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WGC BRIDGESTONE INVITATIONAL MEDIA CONFERENCE

June 30, 2009

LAURA HILL: It's my pleasure to really just turn this over to the man of the hour, I would like to first introduce Don Padgett III, who is the Executive Director of the World Golf Championships Bridgestone Invitational and Don will make the official announcement of the 2009 Ambassador of Golf recipient. Don, please go ahead.
DON PADGETT III: Good morning everyone, and welcome to today's call. Each your the Ambassador of Golf award signals that the Bridgestone Invitational is just a few weeks away. Our preparations for the event are going well, and this year's dates are August 4 through 9. So it's right around the corner here. Our field is shaping up nicely we have 74 of the best players in the world currently qualified, and we are looking forward to another exciting event here at Firestone Country Club.
Speaking of the best players in the world, today we are pleased to be joined by one of golf's greats, the Ambassador of Golf award is annually given to a player who is meets the ideals of the game on the international level and whose concern for others extends well beyond the golf course, and this year's recipient is no exception. He is a World Golf Hall of Fame member, 19-time PGA TOUR champion, three-time U.S. Open winner, five-time Ryder Cup Team member, and former Captain of The Presidents Cup team. He is also dominated the Champions Tour with 45 victories and counting.
And I'm pleased to announce today's 2009 Ambassador of Golf award recipient is Mr. Hale Irwin. Before I ask Hale to make a few comments, I want to add that his selection has as much to do with his record off the golf course as it is on. Most notably he is helped found and support the Hale Irwin Center for Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at St. Luke's Children's Hospital. His dedication to this cause helps children suffering from blood and cancer disorders receive specialized care from a team of dedicated experts in a comfortable non-threatening environment.
We are very proud to add Hale's name to the distinguished list of past recipients that we have had and we look forward to honoring him in person at the Bridgestone Invitational on Wednesday August 5.
And Hale at this time would you care to make a few comments before we open up the lines for questions.
HALE IRWIN: When notified of this award, I have to say I was very humbled and very honored by this when you are recognized by others within your industry or sport, it is a special time and I have been blessed with having a lot of great people that have been around me throughout my career and this award, I think to me, at least signifies that those opinion are not going unrecognized, either, because this game, it's well beyond one individual. It teaches an awful lot of life skills, it teaches great humility, and it shows that I think if you can tackle a problem on the golf course, you can tackle a problem off the golf course.
I wish more people could be introduced to this game. They learn an awful lot about themselves and how they react and how they interact with others, and it's a wonderful way in which I think people can learn to come together.
So for me, it's more of a recognition of a career that's been filled with an awful lot of very, very nice things filled with great people, filled with some wonderful moments that I've been able to share with family and friends.
So that end, I will always try to keep golf in the center of my life, along with my family. It has really helped direct me towards what I have become and I have no one to thank but the game itself, really. It has shown me so many great things and I will never be able to put enough back into the game as much as I have taken out.
LAURA HILL: Congratulations, again, Hale.

Q. You won the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, and at the time, it was called the Massacre at Winged Foot because it was difficult conditions, and the last couple Opens, especially those at Bethpage, people have talked about how brutal the conditions were. Do you still feel the conditions at Winged Foot were just as tough as any that maybe anybody has ever seen?
HALE IRWIN: Well, that's hard to say. Everyone likes to point to the time that there was -- well, I did this, it was tougher then, it was easier then, whatever.
For me, I think in my career of playing U.S. Opens, the only course that I think would come close to Winged Foot, and it was probably Bethpage in 2002, simply because Bethpage was longer. I think they had prepared it, for instance, just some of those fairways like 10 and 12, the fairways were so far out that I think half the field could only get to the fairway.
So I think the prep of the golf course was a little different at Bethpage, gosh, going from 74 to '02, you've got equipment changed, agronomy changed; you've got a lot of things changed.
But Winged Foot for its day, had they prepared any U.S. Open venue today as they did in '74, I think even today's technology would have a hard time overcoming what we saw in '74. It was quite the golf course. And we didn't have weather as a problem. We were blessed pretty much with very good weather, and it was just an extremely difficult course when you've got the best player in the world being Jack Nicklaus putting them right off the first green, gives you an idea of how slick the greens were, even in '74. And the length of the rough was unlike any I've ever played in. I guess you just have to kind of judge for yourself.
This year's Bethpage looked very difficult, although you look at the scoring, and you say, had it run fast, maybe the scores wouldn't have been so low. But when you can take today's great players and make them throw darts on the greens, that's going to make it a little easier.

Q. Wonder if you would comment on your experiences at Firestone on the South Course.
HALE IRWIN: I've had wonderful experiences there. I always enjoyed playing Akron. Just before I started, it was the Rubber City Open, and then it became the American Golf Classic. And the standard set at Akron became the standard by which all other tournaments had to perform. It was clearly the course, the organization, everybody, made that such a wonderful tournament. And that's the way the players approach it.
So every time I got to play at Firestone, I was delighted. It was a very challenging golf course. The reception, the hospitality, everything about the tournament was fantastic, and it goes just beyond the first tee to the 18th green. It extends into the community, and we were all well received.
I enjoyed it very, very much. I have looked forward to playing Firestone each and every year that I was eligible and was able to play just for those very reasons. I enjoyed it immensely.

Q. If you could just talk about your involvement with the St. Louis children's hospital over the years and maybe share any experiences you've had that have stood out either at the hospital or while you've been involved with charities?
HALE IRWIN: Well, let me answer that in reverse, perhaps. I think those of us that are in a position where we can help charity, it is something that we really need to entertain and hopefully will become involved with some line of work with those charities. There's not a bad charity out there.
But many years ago, there was some gentlemen here in town that wanted to -- corporately wanted to get involved in the community in some fashion, and so we kind of put our heads together and came up with something for children's hospital because it was an across-the-board hospital that took all children of any race or creed or religion on, it didn't matter that all children were welcome there.
And we felt that that would be the proper way to get started in this community with this particular charity affair. And it was up to me to kind of come up with a format to bring the players in, and it became -- I wanted to make it as much on the social calendar as it was on the golf calendar and I think we have succeeded in a big way. We got a lot of community involvement. We got a lot of corporate involvement, and we got nearly all the players of any renown have come through here at one stage: Lee Trevino, Greg Norman, all those players have come through here at one time or another to play in our event.
So I think we did a good job in presenting it to the community and showing what the hospital was for, and providing services and products to the hospital to help the kids out. Anyone that cares anything about children cannot help but become involved with this hospital here. It was fantastic. They got such a wonderful staff and I think the thing that I learned was that every time I felt sorry for myself, I just went down to the hospital, took my pass and went into the hospital. I saw a lot of kids that really didn't have near the life that I was able to have, and it really put things back together for me in that I was pretty lucky to have what I have, and my children were blessed with good health.
So it really put things squarely in front of me that quit complaining and try to help these other kids out. So that really defined I think for me the efforts we were all putting forward were really right here in front of us.
I think one instance that comes to mind, when we were having the dedication of the wing that was given in my name, which was a tremendous honor, there was a little girl who was admitted with leukemia and they asked me to go see her just before the dedication. And I came out of the room, I was in tears. I just couldn't function. I was that way throughout the whole presentation, just simply because there's this beautiful little girl who had a terrible disease, and unfortunately she didn't make it too much longer. That was a very difficult time for me. It just sort of crystallized what we were trying to do, want to find a cure for some of these terrible diseases for kids.
So that experience, that time will live with me forever simply because it really hit home as to what is really important in life, and it's not necessarily complaining about that 3-foot putt that you missed, but it's about making 3-footer so maybe you can go on and help dedicate your time and money to help solve some of these issues that these kids have.

Q. You won the U.S. Open when you were 45 and you've continued to excel as what some would say an older golfer --
HALE IRWIN: I like that. Older golfer is good.

Q. To what do you attribute your success in your senior years on the Champions Tour?
HALE IRWIN: Well, I think a lot of it really comes from my participation in sports my whole life, being blessed with some good genetics. I think keeping -- again, I go back to what I've said before, is to kind of keep in front of me what's important. Balancing my family life with my business life, my professional life, balancing what working out and being in condition would do for me versus going over the top where it too much. I think I was -- again, I'm going to say, lucky to have good judgment throughout my career, and finding my way through some times that weren't particularly good, but at the same time, I never gave up. It's just not in me to give up, and I think that that desire to succeed helped me for a long, long time.
And the fact that I have not played well of late I think just shows me that, well, I can still hit the shots and I can still do some of the things. But the intensity by which I have played in the past and intensity I think being in my mind how I got into it, how I can stay focused, that has slipped more than anything else.
To go back throughout my career and look at those times where I really kind of graduated from one level to the next, I think you can see it as I won a couple of tournaments prior to winning at Winged Foot and throughout the '70s really establishing myself as an international player, and at 45 winning the Open again and then going on and having a very successful senior career, just shows that if you keep at it, if you keep the positive thoughts and you keep yourself in condition and really never give up, you can achieve an awful lot.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about how younger people, you see them getting just as involved in the game, talking about youngsters who are starting out, and also about some of the younger players on the PGA TOUR, do you find that they also have that commitment to charities that you have?
HALE IRWIN: Well, I would hope that today's younger player has that dedication. Particularly if you're a parent and you have your own children, you see the value in that.
I sometimes am concerned that some of our younger people are not as driven to help those others that may be less fortunate, simply because it seems to be a society now, what can you do for me, rather than what can I do for you. And that does concern me now.
As I say that, at least in the professional golf scene, I do see many of today's players participating in charitable events all around the country, as has been well documented that the TOUR is helpful in producing millions and millions of dollars to go back into our various local charities around the country through the TOUR's participation.
I think all of us on the TOUR are understanding what charity is and how we can be involved and how we can help facilitate bringing those needed funds for research and development into helping out all charities, particularly the children's charities. I think we all recognize that, and that's part of what we do, because golf is quite a mechanism. It has great leverage in getting into the community and help leverage out some of those dollars in the private sector to go back into the public sector for charitable causes.
So I'm going to say, yes, I think that the players and the people around the players are all at least aware and in many cases, they fully participate in these charitable affairs.
LAURA HILL: Hale, thank you again for joining us this morning. Congratulations on this award.
HALE IRWIN: Thank you, it's been fun. I've enjoyed speaking with everybody and look forward to being in Akron very soon.
LAURA HILL: Best of luck out on the Champions Tour, and we will see you August 5 for the presentation of the award.

End of FastScripts

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