An interview with:

JILL McGILL

THE INTERVIEWER: Ladies and gentlemen, Jill McGill finished with a wonderful round of 69 today. She's in at even par. She's a little bit disappointed in the bogey on the last hole, but, Jill, have you ever played in the final pairing in the U.S.  Open before on Sunday?

JILL McGILL: No, I haven't. I'm going to be in the second to last group, I think. Am I not?

Q. No. Juli bogeyed the last hole. I checked with Kendra Graham, and you will be in the final pairing.

JILL McGILL: Woo -hoo [ph].

Q. Is that good or bad news?

JILL McGILL: You know, it's good news. Any time you're in the last pairing of a U.S.  Open, I think that's a good thing. I haven't been in that position before, and I definitely will be looking forward to it. I'll be a little nervous, see if I can contain my butterflies, but I'm excited.

Q. I have a couple more questions, but, Jill, you won the United States Women's  Amateur Public Links and the United  States Women's Amateur Championship. Do you remember how to win?

JILL McGILL: Well, it was a little while ago, but I love playing in the USGA championships, and both of those tournaments were match play, and my sports psychologist and my teacher have been talking about that a lot, the difference in my success between match play and stroke play, and I have been trying to play more like match play where you hit a shot, and if you miss a shot, you hit it again, because it doesn't really matter.

That's the way that I'm trying to do this, so I'm definitely drawing on my experience from the Amateur and the Publics.

Q. I remember seeing you at Pumpkin Ridge in 1997 when you were helping with the junior clinic, and you were just stringing shot after shot out there, and I asked a friend of mine, I said, "Why hasn't she won?" Why haven't you won so far?

JILL McGILL: I have a tendency to get in my own way, trip over my own feet, and I think that I -- just for a couple years, I wasn't really sure if this is what I really wanted to be doing or not. I wasn't having a lot of fun until the last two years out here on Tour, and realizing that, what a great place to make a living out here playing golf, you get to play great golf courses like Prairie Dunes, compete with the best of the world, get the competitive juices flowing all the time.

It's up to you. You get to be as good as you want to be, work as hard as you want to work at it. I think I've put a little bit too much pressure on myself, think that I have to do this, I have to do this, and now I just have decided that this is what I do for a living and I'm going to go out and give it my best shot and see what happens.

Q. Jill, I overheard Juli saying that she doesn't expect Annika to make any mistakes tomorrow, so everything falls on her shoulders. Do you feel the same way, that when it comes to Annika, she's not going to make any mistakes, and that puts extra pressure on whoever it is going up against her?

JILL McGILL: I'm not thinking about what Annika is or isn't doing. I'm going to be thinking about what I'm doing and trying to get the most out of my game. She's a machine. I wouldn't expect her to make any drastic mistakes, that's for sure, but this golf course is playing tough. I don't think anybody has played a round without a bogey  -- I may be mistaken  -- so you have to stay in the ball game out there, and you have to grind over every shot and commit to every shot and try to hit and try to do what you're trying to do.

At least I can't be concerned  -- I've come to realize that I can't be concerned with what anybody else is doing. I'm only concerned about what I'm doing. If that turns out to be good enough, I'll have a big grin on my face, but these three days have been great and I'm going to keep on trying to do the same thing the next day.

Q. With your comments about minding your own game and what other people play, does this mean if you can shoot a subpar round on this course tomorrow, that you could win the championship?

JILL McGILL: I've never been one to think about scores. It depends on what the wind is doing. Yesterday the wind was playing more havoc for the players than it was today. Like I said, I don't know what any of the scores were. I didn't look on the board. I had no idea where I was. As you can tell, I didn't know that Juli bogeyed her last hole, or 17th hole.

I don't know what it was for her to go to even, so, I mean, I would imagine that if you do shoot a subpar round, you'd have a pretty good chance at it. I think Annika is 2-under par, so I would think that you would have to shoot at least 2-under par.

Q. Talk a little about going into the greens here. With the way they are playing, it seemed like today, if people tried to fly into the greens, they were going on past, and the people that try to run it in there had a lot more success. Talk a little bit about your approach to it.

JILL McGILL: It's very strategic going to the greens. They are very undulating, and there is definite places you want to be on the green to give yourself the best chance for birdie or par.

Every hole is not a birdie hole, like some golf courses, if you make par, you're happy and you move on.

My caddy, Adam Hayes, did a fantastic job the last three days of -- we were focusing on where we wanted the ball to end up on the green and where you had to fly in order for that to happen, and I would say our success rate has been pretty high at that.

And it just takes some thinking, and you have to play smart, and you're not going to hit it close to the pin a lot of times, so your next question is, where do you want to putt from? That's the way you have to play this golf course.

Q. Jill, it's been a few years since an American Women's  Open, and the last 7 or 10 hasn't been good overall. Can you talk about what it would mean for an American to be at the top of the leader board tomorrow?

JILL McGILL: I think it would be great for the sport and states. I don't think there is so much rivalry between Americans and others. But I think that maybe younger golfers here can relate to somebody else, maybe, from the States, an American, and they look up to them, so for that I think that it would be fabulous.

I would love to see somebody from the States win. I'd love to see me win, but  -- i mean, I don't really know how to answer that. Everybody has a shot. It's not rivalry situation, I don't think.

Q. You said for a couple years you weren't sure this is what you wanted to do. Is there something else that was taking your focus away, or can you talk about that period of uncertainty for you?

JILL McGILL: My progression into professional golf was -- I kind of stumbled into it, stumbled into a scholarship because of Title 9, and there were a lot available, and I was decent as a junior golfer.

I said, I can get my college paid for and be in California; that's a bonus. And I was going along in college and won the Amateur and Publics and got courted by some of the companies and they said, you should go professional, and I said I'll try it.

So it's not something that I was gearing up to do my entire life, like a lot of the girls out here, and men. And I think that I was a little bit overwhelmed by the life-style, being out on the road, and the grind, and what it takes, and I wasn't sure that's what I really wanted to do, but I look at all my friends and they've got great jobs, but golf has taken me all the way around the world and it's given me a way to meet fantastic people every week in my Pro Ams.

And people here from the USGA -- golf is such a great world, and everybody involved in golf. I mean, the people are fabulous, so that really makes it exciting to do it for your profession.

Q. The fact that Annika has such a history in the final rounds of being dominant, with that and the course, does that make your job and the contenders' job even that much harder tomorrow?

JILL McGILL: Like I've said before, I'm not focusing on how Annika plays and what she does. Everybody knows she's good and very consistent; she's machine-like.

All I can do is do what I can do and go out there and commit to every single shot and play the course that I have played the last three days and try to make good decisions out there, and if it happens to be good enough, it happens to be good enough. That's really what my focus is going to be on.

Q. Jill, you mentioned that at times you kind of got in your own way. Tomorrow, playing in the final group for the national championship, how do you avoid getting in your own way while also pushing Annika?

JILL McGILL: You take a lot of deep breaths. Breathing is your best friend out there. Make sure that you just  -- you feel good physically out there, do everything you can -- drink a lot of water, make sure you eat, so your body doesn't feel more goosey than the nerves, and I'm just going to try to do what I did today.

I was nervous for the first few holes, then kicked in and settled down a little bit. Use it to your advantage, I guess. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

And the way that I keep positive is just, you know  -- what my sports psychologist keeps on telling me, I have the creative positive energy, and make sure that you just commit to it and you  -- i mean, for lack of a better phrase -- give it a rip every single time you get up there. That's all you can do.

Q. Jill, have you played final group on Sunday as a professional, and, if so, what do you remember about the experience?

JILL McGILL: I have not played in the final group as a professional. I would say that the most exciting rounds -- or rounds that I've played as far as a pairing goes, or where I was in my first year as a professional, I wasn't a member of the LPGA. I was playing at the British Open, and I was paired with Nancy Lopez, so you can imagine, "Oh, you're playing with Nancy Lopez."

I called my parents, "You'll never believe who I played with," so I was very excited. I don't know. I kind of fed off it a little bit, so hopefully I can do the same thing tomorrow.

Q. Thank you so much, Jill. Great rounds.

Well, you got three birdies and two bogeys. Quickly, your birdies and bogeys.

Number 3, Jill.

JILL McGILL: What's that?

Q. Number 3, very quickly. They want your birdies and bogeys.

JILL McGILL: Number 3, I hit a gap wedge to about 10 feet, made it.

Q. Number 7?

JILL McGILL: 7, I hit a little 4-iron right down short of the green, got up and down with a little pitch and run.

And No. 10, I hit an 8-iron to about 15 feet.

Q. You bogeyed  --

JILL McGILL: 13, I pushed my drive right and had to take an unplayable, and hit it in the fairway, and made about an 18-footer for bogey.

And 18, I hit the fairway, and I pulled my second shot left and hit a good chip and missed about a 3-and-a-half footer.

Q. Thank you very much. Good luck tomorrow.