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WYNDHAM CHAMPIONSHIPAugust 13, 2014Davis Love IIIGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA MARK STEVENS: We'd like to welcome Davis Love, III. Davis, you've won her twice at the Wyndham Championship. The tournament is celebrating 75 years so you know the history here as well as anybody. Kind of open it up, tell us about what this event means to the players and the area and we'll have some questions. DAVIS LOVE, III: 75 years of anything is incredible but to keep a tournament running that long you know kudos to Wyndham and to Bobby Long for making it happen and keeping it going. The players just love coming here. Great hospitality, great golf course, great tournament. The McConnells have done a great job of renovating the golf course and bringing it back to what it was. Just a lot of history here. The tournament was here for a long time and they were smart to get it back right here in downtown and where we can play great traditional golf courses. There's very few golf courses like this that we get to play during the year.  The players really appreciate that as well. MARK STEVENS: Questions. Q. What do you remember of your victories here, maybe that 62? DAVIS LOVE, III: Some rain "laughter". But I really enjoyed Forest Oaks. I played well there. We got to come over from school at Chapel Hill and play when the Hughes family owned it. We got to come over and have lunch, which was the best part and then play golf and they would take good care of us over there as high school and amateur golfers getting to go over there and play. Felt like a big golf course and seeing where the Tour played and get to play there in the tournament, it was a lot of fun and obviously a good, long hitter's golf course. I played well there and had some good success there. But my wins there I got on a roll. Even winning early in my career and then late in my career over there I just -- if you get on a roll making birdies, you can do well on that course and then it will look hard to some guys because it's a big, long golf course. Played well both times I won there. Q. Davis, Joe Ogilvie is shutting it down after this tournament. He's retiring from the PGA TOUR. Are there any funny stories between the two Carolina rivalries that you can recall? How well do you know him? DAVIS LOVE, III: He brings it up a little bit. Not in a bad way. He's been a good leader for a lot of guys on Tour to think about the way the Tour business is run and help us with being on the Board and on the PAC, always being involved. He's always thinking outside the box and I think rather than being a basketball rival we've been more -- I'm included on his e-mails when he sends out a suggestion but he really has helped us a lot. I know we said he slowed down a lot of meetings but he made us think and he made us look at different alternatives, way to do our business and he really helped out. I know he spent a lot of time talking to staff, lot of times talking to player directors and PAC members. We stayed more on the business side and a little bit on the golf side. Q. He had a good career, obviously? DAVIS LOVE, III: He's had a good career. Apparently he's had a good career off the golf course as well so he can quit frustrating himself with four footers and go do something else. It's nice that he has a passion for that. I have some things that if you said you can't play anymore, you're done, I would have a lot of fun things to do off the course as well. I'm glad he has something to do and something he enjoys. But we'll miss him. We'll miss him around the locker room for sure. Q. Davis, just a generic question just about the Pro-Am in general as far as the dynamic of playing, going out there and being with guys that you don't normally get to be with and have fun with them and at the same time you have to prepare for what's going to be a competitive week. Can you just talk about that dynamic while out there on the Pro-Am? DAVIS LOVE, III: We always say we're going to meet our four new friends. For some guys it's a joke. For most guys it's serious that here is four guys that are supporting this tournament, supporting the charities and making the tournament happen and you don't know if it's going to be the CEO of the company that's hosting the event or if it's just going to be a guy that bought a Pro-Am spot to get to play with a pro. But, no matter what, they're putting their dollars and their support behind this tournament so most guys do a really good job of just getting out there and making sure those guys have a good time. And the veteran players have learned, you have to tell a few stories and ask them how old their kids are and what they do for a living and then it's a fun day. On top of that, yes, I haven't played a practice round so I got to play a practice round today in the Pro-Am and I've got to learn the golf course and see what's going on out there. Obviously as a veteran I know it well but for most players it's a good practice day and then a fun day to meet new people and make new contacts. Q. This tournament, obviously with the FedExCup, how has that changed the dynamic of the tournament from the players' perspective? DAVIS LOVE, III: It's important. As I said at the drawing party last night, I have to finish 1st or 2nd to get in The Playoffs. There's a lot of guys playing for something, playing to keep their card. Obviously the pressure is not on me to keep my card as much as for pride, I want to finish in the Top 125. I don't want to finish outside of it. I'll get to play in this tournament next year no matter what but I want to get in the Top 125, I want to get in The Playoffs, and saw some guys are trying to move up into the Top 30 and some guys are trying to impress Captain Watson with a good finish here and a good run in The Playoffs. Everybody is playing for something this week and yeah, the field might not be as deep as some other weeks around it, but the guys that are here are here for a lot of different, very important reasons and playing hard to try to get something out of this week. It's a fun week to watch.  It's kind of like a Q-School on TV or Tour Championship. There's so many other story lines going on it's fun to watch. Q. You played for Tom in '93. What do you remember about him as a Captain? What stands out? What makes him unique as a Captain? DAVIS LOVE, III: Freddie Couples made a good point when I asked him to be my assistant Captain. He goes, it's going to be like back in '93 when Tom Watson took Lanny Wadkins and Raymond Floyd and they went down the hall and came back and told us what was going to happen, you know. That was my memory was I was intimidated being on a team Captained by Watson playing with Floyd and Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins right on down the list. They would go off and you wouldn't see them for awhile. "Where did they go? What are they doing? Are they talking about me? Am I going to get to play?" I just remember being the new guy and just amazed at how much leadership and how much thought they were putting into it. One of his great lines, we were in the lounge waiting to get on the plane, obviously we got to ride the Concorde back then, it was a big deal. We were in the lounge kind of gathered up, the players, and said, "Guys we're getting ready to go on a great adventure here" and he made it seem bigger than life, like he was thrilled to be going so we should be even more thrilled. He was a great Captain and I had 6 Ryder Cup Captains and watched Corey do it and it's just fun to be a part of the team, and then you look up to that guy. We say all the time we try so hard to win or for the Captain that it gets in our own way. I think that's why our record is not as good as it should be in the U.S. but I hope those guys can go back and make him 2-0. Q. Not on the plane with parings, was it? DAVIS LOVE, III: I remember telling Kite to go tell Tom we're going to play together, so there wasn't much input from the new guy. I'm sure that Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins and Raymond Floyd there are -- back then there weren't four assistant captains. What is with all the assistant Captains? "Somebody got to drive. They've got a bunch of carts. Somebody has to get the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out to the players." He had his Assistant Captains were playing and they were the guys that he leaned on and now he's got Raymond again. He's got guys that he can lean on but they're called Assistant Captains. Back then he might have had a friend hanging out with him just because it's cool but he had his guys that Freddie said went off in the little room by themselves. I remember sitting with Fred at the Presidents Cup, I was sitting on the floor and ten guys in the room and we're all discussing what's going to happen the next day and I'm -- I was like this is what they did to us. There's a bunch of players down the hall wondering what's going on. I just remember Watson really, really staying up late, working hard, sending us to bed. He was very serious. He will be more serious probably than the last three, four Captains these guys have played for. Q. Are you aware that you've made more than 700 starts on Tour? DAVIS LOVE, III: Is this 700? Q. Well, there's some British Opens prior to '95 that might make it a little bit more. Can you talk about maybe some highlights and maybe how the Tour has changed in that time? DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, talk about it all the time. Little things like we would have to drive back out to the clubhouse and go walk up to the scoreboard to see what your tee time was the next day if your hotel didn't get the tee time for you. There was no text messaging of like -- like we know the horn is going to go off before it goes off if you're looking at your phone you know because they're going to text you that play is suspended and back then you had -- you really didn't have any idea. It's hard to find your tee time. Sometimes you're guessing, calling the newspaper to find out what your tee time was the next day "laughter". Literally, it was a different world, you know, and all the scores were put up on the scoreboard. There was no Internet to see where you stood, what the cut was going to be. A whole different -- you remember walking out behind the clubhouse to watch and see what the cut was going to be. Little things like that. Just the Tour has just grown so much bigger. We were laughing the other day that golf and NASCAR used to be last two things on Sports Center, if they put them on. Now they're up at the front. It's amazing, Greg Norman, Fred Couples, John Daly and now Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy are superstars in the world of sports and they're the lead-in. Rory McIlroy is now the hottest thing going. Talking about him as much as -- almost as much as LeBron James, and talking about Tiger as much as LeBron James. It's incredible that our sport has grown that much. We've always had really good fan support I think at events. I don't see that -- obviously if Tiger and Rory are playing in a big city they get a little bit bigger crowd but I don't think that's really changed, but the worldwide scope of when you hit a shot or play a practice round at the PGA it's on TV and just amazing that so much -- it was two hours on CBS on the weekend and now it's 25 hours a week that we're on TV or more. Just incredible. It's grown and obviously the money is incredibly different. We've caught up with a lot of sports. It's amazing what Dean Beaman and Tim Finchem have done. They had a good product but they really grown it. Q. Did you ever think you would play in 700? DAVIS LOVE, III: I was hoping to play for a couple years and didn't really know what it meant to stay out a long time and one of my favorite stories I tell all the time is I'm playing with Billy Haas, sitting with Jay Haas one time in the locker room. "How long have you been playing?" He said 21 years. "Are you crazy? 21 years. How do you play that long? Don't you want to go do something else?" He's still playing and this is almost 30 for me. You know, you just don't really -- you can't really see down the road. My dad always said, "I want you to work as hard as you can and see how good you can get" and I think I'm still trying to do that. I was out there pounding balls with a launch monitor yesterday in the rain and still love it, still enjoy it, still love the 4 hours inside the ropes. It's the reason you play, the reason you work hard. Now I get to play with Bill Haas and Fred couples in a PGA Tour event. MARK STEVENS: We could listen all day to your stories but he has a Pro-Am to warm up for. Thank you for your time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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