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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 28, 2004

Gary Player

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

RAND JERRIS: It's our pleasure to be joined by Gary Player in the interview area. Mr. Player is the 1987 and 1988 Senior Open champion, and he's playing his 17th Senior Open this week. Gary was also the 1965 U.S. Open champion here at Bellerive. Gary, it must be pretty special for you to return to Bellerive to a place like this.

GARY PLAYER: Very much so. It's a privilege. They've got the course -- it's not possible to get a golf course in better shape than this week, absolutely fantastic. The zoysia grass on the fairways is outstanding. The course is very tough, it's very long. I just heard the USGA better not do silly things like they did at the regular Open and leave it, and it is because if they leave it as it is now, it's going to be absolutely perfect. If they start messing around with it and not watering the greens -- these are very, very undulating greens, extremely undulating, and if you do not water them, and you start trying little funny tricks, they could become very close to unplayable. They have to be very careful they don't mess around with these greens. Just leave it as it is; it's a great test.

RAND JERRIS: If I could follow up a little bit on 65, if you have any specific memories from that week in 65, for example, who your caddie might have been this week.

GARY PLAYER: Well, I went to an appearance in Manchester last night for Callaway, and it was really very touching. The young man who caddied for me, Frank, and his father who's still alive and his brother and his mother all came to say hello to me, which was really nice. I gave the old granny a big hug and a kiss, and it was really nice to see them there. Also, the big thing for me in 65 is that I was trying to be the first modern player to win the Grand Slam before I turned 30 years of age.

We had seen quite a few players in history who needed one more tournament to win the Grand Slam but never did it, and so the final one is always the tough one where the pressure is. Jack Nicklaus, I've got to give him a lot of credit for my win here in 65, because he said, "Come and practice with me and spend a week at Bellerive." I said, "No, no, I don't have enough money to go do things like that. I want to go to the next tournament." I think it might have been Greensboro if I'm not mistaken. He said, "Come on, familiarize yourself with the course." I came up here and practiced with him for the week, and that definitely made a very, heavy, big difference.

I was at my fittest that I ever was. I weighed 20 pounds more than I weigh now, and I'll never forget I was doing these heavy weights, and there was a very famous architect, I won't mention names, an old architect who said Gary Player will never last, he's doing all this weight training, and it's impossible to do weight training with golf. Babe Ryan, one of the greatest football coaches, never had a dumbbell in his gymnasium. He said the same thing. His team would finish dead last. I know this man is up in heaven and looking at Tiger Woods and everybody else pump iron and say, "Wow, things have really changed."

RAND JERRIS: I want to take a moment to acknowledge your caddie from 1965 who has joined us (applause).

GARY PLAYER: It's amazing. In those days, they gave him a check for $2,000. I suppose you could multiply it by 40 now, but it's amazing now, $20,000 or $25,000, and I remember this man as a boy very well walking around and being so efficient and so enthusiastic, and it was nice to see your mom and dad.

FRANK PAGEL: Thank you.

GARY PLAYER: It was a great moment for me to have won the Grand Slam. I told -- and they thought I was being absolutely nuts, and I told them my Grand Slam on the Senior Tour was a greater effort than my Grand Slam on the regular Tour. He said, "How can you say that?" I said I had a long many, many years to win the Grand Slam on the regular Tour, and when you're young, you're going to every tournament and you expect to win it. Every time Arnold teed up, every time Jack teed up, every time I teed up, we really thought we were going to win the tournament, and we had 30 years or more to do that.

But on the Senior Tour, and it's still not really realized in the United States, the rest of the world have no idea, just how tough it is to win on this Champions Tour. You've got a short window to do it. You've got a maximum of eight years to do it. And when I tell people that, they think I'm a bit nuts.

If you look at the U.S. Open where Tom Watson and Don Pooley played in a playoff, that was as good a golf as Tiger Woods and Ernie Els playing in a playoff, holing 25-footers on top of each other, birdieing on top of each other. It was so spectacular. You look at the scores these guys shoot on the Champions Tour, and I must say, equipment has a lot to do with it, but they are also guys who go to the gym and having a gym on the Tour and training, first time they had a money incentive. We never had any monies to play for -- there we are, won the U.S. Open and won $20,000 or $25,000. What's the first prize this week?

Q. $470,000.

GARY PLAYER: What a difference. Arnold and I never won that as leading money in our lives for the whole year (laughter). It's interesting to see.

Golf has made the most dramatic changes. You see a lot of guys now winning tournaments, a lot more guys are able to do it because the gap has closed because of the equipment. If you had to play, say, Sergio without any grooves on your club and with a wooden shaft and try and play against him, he'd kill you he's got such great touch. But if you always use the club with the grooves and lightweight shafts, it brings people together. It's harder to separate them. The cream will always rise to the top, but it's harder to separate them much more than in the old days.

Q. You mentioned the 65 win completing the Grand Slam, but now in retrospect that having been your only U.S. Open victory, does that make this event even more special coming back here where you won your only Open back in 1965?

GARY PLAYER: Well, I think, you know, the only Open that I won here, but I finished 2nd twice, and you're very close to winning. I have enjoyed the U.S. Open golf courses very much because you have to keep the ball in play and you don't find all these long hitters having a tremendous advantage that they can hit balls way off line and get birdies. Here you've got to keep the ball in play.

I think that the U.S. Open Seniors, the two Open Seniors that I won, I won the one tournament where I went 69, 68, 67, 66. That sticks out in my memory as one of my greatest achievements in my life. I kept getting one better. That was the record for the Senior Open until somebody came along and beat it.

So, it's always a bit hard to pinpoint in your career which tournament gave you -- which meant the most to you. If I had to do that in my life, I still think the best golf courses that played championships on are links golf courses in Scotland. When you play here, if it's 150 yards you know it's an 8-iron. Ray Charles knows it. If you play in Britain one day you're driving a 3-iron and the next day you're hitting a sand wedge. You just don't play by yardage, you play by instinct, you play with feel, and links golf courses -- we just played the Senior British Open on Portrush, which is probably the best golf course in the world. That is some test of golf. All these major championships have different challenges and are very difficult to win.

Q. You succeeded Bobby Locke as the next great champion out of South Africa and now Ernie Els has succeeded you as the next great champion out of South Africa. We were contrasting what you accomplished in your career with your talent with what Ernie has done to date. Would you characterize him as having underachieved relative to you?

GARY PLAYER: Well, he's been runner-up in quite a few majors already. I was runner-up seven times in majors. So everybody has wins -- not everybody, but a lot of players have runner-ups and wins. He's won three major championships at this stage, which is very good, and he's probably the best player in the world today right now. Right now he's probably the best player in the world. I think he's done very well. I think he has a swing -- the most beautiful golf swing that any human being has ever had, but Sam Snead -- the most effective golf swings that has ever been displayed is Ben Hogan, and I think Ernie Els, his swing ranks with Sam Snead as far as beauty and grace is concerned. He's a big man.

I don't think you should ever compare eras. To compare Tiger Woods with Jack Nicklaus, anybody who does that doesn't know anything about golf because, you're comparing oranges with watermelons. You've got a metal head as opposed to a wood head. I looked at the club I won the U.S. Open the other day, and I could not believe my eyes. The shaft was that thick, and I held the club like this and it went, "boing," and I put a marble face in my woods. I had a ball with a fiberglass center in it. The ball went 50 yards less than it does today. If you look at the driver head with the ball, it was like a miracle. I just holed putts from all over. Now, that metal head with the ball is going 50 yards further. Golf is in a very serious predicament at the moment professional-wise. Leave equipment as it is for amateurs, but R & A and the USGA, they still don't get it. They don't realize what's happening in golf.

The ball goes 50 yards further. Larry Nelson, who is 54 now, a very quiet, unassuming guy, says I hit the ball 50 yards further, and many guys hit it 50, 60 yards further.

The way we're going now, all golf courses are going to be obsolete because in 40 years' time, you'll have a Tour -- there's never been a big man yet to play golf. Only one in the history of the golf game has there been one big man, George Bayer. We've never had a big man, but we're going to have a tidal wave. You're going to have a Tour of Michael Jordans in 40 years time, and they'll all be hitting the ball 400 yards. They've got a guy on the Nationwide Tour who averages 350. It's coming.

Right now, right at this moment in any golf tournament, there's no such thing as a par 5 anymore. No such thing for these regular guys. Every time they tee up now, par 68. There's no such thing as a par 72. It's 68.

So where are we going? What's going to happen? You cannot compare the golf ball, the condition of these greens -- when I look at the condition of these greens as compared to when I won here, and I look at these fairways, I mean, I played 36 holes here. I haven't had a slightly bad lie, not even a slightly bad lie. It never used to be like this. Everything is just perfection.

As we sit here, there are people sitting in their little factories and big factories and trying to make the ball go further and trying to come out with a new driver, and I believe there are a lot of golfers today that are playing golf with drivers that are not 100 percent legal. How are you going to tell them? Cut it open? Try it, you'll get sued.

I think it's a very serious thing what's happened. Jack Nicklaus agrees with me, and I don't know of a pro golfer that doesn't. I see guys out here now hitting the ball over 300 yards. They couldn't do that when they were young men in their lives at the prime of their strength. So I don't know where we're going.

Q. Given what you were just talking about, you remember the clubs you were hitting into the greens? How do you compare what you were clubbing then as compared to what you're doing now?

GARY PLAYER: Very interesting question. I haven't worked it out, but it would be interesting for me to see. One club less, and if you gave me the same clubs, if you gave me the same clubs, I'd be three clubs worse. If you brought the same clubs I used in 65, I'd be at least three because I'm a short hitter now. I'm nearly 70 years of age, one year to go, but yet today, I got around the course very comfortably.

Q. You mentioned your age, and as you age -- I know recently you mentioned that you're going to continue coming to events like this and playing, but is it kind of a personal thing for you because you just enjoy coming to events like this and playing, or is it good for the game of golf as an advancement of the game or is it a mixture of both of those?

GARY PLAYER: It's a mixture of both. I'm not only going to continue events like this, I'm going to continue the Tour. I love playing golf. I'm trying to be the first person in America to ever win in six decades. I've broken my age this year around the world six times. I'm still athletic enough to win. I haven't been playing particularly well this year, but golf changes in a matter of seconds, minutes. You can find something, and I'm still a very good putter and I can still play reasonably well. I've got an outside chance to do it. I'd have to have a great putting week, have to be on the right kind of golf course.

I love people, and I love travel. I find it -- well, it's without a question the best education that one can obtain, better than any college degree or university. I enjoy traveling and I'm designing a lot of golf courses, over 200 golf courses around the world, visiting a lot to mainland China, Poland, Bulgaria, a lot of countries that I never went to to learn their traditions, in Qatar, in the Middle East, you learn an awful lot, and I love it. I've traveled 14 million miles, and I enjoy it. It's part of my life.

Q. At the risk of asking you to do the apples and oranges thing again, the one thing that has not changed over that time period is the mind, and I'm wondering from your standpoint, has there ever been a great golfer who wasn't mentally superior on the golf course to the people they were beating, and do you think the mental aspect of the game today is as sharp and dominant as it might have been for you or Arnold or Jack or Hogan or whoever it might be?

GARY PLAYER: It's very difficult to know what's in another man's mind, but I can only tell you that Jack Nicklaus wasn't the best striker of the golf ball that I ever saw, and yet Jack Nicklaus' record on paper is probably the best record in America by a long way. Jack Nicklaus had the best mind that I've ever seen in a golfer, ever. I think Tiger has got a great mind, but I think Nicklaus has got more patience than Tiger. If you watch them both, I think Jack's patience is a little better. I'm not saying that Tiger doesn't have patience. I'm giving Nicklaus an A plus and I'm giving Tiger an A.

The big change that's going to take place in golf is obviously the mind. The equipment we know now is out of all proportion. We've got guys who are now training that never used to train but they are starting to more and more. The next two big changes, the biggest improvement is going to be food, number one, and the mind, number two.

I'm not sure -- it's very difficult for me to digest it. I would hate to have a psychiatrist walking around with me or psychologist telling me or living with me. I don't want that. A lot of young guys do want it, and I cannot criticize it at all. I cannot criticize it because that's what they are thriving on and they need, but not for me. I wouldn't want that. I want to do it myself.

I think guys -- it's a very difficult question to answer. Maybe when you struggle more, there's more on a plate available to young people today than there was when we played, so maybe you had to use your mind a bit more. You had to to survive, whereas today you can be a nice player and be a multi, multi-millionaire. In our days you couldn't be a nice player and be a multi, multi-millionaire. It's a very difficult question to answer. Jack Nicklaus, I still rank him the best mind I've ever seen. Ben Hogan had a phenomenal mind. Tom Watson had a great mind.

Q. Gary Player?

GARY PLAYER: Well, I have to being so small because all these other guys were my size when they were six (laughter).

I think what I'm trying to say is we went through more adversity in our careers, having to travel on a Greyhound Bus, having to hitchhike a ride, not traveling in G-5s and G-4s and G-3s. Now you see the caddies coming in on single-engine planes. I think it's fantastic. Change is the price of survival. I think it's fantastic. If it didn't get that way, it would be sad. I think it's wonderful to see the changes that are taking place and the monies that these guys are making. We used to travel around the world for a $10,000 or a $15,000 appearance. Most of these guys won't even travel around the world for a $200,000 appearance, so the world has changed.

I'm very pleased I played when I did play because I mixed more than the average man in the street. I mixed in at country clubs and had dinners and I dined with the members. I had a different life, and I'm pleased I came along when I did.

Q. You mentioned the situation with the money that players are making today. Out of curiosity, what was it that led you to donate your winnings from the U.S. Open here in 1965. Was that or something that came up at that point in time?

GARY PLAYER: No, it was very simple. I think I realized to the full extent having traveled so much just what this great country has done for the world. America has been the great samaritan. When people wanted help -- I saw them going to few other countries other than England and America, and they always obliged and helped. I appreciated what American golf, the opportunity it had given me, and I said to Joe Dey when we were playing at Oakmont, I said, "One day when I win this great championship, whatever the prize is," I can remember saying on the 18th hole at the golf course, at Oakmont, and I said, "If the prize is $20,000, $50,000 or $100,000, it's a little secret, I'm going to make a donation." My mother died of cancer when I was eight, so I wanted whatever it was to go to cancer, Junior Golf and the USGA for improvement of the game of golf because the R & A and the USGA and the PGA have been wonderful groups of people that have really done so much for this wonderful game of golf.

RAND JERRIS: Well, Gary, thanks very much for your time today. We wish you luck this week.

End of FastScripts.

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