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BUICK OPEN

July 28, 2004

Shaun Micheel

GRAND BLANC, MICHIGAN

JOE CHEMYCZ: We welcome reigning PGA Champion, Shaun Micheel. Thanks for your time.

Talk about the state of your game right now, and going into the Buick Open a lot of people are talking about the PGA coming up. And first of all you're here for the Buick, maybe the golf course setup and your game.

SHAUN MICHEEL: I think since last year's PGA, I've certainly taken a lot of opportunities probably to do some other things off the Tour. Most importantly the birth of my son who is now eight months. I probably would not change that for the world. The one thing I have learned really over the last year as far as my game goes is that I need to be playing more. I've only played 17 events this year, and I know that for some people that's probably a lot, but I think in order to really be competitive, at least for my game, I need to be playing more. That's one thing I've learned about myself in the last year.

I certainly had some good tournaments. I was playing really well up through Atlanta, finished well at the Masters, it a Top 10 at THE PLAYERS Championship and took some time off and really played the paid the price, I suppose, with my game. Had some flashes of glory, three good rounds at the U.S. Open, and it was a very definitely last round I think for everyone.

Same at the Open Championship across the pond. I had some really nice rounds and it just kind of got caught up in the wind over there. My game, obviously everyone is talking to me more about the PGA, but we have another important tournament this week. I took last week off and tried to work on a few things. I feel really good with my game.

The golf course is in tremendous shape. I know there was probably some concern from everybody involved in the tournament, the tournament staff how the rain might affect the golf course. It's certainly playing much longer than I ever remember it. I think Kenny Perry had a great score, 20 something under a couple years ago. I don't think you'll see that. Just the par 5s really aren't reachable this year, at least through today. I fully anticipate that softness staying with us for the whole week.

The course is in excellent shape. The greens are always some of best we play. So my hat is off to what the staff has done to get the golf course in shape for this morning because I was really doubting they were going to be able to play on time this morning. So kudos to them.

Q. Rocco Mediate was in here last year saying basically the same thing; that he took some time off to spend with his family and his game suffered. But you don't get those times back; you realize there's a trade off there.

JIM FURYK: Doesn't matter what you do in life. I think there's a balance. I certainly maybe went the other way. I took to one extreme that maybe I wasn't playing. I know my wife over the last few years, I was really playing a lot, playing 30, 32 events which is a long time away from home, and that didn't include the practice time in the winter for me. So really I was gone 35, 36 weeks a year. So she kept asking me, "When are you going to come home?"

So I win and now I come home and now she's pushing me out to the course. So I know where I fall.

How many chances do you get to win major championships? There just are not that many out there for some of us. I wasn't traveling the world putting money in my checking account. I did a couple of things in the winter. I played the Franklin Templeton and played the Grand Slam of course. And I played Tiger's event, I played one event this year in Thailand and played well. But other than that I really haven't been jet setting.

I've just kind of I still have responsibilities to my sponsor and the PGA TOUR because there is where I'm a member.

You're right, you're not going to get those times back with your son. I see a lot of families traveling out here week after week after week, and I'm just not going to do that to my son or to my family. My wife doesn't really enjoy the lifestyle as much as some. When they are not out here, that means when I'm done playing, if I don't feel like playing the next week, then I don't. There are certainly times the last few years of my career that I've really had to play, and maybe there will come a time again that I will have to do that. But for right now, I'm trying to find that balance where I can spend some time at home and still work on my game.

Q. What is it about your game that makes you say you need to play more than many of the guys out here?

SHAUN MICHEEL: Well, I think just being competitive and being sharp. I played fairly well today and I hit some pretty good shots. But I think just overall, you don't learn much on the range. You can sit and practice all you want but you have to come out and practice shots and you have to score. I know if I just come out, you're going to hit the ball pretty well every time. Most of us have played enough golf, you pretty much tee it off and hit solidly. It's hitting the right club and there's decisions to be made out there. If you're not in the heat of the battle all the time, you kind of forget maybe how you're supposed to play. That's probably the biggest thing.

Q. Last year at the PGA, after the PGA, you said something like, you know like most guys do, "it's going to take me a while for this to sink in" and for you to make sense out of what happened. What did you find out about your game at the PGA and winning a major that you maybe didn't know before?

SHAUN MICHEEL: I started making some putts, and I think that's obviously a key in a major championship. I have gone back and looked at some of the video of what happened to me last year. And I know that really from day one through day four, I walked the same, I pretty much reacted the same, my mannerisms were the same and the bad shots really didn't affect me that much.

And this year, maybe it's just some of the pressure I've been putting on myself to duplicate what I did last year, I notice my attitude has changed a little bit. There have been times on the golf course where I've gone back and looked; maybe I shouldn't have . I'm not out there throwing clubs or anything like that. But I think you can tell when we are not playing well.

There are some guys like Jim who are absolutely masterful playing 1 through 18, and if they didn't have a scoreboard to look at, you wouldn't know if know shot 68 or 78. That's how I need to be and that's really what I took away. And next week when I'm at home I'm going to put those videos back in and go through some of that and try to duplicate that.

Q. Tell us about playing Whistling Straits last month.

SHAUN MICHEEL: It was a great day, first of all. You walk on to the property, you certainly don't realize that you're playing golf on a stateside golf course. The property itself is beautiful and it hard to believe that they "they" being Pete Dye and his crew, that moved almost 13,000 truckloads of sand because that property is an apparently was flat and had a runway on it at one point. It just looks like it's just so natural.

But, before I went up there, it was understood that they had cut the fairways nearly 40 acres down to 22 acres of fairway, so half. I immediately saw the length of the golf course when I first stepped on the first tee. The weather conditions certainly will play a big part in the championship, and it did that day.

It was a great day, I teed off pretty early in the morning, and the wind blew ten to 15 miles an hour, and the first four holes kind of go the first hole goes towards the water and the rest kind of parallel and the wind was straight out to the south. The second or third hole, maybe it was the fourth, the fourth hole was unreachable really in three shots. I hit it in the first cut of rough and I couldn't even move the ball more than about 150 yards just because of some cross bunkers.

It is such a long golf course, that if the wind comes up at all and they play the golf course the way it did when I played, it really felt like double digits over par could win the golf tournament. And I know how good these guys are, there are so many good players. In a way I kind of hope it plays that way because people are going to be looking at me like I'm kind of silly, but Bobby Clampett felt the same way. I felt the cut was going to be 12 to 14 over par.

And I know Pete Dye, I read some articles about him and he said that he designed the golf course to where par was could be almost unattainable. There's literally a thousand bunkers in play. There's probably 1,400 sand traps out there. And some of them, you just, you have a hard time even getting into them because they are not typical sand traps. They have lots of little shapes and they are pretty narrow they are not real wide. There will be a lot of times where you might get into one and you're trying to just figure out a way just to get the ball back into play, and there may be times that you can't even do that.

I played, I thought, pretty well that day. I didn't make any birdies and I shot 77 or 78, which is a high score. But you've never seen the golf course, when you see it for the first time, you'll understand that there are so many angles off the tees. There's very few, if any, real straight driving holes. You're always hitting angles or you're hitting in corners or bunkers. And the fairway, the fairway is so much narrower than really what you have in regular event because just you're hitting across a lot of fairways. I suspect practice rounds will take anywhere between 5 1/2 to 6 hours to play; it's that demanding. And yeah, exactly, I've kind of felt the same way as you did.

With a golf course that I said that I felt like I really needed to come up and play before the week got started, you've got 156 man field, and it really is going to test it's going to test the caddie as well. It's a very difficult walking golf course.

Spectators, it will be interesting to see how they have it, where the spectators are going to be positioned, because half the holes probably border Lake Michigan. So there's really one side of the golf course that you can't put spectators; so then you've got that element to deal with as well. It's just a tough golf course.

I overheard someone say from the PGA of America, I don't recall who it was, and I'm not sure that they knew that I was in the room when they said it. But I overheard someone say that it's too narrow; it's too hard. I don't know. It's going to play the same for everyone. And in a way, like I said maybe I wish they will play it all the way back. But there are fairways that I know if the wind blows, people won't be able to reach. And I'm speaking of 15, 518 yards or so. So you've got three par 4s that can potentially play over 500 yards, which is unheard of. But, they kind of built in for the technology.

And the greens, depending on how they mow and where put the pins, they can make it much like every hole is the 18th hole is named Diabolical, and when you see it, you know why it's named that.

Q. You've obviously thought a lot about this and probably thought about going back as Champion and sort of the hoopla that will surround that whole experience. What are your expectations for yourself then dealing with that course and dealing with all that extra stuff that's going to come with it?

SHAUN MICHEEL: I've already been kind of trying to mentally prepare myself for that. There's going to be a lot I think people have a certain interest in maybe how I see the golf course. And there will be issues on some of my comments and I'm sure there will be a lot of other people that they will be interested in hearing from as well.

But, I'm looking forward to it. And I said this, I mean how many times do you get a chance to defend in a major championship? So, I know that that's part of and in a way maybe I wish maybe I would have gone up to Whistling Straits and maybe played a couple more times before the practice round get started just, so I can maybe devote some time to stuff that's going on off the course.

I don't think it's going to affect me much. There is no more pressure on me that week than any other week that I've had. I'm still trying to play well and trying to win. In a way, I think maybe I'll be excited to maybe get my year over. If I don't win, turn the reins over to someone else because there have been parts of my life that have been very difficult for me the last year.

So as far as your question goes, I hope and I don't think it will affect me much, but at this point, I'm pretty well I understood what it takes to devote my time to practice, to media requirements and commitments and stuff like that. Those are all good things. We love having those opportunities to come in and speak with you. But it does take away some time off the golf course.

But I look forward to it. I'm excited about it. I'm taking my mom and dad up there with me and let them have a chance to see it. They were such a big part of my success and even getting me into golf, they were certainly a big part of CBS's coverage last year, so I'm anxious and happy for them.

Q. What are some down sides of the success you had, and winning a major what did that do for your own expectation level, because obviously that put you in your own category of player.

SHAUN MICHEEL: It did. I was certainly building on that part of my career anyway. I didn't have any victories prior to last year, but I felt like my game was starting to round into shape and I was getting a better understanding of what it takes to play well week in and week out.

Yeah, I've had pretty high expectations of myself. Nobody puts more pressure on you than yourself. I've had some really good friends out here. Jeff Sluman and Nick Price have been very instrumental in trying to help me understand that I don't have to say yes to everything.

The other part of your question is, I have said yes to almost everything, and only until recently have I kind of started saying no to a few things. That kind of upsets people. I think I'm a pretty sensitive person and I think people don't understand sometimes that we're out there working. We're playing a game but yet we are working. I'm still trying to make a living for myself and my family. I'm still trying to put food on the table. And sounds very simple, but that's really what I'm trying to do.

And sometimes when you say no to people, there's been a lot of nasty comments I've heard over the last couple of months, and not only of me, but to Ben Curtis, to Tiger Woods; and we all know Tiger is one of best players in the world. For people to say ugly things to him, you know, there's really no excuse for that.

I read something in an article in the Scottish I think it was the Scottish Sun the Monday after the Open Championship, and the article was basically, no more riffraff at the Open Championship, and what they were alluding to was that they felt like guys like Todd Hamilton and Ben Curtis not only did not deserve to win the golf tournament but didn't even deserve to be in the Open Championship at all. I felt like sending an e mail to the editor of that paper and wondering why this guy even still has a job, because he obviously doesn't understand that his golf tournament is an Open Championship and that's really what that means. If you don't want guys like us playing in it, don't have a qualifier and don't call it the Open Championship.

It just upset me. I know that you've got to have thick skin sometimes to play. I mean, most of the fans are great but sometimes they are not. There have been several incidents that I'm not going to mention them, but just have been people said some ugly things to me. And finally at one of the events, I finally just snapped back. I finally had enough, not like I was trying to put him in his place, but just that I was trying to explain where I'm coming from and why I was doing what I was doing. You know, I said no to something and somebody said something. I just explained, I said look, I'm trying to do trying to do the best that I can on the golf course, and if you just give me just a little bit of time, I'll sign your flag when I get finished playing today.

And that's why I said that I'm really looking forward to my year being over, because it's easy to handle the great things, but it's the great champions and the great people that handle the negative things. And I have done that for the most part, but there were times where I just felt like I needed to say something and I finally did.

Q. Since you brought it up, having said what you just said can you realize what it must be like for Tiger, eight major flags being thrown at him?

SHAUN MICHEEL: It's tough. I don't know how he does it. Tiger is a unique individual. He's a great golfer but he's just got a mindset for what goes on and what he's going to try achieve, and he's set out a plan for himself on how he's going to achieve those goals and he sticks to it.

You know, he has a unique ability to just kind of like let things just fall right off his back. He just does not seem to be unflappable, really. I can't imagine and I don't think that I ever want that. I did not come to the PGA TOUR to be the No. 1 player in the world. Maybe that's a goal that I should have and maybe try to become a Top 20 or Top 15 player in the world. But I don't understand how he does it.

And I'm amazed that he's able to play as well as he is, with some of the negative things that are written about him. Because even when he's not playing well and he's not winning, he's still contending and that's what I'm trying to do. Other than winning the PGA Championship, if I was having a year like he has had over the last few years, people would be like, my God, you're having the best year of your career. That's great. But they are looking at him like he's not doing anything special.

So I don't know how he does it. Maybe I don't want to know. I just don't have that much time. I've got other things. I mean, I'm 35 years old so there's an age difference for one. But, you know I have a family, and he'll have a family I'm sure some day soon, and maybe golf will become a little bit more of a lesser priority to him. But he's chosen that and he's played that and he's done incredibly well, so I don't ever want to know what that's like.

JOE CHEMYCZ: Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

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