PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 17, 2002

Rich Beem

RICH BEEM: Gosh, like what? I can't even think right now. My round was a lot better today as far as ball-striking goes. Putting was, I thought, really tough out there to get the speed of the greens down there with all of the wind and everything blowing around. Started off really well with a great little second shot in there at No. 1. Knocked it about two feet or so. I got to have to a really good frame of mind. I just really hit it solid for, gosh, up until No. 14 and then I really had kind of the wrong club. I carried a second 4-iron, that's a little bit longer with a different head on it because I don't hit my long irons very good and that was my first really bad swing of the day, but that was more not the right club than anything else. Then 17, I thought I hit a great little shot in there and just, you guys probably saw it, caught the top of the trees somehow and went back in the bunker, decent bunker shot, but you don't want to be above that hole putting for par. I misread that a little bit. And then made the par save on 18.

RICH BEEM: Absolutely. I kind of got the best of my rules official in the group. I kind of got his gander up a little bit. I was off the green. When you're off the green, you can touch the line of your putt, you can sweep debris off the green with a towel, with basically anything that you want, and I was off the green, and I just walked up there and there's a bunch of stuff in my line, instead of trying to sweep everything with my hand, I did it with my hat and I knew that was going to raise a few eyebrows, but I knew the ruling specifically, and I didn't even think twice about it. But I knew that it was going to get the attention of a bunch of folks, and it did. Mission accomplished, I guess. (Laughs.)

RICH BEEM: You know, I don't remember the rules, he was with our group today, and unfortunately, I don't. He was a really nice guy and I don't remember his name, I'm so bad with names. But, yeah, he asked me about it, he stopped me after I walked off the green and he was hesitant and I basically point-blank told him, "I was off the green and I'm allowed to do that." He went through the rule book -- he knew the ruling book, as well, but he wanted to double-check. He told me, "Yeah, you can touch the line of your putt with your putter, you can do anything you want to." So I knew what I was doing and I knew it was going to raise some controversy, but I thought, what the hell, give you guys something to chat about. (Laughs).

RICH BEEM: Yeah, I think he's going to be really tough to catch. Not saying it's impossible, and there's a lot of really great players behind him. Tiger is only four back and whatnot. If he keeps hitting the ball like he did today and has his touch around the greens, especially with the putter, he's going to be pretty unbeatable. So, I'm looking forward to watching it firsthand.

RICH BEEM: Instead of one swig, I'll probably take a couple of them and I'll probably do it in the locker room so nobody sees how big a swig, but I think it's going to be more than one.

RICK BEEM: I sure hope so, because if I hit here and I go to bed tonight thinking about being in the final group of a major, I'm not going to get any sleep no matter how many pills I take. I've said it before, I don't feel like -- I don't feel like I have anything to lose tomorrow. I'm still not too sure -- I don't have any expectations of winning, I guess that's the easiest way to put it. I don't discount the fact that I can play with these guys, but to win a major, you have to have something special, and I don't know if I have it. I know that I can beat some of the best players in the world, as I proved in The INTERNATIONAL, but majors are something special and something different. So, I'm certainly looking forward to the opportunity tomorrow. I'm looking forward to finding out exactly what it takes to win a major. I would expect the winner would come out of our group, but we'll see.

RICH BEEM: Actually, it's been one of just kind of pointing me in the right direction. He's kind of helped me out with my swing, at times, through college. But he helps me more with the playing aspect of the game. My dad was a great player, First-time All American in New Mexico State back in '63 or '64. He was a great player, great ball striker, doesn't really have the financial backing, at the time, to try it. So, he's actually helped me more with the playing aspect of golf than he has, really, with his swing. My dad is a great teacher and whatnot, but I'm more slash at it as hard as you possibly can, chase it, and hit it again. He helped me develop, be more creative on the golf course than anything else. Hit big hooks and big slices like Chi Chi Rodriguez, knock it down and go ahead and slash at it off the tee, like Seve. These are the players that he liked to watch because they were actually playing golf; they were not making swings. So, Seve is one of my heroes, because how fun is it to watch a guy who is hitting it in the middle of everywhere and get it up-and-down. That, to me, is golf.

RICH BEEM: I think we were all trying to be aggressive. When it's blowing 40 miles an hour out there, sometimes sideways, you can't really -- I don't know of any pins that were that accessible, that you can go ahead and fire at through the first five holes. I think that the golf course is playing extremely difficult, especially in those holes, because I think that's when the wind was at its actual hardest. I think we were trying to jockey for position a little bit and trying to get through the first five or six holes in a certain rhythm, I'll say that, but I'm not too sure we were really tip toeing because it was extremely difficult and we were trying to get into a nice groove, a nice rhythm, which is what you need to do, I think, under those condition. If you start off and you're making bogeys and birdies and anything else in between, you don't have a really good rhythm. If you're hitting the fairways, knocking it on the greens 4 feet and giving yourself opportunities, I think that's a better way to start off instead of slashing and birdieing, start off the first six holes, bogey three and birdie the other three, I would rather start off with six straight pars, especially in these conditions.

RICH BEEM: They are going to be running pretty fast and furious and I will be sucking oxygen and talking to my caddie as much as possible. The crowds have been really supportive all week and that's been great. The majors, like I said before, they are something special. They are really different. But it's still just a golf tournament. You still have to suck it up, whether you're trying to win The INTERNATIONAL or the B.C. Open like Spike McRoy (ph) or the PGA. You still have a gamut of emotions, you still want to win. I would imagine, I think once you get to a certain point in your playing, just can't get anymore nervous than one level, and I've been there a couple of times, so I know how it feels. It's very uncomfortable, but I've performed under it, too, so that's the one good thing I have going for me. I think that if I do come down the stretch, 16 will be -- if I have a one- or two-stroke lead going into 16, that will be probably one of the hardest shots I've ever hit.

RICH BEEM: A little bit, yeah. I thought that I was in a nice groove there for a while. I was in a nice groove for a long time, for most of the round today. 14, like I said, I just didn't have the right club in my bag. I didn't feel like hitting 5-wood, throwing it up in the air to put it in the fairway, so I tried to hit something else. Pared in low and I just came up and out of it. Didn't really give myself a birdie opportunity on 15. Played 16 fairly well and actually thought I hit a great shot on 17, just hit that tree and came down in the bunker, which still surprises me even now. But made a nice par on 18 after really focusing on the drive, because it's been one of the hardest driving holes for me all week. I am disappointed, but under the conditions, you're right, if somebody said you're going to have 72 right now before you hit the first tee shot, I would have watched it all day on TV and enjoyed it.

RICH BEEM: I think the good thing about the wind today was that there wasn't too much times where it was right into you and it really wasn't difficult to figure which direction it was blowing. To me, it seemed like it wasn't swirling as bad as it could have been. Just a couple of times, I felt like it was swirling, but pretty much, it came out of the same direction all day. I guess it was, like, north or northwest, something like that, but it seemed to come from the same direction all day. Never seemed to change on us, so that was nice. It made club selection a little bit easier knowing that it's been blowing that way all day, and you can go back and have a reference point with the compass readings we have in our yardage books.

RICH BEEM: Sunday morning?

RICH BEEM: I don't know if there's anything mentally. I think I'm just going to try to take the same preparation, come out maybe a little bit earlier tomorrow and hit a few more putts before I hit balls and then spend a few extra minutes at the chipping green. I don't think anything mentally that I can do to prepare for it because it's just a lot different, I think, than The INTERNATIONAL, this tournament is. It's so huge that -- honestly, it's so big that I'm having a hard time comprehending it. It's a major, and guys like me are not supposed to contend in majors, yet, here I am. So, I don't think, in this case, do anything differently, because if I do, I will probably screw myself up big time. I'm just going to go out to dinner tonight, have a couple of beers with my good friend, Bill, and my wife, hang out, and it's going to be a lot of fun, and wake up and do it all again tomorrow and that's it.

RICH BEEM: No, because that was who I was at the time. The only thing that I regret about the book was the use of profanity in it. I think Alan took a few more liberties with the profanity, and the written word is certainly different than the spoken word. The spoken word has different content to it as far as how it's said and what area it's said. That's the only thing I didn't really enjoy about it, and that's just as far as the galleys (ph) go, and that was me, at the time. That's probably me every so often now. But it's not the same. I mean, I'm a totally different person, to a point, than I was then. I'm a better player. I have a much more stable life off the golf course. When I get to the golf tournaments, I don't go out anymore. I go out to dinner and I go home. I'm a lot more focused and it's a lot more fun. I get a lot more sleep on the road.

RICH BEEM: His was actually a little bit slow developing, actually. He made -- he bogeyed 5 on the front side, which was kind of surprising because he hit a beautiful little chip shot up there about five feet and he just happened to miss that. But after that, he hit it right, knocked it on the green and made a putt or two. There was not anything dramatic about it. There was not any heroic shots. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but it just seemed like every time he hit the green, he hit it almost a perfect yardage and hit it in the correct spot on the green to kind of give himself birdie opportunities. Especially, I think coming down, starting on 12, he hit a great little shot there on 12 and hit it even better on 13, even though he missed the green, he was putting right straight up the hill at it. 14, I think the wind just blew into his golf ball, but then starting 15 through 18, he hit it exactly where he needed to to give himself the best chance of making birdie. I think that's the type of player he is. He's very methodical and he knows exactly what he can and cannot do, so he doesn't try to do anything heroic; where, me, sometimes I don't stick to gale plans very well and make it up as I go along, which works for me. It doesn't work for him.

RICH BEEM: Oh, probably. I'll probably take a look at it, just because -- I don't know. At The INTERNATIONAL I didn't because I just got into such a rhythm that I just -- and plus, that's a totally different scenario, too, when you're making points instead of birdies, you know exactly where you stand. You make a lot of points, anything can happen. But I'll probably watch the leaderboard and see where everybody is at. Towards the end, I probably will try not to, if I can, just so I can focus more on the task at hand because the last few holes really require you to pay attention to what you're doing. I think the first few holes, you can kind of get away with just -- I don't want to say playing nonchalantly, but you can get out there and free-wheel a little bit, but the last few holes, especially starting with 14, you have to know what you're doing and pay attention to your golf game instead of paying attention to leaderboards.