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August 4, 2002
32ND CURTIS CUP MATCH
Fox Chapel Golf Club - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
An Interview With:
Great Britain & Ireland Team
RHONDA GLENN: Ladies and gentlemen, from the Great Britain and Ireland side, we have the captain, Pam Benka, and Rebecca Hudson and Vikki Laing. Margin was 11 to 7. It was much closer than a lot of people thought.
What did you think in the beginning, Pam, when your team captured two of the three foursomes matches in the morning?
CAPTAIN BENKA: Well, we were going for three, but with two, we were still in there with a shout. We could have had a disastrous morning and the whole thing was over by lunchtime.
So they real played really, really well. We still gave ourselves a fighting chance, and I can tell you the talk in our changing rooms was that we were really going to go for it. At one stage, if lightning had struck, we were winning all of those matches.
RHONDA GLENN: And at another stage you were winning all of them and halving the others.
We'll open it up to questions.
Q. Vikki, just wondering your thoughts when Carol made that putt, and having the 3-up lead on her, I know it was a lost emotion going on, but what was going through your mind?
VIKKI LAING: Well, I was up there, and Carol was steady the whole entire day. She played really well the last few holes, and the putt on the last was just tremendous. It was just something. She had a really good day.
Q. Pam, what do you think the difference was between yesterday and today? Was it attitude or was it more than that?
CAPTAIN BENKA: Maybe because we were so far down, we had nothing to lose and everybody came out and they were just going to give it a go, and they really did.
Who knows what the difference is -- I don't know. Maybe Rebecca, what was the difference? Why? (Laughter.)
REBECCA HUDSON: I wish I could answer that, because we did the same thing. I don't know. I really don't. If I knew what the difference was, I would have said to them the first day, "Do this, but let's not do this again." I really don't know.
Q. Rebecca, since you went through the same thing at Ganton, falling behind after the first day and then coming back, did you leave Ganton thinking "we not only could have won, but should have won," and does going through this again make it doubly frustrating?
REBECCA HUDSON: There was a huge amount of dejavu. 7-2 down the first day, and then we were 2-up on the foursomes. And at one stage we were up and all of them and halving one, and I said to my caddie, I said: This is exactly what it was like at Ganton, down to the tee."
I don't know. I forgot the rest of the question. (Laughter.)
Q. Does going through it again make it doubly frustrating?
REBECCA HUDSON: No. Just harder. Just more of a -- I don't know, just a loss, the same thing. Ganton was really disappointing. We really should have -- it was a terrible first day. Yesterday, they didn't really seem to be that bad, but I played pretty bad if you look at the individual scores. It's just hard.
Q. Vikki, what did you hit in on 18 and how far? And when you played Carol, you know because she's a veteran, even when you're 3-up, you can't worry about that; you know she's going to keep coming back?
VIKKI LAING: Absolutely. Even when I was 3-up, I was just trying to shoot the greens and keep the pressure on and trying to play par golf, pretty much, actually, all the way around. I had a couple of errant shots here and there, but very steady shots around the green, factoring a lot of that in. And she played very steady all the way around.
Q. What did you hit in?
VIKKI LAING: I think I had 7-iron into 18. I think it was 147.
RHONDA GLENN: Rebecca, is it possible in light of the team's victory to take personal pride in the way that you played?
REBECCA HUDSON: I never even thought of it. It never even crossed my mind.
No. Even if we won all the points and we had lost -- or if we lost our points and we won, I would be ecstatic, but we were down, 8, 10, 12.
Q. What have you learned, other than this is a very frustrating game?
REBECCA HUDSON: You learn every time you go on the golf course. You learn from the experience, the situations. Maybe you don't realize it until another year or so, the same kind of situation and you think, "Oh, I'll do something different."
I'm sure I've learned a lot, and I think a learned a lot at Ganton which helped me improve as a player, which hopefully helped me improve as a player here. Just the experience playing, with television and the media, this, everything. It's all a learning curve.
Q. Do you mind saying what you learned?
VIKKI LAING: Pretty much the same thing. I mean, it's just all about handling pressure and everything out there with everything, the media, cameras and just learning how you react under pressure and learning from it.
So when you're in a similar situation, you're not so -- you're not so nervous and you can handle it, so basically it's just experience, put it in the bank and use it another day in another tournament.
Q. Knowing sort of what they are talking about, that hindsight is 20/20, anything that you would have done differently looking back, perhaps before or during?
CAPTAIN BENKA: Losing all the foursomes on the first day. Obviously got the foursomes pairings wrong. We all thought the foursomes were right, just didn't happen.
The foursomes today obviously worked better. Yeah, if I could go back, I would probably change that. I just -- it was just one of those days yesterday. And today, we just went up and did what we had to do. Just sadly, we were too far behind.
I just can't speak more highly of the girls. They just did all I asked them to do and they were great.
RHONDA GLENN: It was a valiant effort and it scared the American team to death.
CAPTAIN BENKA: Yeah, that was the fun bit of it. (Laughter.)
RHONDA GLENN: Thank you so much for being so gracious with us.
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