THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

May 27, 1997

Tom Watson

TOM WATSON: The state of my game right now is not the best, but my timing -- my timing is a little bit off now, but it was off last year before the tournament, and I hope I can quickly readjust and find my timing as I did last year, and play the type of golf tournament I played last year here. I played some good rounds of golf overall in the last couple of months, played well at the Masters, a couple of rounds at the Masters, played a couple of good rounds at the MCI, played three good rounds at the Nelson, and I played two lousy rounds last week at Colonial. I missed the cut. But other than that, I feel pretty good about what I'm doing. It's nice to be back. The emotions that I had last year, winning for the first time in nine years are still here. It's nice to come back and look at peoples faces and see smiles and say, yeah, Tom, way to go. That's always warm. I get that a lot here in Columbus.

TOM WATSON: The putt going in the hole at 18, if it didn't go in the hole I didn't know how I was going to make the next one.

TOM WATSON: I played the first nine today with the Shootout with Jack and Gary and Paul Stankowski, it's playing easy right now. The east wind made it play a little tough. But the greens are softer -- the greens are soft right now. I forget who I did the interview with, for I guess Sunday's Columbus Dispatch, but I said to them, I said the way the golf course plays its most difficult is when the greens get firm and hard. We've had that a few times here, but very few because of the rain. You just can't do it, because we get so much rain here this time of the year. It's hard to get them hard. It's not so much the quickness of them, but the firmness of them that makes the golf course play tough. Right now they're playing soft, so I think the scores will be low, with the absence of wind.

TOM WATSON: My iron play is a little suspect right now. That needs an upgrade. Driving is fair. I'm a little bit shaky there, too. My long swings aren't as good right now as they need to be.

TOM WATSON: It's tough to win when you don't make the short putts you need to win, when you waste four or five shots on the green that you need, that's four or five shots gone, that's the state of Watson's game.

TOM WATSON: No. I was at the right place at the right time, hold a couple of bunker shots. Should have won by four, but you get the TOUR on your table and have David Duval, shooting lights out with the back nine putting pressure on me. And made a tournament out of it. And I think everything fell my way that week.

TOM WATSON: Oh, yes, always. Kind of like making the last putt at the U.S. Open in '82.

TOM WATSON: I think Winged Foot is one of the most difficult courses we play, and I really like Winged Foot, you have to be on your A-game to play at Winged Foot. The 10th hole is maybe the most difficult par 3 we play, without any water. It really is a tough hole.

TOM WATSON: Yeah, yeah. It's like Oakland Hills -- I mean Oakmont, Oakmont owes me a couple. But I've had my share of luck on other courses. But I like -- I really think it's a great championship golf course. Honestly if we could go play today, right now, and even par would win the tournament, no rough, not even a question.

TOM WATSON: Yeah, I can't shoot 20-under scores very easy. I can make a lot of long putts, but you miss three or four, five short putts act the course of a tournament, that ruins your chances.

TOM WATSON: Troon? Troon is -- I think it was given, I was given the championship at Troon, Nick Price gave it to me. I played a good solid back nine, I forget what it was, one or two under par. Nick had me by five or six shots. The back nine is tough into the wind, 13, 15, 17, all tough holes symbol the wind. And it just so happened that day, that he handed it to me. And that's where the golf tournament is going to be lost, golf tournament is going to be lost on the back nine. You've got to play the back nine well to win at Troon.

TOM WATSON: Back nine has the best character to it. The front nine has a little mundane, a lot of layups, two or three par 4's that you lay up on. But I think starting at eight, that's a really good golf course, the first opening holes they kind of get you started, with a lot of opportunities for birdies. You have the same types of shots, lay up with a 3-iron, layup with a 4-iron, layup with a 4-iron, pitching wedge on the green, 9-iron on the green, wedge on the green. And that's what you do at Troon. It gets monotonous on the first seven holes, wonderful par 3, 8, and then your golf course gets really tough, starting at 10.

TOM WATSON: Obviously, right now there's huge ground swell of attention for Tiger Woods, and he's earned it. He'll always have that now. He'll always have that aura of presence, anywhere he goes. But the -- with the press, with the fans, not just with the players.

TOM WATSON: I don't see anything stopping him. The only thing I think would stop him would be he'll start hating the zoo, what I call -- it's not the zoo, just the frenzy, he'll start hating the frenzy, he'll want to get away from it in the worst way.

TOM WATSON: I don't think Jack ever had this type of attention. I think he would be the first to admit that. I think Arnold has. I don't think Jack really has had this. I don't think Arnold has ever had this type of frenzy. And it is a frenzy. You've been out there. People, you've been here, have been out there, it's a frenzy. And it's wonderful. It's wonderful for the game of golf, but for the person who's in the center of this, he needs some buffer. He needs a buffer around him to take the questions, take the requests and filter them out and be nice about it and try to -- he's got to have somebody to do that for him. And as I said out here, this guy, the toughest thing to do is to say no all the time. No, I can't sign that autograph, I can't do this appearance for your favorite charity, even though I know it's great. You've got to be able to have somebody say that for you, you have to make the final decision, but somebody needs to say that for you.

TOM WATSON: Oh, sure, yeah. This kid's -- he's got a run going right now, he doesn't want to lose. And he's a phenomenon is what he is, and he's going to continue to have this huge frenzy about him, wherever he goes, whenever he plays the TOUR. And as he said, he gets tired. He gets tired of the -- not just the competition, but the frenzy.

TOM WATSON: I never had it to this degree, ever. So I really can't -- and yet there's a certain amount of -- certain amount that your body can take and then you have to get away from it. And I guess in some cases you just say no more, no mas.

TOM WATSON: I would disagree with that. I would think that Tiger has -- this is Jordanesque type of popularity, and Tom Watson never had that type of popularity.

TOM WATSON: It was much more intense, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Tiger Woods has this -- for instance LA, I played with him at LA, and there were 250 more media request passes at LA, just because Tiger was playing at LA, than you normally get. 250. That's a lot. I mean what did they have before, a hundred, 80 covering the tournament, I don't know. Now they had 350. What was it, Wes?

TOM WATSON: It was huge, big, big jump in media requests this year.

TOM WATSON: The incredible thing about The Masters, he never 3-putted once in 72 holes. That's the incredible thing about The Masters. And that one putt he had at 14 on Saturday, after he knocked it over the green and chipped it back, if he missed that putt, that would have gone 60 feet by the hole.

TOM WATSON: He's the only person that can do it. The course is set up for him, with the exception of Troon. Troon is the equalizer. But Winged Foot is a wonderful course for him, just a wonderful course for him. And Congressional is the same way. Troon is the equalizer, kind of like this last week at the way Colonial played, it played very short, a lot of irons off the tee, so it was an equalizer. But heck use his length to an advantage at Congressional and Winged Foot that can distance himself from the rest of the field. Troon he'll have to lay up a lot and that will bring him back to the field as far as his length is concerned.

TOM WATSON: Well, I've already told you how I react to him. I think he's a phenomenon. I think what he's done for the game of golf -- he's elevated it beyond golfers, to be -- to watch TV, watch golf on TV. When you're in every major newspaper and magazine in the country for a period of three months or two months, people are going to notice you. Say, who is this person? And they have. And that's great. That's wonderful for the game of golf, the game of golf is just going to grow and grow and grow because of Tiger Woods. He's an immense catalyst to this game right now. You look at our television package that we just signed, I don't know the numbers, I've asked for the numbers, maybe we'll find out the numbers tomorrow, what they really are, but how much do you attribute the increase in our television package to the fact that Tiger Woods is now the star of the TOUR? I think you a contribute a lot to that.

TOM WATSON: I don't think it's youth, I think it's the belief that first of all he has a belief that he can win now, it's not even a question that he can win, and why else would he be out here, unless he wanted to win? Some of the other players in the TOUR could learn from that attitude.

TOM WATSON: Well, you pick them. There are a lot of players out here, the established players like Norman and Faldo, these players will do it, not can, but will do it. But right now Tiger is the man.

TOM WATSON: Well, I played with him both -- I played with him for nine holes at Bay Hill about three years ago, two years ago or three years ago in a practice round. And I played with him in a Skins game a couple of years ago at the Western Open, he played there as -- I don't know if he played there as an amateur or not. But I wasn't too impressed at Bay Hill, he was hitting the ball high right and not too far. But I was very impressed at Cog Hill, when we played -- we played as teammates. And I was impressed how far he hit the ball a couple of times. And he made a wonderful chip on the 18th hole, very difficult chip he had to win the playoff. And that impressed me. And I played with him in The Masters last year when he missed the cut as an amateur. He shot about the worst score he possibly could shoot. He airmailed a couple of greens, meaning he hit the ball too far. And didn't make a putt. He hit the ball close. He's out-driving by 80 yards. And he became more and more -- it became more and more apparent to me that with his length and if he had the other skills to go along with length, which he has since proven to me, that he's a phenomenon.

TOM WATSON: Oh, yeah, there's always a danger that money will corrupt.

TOM WATSON: Everybody is an individual. Money will corrupt. And it depends what he does with it. If he -- if he doesn't go out -- I don't think right now he's thinking too much about going out and buying a six million-dollar house or anything like that. He's obviously doing the smart thing and going to private air travel.

TOM WATSON: Probably about six or seven years into it. When I first started on the TOUR money was -- that was my goal was to make enough money to be in the top 60. Actually my goal was to make enough money to pay back my sponsors, so I could put some in my pocket. And that was 18 grand. I had to get 18 grand back to my sponsors. And that was what I came out on TOUR with. My sponsors guaranteed me 18 grand for my expenses for the TOUR. I spent 18 grand in one tournament going to the British Open one year after that. But in the top 60, my next goal was to make the top 60, and my next goal was to win. And so that's how it got up there. But after I had won, after 77, 78, I figured that money was not the object anymore. I had enough money that I could put away and if I broke my arm or fell off a horse, I could live pretty comfortably.

TOM WATSON: There were seven of them, seven people. One was my father-in-law and one was my father and several were friends.

TOM WATSON: They all put in one payment and never had to put in another payment. They put the first months payment in and never had to put another payment in. Pretty good investment.

TOM WATSON: Well, John has to do it himself. He has support from me. He has support from Jack, he has support from anybody. We never like to see people fail, get that bad. But we're human, we're going to make these mistakes, we're going to succumb to our addictions. And John has done that. And he knows it. He knew it going into it and he still knows it. But John has a good heart and he has my support.

TOM WATSON: I think the tournament at Firestone, it's got to really enhance the -- first of all the amount of press it's going to get. These tournaments, if they work the way that they're supposed to work, they're going to have the type of field in there that is going to garner worldwide attention. And it's not just going to be a play for pay thing, you're going to be at different organizations and try to draw the top players in the world, it's going to be a top class event. It's going to be perceived that -- the one perception that it has to have, it has to have the perception of being a special event by the players. And I think given that the series is a can't-fail series.

TOM WATSON: I keep hearing a lot about Stewart Cink, the fellow that played so well on the Nike TOUR. I haven't played with Stewart, I just have heard, I've heard lots of people tout Stewart as a special player.

TOM WATSON: Not in particular, no. Paul Stankowski, the guy we played with today is a wonderful player, he's going to do a lot of damage out here. 3-wood, 3-wood on No. 5 today three feet. Boy, he can play.