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WEB.COM TOUR MEDIA CONFERENCEJuly 8, 2014Jarrod LyleJEFF ADAMS: Good morning there in Australia. This is Jeff Adams with the PGA TOUR in Florida. We thank you for joining us and thank Nicole O'Farrell with the PGA of Australasia for her help in setting up this call. Jarrod Lyle is on the phone with us from his home in Orlando. On June 18th I believe it was, maybe the 17th, he arrived in the States to his home there. Jarrod and his wife Briony spent a good bit of the morning today at Golf Channel in Orlando doing interviews with various shows as well as with other members of the golf media here in the States. We appreciate him taking the time to do that, and we thank him for taking the time now to get caught up with his friends in the media via this call for the next 30 minutes or so. I think you're all familiar with Jarrod's history and situation. Two wins on the Web.com TOUR in 2008, subsequent success on the PGA TOUR, two battles with leukemia at ages 17 and 30, his marriage to Briony and the birth of their daughter Lusi. Their story has been an inspiration to many both in the golf world and elsewhere. After playing events on the PGA TOUR of Australasia last November and this February, Jarrod begins his return to competitive golf in the United States with Web.com TOUR starts in July and August at the Midwest Classic in Kansas City, the Price Cutter Charity Championship in Missouri, and the News Sentinel Open in Tennessee, which he won in 2008. The Lyles head to Kansas City late next week in their brand new RV, which I'm sure Jarrod will talk about here in a little bit. Before opening things up to your questions in Australia, allow me to ask Jarrod a few questions to get us started. First question would be how are you feeling and how have your first couple of weeks been in Florida? What have you been up to and the like? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, look, obviously health‑wise there's no issues at all. I've been really good for a long time now, so it's nice to almost put that behind you and just move on to concentrate on your golf a little bit more. But yeah, we got back over here on June 16 and we've just been getting acclimatized to the heat. It's a big change coming from the winters of Torquay to the heat of Orlando, so that's taken us a while to get used to that, and plus we had to pretty much unpack all the boxes at our house of things that were packed up when I'd left and things. So we've been busy sort of running around sort of getting the house set up again, and yeah, combining that with some practice, as well, so I've been out there sort of every second day practicing for about four hours a day and getting out there really early trying to beat the heat, and yeah, trying to get ourselves ready for that first tournament in a couple weeks. JEFF ADAMS: Can you share with us the game plan behind coming to the States to get ready to play these three upcoming Web.com TOUR events and how you plan to approach things in terms of returning to the PGA TOUR? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, look, I think my schedule is going to be a lot different this time around. I won't know how my body is going to hold up until I actually get out there and start playing golf. I've targeted these three events for the fact that they're three tournaments that are relatively close together, so traveling to them is not going to be too big of an issue, plus I've also scheduled one week, then a week off, then two weeks, to see how I can cope with two weeks of golf in some pretty hot conditions, as well. You know, I'm trying to‑‑ everything I'm doing is planning for my return to the PGA TOUR. I'd love to be able to go out and play as good as I can in these three events and hopefully knock off a couple of good finishes. But if I don't, again, it's just going to be a learning curve like it was at the Australian Masters last year and the Vic Open, as well. It gives me enough time after these three events to go work on anything that might need to be worked on. Anything that needs fixing I've got enough time to fix it before we head across to the West Coast to start over there. Q. Can you tell us about the RV and what it means to you? Does it allow you to travel a bit easier, but more importantly does it allow you time with Bri and Lusi? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, Mate, it's a bit of both. It's something that Bri has always wanted to do, and I think with Lusi being two years old now, it'll be nice for all three of us to see a lot more of the countryside than we would if we were just going to airports and hotels and golf courses. We thought about it for a long time, and then probably about six months ago, we decided that we were going to do it, so we're just going to take off and it's going to take us about four days, so we're giving ourselves four days to get up to this first golf tournament, but it's just going to make traveling so much easier where I can put as much stuff as I want underneath the bus. Golf equipment, whatever I need is going to be there every time I go to a golf course or go to a golf tournament. It's going to make things a lot easier. The driving side of it, it's going to be pretty tough, but the way my schedule is and the way my schedule is going to look, it's going to be very hit and miss, and it might be one week on, three weeks off type deal. We've got enough time in between to get ourselves to the next event and keep ourselves pretty busy. We're excited about I call it "Fockering" around America, so it's going to be exciting, Mate. We're looking forward to doing it, and I just can't believe they've let me get a bus to drive around. JEFF ADAMS: You said this morning that you don't need a license for that, which you were a little surprised about, and also Sam Saunders and his wife and young child are now on the Web.com TOUR, and they're traveling in an RV, as well, and he used to be a neighbor of yours there obviously in the Orlando area, Arnold's grandson. JARROD LYLE: Yeah, it's going to be great fun, to be able to travel with those guys. Sam used to live right across the road from us, so I've known Sam for a long time, and we've played a lot of golf together over at Bay Hill. It'll be nice to get a bit of an RV family happening out there, and they've got a young one, as well, so Lusi will have someone to play with, and I'll have someone to play with and Bri will have someone to play with, so it works out perfect. Q. I guess with that question, in addition if you don't mind, when you're over there and Bri was sort of saying it was impersonal; you don't get to meet many of the people. And the last couple of years has really hit home to you I would imagine how important it is to live life again. JARROD LYLE: Oh, for sure. It's a big deal to have to do something like this, or even to be able to do something like this it's a big deal. But it's something that we were talking about a couple of weeks ago when we were sort of looking at the first RV, and we sat there and we thought, how cool would it be to be able to go to all 48 States on the mainland here, to say we've been to South Dakota and North Dakota where there's no golf tournaments and it's kind of out of the way and there's nothing up there, but to be able to say that we've gone there and had a look at it and done all 48 States, that's something to be pretty proud of. For us to be able to do it as a family, too, I think that means a lot more. You know, I feel very lucky that my girls are over here with me and allowing me to get back to playing golf, and hopefully playing golf at a good enough level that we're all happy with. Q. The last time we saw you, you were in filthy weather in Venice Beach and you were happy enough with the way you were hitting it. Has the game come on a bit since then? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, it has. The golf game, I've been working pretty hard with Sandy Jamieson since then, so like five months. Since that tournament, it really sort of hit home that I was playing good enough. I obviously hadn't done quite enough preparation to get myself ready for it, but the fitness side of things was so much better three months past what it was at the Australian Masters. I've seen a lot of improvement. Sandy has seen a lot of improvement in my golf swing, so I've been working really hard at it to make sure it's going to be in a spot that can be competitive. Whether it's going to be competitive when I get out there, I don't know until I play golf tournaments, and that's been the hardest thing through this whole ordeal is I haven't been able to play golf tournaments because of how it would affect my medical exemption over here in America. I always said that I wanted to leave some events up my sleeve to come and play when I got back to the States, and we've targeted these three events purely because they're close together. Knoxville was a tournament that I'd won at before; Springfield you need to shoot about 24‑under to win, so it's going to be a good test to see‑‑ it's almost like a shootout, so you can be a little bit more aggressive and see where your golf game is at a little bit more, as well. There's no guessing behind choosing these tournaments. It was all sort of calculated in my head why I wanted to go to those ones, and we're just looking forward to getting back out there and having a crack and seeing if my golf game and my golf swing is good enough at the moment to compete with everybody. Q. Obviously making a return to the international stage will be a major milestone in this road to recovery. Stepping up onto the green in the U.S. once again in an actual tournament, what will that represent to you in your mind? JARROD LYLE: I don't know, Mate. That's a tough one to answer because it's something that I've always wanted to do. I guess for me just to get back out there is a massive achievement. You know, there was times where I thought I was dead and thought I'd never get back out on the golf course, and there was times where I thought I don't want to play golf anymore. So I think it's more of a personal achievement more than anything that I've pushed myself hard enough to get back out there, and now the challenge is just to see how I do and whether I still have the passion for the game, which I think I do, but until I get back out there and practice and play and compete with people at my level, I'm not going to know I guess the true answer to that question. Q. Just to continue on from that question, in your own mind and in a lot of other people's minds your golf career is a wonderful success already to be able to show the fortitude you have to come back to this level. In your mind what is your level of success? JARROD LYLE: Again, Mate, I don't know. Success for me at the moment is just to be able to play golf again. Whether that success leads to me keeping my status on the PGA TOUR, that would be probably my ultimate goal because I'm a person who's never kept my status on the PGA TOUR. I've always had to either go through Q‑school and get it back or go through the Web.com TOUR and get it back. I think that would be a massive achievement if I was able to do that. I feel like I should have been able to do that years before, but I haven't done it, and I think that would be the biggest, I guess, measure of success for me would be able to go out there and keep my status on the PGA TOUR. I know I've got 20 events to make $283,000 to make that happen. It's not very often you get the luxury of knowing how many tournaments you play and how much money you have to make, so I'd love to knock that off as early as possible. But if it takes me 19 or 20 events to get it done, as long as I get it done, then to me that's a success. Q. Jarrod, along this road, there's been a lot of emotion at every turn. A lot of sportsmen have to take the emotion out of it just to become not robotic but just to get all the processes done. What sort of game plan have you got on the emotional front because every place you go there's emotional outpouring that are very positive but emotions can also be very draining. How do you balance that? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, that's a tough one. Like the first couple weeks I'm out there, I really‑‑ I can see it now, I'm going to struggle between catching up with everybody out on the golf course and just chatting away to people and trying to practice at the same time. It's going to be difficult to do that. You know, I need to sort of set limits with myself and go, okay, if there's a couple of guys there I'll go say hello, say thank you for their support, have a bit of a chat with them, but then there comes a time where I'm there to play golf again. I'm there to work. You know, I need to figure out that side of it. It is going to be very emotional for me getting back there and seeing all these guys that have supported me and let me know that they're thinking about me for the last two years and wishing I could come back and play golf. It's going to be difficult to put that all aside and go out there and play golf, but it's something that I'm going to have to make a pretty tough choice and go, well, sorry, boys, I can't catch up today, I've got to go and practice. I'm sure they'll be the first people to say go for it, Mate, you need to practice, go out there and do it. I'm sure they'll be supportive of what I've got to do, but it is going to be hard, and I hope I don't suck like I did at the Masters, but I can't guarantee anything. Q. I just wondered if you could talk about‑‑ forget about your mates and whatnot, just in general the whole scene. How are you going to juggle being the miraculous cancer survivor and inspiration with the knockabout guy, the Aussie bloke in the background who always just liked to have fun playing his golf? Are you going to embrace that new thing again or will you try to put it aside? JARROD LYLE: No, I don't think it's going to change me too much as a person. I think I'm going to be that knockabout guy who likes to have a little bit of fun and doesn't take things too serious. I think I'm still going to be that person, but I think I've got more of a point to prove to myself now, that all this work that I've been doing I need to perform. Not for anybody else, just for myself. I need to really concentrate on that and make sure that I give every tournament 100 percent when I'm out there, and I still want to have a little bit of fun. I don't want to turn into a robot on the golf course. I think golf needs a few characters, and I think with everything that I've been through, I am one of those guys that isn't going to take things too serious. If I make a triple bogey on a par‑4 or whatever it is out there, you know, it's better than having a day's worth of chemo, so I think I can put things into perspective pretty well and just get on with life and get on with a bad round or get on with a good round. It doesn't matter. I'm playing golf again. Q. And I guess just in general, even these conference calls and whatever, it is different to what you may have been used to on the PGA TOUR. You'll be sort of watched and focused on no matter how you're going. Are you ready for that sort of scrutiny? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, I guess I am. I've always been a very little fish in a big pond, and no one has really paid any attention to me, nor should they because I haven't really got the runs on the board for people to actually sit there and watch me. You know, now I still haven't got the runs on the board, but I've got a bit more of a story to tell, and if I could get out there and play well and kind of use my story to help other people deal with what they're dealing with, that would be a dream. But if I go out there and miss 20 cuts in the 20 events that I've got, I'm going to sit back at the end of it and go, you know what, I tried. I tried. I haven't got what it takes to be on the PGA TOUR anymore, and that's the reality. If I sit there and I make 20 cuts and make $2.8 million, I'll sit there and go, wow, that's incredible. I didn't think I was going to do that, but I did. I don't want to be sitting back in five years' time and go, I wish I had have given it more. That's why I'm here now. I've given it enough time to make sure, importantly, that the health was right, but I've given it enough time to make sure that my golf game has been in decent enough shape that I feel I can come over and compete. Q. What sort of clothes do you have in your wardrobe for your time on course? JARROD LYLE: Mate, we're got bright yellow, we've got pale yellow, we've got sunflower gold, we've got sunshine, we've got all kinds of colors. Look, every day I'm on the golf course I'll be wearing something yellow. I've just got a package today of four sets of FootJoy shoes all with different ranges of yellow on them. Titleist put together a shipment of hats, as well, kind of like what they were for the Australian Masters. Yellow is the new black in the Lyle household over here, and there will be some form of yellow, which really is to challenge and Luke the Duck and all that kind of stuff. We think it's going to be kind of a funny thing. Rickie Fowler has got his orange on Sunday and Allenby has got his pink on Sunday for his mom, and Tiger has got his red, and I'll have my sunflower gold, boys. Or should I say Australian gold, my friends. Q. Is the cough still prominent for you? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, Mate, I wish I could get rid of this thing. I don't know why I've had it. I've had it ever since I got sick, and mate, I wish I had have started smoking because then I'd know where it came, from but the doctors can't tell me where it's come from. There's nothing wrong with my lungs, it's just a cough that comes and goes. Q. You're just going to have to deal with it? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, Mate, there's nothing they can do. I saw my doctor a while ago, and I wasn't coughing. I saw him at the end of last year, and I was coughing really bad, and he put me on these really strong antibiotics that he said, look, if this doesn't work I don't know what we're going to do. It cleared it up for a while, but it could have something to do with graft versus host disease, which I've got a little bit of, and that's something that I'll be dealing with until the day I finally die, but it's just part of this whole process, this cough. I just don't know where it's come from. My lungs are 100 percent fine. There's nothing wrong with them. It's just a random cough that comes and goes when it wants to. Q. All the people in Geelong, Torquay and the Golden Valley all around Australia, really, everybody is going to be watching you when you get to Tennessee and beyond. Is there a message you want to give to them, or is it just stick with me, or what is it? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, I don't know. It's been absolutely incredible, moving to Torquay and having the support of the fans, the golf club down there and the people of Geelong, the people of Melbourne, the people of Shepparton. Everybody has been so supportive to not only myself but Bri and Lusi, as well, and things like that. I'm going out there to play golf for myself but I'm also going out there as a bit of a thank you to everybody that's supported us, and I can't say thank you to everybody personally, but for them to be able to sit there and watch me play golf and just to let them know that they've had a part in some way, shape or form of me getting back out there, and whether it's been a text message or an email or a phone call or a message via a friend's friend or something like that, it's meant the world to me to know so many people care about what's happening. You know, that's the only way I can say thank you is me getting out there and playing golf. JEFF ADAMS: You also talked during the day about one other message you'd like to get out there is the blood donation and the support that that has given you and how you want to get that message out to other people. JARROD LYLE: Yeah, well, you know, I'm sure most of the guys on the phone know how many people it's taken for me to be alive, but it's taken over 1,000 blood donors and blood product donors for me over my two lots of treatment to keep me going. I've had countless liters of blood. I've had countless leaders of platelets. I've had obviously the cord blood transplant, one from Germany, one from the USA, so I think it's important to get that message out there of donating blood and blood products and that kind of stuff because 1 in 3 people in Australia need a blood transfusion at some point in their life. When you think about it, when there's 30 something million people there, that's a lot of people that are going to need blood at times in their life, and I'm very lucky that I've been able to receive that, and it's just through the kind gestures of random people and people I'll never meet that have kept me alive. Q. What does young Lusi understand happened to her dad and what sort of journey or adventures that you were on? JARROD LYLE: As far as she knows, nothing has happened to her dad. She knows we bought a bus. She knows we're in America. She actually asked me the other day if we could go home to Torquay, and I said, well, Darling, it's not just around the corner, it's a long plane trip. Yeah, so she luckily doesn't know anything about what's happened over her two and a bit years of living, so at some stage we'll sit her down when she's old enough to understand and show her all the articles that you guys have written, show her all the videos and documentaries and all that kind of stuff that I've done and just let her know what's happened. At some stage she'll learn all about it, but right now she's just a two‑year‑old girl who runs around and you ask her to do something and she starts going with the why, daddy, why, daddy, so she couldn't care less about the golf. She watches me get dressed in the morning to go out to golf, and she says, daddy going to golf, and I say, yes, darling, we're off to golf, and she says, okay, bye, and that's it. That's the beautiful thing about a two‑year‑old child. They don't know anything about anything. They just want to play with their toys and sit there and watch Pepper Pig and Bananas in Pajamas and be a two‑year‑old child. Q. How has this experience changed you on the golf course and off? You kind of talked about those things, but how would you answer that specific question? JARROD LYLE: I think off the golf course, it hasn't changed me too much at all. I've always been a very open person. I've always said things how they are. I've got nothing to hide about anything. You know, if people want to know my story, I'll tell them my story. If people want to barrel me up and tell me their story, I'll stand there and listen to their story and give them as much attention as they would give me. I don't think it has changed me off the golf course at all. On the golf course, again, I don't think it's going to change me that much. I think I've always been a very competitive person, but I think with what happened to me as a 17 year old, it's given me that perspective on life that, you know, even if you have a bad day of golf, it doesn't matter. There's plenty of good days left. You know, there's plenty of worse things that can happen than shooting 80 at a golf tournament or shooting 79 or missing a cut because unfortunately it's not the last missed cut you're ever going to have. But it's definitely helped put things into perspective, and it just makes you realize that life is too short sometimes, and you just don't take things for granted. Q. Are you expecting to get pretty much the starts you want when you hit the big TOUR? Do you pretty much think you'll get to pick your 20 events? JARROD LYLE: No, not really. I think‑‑ well, at the moment I'm relying on invites to the first couple I'm playing, so I've written away to Vegas, and they have extended an invite to me. I'm hoping that the Fry's will do the same thing, but again, I'm not going to find that out until September. I am not going to go and write away to 20 events to see if I can get 20 starts. I think that would be a bit crazy to do that. I will be‑‑ I guess I'm in a position where I can be a little bit picky and choosy with the tournaments I go and play. I want to obviously go back to LA where I've had my best finish ever and go back there, but because all those tournaments on the West Coast get really, really good fields, it's going to be difficult for me to know which ones I'm going to get into. You can probably choose Pebble and San Diego as two almost givens, but with the way that the Web.com TOUR is structured there, their playoff series now, the start of this year where they had no Q‑school and it was all sort of flipped and flopped around, there was a lot of guys that didn't get starts because of this new wraparound season that guys wanted to come out and play. There's still a lot of unknowns with regards to which tournaments I'm going to get into, but it's going to be very hit and miss, probably more miss than hit a lot of the time, but if I get 12, 13 events on the main TOUR next year, I'll be very happy with that, and then I can just finish off the next lot of them the following year. Q. You are looking sort of like Dolph Lundgren as opposed to someone like me. How are you hitting the ball? Is it still as long as it used to be, or what are you doing? JARROD LYLE: I'm probably hitting it a little bit longer at the moment. It's nice to not have the fat gut to swing around, but‑‑ I've put on a few kilos since Christmas, but I'm kind of happy with where I am at at the moment. Obviously I don't want to put on any more because then that would require Titleist to send me a whole shipment of new clothes again, which I'm sure they're not going to be too impressed with. My golf game is in good shape, and my body is in good shape, as well. I'm happy just to try and stay at this weight. I'd like to lose a couple of kilos, it just requires me to get into the gym a little bit more. You know, it's all positives, though. Like I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm playing golf. I'm trying to be the best dad I can be, the best husband I can be, and Mate, if that's all I achieve in my life, I think I've achieved a fair bit. Q. Hard work being a fashion icon, Mate. JARROD LYLE: Mate, I've modeled myself on you for a lot of years and I've taken a lot out of you, so I feel like we could share wardrobes. I've actually got about 40 shirts here that might fit you. You might have to grow to fit into them, but you could have them. Q. Jarrod, what's been your low round while you've just been playing at The Sands? Is there a low round that you can mention? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, I've had‑‑ I had 63 at The Sands one Saturday I think it was. I went out there and I birdied I think the last four holes to shoot 63, so that was a nice one. I've had ‑‑ off the black tees of The Sands I've had 64, as well, which would be a course record, but they don't play off the black tees out there for the normal members' comps, so it didn't count, but it counts in my head. Q. So the 63 was off the regulation tees then? JARROD LYLE: Yeah, that was off the members' tees, so I played in a comp that day and had 39 points or 40 points or something and didn't even sniff winning the comp, but I got myself a pro bowl, so I was a happy boy. JEFF ADAMS: Thanks, everybody, for joining us. For members of the media, with the time zone and everything, we appreciate your consideration. It's a little early over there for a conference call, but thank you for joining us. Nicole, thank you again for your help in helping orchestrate this call, and thanks, Jarrod, for being on this call, and thanks for spending a good bit of your day with us starting out, like I said, at the Golf Channel early in the day. A lot of talking, but all great stuff, and we appreciate it and we look forward to seeing you out in Kansas City on the Web.com TOUR in a couple weeks. I'm sure everybody here and everybody in your homeland there of Australia will be watching very, very carefully and rooting for you, and we wish you all the best, and again, thank you for your time here today. JARROD LYLE: No worries, guys. Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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