U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 2, 1996

Bob Murphy

BOB MURPHY: Strangely enough, and I don't know why, except that I probably didn't play well in 1973, I didn't remember anything about this golf course. And I don't know how that is possible - except for an Irishman - probably, because this is a wonderful golf course. I can't tell you how good this course is. Condition-wise, it is the best that we have played. I don't remember the last time we played one as good as this is. Wonderful greens. The greens are firm. The greens are fast. The rough is not as high as I have seen it in Opens, but plenty high. Grand old design because you do have the ability - should you knock it in the rough - you have the ability to run it up onto the green. And we all know that in our modern architectures, that doesn't seem to happen; seems to have to go over something all the time. So I couldn't be more pleased to be here playing for this tournament. Last year, for me, the Open was a disappointment. I played very, very well at Congressional and I simply did not putt the greens as I should have and as I needed to beat Weiskopf, so that was a big disappointment for me. So I am going to play very well this week. And I am going to take tomorrow off and hit a few balls and relax, and I will probably go out and putt some of the greens - try to pick some of the spots where I think the pins might be, and then hit some putts back and forth. Jim Colbert and I played yesterday, both very surprised at how flat the greens are in many areas, where just our normal scoping with the eye, we envisioned a lot more break than there actually is. So I want to test out some of that tomorrow and see if I can't guess where these boys will put some of these pins. Anyway, I believe this is one of the best Championship venues we played in a long, long time.

BOB MURPHY: Yeah, I am a lucky man. You know that. You saw me when I was bad. You saw me when I tried to play and I couldn't, but I tried. I finally just -- I had to give up because I was so bad; especially in my hands in 1988 that I just couldn't play, so, yeah, I am a lucky guy to think that I could find something for the arthritis in the first place and something as effective as I have found, to then be able to play again, it is wonderful.

BOB MURPHY: Well, I surprised myself, yes, as I have said, I was hoping that I could win again. I surprised myself that I am as confident as I am. Of course, the first surprise is that I was able to come back and start playing, you know, good golf and I am a lot of times - and I say this only in the psychology standpoint - I have to pat myself on the back once in a while because I stick with the fight better than I used to. Sunday, at Cincinnati last week, was a perfect example. My brain was in Cleveland; I was already here. I was going through the motions. Gale and I went on a wonderful two-week vacation to Europe, and I came back and I played Philadelphia and Cincinnati prior to playing here in this Open, and so felt like I was on right on schedule with what I want to do. And Sunday I started out the with a triple bogey, and normally that would have been at least 78 for old Murph, but I fought and fought and fought and came back and shot 69 at the end of the day, and that is -- that is something that I didn't do when I was on the regular Tour. I just didn't do it. So there, I have to give myself a pat on the back. I am trying very hard to be a much more consistent player, and then the confidence -- when the confidence builds then when you get under the pressure and you need to do some things on the last 9, I seem to have more reliability in myself.

BOB MURPHY: Well, the biggest thing and - you know, here we go with the great advertisement - but two really big things happened to me. No. 1, I got this driver, started out with a Big Bertha driver, now it is a great Big Bertha driver and I don't know what is next. Probably a Volkswagon on the end of a shaft, I guess, but this is a wonderful golf club. I mean, I am -- I am hitting 80% of the fairways, so that is a key factor. I am driving the ball better than I did when I used to play.

BOB MURPHY: I think it is tremendously a part of the equipment, yes. I sure do. And my iron-play, I led the Tour last year in birdies on par 3s, that is iron-play. My iron-play, with these irons that -- the Big Bertha irons, I am much more consistent putting the ball from 25 feet short of the hole to 25 feet past. You always miss them left and right, but I am right in that area and so I am putting for a lot of birdies, and I am making a lot of birdies, so equipment has been a key factor for me. I can't tell you how much the golf ball has changed, you know, since I quit playing in 1988 up until now, but I feel like it is -- I feel like it is straighter, so the technology in the game can't be denied. With the golf courses, I don't -- I do not ever remember playing a golf course as good as this one is right now when I was on the regular Tour. I think the technology on that end has changed significantly. We play better golf courses almost every week. We really do.

BOB MURPHY: I think that Dale Douglas said playing today, he said I am going to be wanting to borrow a few of your fades out there this week. I would guess we are going to play the golf course 6750 to 6800, so that is not a long golf course You are going to have to put the ball in the fairway, and a little -- long hitters and guys that drive it like myself, there are a few holes where we are going to have to back off and probably play 3-wood because the fairways are getting firm, so the ball is going to be bouncing through and into the rough and that is the way golf is supposed to be played. When we play golf where the fairways are soaking wet and drive it down the left side and it just hits and plugs and goes three yards; doesn't bounce on into the junk, that is not as good. This course is set up to play fast, and so I don't think scoring is going to be real good here, I don't.

BOB MURPHY: I think he is right. I don't think that it will be that low. I don't. Not if they keep the speed of the greens where they have them right now, and if we don't get a lot of rain to soften the golf course, knowing the USGA and where they put the pins, you are going to be shooting at a lot of middle to greens, a lot of middle to greens.

BOB MURPHY: I think they are very long. 16, you have to hit two very good shots. You must drive it in the fairway. If you don't drive it in the fairway, if you can put the second one in the fairway, you are going to be playing a huge shot into that green blind shot, so that is going to be a hole that normally, for us, a par 5 is a birdie hole, well, it is going to take three real good shots to make a birdie there. The key is, of course, the first two: 17 is playing to the center and that is where I am going to try to get it every day. If I get real lucky, my ball will be on the middle of the green and they can put the pin whereever they want and I will try to get at it from there. That is about 220 yards to that center of that green from where we played the tee today. Me, that is a full four wood, so that is a long par 3: 18, I think it is a wonderful finishing hole. A lot of room on the drive. You have got a lot of room. The green sits up and you really can't see the surface, so that is a hard second shot. It just takes away that good feel that sometimes we can envision and just see the shot going in and landing in this particular area of the green and pitching it right to the hole; you don't have that when you are playing a shot to a green that you can't see. So that makes it a hard finishing hole. So if it is tight, the game will be -- will probably not be won; it will be lost on the last three holes. That is what will happen.

BOB MURPHY: Yeah.

BOB MURPHY: Yeah, it is totally different. I have said it before. I looked up patience in an Irish dictionary and it is not in there. So for me to make a triple, by George, bogey and come back with six birdies and shoot 69, that was every challenge -- we had a funny incident in the locker room. We walked in and played with Bobby Stroble who is a young man trying to make the Tour and his caddy said something to the effect, well, you made that bogey on the second hole. I thought that was all. I thought you were all done. Bob Strobel looked at his caddy and he said I think Murphy came to play 18 holes. I think he came to play all 18. (LAUGHTER).: And so the caddy should take a lesson from that there, too, where if my man, as they call us, if my man makes a couple of triple bogeys fast, it is not necessarily the end of the day. So.....

BOB MURPHY: I think it is a combination from a little bit of everything, had we all been smarter in our younger days and we all would have watched Jack a little much more closely than we did, but we weren't. All the great players have had that. All the great players had that. I learned most of that when my stint with ESPN and CBS from the booth. I realized that guys made a lot of mistakes on Thursdays and Fridays and yet on Sunday there they were, the great players, they were right there still vying for the tournament, so I used to use that as an example to youngsters. I would say, for instance - one comes to mind right away - Canadian Open when John Cook beat Johnny Miller in the playoff. Johnny Miller shot 43 on the front 9, the first 9 on Thursday. And yet he was in the playoff come Sunday afternoon. So I use that as an example to youngsters, to tell them that, you know, the game is 72 holes and you must play all 72 holes and keep fighting. And some way - I don't know, maybe my wife said to me - why don't you do that, see, but I learned a lot in doing television, sure did.

BOB MURPHY: The magnet therapy, I got them on right now. I use it. It is great.

BOB MURPHY: Yeah, I have got one round one here and then a flat one about like that in the back middle. (Indicating four inches.) Another one on my hip over here. Talking about the use of magnets. Colbert put me on it. Cobert has a very bad back; we all know that. Arthritically, I am doing terrifically, but I still have the old aches and pains that a 53-year-old has. I understand the magnet therapy. I understand how the body works on positive and negative charges and I can truthfully say - and they do not pay me, guys - I am not on their staff; I am not paid or anything, that I have 80% less pain wearing these things than I did and I can prove it to myself by not wearing them for three or four days and the pain will be right back, so I use it. My hands were hit the worst by the arthritis, especially right here. (pointing to index finger) and I have small ones - they are about the size of a dime - I put them right on my hands and I wear them at night, so it works.

BOB MURPHY: It could. You could get tangled up. I have to watch it when I go by the refrigerator which I do a lot. I keep my beer in aluminium containers so I don't get stuck to the frig.

BOB MURPHY: I did. I did more things to cure arthritis than -- I did one of everything. You can well imagine when I started playing the Tour, the letters -- I should have kept a lot of them. I have gotten letters with the grandest cures you can ever imagine. From one old Irishman, best one was sheep manure.

BOB MURPHY: You sit in it or you stick -- if your elbow is bothering, you put your elbow in it.

BOB MURPHY: My wife said -- she probably wouldn't have any sense of humor if I used that. All kinds of vitamins, all kinds of stuff. I mean, still today, I get 10 to 20 letters a day from people wanting to know what I am doing for the arthritis, and I have a form letter with a consent of the doctor in the hospital in Arlington, Virginia, I have a form letter that I send out to everyone and I have gotten a lot of terrific responses back by the way people who have gone up there and have gotten a lot of help, so that is good.

BOB MURPHY: 62?

BOB MURPHY: Up in Cadillac. Well, I was -- that was a round that happened to be a rather easy 62. I knocked it about a foot from the hole at the first hole, about two feet at 2, about four feet at 3. About five feet at the next hole about a foot at the next hole and I was 5-under par. And then I made three birdies on the back and then I promptly knocked it in the water, changed clubs and knocked it in the water; made a bogey. I just took an 8-iron and knocked it in the hole and made eagle, so got that shot back. These are the things you do when you are really going. Then I hit a 3-iron about eight feet at the next hole and made birdie there, and it was easiest 62, you could possibly imagine. As a matter of fact, my wife called me. She saw me on the last hole. I put it about five feet right under the hole and I missed the putt. She says, you must have misread that putt. I said, darling, I didn't have to read them, they were all going in. I didn't read any of them. I just walked up and hit them. So those rounds are easy. It is the 73s and 4s that are hard.

BOB MURPHY: No, but you understand that you have one more day, you know, should you start this golf tournament with, say, a 73 or 4, you have one extra day in which to get yourself back in the game. That is one of the things that I have worked hardest on, on the Senior Tour is to change what I did on the regular Tour and that was get off the poor starts. I was famous for starting with 72, 73, and so I have tried very hard to change that and in doing so, like starting with 62s, you find yourself in a different position. You just have to go faster on the Senior Tour. You do.

BOB MURPHY: Yeah, believe me, when you hurt, I think you spend more time than you think, thinking about the fact that you are hurting and/or it is compensating moves. I think that is the biggest thing. The left knee is hurting and so you don't really drive to the left knee and so as a result you are back on -- I can tell you, Lee Trevino is not here. Last week I played with him in Philadelphia. His left knee is so bad he can hardly bend it. He won't drive to the left knee, so he hits every shot. It looks like this. Well, what happened, is he blows out his middle back, and you can just see it. I mean, three times during the day he almost went down on the ground and then he got over a putt on 18; made a little wiggle and he was stuck and the next morning he couldn't get out of bed, so that was compensation for something that was hurting and you think about that, you think about that hurt and then you -- your body, your subconscious is amazingly strong. It will not go over there. If that is hurting, it will not go over there.

BOB MURPHY: I think your concentration is terrible, yeah, like Lee, spent the whole day talking about he shouldn't be playing, he should go have his knee worked on; get it done; get it over with, come back and play.

BOB MURPHY: When you play with Lee you might as well listen because it is going to happen. It is like -- he told Tony Jacklin years ago in the finals of the British, Tony walked up to him he said, "Lee, I have thought about this. I just really don't want to talk much today." Trevino said, "fine you just listen I will do all the talking." And he did. (LAUGHTER) But you know, that is something that Lee has had just a lot of those nagging little things and I tell you, I think you get tired of having to address them when that knee is as bad as it is. The doctors tell you, well, you just play on it until you can't stand it anymore; then we will work on it. So that is basically what is going to happen. His back is one thing, but he has got to have his knee fixed before he comes back or it is going to happen again.

BOB MURPHY: Well, I think if I had had some place to go, Jerry, I thought about Trakanian (phonetic) made me an offer. He had offered me a job with CBS television, full-time in about 1985 and I was hurting then and yet, I would have these windows at that time. I had windows of three, four, five weeks where it didn't hurt at all. And in doing that, then I would have these ideas that I could still play. And so I finished second a couple of times in 1985, and I had, you know, great ideas about playing well in '86 and I played terribly and then all of a sudden, well, I missed five cuts in a row, and I went to Canada and I was hurting so bad that I had never played one hole of practice, not one, and won the tournament. So you know, thoughts of doing television went right out the window. I thought I could still play. If I had had a place to go, Jerry, and I really, in retrospect, I could have walked. That is the hardest thing to do, so hard to do. Then yes, I would have quit long before I did, yeah.

BOB MURPHY: Appreciate it guys.