SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

June 4, 2002

Bill Rogers

BRUCE LIETZKE: I just have to kind of shift my thinking a little bit. I played in a lot of World Series tournaments here and it feels -- it still has a different feel even though the golf course is basically the way I remember it. It looks like the greens have been rebuilt since I've been here. In my last NEC World Series, I think it was '95 or '96, the golf course looks a lot the same, but I'm here for a major championship so there is a little different feel here. And I have to shift my thinking from PGA tournaments and the World Series, which Bill happened to be a champion of in 1981, and shifted over to the old guys tour and get ready for the second major of the year.

BILL ROGERS: George, when did I see you?

BILL ROGERS: I guess it was The Masters, and you mentioned something about am I going to go. At that time I was still undecided. I can tell you even at our meeting it got me thinking a little bit more seriously about it. And having played today with kind of our old group, Bruce and Bobby Watkins and myself, I'm glad I made the decision to come. Obviously, I haven't been playing any, but I would say that the overriding reason that I'm here is because of what happened. I had one of my most special times ever here, winning the 1981 NEC. I'm just real happy I came. I had just forgotten how special a place this is and how special a golf course it is. And obviously the greens change. What year did that happen? Was it like '86 -- or it might have been later than that, that they changed the greens around. Nobody can remember. It was so far back. It's just as special as -- it's real interesting to see how they've opened it up with the new golf course. That really -- it was so dense back in that corner back in there, and it really has kind of taken on a different appearance because of the opening with this new golf course, but I'm happy to be here. I'm glad I made a decision to be here.

BRUCE LIETZKE: My son has been caddying for me this week and he's never seen the golf course. He was learning lots of things out there today. I said there are only two Par 5s. 16 is a 3-shot Par 5. It's not a hole you stand on and think you're going to make birdie. 2 is a reachable Par 5, but you have to hit two great shots. And there's not a hole anywhere else that you stand on the tee thinking I'm going to be able to pick one up here, not even a realistic chance. You're going to make some birdies out there, but you have to make some shots. I was telling him that it looks like we're playing a golf course where 70 or 71 is going to be a real good round. You will pass people up in this tournament on Saturday and Sunday with rounds of 70 and 71. And if you shoot 67 or 68, you're heading towards the lead and going to win a golf tournament with those kinds of scores. Yes, I can see even par, one or two under, winning this tournament for four days if the weather conditions are halfway normal. It is a real tough golf course. They've got a few tees shortened up from the way we played the World Series; not every tee. I'm going to say the golf course is probably 400 yards -- I'm sorry, not 400 -- it's probably maybe 180 yards shorter -- 180 to 200 yards shorter from the tips, which is the way we pretty much always played the World Series here. Not every tee is back and a couple of tees were about 20 yards back. I know Tiger can shoot some super low rounds here, but Tiger is not playing this week. I think 70s, 68s, 69s, and 70s are going to be good rounds this week.

BILL ROGERS: It was just time. There were a ton of reasons, but I don't think I was meant to kind of be a lifer on the tour. Children come along, raising a family, and getting kind of the loss of desire and competitive spirit to compete with the guys, was pretty much the handwriting on the wall for me. As a player, you certainly -- it was in my case, you would never want to face the scary scenario of never playing the game again and maybe becoming a club pro, but that's exactly what happened to me. I went and became a director of golf in San Antonio and spent 10 wonderful years doing that and got to see a family grow up, for the most part. Just recently in the past few years, I joined partnerships with a couple of friends of mine and we built a Fazio golf course, Briggs Ranch Golf Club. So we've been busy trying to make that successful and young in the game at that. And I've played a couple of times with the encouragement of Bruce. I am pleased he expressed interest. And I've been playing more in the last 6 months than I have in three or four years. And I mean that. I'm probably playing anywhere from four or five times a week, whereas I might not have played four or five times in a year.

BRUCE LIETZKE: That's true.

BILL ROGERS: But my interest has been piqued a little bit in thinking about coming out. And if you had asked me a year ago, I would say absolutely not. As things have kind of happened, it just begins to be a little more interesting, working on your game and seeing a little bit of proof coming around, there might be thoughts of playing a little bit more.

BRUCE LIETZKE: The senior tour added a new exemption in 2003 for players just like Bill that won majors or just won PGA tournaments, but for whatever reason didn't win enough career money to get that exemption when they turned 50. Bill is a prime example of what that exemption, actually three exemptions for next year, adding three players to the field, and that probably has -- I know that has helped ease his mind into playing a little bit of golf this year. I've been trying to get him to play some tournaments this fall so when that exemption does kick in next year, he won't have -- it won't have been 15 years since he played his last tournament golf. So I think he's going to play a few other times this fall and then if he wants to next year, that exemption, he falls right in with that exemption, and he can play as much golf as he wants next year.

BILL ROGERS: I probably became a little bit complacent. Frankly, I don't think I was willing to pay the price to stay up at that level. Who knows what that's all about. Maybe it's just kind of where you came from and who you were. It just wasn't my makeup, I don't think. You know, I was perfectly content, kind of chugging along making a living and having success on the tour. I wasn't one of the dreamers. I want to win major championships and stuff like that which you hear about on the young tour. But I was content with what I was doing. It all happened in a hurry. Frankly, I was a bad time manager. I didn't handle all the responsibilities that came with it. And that was part of the plan as well. I have no regrets how everything has turned out. Heck, I had a great go. It wasn't completely like I fell away. I mean, I very much could have won the Watson Open in '82. I was right there. I'm not going to say -- that was kind of the way it turned out. Then the one in '83. But I would say beginning about in '85, the handwriting was on the wall for me. I wasn't willing to go keep up with the pace of it there.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I can't remember 1977. I can't remember one thing in 1977. Actually, my first win was the Tucson Open, and what I remember was making an 82-foot putt. It was the 4th playoff hole. And this was against Gene Littler. So this tells you how far back this goes. It was an 82-foot putt on the playoff hole to beat Gene in a playoff. That, and the couple of times I won Colonial are the tournaments that I cherish more than the others. I wouldn't trade any of my tournaments in for anything, but that first win I think for everybody is always extra special. And especially to make a putt like I did. And being a Texas boy and winning Colonial a couple of times was always special. What was your second question?

BRUCE LIETZKE: We have a lot of similarities. I was never a dreamer of being the No. 1 player. I wanted to win major championships not to become famous, but to get a 10-year exemption to keep plodding along. The money and all the fame, you can have, but I wanted that 10-year exemption. And Bill and I had families. His daughter and my son are virtually identical age. And his son and my daughter are identical ages. They grew up in nurseries. And my kids started school in 1988 and I looked at that club pro thing too, actually. I was willing to quit the tour to be at home with my kids and to be a father. What I did instead was cut my schedule back to where I decided I would not play 22 or 24 events. I cut it back to 15 or 16 and then cut it back from there. But that was all family oriented, and without a doubt -- golf fell off my priority list the year. My son was born in 1983. I played eight years from '75 to '83 where golf was the No. 1 thing. I wanted to make Ryder Cup teams and win majors and see how far up the money list I could go. And the day my son was born in '83, golf fell way down the priority list and it will never work its way up. It will always probably be fourth or fifth on my list of priorities for the rest of my life. Instead of doing the club pro thing, I cut the schedule back and I found I was fairly competitive and earned a living and played well, and actually won a few tournaments. I was very fortunate it worked out that way.

BILL ROGERS: Believe me, I would have liked to have done it like Bruce and do it in my spare time and had the ability to do that. Nobody else will ever be able to do it like he's done it. That's what kind of everybody would dream of. But he was able to pull it off and has continued to pull it off.

BILL ROGERS: It was a slow process to the end for me. It wasn't like I'm going to retire. But if the truth be known, when I left the tour in '88, you know, really the whole deal started, I would say in 1986, is when I -- I still had six years left of exemption, of which I gained right here at Firestone. I had a 10-year exemption. I had six years -- what, five years of an exemption left, after '86, and then three years after '88. But still it was time.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Our freshman year at college. There were 23 freshman that showed up for the golf team at the University of Houston in September of 1969. And of those 23 that showed up for freshman golf, we're the only two that came back. Dave Williams chased everybody -- we played with Bobby Wadkins. He came in as a freshman. He got run out of there. We were suite mates our freshman year in the dorm. And then we were roommates the next three years. But that's the first time we had run into each other. Both of us played high school golf in Texas, but if we ever played against each other, we don't remember it. So freshman year in Houston is when we bumped into each other.

BILL ROGERS: It's at the house.

BILL ROGERS: I can distinctly remember the last hole and hitting a 5-iron about 15 feet and making the putt to beat Tom Kite by a shot. I mean --

BRUCE LIETZKE: You birdied 18?

BILL ROGERS: Yes. I had no choice. I can remember that. But what's amazing is I was out there strolling around today and kind of had forgotten about a couple of holes. As fond a memory as that was, you'd think I would know every blade of grass. But maybe things have been tweaked a little bit. The trees certainly in 20-something years have grown a lot too. It was a relearning of the golf course experience.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Did you say Kite or Watson?

BILL ROGERS: Kite.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Where was the pin on 18? Do you remember.

BILL ROGERS: Well, it's not even the same green. It was kind of left.

BILL ROGERS: Well, it was heady. I can tell you that. It's a sport that will drive the ego. There's no question about that. And the more success, the better you feel about everything and everybody is reminding you how good you are. It's heady territory. And to be honest with you, I mean, it's kind of considered -- or it's nice to be considered, you know, as a -- whether it was a superstar or whatever at the time, I had a good little go there and I kind of not like to boil it down to really that one year. I mean, I felt like the beginning of my amateur career, I had a nice little gradual improvement right through to what happened in '81. And I'm kind of proud of all of that. But to be thrown in that arena. And as a British Open champion, as opposed to the Master's, the world -- you're kind of the world's champion and with that came a demand on time, travel, and I went after every deal and I burned it at both ends and went after it with gusto like it would never end, and I probably burned it a little too hard. Some people call it burnout, but that was all part of your first question, what happened kind of type deal. But you don't think -- you kind of think that it will never end. Like Weiskopf, I'll never forget him saying, when you're playing good, you never think you'll play bad again. When you're playing bad, you never think you'll play good. I won seven times that year around the world. There is no reason to believe -- I can distinctly remember teeing it up in Phoenix, at Phoenix country club in 1982. My first tournament coming back from South Africa saying, Here we go, you better prove that you can do it again, which is ridiculous. And that was something that I didn't quite know how to handle. I put the immediate pressure -- and I never kind of worked out of that probably.

BILL ROGERS: I admire him. He didn't have a good run on the young group. And, man, he's killing them -- I guess he's got all his deals squared away so that's all he wants to do, and I admire him for taking advantage of it. He seems to enjoy it. If he was doing it just -- if there was some drudgery involved, I would question his motives about it, but he appears to enjoy it, I guess.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I think he's a mental case. (Laughter) No, Bill is right. I don't think it's possible for anybody to have a PGA Tour career and do all the traveling and the wear and tear, the psychological wear and tear. Professional golf isn't very taxing physically, but mentally over a long period of time it really can wear you down. I just don't think there will ever be somebody that plays 32 or 33 weeks on a PGA Tour until they're 50 and come out here and play the same amount of tournaments. I've never seen anybody like that. But Dana had his club pro job and I guess he played golf every day, but not the true competitive golf that he's playing now, and he's just -- he's just like Bill and I when we were rookies, our first couple years on tour. We played every tournament. You want to see the courses, you're trying to make some money. He's been sitting in a pro shop for years and years and he's just doing what he loves to do now. And he is a golf-aholic. He plays golf every day even on his weeks off. I truly don't understand that. He loves doing it.

BILL ROGERS: Has anybody checked his cigars, what he's smoking. There's something to that. You don't want to get ahold of one of those (laughter).

BRUCE LIETZKE: Playing that much you mean?

BRUCE LIETZKE: I'm going to play 20 or 22 events this year. Now, the Senior Tour, they have shorter weeks. And I'm actually at home -- even the weeks when I decide to play, I can be home Mondays and Tuesdays. And I do have two kids, my son is going to college this year, his daughter is in college already and my younger is two years away, has two more years of high school, and my schedule will probably go up from 25 or 26 events when they're in college and they don't need our physical presence. They need the money coming in on a pretty regular basis, but yeah, my schedule will go from about 20 to 25 or 26. My wife will travel with me and I'll do the Senior Tour for -- I'm thinking for about eight or 10 years I want to play the tour, the Senior Tour.

BILL ROGERS: And his son is caddying for him, this week, Steven is caddying for him. So that's a pretty special deal.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Yes, I have a 18-year-old son and 16 year-old daughter.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Oklahoma.

BRUCE LIETZKE: He plays, he's not going to try out for the golf team this year. He's looking more at fraternities than golf programs right now.

BILL ROGERS: That won't happen, but I'll have a good experience no matter what happens. But with that little bit of a carrot of an exemption next year, if I continue to feel -- I haven't played enough to really know, but I hit enough shots to think that I can get it around a little bit, and some of the other stuff isn't so good yet around the greens, but if I give myself a little bit of a job -- I just so enjoyed today. It's like what we used to do. We walked around. We had a heck of a day. It's what we used to do and I really had a great time doing it. But I still have obligations and a lot to do at home, too, and getting our place successful.

BILL ROGERS: Yes.

BILL ROGERS: It's in San Antonio.

BILL ROGERS: I don't think so. I took my son to the 2000 Millennium Open at St. Andrews, and they had a champions four-hole -- past champions little four-hole get-together with the team and stuff. And I literally -- that three-hole arena of 1, 17 and 18, there must have been 50,000 people, and I hadn't pulled off a shot in front of anybody in a long time. And I swear I was -- it was unbelievable, it was like the first time I ever hit a golf shot. I was so frightened that anything could happen. But the fact that Paul Lawrie and Weiskopf snatched a couple out of bounds helped my feelings.

BRUCE LIETZKE: And you played with Daly, right? And you know Daly is about to do something, so that took some of the pressure off.

BILL ROGERS: I tell you, to go over there for a Senior British Open, I might think about that, but not the regular show, no.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I called him every day for the past four years. Every since we new the Senior Tour -- we've talked on a weekly basis really forever. Like I said, our families are extremely close. We take summer vacations and winter vacations with our family, so we've kept in touch, and when this senior thing came around and I knew I was making enough money and I was making plans for the Senior Tour. My kids were almost out. And I started talking to him a little bit about it. And boy, two years ago, there was not a thread of desire for him to come out here, but I kind of chipped away, and the one thing we decided to do was that Legends tournament. It was a team event. I couldn't get him out here for an individual tournament, but I said they have that Legends team deal. We have to do it. Even though we were terrible in the Ryder Cup, we lost Ryder Cup points, we played the Disney team, never made the cut, but we decided to play in that. Even though they ended up changing the format and I could have played in the individual thing, this had been planned for a long time, and we ended up winning that. And I saw a little spark in him. He might have had one -- he played in San Antonio last year and he also played in Tampa Bay this year, and I don't know if he had sparks there or not, but he played great the second day at this team deal and I saw the old Bill Rogers. His speech pattern was picking up and he walked a little bit faster. And sure enough, he called up and said, "I'm thinking of playing at Firestone, and I'm thinking about playing in Minnesota I have a spot there." So just a little bit of exposure to it, he's played a couple on his own and then the Legends tournament where he played so well, I think that got his interest going a little bit. That's all I could do. I certainly didn't want to force him out here. He didn't like golf very much when he left the tour in '88 and '89, and I didn't want to force any of those demons on him, but the Senior Tour is a pretty fun place to be. Like he said, coming out, playing practice rounds with old friends, we're playing tomorrow with Crenshaw. As some of you guys know, Bill and I were assistant captains to Crenshaw for the Ryder Cup in '89, and we're playing a practice round tomorrow. And those great memories we can rehash tomorrow is some of the reasons Bill wants to play more tournaments, to see guys like Crenshaw and the Wadkins brothers and guys we grew up with.

BILL ROGERS: I'll tell you a good story on Bruce you've never heard. When we got out of school, he was burned out. He absolutely wanted nothing to do with golf. So his father got him a job at the Mobile oil refinery in Beaumont as a security guard. And of course I said, look, you've got to be kidding. We were out playing mini tours, having a nice time. And sure enough, about four or five months into these mini tours, we're in Savannah and the phone rings. I have got a picture of him out there in the house and they've issued him a gun and one bullet and it's locked up in the drawer.

BRUCE LIETZKE: It's the Barney Fife story.

BILL ROGERS: And that phone rings and he said, "How is it out there?" I said, "Lietzke, I finished third this past week and made $5,000 and stuff." And that was the start.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I was earning three bucks an hour on the graveyard shift being a security guard.

BILL ROGERS: He was out there for the next series in three weeks. He gave the gun back.

BRUCE LIETZKE: It's all come around. Because he started calling me, "How is that Senior Tour out there." "Well, I just made $40,000." It's all come around.

BILL ROGERS: No, but it is a different atmosphere. I think it's conducive to kind of continuing relationships and we've had such a good relationship. I mean, I miss that as much as anything. That's probably one reason I enjoyed today so much. We did it in San Antonio, when I played, and then in Tampa. There is a lot of good stuff going on.

BILL ROGERS: I've got again, back to specific obligations with a business in making it. I'll have to see how much can be done and really understand this exemption deal. I'm still not 100 percent and all there is to know about that, but it would appear it allows me to play some with -- we'll just see what makes sense, but I have a feeling I'll play a little bit. I was always the kind of the player, I have to play a lot. The more I played, the better I was. And to think that I can come out here and play like Bruce, there is no way. It's a different deal.

BILL ROGERS: Kind of. I had Johnnie Miller as a little bit of a role model or idle. I like the way he did it. But yeah, I was in awe stumbling into Nicklaus. Jim McClean and I played in 1971 U.S. Open at Merion. We were juniors in college. I'll never forget. We walked into the locker room. We're sitting there. And nobody else was in there, but we were eating a sandwich. Actually there was another table of players. Nicklaus walks in and says, "Anybody want to go play a practice round?" We slid under the table. We were so scared. We could have gone and played with him, but we were so scared we slid under the table. He never saw us. But we were in awe of everybody.

BILL ROGERS: Absolutely. That's one thing that I think I had a little bit of a misconception. I did some TV for ABC, and I was the rover on the course, and I saw the Chrysler team, and this was probably five or six years ago, and I was really kind of amazed at the competitiveness then, that I thought they were kind of out there slapping each other on the butt saying -- but I've been very amazed -- everybody still plays very good and they are the still putt well. It's very competitive. You can always yuck it up when it's yucking up time, but there is still plenty of competitiveness. There's still plenty of that going on. It's not joke time inside the ropes.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Sunday was the greatest day I ever spent on a course, which is kind of weird. It's an individual sport and we both -- Julius was right there. That was the greatest day of golf. It far surpasses any of my individual deals. It surpasses our Ryder Cup team victory in '81. That was just a quiet little match in '81. There is something special -- especially through the years now, I have coached my son's golf team for four years, I was a baseball coach for both my kids. There is something special about team victories and team sports, and I'm so happy I ended up playing golf; you're all on your own and you get all the credit, you get all the blame. But there is something extra special with team victories. And Bill and I didn't hit a single shot, but the team members made sure we felt we were part of the team. Crenshaw welcomed us in and it was so gratifying to watch most of the guys younger than us, Mark O'Meara and Hal Sutton or kind of our generation players, but mostly it was younger kids that weren't -- we were familiar with, and to watch those guys come together and spill their guts out in meetings, you could just feel the pressure and see the pressure out there. And that Sunday was the more glorious day I've ever spent. My son was there, my family was there. And again we're both kind of family oriented guys, and to have them there and watch this adopted family of 12 golfers and one of your great all-time friends, Ben Crenshaw, be the victorious captain, I don't think I'll ever spend a better day on the golf course.

BILL ROGERS: There was nothing that we weren't -- we were there for every --

BRUCE LIETZKE: Every player, assistant captains, all of our wives, all of their wives, everybody was in on that meeting. It was emotional that night. And then by Sunday evening when these guys had performed the greatest come back of all times, I just kept going back to the things that the players had said the night before and watched them put it into action the next day. I was just so proud of those guys.

BILL ROGERS: It was way up there. It was close to a tie. It was a special day. I think as Bruce would say, my son was right there too. He saw every shot I saw. That was just -- he'll wake up one day, maybe when he's 20 or 30 and he'll say, "Golly, that was pretty unreal." He didn't realize it then, but there will never be another one like it, despite all the aftermath and -- it was just too special.