U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 22, 1998

Gary McCord

GARY McCORD: I haven't been to one in a long time, so....

GARY McCORD: Yeah, I should probably, yeah.

GARY McCORD: No, I didn't leave the site. My agent was down there trying to qualify also but he was basically -- his job was to babysit me and get me to Cleveland. We had to leave for Cleveland in an hour after I got done with the deal. I don't know what it takes for the SENIOR TOUR to make qualifying, so, I shot 1-over, I think, and I know the guy behind me was stiffer (sic) on every hole. I think there was one or two shots, so I figured he was where everybody else was, I got dressed. I put my Levis on. We ran; put the stuff in the car. As we were in the car getting ready to go one of the USGA guys that I played a practice round with said: Gary, he says, I think you are in a playoff, you better stay. And I looked at my agent; I says: We have got to get another airplane because if I have got to say, I can't play in Levis, can I? He said: No. He said: I will give you ten minutes. So I go back and I am changing clothes in the parking lot behind the door, open the door; got behind it; changed clothes real fast; ran out to the tee. He comes out, hands me a thing. He says: Guy lied to me, he told me he is 1-over. He really is 4-over, so you are in. Take off. We went to the airport made it to Cleveland which is a great spot to go if you are -- (laughs) if you are going somewhere.

GARY McCORD: The last professional tournament I have competed in was -- I believe it was Phoenix this year on the regular Tour. And I had missed my fourth straight cut by one shot the week before I was at the Bob Hope and I was -- I think I was 11-under on -- I had two holes to go and I had a 4-footer for birdie, three holes to go and I missed the cut. Think about that one. Next week, was Phoenix and I drove it down the middle. I was playing with John Huston who won the next week. We all drove it down the middle, I am 1-under playing great, and I got an 8-iron into the last green with nothing around it and I double-bogeyed the whole to miss the cut again by one. I put the club in my bag. I told my caddie key: I am waiting for the SENIOR TOUR where there is no cuts, I am done. The bad news was I qualified for this which there is a cut, so (laughs) we can continue. We can continue the nonsense.

GARY McCORD: Not at all. I have got a week off so this is fun.

GARY McCORD: Yeah, when you can. You know, you get -- last week I got up at 6 in the morning, 6:30 every morning and Peter Costas and I go out and play as much as we can before we have to do TV stuff; then do TV all afternoon; get done at about 6:30. Run off to another golf course; play 'til dark, just do it that way, you have got to find time. It is not the best kind of practice, but it is at least practice.

GARY McCORD: No. No, it doesn't take you long to remember all the chaos and the nonsense that goes on. Just got to make sure the rules are right. When you go to another Tour and with a cart, not this event, but with carts on the SENIOR TOUR and stuff, I don't know what the rules are so I have to find out all the rules and everything. It is the same old deal, you just try to get your ball around some there and not hurt anybody. That is kind of my goal.

GARY McCORD: Right now I am doing everything I can to prepare for the school SENIOR TOUR Qualifying School in December. I will play a few tournaments at the end of the year. On the SENIOR TOUR, if I have to go play a couple on the Nike Tour, whatever it takes for me to take -- find the ground again or know where the ground is when I go in December to Qualifying School, probably the toughest Q-School there is, to have a little idea of what I am doing and then I will make my decision after that.

GARY McCORD: I have got a thing called CBS over there and we do -- I think we are doing 26 events this year, 25 events. My contract is up so there is a lot of things kind of up in the air of what I can -- it is just guys -- it is nice to be 50 and have any kinds of choice at anything, so, this is wonderful. I mean, you can't get any better than this. Whether to go to television which is pretty easy to go play the SENIOR TOUR which will be a lot of fun those are not career choices you are going to lose sleep over, either one, it is going to be pretty nice.

GARY McCORD: Yeah, yeah, that is what I am looking at. I am looking at, you know, I am looking at my schedule at CBS to see maybe if I can trim a little fat there and do play a little bit over here, cut out a lot of the corporate outings. I do about 50 of those a year. I got another book I am supposed to be writing; got a movie that is due from Disney. We are writing it right now and we are going to do it next year; going to take a lot of time. So, you know, you just -- you get in the cross-fire, you are trying to weed your way through and then you have got to try and find some time at home too, so I am trying to do all of those - try to manage yourself, that is all it is.

GARY McCORD: I don't either, but we are in there trying.

GARY McCORD: I am stupid but I am not that stupid. What I have carved out in my niche was CBS and having a nice time and a very nice easy job for a good company. And from you know, anything you take, you get some exposure doing something; then you take that exposure and you run with it and you try to do other stuff. Well, obviously, I couldn't play golf with a lick. I got on television. It is unbelievable exposure. From that exposure now you start doing these other things on the periphery and start having fun; see what you can do and/or what you can do and what you can't do. So you need that podium. You need something like that. I played out there since 1974. To come out and play the Tour full-time, you know, if I got my card I have taken a long look at it, but right now, I think it would be more of a blend of doing a little of this and a little of that.

GARY McCORD: You are always on the brink of insanity, but I have yet to cross into that room that has got the walls that are very soft and the pastel colors. I am not in a frenzy to go out and play 30, 35 weeks a year, no. There is too many other things I like to do that I want to do that I am getting an opportunity to do, because of television and only because of television. Not because of my playing abilities. So if you keep a happy medium and balance both of them or three of them or four of them, or whatever you are trying to do, that is the way I think I will probably go about this whole thing. Right now it could change dramatically, you know, in December. I don't know. I really don't know.

GARY McCORD: In life you try to live a contradiction and if I played well, it would be a contradiction and I think that stimulates all sorts of conversation.

GARY McCORD: I have practiced. I have prepared. I am playing well. My situation, when I play the regular Tour, I really didn't know what I was doing. You can tell by my career all-time money list, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. When I quit, I got with a guy named Mark O'Grady who redid basically my whole golf game and everything. And then I have had now about twelve years to get rid of all the scar tissue from all that bad play with a system that I know that I can kind of hit it out there and I am a lot more efficient, I think, than I was then; not saying I was a good player but I know a lot more than I did then and watching television, you are sitting there watching the greatest players in the world every week, you better learn something. So it is kind of fun to go back now with this, you know, instead of no bullets in my gun, I might have one or two now and it is kind of fun to go back with a couple of bullets now and go see what you can do. It will be a lot of fun. I am not putting any pressure on myself because I haven't played too much. I need about probably a month of playing to get where I can, you know, set up on a whole and know it is going to go that way or just short stuff and all that stuff. It will be fun. It will be fun to just get out there and play again; especially a golf course like this.

GARY McCORD: How many more do I need?

GARY McCORD: Yeah.

GARY McCORD: My golf swing is a lot better than it was, and the other bullet is that when I was playing the Tour I was broke all the time and you play scared. I am not broke anymore. So there is no reason for me to play scared. I probably, just because the adrenaline and trying to do stuff, but it is not a money issue now. And before it was a money issue, raising a family, all that stuff, and you are out there choking your guts out and throwing up all over your foot jaws, for economic reasons, and that won't be a reason this time, so it is fun. I have got some new toys I get to go out and see if the new toys work.

GARY McCORD: Right. I can't take a pay cut, so there is no way that the money aspect of it to go out and play and to make what I am making now, doing all the other stuff. So again, it is nice to have an opportunity to do something that -- this is my one love. This is what I like to do and I'd like to do it well. I never have done it well. So it is an opportunity for me to come out now and play and maybe I can be better. I really I can say I probably won't be any worse because there is not really a whole lot I could be worse at than the career I had or the lack of career I had. So it is all optimistic. Everything is optimistic.

GARY McCORD: No, just a couple of them have asked me my plans of playing out here. Whether I would come out and play, Stockton, Colbert, Chi Chi, and, you know, very nice, they said that they'd like to see me out here playing once in a while. I said, yeah, that is great, I am going to try and come out here and play as much as possible. As far as the soliciting advice, you know, you work on television, you watch these guys and all you do is keep your eyes open and watch them play and watch what they do and what they don't do. Coming down the end through osmosis, usually you can find something about somebody's game like watch Mark O'Meara come down to the stretch and see what happens and most of it is -- the bottomline is you just put yourself in a position to win it and hang around, see what happens. Don't be heroic. There is not a lot of heroism going on. There are some great shots going on, but no one is getting heroic trying to do something they can't do.

GARY McCORD: No. No. I have the utmost confidence in my abilities and what I am doing with the golf ball that, no. That is not even a scenario.

GARY McCORD: First of all, I don't know what peoples' image they have of me. I can't do much to do that. I just go out and try to do the things I do. If it can make someone -- you know, I am a guy sitting up there in the tower talking about how bad I was and basically got that from Bob Buker (phonetic) years ago when I'd go to Milwaukee and hang around with Bob and I watched his stick, I thought, man, that is a pretty good idea. He played been for five years; had a pretty bad career. How many people play professional baseball? I don't know. I figured all over the United States, maybe 10,000. Hell, it is 25 million people that play golf, what if I told them how bad I was; then I am going to be their friend on TV; I am going to tell them how good these are and have some fun with it. That was the basic formula, so you have to be comfortable with knocking yourself down in front of everybody. I remember the first time I did it on television and was taking that route that my colleagues won't come back. They won't come back and explore the realm of my insufficient career on the Tour. I was sitting there one day, I am thinking, well, how am I going to get these guys to respond to them when I say, yeah, guys in the trees on the left of 14, I said there is a sprinkler back there, I know it, I have been there three times and it is 117 yards from right there, what you have got to do is duck-hook it around that one tree -- I am waiting for some guy to go, yeah, you were really bad, you are over there all the time. Nobody -- they won't do anything. I didn't know that on television that you will not degrade your colleague any at all. So I sit there one night. I am thinking how am I going to get somebody to respond and then I am sitting there looking at the fat evil swine Ben Wright and I am going, I can't understand anything he says, his vocabulary is way above mine and we are kind of different. So the first thing -- next day I went out and I attacked Ben for something, who knows what. I mean, viciously attacked him on the air and I knew I am waiting for a response. How is he going to attack me - only one way, my career. And, he did. He just went, boom, well you evil swine with the record you have got you should be kept in doors all your life or something like that. And boom, that was it. So then I start playing off him attacking me at -- CBS didn't like it at first. They split us up and then finally Frank liked it and it kind of grew on people and that was how that whole thing got started. So to answer your question, it would be a contradiction, yes, if I went out and performed with any kind of ability, they would go wait a minute, I thought he couldn't play a lick. I played at Kemper. I don't know when this was, 92, 93, Frank let me play and I shot 68, 69 first two days and like in 6th place. This is when I really knew people have no clue that you if you are up and doing television, you have no previous life, no life whatsoever. And I got up on the tee on Saturday and I hit this limb, cut right around the one bunker on the corner just perfect, just melt it right around the corner and two little old ladies sitting right there, one of them turns to the other, I am finished, and she went: My God, he got it airborne. I turned around, I said: Ma'am, I got my name on my bag. She says: Well, I'd thought you were a TV announcer; I didn't think you could play a lick. That was when I went: Whoa, they really don't know. They don't know. They just -- they are just taking the information they get and they are going to then basically paint a picture of you from that information. Well, I have painted a morbid Salvador Dahli (ph) portrait here of myself. If I go out there and can get it airborne, a lot of people are going to be like these two little old ladies and go: He can get it airborne. That is kind of fun to be in a position where you can't pigeonhole yourself or nobody can.

GARY McCORD: There is no question. All the great players have a mindset that of invincibility and you have to take that out there and you have to be clothed and cavalier so everything bounces off and you go about your business and you keep going. If I was to play the SENIOR TOUR full-time and get rid of everything else I got, yeah, I'd go out there and I would start practicing hard and I would do this and do all the right things and see what I do. No question.

GARY McCORD: No. Because I am -- I am an entertainer and there is a vast difference of being in the entertainment business and being a commentator. I don't want to be a commentator. You can hire anybody out there to be a commentator. To be an entertainer is someone that if you do it right, they are not going to fire you, but you can fire a commentator and get another one. Entertainers are hard to find. And that was just a niche that I -- when I started off I said well, let us try to go that way, couple of people liked it; they haven't fired me yet, so I am still in there.

GARY McCORD: When you have been with Mark O'Grady for twelve years, Tommy will tell you, with all the doctors 24 hours a day; yeah, I know what I am talking about in the golf swing but you don't -- I am not going to sit there and talk to my audience about maintaining spinal angles through vestibular ocular reflexes and fusy (sic) motor control and make sure your ramp gradio (sic) movements are perfect. I'd lose them like this - the guy that is swirling his beer on the couch is done, he is gone, so I am going to laugh and giggle and make up some stories about my buddies at St. Louis Ray (sic), all my Muny (sic) guys. You entertain them. You don't bore them to death. I can bore you to death with all that stuff, but I had to learn all that stuff for the credibility on TV where if you go talk to some of these players, a lot of the guys on the regular Tour that I work with, yeah, he is working with me, knows what he is doing. That is the credibility you need from the players themselves that seek out your advice to do these things. I don't go out and put them on banners and everything else. I am working with this guy, this guy, and this guy. But, I help those guys -- that is -- in our business, what I do, you better be very, very, very spread out throughout the whole thing. Don't niche yourself, but know a lot about all the things with television, from entertainment to golf swings, to the history of golf, to anything, you better know all of that to put it in the soup, so when you stir it up and CBS or NBC or ABC goes to hire or fire you, they look at the soup and go: He's got a lot of ingredients in there.

GARY McCORD: I came out on the Tour with Doc in 1974. We got our cards together. I think Crenshaw finished first. I think Doc finished second. Maybe I finished third or I tied with Doc, I am not sure.

GARY McCORD: Larry was the school before us, I believe. We were in the school 73 in the fall. I don't remember Larry there. I think he was in 72. And, Doc has always been a great ball-striker, great ball-striker. Doc had some deficiencies inside of 100 yards. I am going to guess in 19, I think it was 91, 92 around in there, he had some surgery on his shoulder. And Doc spent a long time chipping and putting and from that point on he got real good because now his short game came up to his ball-striking which was always very good. And Doc never could putt very well. He had a flaw with -- his left wrist would break down through impact, adding loft to the putter blade, the putt starts spinning left-to-right and it was on a sheer pattern; all of a sudden he got it to where the blade was always at the same angle he addressed it with, to where he hit it, which was huge for him. Then his short game stuff, he is always working with Phil Rodgers (ph) and watching us do short game stuff. He just -- in those six months that he was off and he told me this, he got very good at the short game. Meshed, got out here, saw when -- when you come out here you can look right away, you see the guys come out, they start playing well right away because you don't look around; you don't see Tiger Woods, Freddie Couples, Davis Love, guys that are going to hit it, 50 yards by. I play everyday with Phil Mickelson, you can't play those guys. You can't do it. They hit it 60 yards by you, they can putt better than you. They can do everything better than you. You get out here, you go: These are all the buddies I grew up with. We are the same age, same club head speed, this is going to be a lot more fun. It is the ecstacy of getting back to your old classmates and you know their skills and so forth and these young kids, you are thrown out there in that lion's den and these guys are just unbelievable. There is a lot of them from Nike Tour all the way down, everywhere you go.

GARY McCORD: That was amazing. I am not really Gary McCord. I am here from Bloather (sic), a planet in the MC 3 galaxy. It is in the third parsect of the black void-call career and basically I was set down here on a recreational renaissance because we are a wine growing planet up there and we need something up there to help us with our leisure time so I was sent down here. I took over the body of Gary McCord just briefly just a short visit to see what this game of golf is all about and I have to go back now through a certain worm hole back to my galaxy and I will report on all the action, but believe me, he is okay, he is fine, I am just going to use him for a couple of days. I guess I have got him in a position he has never been in before because I talk to him quite a bit and he is giddy with enthusiasm. And, but I am here; we are going to find out about this deal. I am sitting here doing all this stuff. These guys are writing it down. I am thinking what the hell is going on here. I wasn't. It was a deal where I never get in the press tent. I remember I had a buddy of mine with me I am walking, I said watch this, I am not going to get here much, but when I get here they are going to remember me. I remember you are absolutely right. This was the whole process about entertainment. Next week I showed up in Dallas Texas, Greg Norman came up to me, he goes: He says, I have got to hand it to you, he said, I have got laughing so hard at that thing he said you know that you are on the front page. He said: I never seen golf on -- it was on the front page everywhere. Next week I go to Dallas, I got these guys interviewing me. First guy I went over got in a dumpster did the interview in a trash standing in the trash. You know, and just -- and you find out real quick people don't want to hear about birdies and bogies and pars. Guys, it is an entertainment. We are out here to entertain people. These guys know it that are on the SENIOR TOUR, they are very, very, very good at it. And they have got some of the great entertainers ever out here and I wish the guys on the regular Tour could learn a little bit from them. But it is an entertainment. I find myself the same way I am out there trying real hard and forget about smiling and talking to people and trying to pursue my golf ball, but in the long run, they are out there just watching me play and no big deal. So....

GARY McCORD: Right.

GARY McCORD: That was 78, 80, something like that. Two days later, we had a rainout and Brian Gumble gets a hold of me, he says: We have -- you have got to do 15 minutes with me. I said, okay, can I do anything? He said, yeah, so I came in just for a while. I came -- I had a deck of cards and I had a paper sack with three holes, two for my eyes and he finally asked he said what is that third hole for; I said: Insight. And I started doing card tricks. That was when I was the unknown golfer and just I am not there much so, when I am there, let us have some fun. You asked the other guys about the birdies and bogies. But I just -- I try to be an entertainer. I couldn't do the other things, so, I entertain myself with my game.

GARY McCORD: I have got to stay out of that kikuyu grass. That stuff will get you. Thanks, guys, I appreciate it.