PGA TOUR MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 2, 2004

Davis Love III

DAVIS LOVE III: Good afternoon, I'm happy to be on. Happy to be home and relaxing after a long week last week. I played good all the way through. I think if you talked to anybody that made it to the quarter finals will tell you that they don't think anybody was really playing great. I certainly feel Mickelson was playing the best of anybody. We all had pistol points in matches and we got through, and Tiger and I, luckily, got through to the finals. And there were some points in our match that I could have put him away and then there were some points where he could have put me away, and he pulled through and he played pretty good. We both had had a lot of time off. We didn't really know what to expect, I guess, that week. But he came through when he had to, and I'm disappointed not to have played better and not to have won when he gave me an opening on the first 18. All in all, it was a good week. I hit the ball good all week and had some good stretches of holes where I putted real well. I chipped and pitched very well. I feel like I got my game in shape in Florida. And Joel is right, I'm excited about defending in a few weeks. I'm going to play Honda and Bay Hill to get ready. I've missed Bay Hill the last couple of years. I don't know if I'm looking forward to the hard greens and difficult conditions as much as getting back and playing in Arnold's tournament and enjoying the friends that I've made there over the years. I'm looking forward to the Florida swing and I'm happy with the state of my game.

DAVIS LOVE III: It is unfortunate, because there was a big crowd basically following one match. It was growing during the day, and it was a Tiger Woods crowd. Certainly he's going to have the crowd. Certainly he should have the crowd, especially in California, not far from home. He should have -- unless he's playing Fred Couples, he's going to be the favorite in California. I understand that. The way I handled it, you know, my question to everybody -- and Joel was telling me about an article in USA Today. My question is, should I have done anything different? Why should I play with somebody trying to distract me from playing. Tiger Woods is hard to beat, so is Briny Baird and so is Phil Mickelson. If someone is distracting me while I'm playing Briny Baird, I'm going to make them stop. It doesn't matter if I'm playing Tiger Woods or Briny in the first match. I should be allowed to play my shots without someone trying to distract me. I don't know what the players have said. I haven't read one newspaper since I got home, so I don't know what anybody said about anything, except they nominated me this morning on ESPN on the "Just Shut Up Award," but I didn't win. I got fourth out of four. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to say, Well, I'll let this group of fans distract me and I'll just lose 7-6 because I can't hit a good shot if they're going to distract me every time I hit it, or do I have them thrown out. You have to stand up for what's right, first of all; and you have to stand up for the game, second of all; and you have to try and win, third. I wasn't going to play with something in my mind other than beating Tiger Woods. You saw me, I stood there with my arms crossed because I didn't want to punch the guy. When he walked away and said something worse, they had to pull my caddie away from punching him. We handled it the only way we could handle it, have the guy thrown out so we could go back to playing golf.

DAVIS LOVE III: I have since I started playing there in '86. More people from my area, from Sea Island, St. Simons up here, go to THE PLAYERS than they go to Hilton Head or Atlanta or Augusta. So that is our home tournament. Jacksonville is a big city. We do most of our big shopping down there and that's our airport. That's our hub city. We really feel close to the golf tournament, and the people that live there and the players that live there are kind of close to our neighbors. Frank Lickliter is going to come up tomorrow. The tournament is our home tournament. The fans have always treated me very, very well there. Obviously the better I play down there, the more they get behind me, which is nice. It's nice to have that big of a tournament close to home.

DAVIS LOVE III: The year has been put behind me, I think is the best way to put it. We're coming up on the anniversary, the one-year anniversary of my brother-in-law's death. We're still as a family still dealing with that. No matter what the distractions are for me, trying to play, I've done a pretty good job over my career of focusing on that and coming home. That's what I've been doing the last couple of days, is dealing with family and getting back into looking after what everybody here needs after being gone for a week. I feel after a four or five off break I had after the Hawaii tournaments, I do feel kind of like The Match Play was kind of really the start of the year for me. Hawaii was an extension of last year. I had time to practice and take a break, practice, defend at Pebble, get all that behind me, and I certainly felt like I came out at The Match Play more prepared to play. I'm into this year now. I don't have to think that much about last year. It was a frustrating up-and-down year.

DAVIS LOVE III: As I said, I never read the paper.

DAVIS LOVE III: Not to talk about this the whole time, the first hole of the afternoon match, my caddie heard it, and then I heard it on the second hole -- this is all after we go to In and Out Burger after the match and we discuss it had all. He wasn't going to tell me all this while we were playing. When I got to the second hole, I heard it all the way through the hole and it was just a par 3. And I thought, I'm going to play the next hole, if I hear it again I'm going to have something done. I didn't hear anything and I played that hole, and it was okay. And I played the next hole and everything was fine. Somebody said something or he was just seeing if he could rattle me for a hole and he's not going to do it anymore, then it happened again on the par 3 tee. Maybe on the par 3 he felt he could get close enough, or he wasn't in position, because a par 4 I was out in the middle of the fairway, whatever. I don't know what he could do to handle him or to stop him, but I thought somebody had done something and he was already taken -- it was already taken care of. That's the only reason we let it drag on instead of jump on it immediately. Should they be kicked out? Yes, they should be kicked out. How about if I walk in the press room at the end of that tournament and instead of saying, look, maybe it cost me a hole, which is what I said, I said, you know what, this is unfair, this cost me the golf tournament, I was winning, I was playing good, I was beating him. And you guys had the stat, right? I didn't win a hole after that. I say, this guy cost me the tournament, it's not fair, I'm getting a lawyer. You know, how many lawyers in California would have jumped on that, you know. Sue him for the difference between first and second. But you know me, I'm not look like that. Maybe it cost me a hole, maybe I should concentrate better. It didn't bother me. I put it behind me after 5 and I went on and played. That's how I honestly feel. I forgot about it. As soon as I hit it in the trees on the next hole, I'm like, gosh, how am I going to get it out, I'm back to playing the game. And I honestly didn't think about it after the 6th tee. I didn't think about it until afterwards. I'm disappointed in the way I played. I'm not disappointed all that happened. I'm disappointed he got so much attention. You know what, I have to give it attention, I have to get the guy to quit doing it. Whether I walk up and hit him with a 4-iron or they move him somewhere else or they throw him out, it has got to stop. If it's a cameraman, or Glenn, if you're walking inside the ropes and you've got an orange shirt on and you're in my line on every putt, I have got to play the game. It's not fair. And the people who disagree with that. Don't understand the game. Obviously Joel told me about the USA Today article. The guy doesn't understand the game if he's saying I'm in the wrong. A guy is saying something 10 seconds before I go to hit it, trying to distract me. That's not part of golf. Jerry Potter asked me a question, I don't remember how he asked it, it was kind of like, isn't that part of the game, kind of that the fans are out there. I can't remember exactly how he asked the question. It's not part of it. It's not -- yeah, they cheer when Tiger makes a putt and it's loud. Great. That's what's supposed to happen. They don't cheer when I make a putt. They're not supposed to. They're pulling for Tiger. That's part of beating Tiger, right? But not part of beating Tiger is a guy in a Tiger Woods' hat yelling at you before you hit. That's not part of it. I don't understand -- I'm going to talk to the security guys and find out, maybe they said it was him, but it was two or three other guys and we couldn't round them all up so we couldn't just throw one guy out.

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, it was that guy, because the nice couple standing beside him said, look, it's this guy right here. There was another tall guy that I pointed at, and he was one of them too, he just wouldn't admit it.

DAVIS LOVE III: That's what you were asking, That happens in every other sport, don't you think it's going to happen here, too.

DAVIS LOVE III: I haven't paid as much attention this year -- like I said, I played good last weekend. I haven't read anything about it, but what I've seen, I played with three of the best players in the world last week, four of them -- five of them. Everybody I played is a great player and played good. Phil Mickelson has done something. I don't know what he's working on, but he's done something. He's hitting nice, controlled shots into the fairway. He's playing with a lot of -- I don't know, he's playing real smooth and graceful. It doesn't look real out of control. I expect that he's pretty confident with his game and he's ready for a big year. Obviously, other than the way Tiger was hitting his driver in the morning, his game is very under control and he's obviously -- after four weeks off to come out and win, he's going to be very confident. Darren is always playing good. He's in great shape. A lot of guys are in good shape and they look like they're ready to go and playing good. Obviously Mike Weir didn't have a good Match Play. Expect for a few holes, he played great at Riviera. The guys that played great last year are playing well again. It looks like Phil is back. It's going to be probably another year like last year where the big name guys have gotten on a roll for the last year, 14 months and are playing good.

DAVIS LOVE III: Everybody had different reasons for not playing good for a few years there. Obviously if Tiger wins nine -- what did he win one year? Nine?

DAVIS LOVE III: If he wins nine and we play 23 or 24 tournaments, that doesn't leave a whole lot to spread around. So there weren't a lot of multiple wins. And then the next year you have guys having hot weeks and taking a win away from a Phil Mickelson and Davis, and David Duval has been down. It's been a return to form. Every few years there is an a bunch of new guys. There is a new crop of young players that come in that start winning and take over. I just think it's a cycle. A lot of the top players have watched a Tiger Woods or Ernie Els or Vijay Singh and saying look how hard they're working, look how hard they're working out, here are the things we need to do to keep up. Tiger Woods, like when Greg Norman was No. 1 and like when Nick Price or Fred Couples or whoever, when the goal is out there, you know where to go. If you're the No. 1 guy -- I remember Beth Daniel saying one time, getting to be No. 1 was more fun than being there. When you see No. 1 out ahead of you and you're chasing it, sometimes it motivates you. He put the carrot way out in front of us, and we had to run hard to get there. It's been a lot of fun for a lot of guys to try to keep up and catch up. After a tournament like we just had where, leaving out the fan thing where I get criticized for not winning, I think back, let's see, it's been -- Tiger has been out since '96, well, who has run with him since '96 better than me. Phil Mickelson has been there off and on, and Ernie Els has been there off and on from another Tour, and Vijay has been there off and on. I've tried hard since '96 to knock the guy off. I've been second a bunch, I've been second, third, fourth on the money list, Top 10s, I've been chasing him and it's been a lot of fun. You have to give whoever, Vijay, Ernie, Davis, Phil, you have to give us credit for working hard to keep up with the No. 1 player in the world and try to knock him off. I asked one of my friends in the locker room after Accenture, how come when we beat Tiger -- at THE PLAYERS Championship last year, I didn't beat Tiger, nobody mentions that, but when Tiger beats me at Match Play or another tournament, it's like oh my gosh they can't beat Tiger. I won four times and in Tigers tournament last year and the first thing you hear when Tiger beats me in the finals in a 36 match-play event I can't beat Tiger, I've been trying since '96, and I've done a pretty good job of being there. I didn't beat him enough, no. Shoot, I wish I had beat him a lot more. I wish I had beat Fred Couples a lot more, too, and Greg Norman and Nick Price, when they were No. 1's, too, but I'm proud of the fact that I keep trying. And at 40 years old, I was the only guy last week that was trying to beat him last Sunday.

DAVIS LOVE III: I think because Tiger has won, whatever, 40 or 41 PGA TOUR events, they think, well, he's really, really good and all the rest of the guys can't beat him. When that's not it. He's probably one of the best players that has ever played the game and there are a hell of a lot of guys right below him that want to be where he is that can't quite get there. If you take Tiger out and he disappears, you've gotten Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Davis Love, Phil Mickelson, there's a hell of a lot of good players and they're shooting unbelievable scores and winning golf tournaments. If Tiger is not in the field. At Riviera or wherever -- he didn't play Riviera, did he? It was still great golf. The numbers don't change. The scores guys shoot don't change that much when Tiger Woods is not there. It's just he doesn't shoot one shot better than or two shots better than a bunch of great players. It's a great time. These kids -- call them kids, these guys coming out, just one after another, just unbelievably good players. My son is 10 and they're saying he's playing so good, do you think he has potential. I'm like, potential, he has a one in a billion chance, I was a one in a million chance. How many kids, when my son gets to be 21 years old, are going to be incredibly good golfers. It's mind boggling when you look at Nationwide and college and down below how many good players there are. I think our Tour is -- the only problem we've got is we don't have room for everybody, and anybody can win any week because we have so many good players. I wouldn't be surprised if you go to THE PLAYERS Championship and somebody wins that isn't a top player name, just because there are so many good guys. Like Craig Perks, just get on a roll he can win any tournament. He plays good at that golf course. He won it and almost won it again. Anybody that has confidence and has a good week can win any tournament at any time. I think it's going to get harder and harder for the top players to dominate.

DAVIS LOVE III: The best advice I ever got on that was from Paul Azinger, who obviously tried and tried to get on the Tour and didn't have immediate success and worked his way up to the top. He said, Look, I figured out there was a sweet spot when I played good. It wasn't the first week out, it was usually the second or the third, and it was never the fourth week. And then when I went home, one week wasn't enough and two weeks was just right and three weeks was too much because I got sour. So he was saying, look, I'm not going to tell you what's right, but you have to figure out how many in a row you play good and how much time you need off. If you go home for a week and you're so busy that you can't ever get a break, or you go home and practice all week, you might as well be playing. He said find something that works. What works for me is, I don't need to sit around for two or three weeks before THE PLAYERS Championship. I need to play a little bit and be Florida tournament golf ready. I need to play either Doral and Honda and play THE PLAYERS or Honda and Bay Hill and play THE PLAYERS, so I'm ready when I get there. And then I feel like I've played the best at Augusta when you have a break and you practice and you just -- you don't compete that week, but you don't take the week off, and then you're ready for Augusta. It seems like for some reason that theory is not working because I won Hilton Head rather than Augusta, I'm doing something right because I've got seven wins on either side of Augusta, I just have to hit that right week.

DAVIS LOVE III: I've gotten two seconds there. It's funny, I think when I've finished second at Augusta, I haven't played good at Hilton Head. I'm tuning it for that time of year. You can't say, all right, Sunday of the Masters is the day I'm going to play good this year. You can't be that good, but you can have your game ready for the big times of the year. Obviously you want to be ready for THE PLAYERS Championship through Augusta. You want to be peaking -- you don't want to be saying, maybe I'll go snowboarding in between PLAYERS and Augusta, that's a good week. You want to be playing golf and ready to go. It is frustrating that I get ready for the Masters and I haven't pulled it off yet, but that's part of it, why it is a major, why it's hard to win, and going back to beating Tiger Woods. That's why it's hard. It's a mental game. Basically physically hitting the ball, I beat him, Mentally I didn't beat him. Physically, I've gone into the Masters ready to win and, mentally, I haven't pulled it off. As long as you sit back and admit, hey, something is not going right when I'm playing those four rounds of golf, and it isn't the fact that I can't get ready to play, because I win the next week, so my game is ready, how do I relax and play Davis Love, Phil Mickelson golf at the Masters, because we know Phil Mickelson can win. Nobody will ever argue that Phil Mickelson can't win the Masters. Why doesn't he? Well, he doesn't let himself win. He doesn't get the right breaks, whatever. But I haven't let myself go at the Masters enough. I take a deep breath and drive down the road to Hilton Head and say, Why didn't I win the Masters and then I play at Hilton Head and I win, because I relax and I play my game and I'm confident. Where are the weeks that I want to be completely ready, and then the rest of the PGA TOUR events that I want to win just as much, I fill those in where I'm hitting weeks ready to play and you have got to be tournament ready, so competing at Bay Hill is important, because it gets you in a mode to get ready to compete at THE PLAYERS Championship. So it's like a year-long process of where are the peaks and where are the valleys and where are the weeks off, and for me, where the kids need to me to go to horse shows and golf tournaments and family vacations you just balance it all and try to have some rhythm during the year where you're not playing six in a row to catch up on the money list at the end of the year; you've balanced your schedule all the way through.

DAVIS LOVE III: There is a question.

DAVIS LOVE III: If it could be franchised, Phil Mickelson would have them.

DAVIS LOVE III: You know how he thinks, how can we take over the world here, with cheeseburgers. But if you put one beside every fast food hamburger joint in the United States, you would run them out of business. They have got a good family business, and sometimes a well-run family business knows better than most.

DAVIS LOVE III: First of all, I don't want to think about the world of golf without Arnold Palmer. I get tears in my eyes thinking about it. I don't even want to think about it. I think through guys like Jim Bell and talking to the TOUR, they kind of understand that some of the guys weren't happy with how hard the golf was. I talked a lot with Mark Russell while we were having our match with Tiger about golf course setup, because that's one of the big issues with the board right now, where do we go with golf course setup. I think whether it's Bay Hill or Jacksonville or La Costa or wherever, as long as we tell our rules officials here is what we're looking for, we're looking for really hard with variety, and some weeks the greens can be soft and some they can be hard, but here is kind of where we want to play.

DAVIS LOVE III: Yes, we don't want every course to be long, we don't want every course to be short. We set the board, which is basically the players, you know, here is how we want golf courses setup. If we go to Arnold and say, look, this is what we've been doing all year, we've had 10 really hard, 10 really easy, yours is extreme in one range, we've had these hard greens and these fast greens, and yours goes over the edge a little bit, so why don't we pull it back in the range of really hard. You know what I'm saying? So the field staff, we need to give them more direction and more info, what ShotLink is doing, things like that, greens hit, 7 irons on the greens versus 7-irons off the green, say, hey, look, Arnold or whoever, wherever we go, go to X, Y, Z course and say, look, you guys, you know, this is too easy, the greens are too slow whatever. We have both extremes. Players complain every week no matter what. No matter where we take them, players complain. When you see a tournament that was so loved having more complaints than it used to get, above average, we want to help them out. As far as me going, I've had some health issues back and forth and have skipped it a couple of times. Jim Bell and the whole staff down there, and Arnold, I miss seeing them. I'm looking forward to it. I can play the golf course, I've done very, very well there. I'm excited to try to win that one, because it's one that's gotten away from me a few times, too.

DAVIS LOVE III: I have to finish writing down this Peter Jacobsen number, though, to call back in. Well, we've been watching some of these other swings, like Tiger's and Adam Scott's and some of these guys, and I tend to, and I have since I was a kid, gotten a club where it's crossed the line at the top, where at the top of my backswing it's pointing to the right of my intended line. When Tiger was really hitting his best working with Butch, his club was pointing to the left of the line of play at the top, and we felt like that was a worthy goal to try to get more that direction -- more to the left than to the right, and so we've been working on that and we've been fiddling around with different ways of getting it there. I have times when I get there good and times when I don't get there good. Kind of this winter, the work we did was kind of late. Like I said, at Tiger's tournament and not -- as you know, Kevin, I went home a lot during Christmas and all that, and then straight to Hawaii, so my work has kind of been in January and start of February that we worked on getting my stance a little bit more athletic, standing up a little taller, bending more at the waist so my shoulders could turn a little bit better, get the club up and online. My dad always told me, don't worry about it, your club is across the line, you hit it farther than everybody else. Sam Snead was across the line, a lot of great players were across the line, don't be obsessed about it. I'm not on the range every day trying to fine-tune tweek my swing, but as a long term goal, Jack started me in 1994, I was very up-and-down above the plane and across, and he started me on a trend of fixing that. Other things, I'm trying to keep my feet quieter when I hit the ball so I'm not jumping around as much. As you saw in La Costa, I drove the ball extremely well because my pace is better. I think I figured, on 34 holes on Sunday I missed the fairway but one driver. I miss the fairway with a couple 3-woods but only missed it with one driver. That's a big step, playing against a guy like Tiger where you know you have to drive it in play, you have to drive it long to compete. I didn't hole the ball as good, whether it's putting or hitting 6 irons the right distance on par 5s and stuff like that. I didn't hole the ball good enough, but I drove it good enough to beat him. So when I go to THE PLAYERS Championship or Bay Hill where it's a hard driving course, it sounds like the Honda course is very long and difficult, it's going to be windy, where I can compete, you know, as again, almost 40 years old, I can compete length-wise and accuracy-wise with guys -- Phil is figuring out just to get it in the fairway, so I was kind of outdriving him. And Tiger, he hits his 3-wood almost as far as my driver, but he doesn't hit his driver right now as far as he has been, but he's putting it in play. I think that's a big thing. To get lots of birdies, to get enough eagles to be consistent, you have got to drive it. You don't have to drive it John Daly long or Hank Kuehne long, but you have to drive it long enough and straight enough. That's what we've been working on and fine-tuning. I worked some with Mike Shannon, who is here at Sea Island, for the guys who don't know him, he moved from Alabama and he's a great putting guy. He's working with a lot of Tour players and he's helped me some with my putting and setup, and we're doing little things to continually get better, but Jack is more maintenance with me now. He was out at La Costa until Friday and I hit it pretty bad on Wednesday and putted great and then he worked with me Wednesday and Thursday when we had the rain delay and came back out and hit it great the rest of the week, so he's been a great asset to me.