Curtis Strange

Curtis Strange, the last player to win back-to-back U.S. Opens, will be playing in his first Senior Open this week. He'll share his thoughts with www.ussenioropen.com as the championship unfolds.

This is the first time I've ever been to NCR and it's very nice.  It's actually has more rolling terrain then I anticipated for Dayton, not knowing what to expect.  But the golf course is beautiful.

Like any of us, we like to play a golf course that you can play everyday.  That also has enough movement and undulations to keep you second guessing, something different everyday, a different type lie or stance, that's what you have out here. 

There's a lot of downhill and uphill tee shots, little doglegs, long holes, short holes reachable par fives, and it's going to be a good venue for the Seniors this week.

It also has old style greens. What I mean by that is they have a lot of slope in them -- this golf course is old enough, when you think this golf course was built, what, 60 years ago, 50 years ago. On the Stimpmeter the greens are not very fast at all, so all the old style greens, they have a lot of slope.  But if you sped them up to 11, 12, 13, a lot of the greens would be limited where they can put a hold location and that holds true here, but with that said, the greens aren't that fast. I think they made sure to keep them at a puttable speed so they could have different hole locations, which overall makes it a fun course to play.

I‘ve been working hard the last two week on my game in preparation for this week.  I went home after the last tournament I played in and I didn't even fish any.  I didn't even fish a little tournament we had at home last Friday and Saturday, but practiced every day.  I got committed and played and got excited about my game.  This is the biggest week for me, it's our Open for our age and so I've been excite about it, but I haven't been playing well unfortunately.

I thought I had a little something and you never know what's going to happen, but I've struggled a bit the last few days and Jay Haas has been trying to help me a little bit, we've played the last two days together, but you never know hopefully something will click and get something going.

Because of my history in USGA events, winning two U.S. Opens, it would be nice to one day have an opportunity to win out here in this tournament.  I dare say I don't think it's going to be this year, that's not a positive attitude, but it's a more a realistic one.

This week I just want to play well, hit some good shots and get it going in the right direction.

My problems are not so much fundamental, everything is OK if you look at it on film.  I went to go see Billy Harmon last week to get some help.  Billy has always known my game and basically it's OK, it's just getting some feel and confidence which I don't have right now.  I'm almost running scared out there at time especially in a big tournament like this, but I'm not really. It's just I'm not real full of confidence.  In this game you never know, it will eventually, hopefully will turn around.  A little key here, a little feel here that works, that's fundamentally sound and not a Band-Aid, that could very well happen tomorrow.

If not then you try to survive tomorrow and you try to find something tomorrow afternoon and the next morning, because if it clicks you never know what's going to happen and what you're going to shoot.