the point margin, they won't remember that, it's whether you won the Curtis Cup or lost it. In most cases they don't even remember who played, don't even remember who was the captain. They remember the captain if they won. If they lose, it's not going to I don't think the point issue won't worry me in the sense that if we lose points, because we're going, but we'll be going out there tomorrow to attack. We have to attack and as we said, there's no second place and we are here to win.
Q. You mentioned at one point it looked like even you might get a point and a half in the foursomes and it obviously didn't go that way. How big a psychological scar do you think that was on the team going into the afternoon then?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: Something I haven't discussed with the team, obviously some people asked me during the afternoon round, obviously heads were down and the morale was low, but we tried to make the comparison to Formby of two years ago and when the Americans, when we had beaten the Americans three nil in the foursomes match in the morning and as I said Martha Kirouac came up to me, the captain who was that same time, and just said, "Formby", and there's a long way to go. I said, I'm fully aware of it. But I do feel it has an effect on people, I would be foolish to say it didn't.
In some ways the players went out saying, yeah, we're going to show them. And we had quite a good start. Scoring was good at the start of the round, but in the middle we seemed to waver that a little bit. Par 3s definitely looking at the stats seemed to cause us dearly, the Americans made a lot of birdies on those where we made bogeys, so that's something we're going to have to address tomorrow.
CRAIG SMITH: Ada, if you could order up your own specific weather, from the weatherman, what would you want tomorrow.
ADA O'SULLIVAN: You're looking at somewhere between 30 to 40 knots. That's what we're looking for out there tomorrow. That's not going to happen, I know, but we won't live in the dream world. But this afternoon was lovely. It was a little bit of wind there this afternoon, obviously we got to have more than that, we got to have more than that. But it's up to the Gods now, let's put it that way.
Q. Are the Americans better wind players than you would have given them credit for maybe at the beginning of the week?
ADA O'SULLIVAN: We haven't really seen them in the wind to be honest about it. We haven't seen them in the wind. We'll have to wait. We might not see it tomorrow either. That's it.
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