U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 8, 2014

Mark Gardiner

MIKE TROSTEL: Welcome back to the 2014 U.S. Senior Open at Oak Tree National. I'd like to welcome Mark Gardiner into the media center here, Mark playing in his first U.S. Senior Open, shot a 70 for the only spot at the St. Louis Missouri sectional qualifier, and fittingly today on Military Appreciation Day, Mark is a retired chief master sergeant from the U.S. Air Force, 26 and a half years. Both his wife Michelle and his son Jamie are serving in active duty in the U.S. Air Force, as well, and his caddie this week and good friend Tim Klepper also a retired master sergeant in the Air Force, as well. Mark, you started playing when you were 18 years old, a little later than a lot of the guys out here, but first of all, let's talk about your experience being here at Oak Tree. You told me just a second ago that it's the championship you've been gearing up for for three years.

MARK GARDINER: Well, I'm blown away. I mean, I've played in a couple of Pub Links, but when I retired from the Air Force three years ago, this was the one tournament that my wife and I talked about that we wanted to work towards because it only takes one round. You play one good round and you're at the show, and I did, I played one good round and I'm at the show. It's quite a show. I'm very honored to be here. I've been treated amazing. I mean, this is beyond my wildest dreams, and I hope that the rest of the week continues in that way and I walk out of here with a tear in my eye, but I'm having a great time. I'm honored to be here.

MIKE TROSTEL: You said you got here on Sunday and played a little bit of golf then. What are your first experiences at Oak Tree and then just being around these guys that you've watched your whole life on TV?

MARK GARDINER: Yeah, that's what's amazing to me. Probably the other story on this is 10 years ago I grew up in a bowling alley, and I won a qualifier in St. Louis, and I bowled against guys I had watched for 30 years on the PBA Tour, so I was one of those guys, so to actually get here, the same story, same scenario, different sport, obviously this is my passion, surpasses anything I could have dreamed of. The course itself, phenomenal. I didn't know it was one of the toughest courses in the United States when I signed up. I didn't care if it was a nine-hole county course at home. I'm in the Senior U.S. Open, but this is outstanding. From the back, wow, it's a track. For an amateur, this is all you can eat right here, and I'm sure some of the pros are saying that. From what I hear they're going to move some of the tees up, it's not going to be played at 7250. I don't think I'm giving up any length to anybody, so in that regard I feel pretty comfortable off the tee, but obviously the short game is where these guys make their money, and that's why I'm still an amateur. I'm looking forward to the challenge. I feel somewhat comfortable with the sparse crowd that we have today. That clinic was a little bit gut-wrenching for me. But yeah, I hope to hit it straight just like everybody else out here.

MIKE TROSTEL: What are your goals for the week?

MARK GARDINER: My goals for the week. Well, jokingly I said I don't want to hit more than five spectators, but you know, I'm hitting the ball good. A lot of people hit the ball good in practice rounds, and if I can just keep a loose, long, fluid swing, I think I can do well. I've had a very good year from an amateur's perspective, and I'm confident, but this is a different stage. I've got a good draw with the guys that I am playing with. I don't have any big-name guys, so I don't have a bunch of crowd dust in my way. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm playing good. The speeds of the greens as of the last couple days aren't unmanageable. Keep it under 90, I'll be pretty happy.

MIKE TROSTEL: You've also had a pretty decorated career as an amateur golfer, as well, 22 club championships, but let's look into four Air Force championships, as well. How much golf did you play while you were in the military?

MARK GARDINER: Well, my friends say that's all I did was play golf in the military, but I did play plenty. The services that they have, every service has a championship every year. They invite 30 or 40 guys, and normally it's the top four or six guys make that team and then they go to another tournament and play against the armed forces counterparts. I did win it four times. I played on the Air Force team 13 times. The Armed Forces team I played on 11 times, and with that you play around the world. They have world military golf championships. I've probably played in, I don't know, 12, 13 or 15 different countries in the span of the last 15 years of my military career. I did play plenty, and like I said, I haven't worked in three years thanks to my wife. She lets me -- I turned one year off into three years, and I've played more golf than I could ever imagine. My arm is telling me that every swing. So yeah, I certainly played a lot in the Air Force, there's no doubt about it.

Q. I saw you kind of smile, almost shake your head as you were being just introduced. Is this all sort of pinch-me moments even as you go?
MARK GARDINER: Well, I cry during good diaper commercials, and this is certainly a pinch-me moment. I mean, I'm a retired Air Force guy. I grew up in the military. I served in the military. I'm still with the military. I mean, this is what these guys get every day. I've had some great opportunities with the service and in sports, but I could never have imagined -- there's no way coming in here on Saturday that I would have thought I was going to be doing a clinic with Corey Pavin and Brad Faxon and those guys in front of it might have been 100 people. I don't see 100 people on my golf course in a week, and I just hit 10 drivers in front of them. Phenomenal. It's a good story. I earned my way here. I'm happy to be here, but the bottom line is I want to play golf and I want to play good golf, and that's what I hope to do this week.

Q. What does it mean to you to have the tournament have a Military Appreciation Day?
MARK GARDINER: Well, you know, I'm a military family. My dad was in the service. My wife's father was in the service. My son is in the service. I'm red, white and blue. That's as far as it goes. I'm it. I'm all about the military. When I saw it was at Oak Tree and Tinker Air Force Base just down the road, I knew there would be some military folks here, which is nice. There's some comfort in that. It's different. People see my name on the flag here, they see Gardiner, they don't know who that is, but when an Air Force guy sees it, they go, that's the Air Force guy, there's some comfort in that for me. I'm honored that I'm here to represent the Armed Forces, and it's great that the military is treated as good as they are and they get in for free. That's a great honor to them.

Q. What's it like to have your good friend Tim on the bag for you during this event, especially since you guys were in the Air Force together?
MARK GARDINER: Well, when I first qualified I offered the caddie job to my wife. She's caddied for me one time. We did very good last year at a USGA qualifier. But she was pretty nervous. And Tim, you know, he already thought he had the job. There's no doubt in my mind he was booking a plane ticket or whatever, so my wife backed out, Tim took it. Tim and I go back 30 years back to when we were one- and two-stripers in the Air Force, the lowest of the low in the Air Force. We've probably played, I don't know, 600 or 700 rounds together. As an amateur I'm not supposed to win money, but we've won plenty of money together. It's a lot of fun to have Tim on the bag. His math isn't the best, so I have to check a lot of numbers in the yardage book, but he does very good. He's a very good greens reader. He's a lot more excited, I think, than I was when I made it. He was ready to leave two weeks ago. But it's very nice to have him on the bag. We're great friends. He lives in South Carolina, I'm in Illinois, so I don't get to see him but once or twice a year. He gets me Masters tickets, which is pretty nice, so I think I offered him at least a tote on the U.S. Senior Open, so I'm pretty grateful that he's here.

Q. I know you were attempting to get back to playing in college as an older gentleman, then you ended up coaching. How did coaching kind of help you get ready for this event?
MARK GARDINER: Did you ask about playing collegiately?

Q. Coaching.
MARK GARDINER: Well, I'll tell you what happened. When I retired from the service, I was going to attend a Division II school just east of St. Louis. I was going to get paid by the government to go to school and I wanted to go to school to play golf. School was third in line of priorities. So three days before school started, the NCAA said that I had played way too much amateur golf in the previous 30 years and that I had no eligibility left. It was a pretty bad day in my life. I was looking forward to playing against flat bellies for six, seven months out of the year. So I disenrolled from school because I didn't want to go to campus for 25 hours a week of schoolwork, and the coach called me and said, would you like to coach, and I jumped on that. I've coached sports forever but not at the collegiate level. It was pretty tough the first couple tournaments seeing the kids shoot 80, 82, and they think they're going to be a pro. Coaching, you know, I just tried to take what I teach the kids and apply it to what I do on the course, and that's very hard to do. Very hard to do. You're your own worst critic. It's all about just being patient, and I'm an impatient kind of person, so it's very tough for me on the golf course. But I do, I just try to take what I give the kids and apply it to what I do.

Q. I happen to be standing by the 9th green when you guys came up, and the gal was tending the flagstick, and I'm sure you knew she was military. You kind of bee-lined to her. Was that important, and did you do that throughout the day around the course?
MARK GARDINER: Well, I saw the U.S. flag there on the flagpole, so I knew that there was probably a military member standing there. I was a chief in the Air Force, highest enlisted rank there is. You get the utmost in respect from the unlisted corps, and it is important. They come out here. Do they volunteer? Probably. Were their hands twisted a little bit? Perhaps. It's just important for them to be recognized. That's all. The military gets plenty of recognition, but too much is never enough for what they do, for what we do on a daily basis, and for her to come out here maybe on a day off and spend four hours standing in the sun just removing a flagpole for a couple of golfers, it may not seem admirable, but it is to me. It's important that they come out and support the community effort, and they do that here.

Q. Can you talk about a couple of your experiences in the Air Force playing golf, and I'm particularly interested in when you played against the high-ranking Ugandan general.
MARK GARDINER: Okay. It's interesting, when you travel for the Armed Forces team, you go and you play at some of the tournaments might have 15 or 16 different countries. Well, we'll have countries like Uganda. They're going to bring a team of 10 people. There might be 12 people that play golf in the country, let alone 12 that play in the Armed Forces of Uganda. A couple of times I played against, I don't know if he was a second or third highest ranking general in the Ugandan Army, but I talked to him a bunch. He didn't play very good. He might have shot 120, but he was a joy to play with. And he smiled so much, and I talked to him. I said, you know, you just seem so relaxed out here. He goes, oh, I am, I don't have my security detail. I said, your security detail? He goes, yeah, when I'm at home, I live in a barricaded house and I have a detail of about 20 people that follow me everywhere I go. When I'm over here in Scotland, I have nobody, and it's just wonderful. So those are some of the experiences. I've played with truck drivers from Pakistan, the general from Uganda, kids that are from Germany that play for the German Golf Federation that are drafted into the service for a year, and in that one year all they do is play golf, so they're not serving their country as much as -- well, I shouldn't say. I did the same thing. It's a great experience. With the defense cuts that have been imposed and ongoing, I was lucky to do it a dozen times. I don't know how much longer that's going to go. It was a good experience.

Q. You were fortunate enough to qualify for the Professional Bowlers Association tournament and you've bowled two 300 games in your career. Can you talk about the similarities or differences of competing bowling and golf?
MARK GARDINER: Well, I kind of gave up bowling. Bowling, I don't say this in a cocky way, bowling is just too easy. Technology has changed the game of bowling. The conditions have only hardly ever changed. The lanes stay the same, the oil pattern changes, the pins stay the same, the approach is the same, there's no wind. The light is always the same. If you have any physical activity or any physical ability in bowling, you can compete at an amateur level. Golf certainly isn't that way. I mean, it is the toughest sport there is. I've played a number of sports competitively, and rate out there is why it's so hard. The hole could be 400 yards or 200 yards. It's always changing. There is no comparison in my mind between bowling and golf. I mean, great hand eye coordination benefits both sports, but golf is it.

Q. How would you describe your swing, and who would you compare it to on the Tour?
MARK GARDINER: Well, people -- I have a loop in my swing. People say it looks like Furyk, and I always come back with, well, I'm older than Furyk, so Furyk's loop looks like mine. I'm not very technical. I'm very handsy. As long as I'm patient and I have nice long swings, I can move the ball well. Chipping and putting have always been not the best for me, but again, that's why I'm an amateur. It came together, has come together for the last year, but yeah, I'm not technical at all. I can try to move it left to right, right to left, and I feel better when I do that. If I'm not stuck in one shot the whole time, it gives me a little freedom to play loose, and that's what I like to do.

Q. When you were on the range today, because I was out there, and then you had Pavin and you had Faxon and then Fred Funk made that unanticipated appearance, what was going through your mind? What were the emotions of that being on the same practice tee with those folks?
MARK GARDINER: Well, you know, again, it's pinch me. These are guys I've watched for years. I had met a couple of them before. I played in the Disney pro-am five or six years ago. I mean, they're just -- I compare it to the military. Everyone is always scared of general officers. Oh, general. He's the same as you. Puts his pants on the same way. Gets paid a lot more, a lot more responsibility, but he's the same, just like you. They're all good guys, that I've met. Again, a week ago I'd have never, ever thought I'd be here in a media center giving an interview. I did dream that in my sleep, but I never thought it would happen. Yeah, it's phenomenal. I'm just blown away.

MIKE TROSTEL: Mark, thanks to you, Michelle, Jamie, Tim, for all your service, and best of luck this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports