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KITCHENAID SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIPMay 21, 2019Scott McCarronRochester, New York JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon from the 2019 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship here at Oak Hill Country Club. I am pleased to be joined by Scott McCarron, a 10-time winner on the PGA TOUR Champions, and the 2017 Senior Players champion. We were just talking for a moment back there, I was going to ask you how you were doing, but the answer is pretty obvious. You've already got two wins this year, so it's been a pretty good spring, I'd say. SCOTT McCARRON: I think I'm going to be okay. You know what, I'm doing well. I'm healthy. I feel good. I got a little sick at the Regions. We had a lot of rain and a lot of wind for a couple weeks, and got a little cold during that week, but other than that, I feel great. I've been having a lot of fun this year. A little slow start at the very start, so I didn't get to play that much over the off-season. North Carolina was a little cold, little wet, like everywhere in the country, seemed like, but I'm rounding into nice form, won a couple times and had a couple other chances, so things are going good. JOHN DEVER: Let's go back to last year at Harbor Shores. You were right there at three rounds, maybe didn't play your best golf on Sunday, and Paul Broadhurst played about as well as anybody could that day. Does that leave you with a sense of maybe some unfinished business here with our championship? SCOTT McCARRON: Certainly. I kind of put myself in position a couple times, I got a couple top 6, 7s, I think. Last year certainly was disappointing on Sunday. I didn't play that well. Kind of the middle of the round, which was unfortunate. But Paul played great. I mean, I watched him in front of me just making every putt he could make, which was really impressive. So it would have been tough to catch him last year. But again, I feel like that golf course, I played well at a couple times. Oak Hill, I played in 2003, I think I finished 14th, right around there, so I mean, I had a decent tournament back then when Shaun Micheel won. I like this golf course. I think it's kind of a -- Billy Harmon and I talked about, it's a little bit of a fader's golf course, I can set up there on the left-hand side of the fairway and hit my cut. I remember this being a very difficult golf course, and obviously last time we played here Jay Haas won it 7-over I think, something like that. You've got to hit the ball in the fairway. You've got to hit the greens. I didn't get a chance to see it yesterday because we had such high winds. I'm glad to be back here and playing at a golf course that I played well at many years ago. JOHN DEVER: So haven't played this week yet quite yet? SCOTT McCARRON: No, heading out there today. I'm not in the pro-am today, so I'll play at 2:45 in our shotgun start. JOHN DEVER: So you haven't experienced it in May quite yet, but what would you imagine Oak Hill is different in August as opposed to May of the average year here? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, the big difference is just the weather. In August you're going to get it hot and humid and the ball is going to travel a little bit farther. Having it this early in the year, as we're looking, we're going to get some rain, we're going to get some cold weather, and we're going to get some wind. So it'll probably make the golf course play a lot tougher. Q. Scott, you've had great form in senior majors over the last few years. How frustrating is it to have only gotten over the line once, and does that fire you up even more when you tee it up in these championships? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, any tournament is tough to win, especially majors. I want to win as many tournaments as I can, and I want to win as many majors as I can. I'm putting myself in position. I've come close a couple times. A couple times I haven't played my best, but it seems like every time someone has played really well. Paul Broadhurst played well at Carnoustie. I had a chance, but I bogeyed 16 and 18, two very tough holes at Carnoustie. Paul Broadhurst got me at the Senior PGA last year. I didn't play my best, but he played really well. So it's just a matter of playing well when it counts, coming down the stretch, and if I keep putting myself in position, I do know how to win. I've won 10 times out here. So I feel that I just keep putting myself in position and then closing the door a few more times. Q. You mentioned 10 times a winner; just talk about how much fun that is starting kind of this encore golf career. SCOTT McCARRON: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I mean, I tell people I still feel exactly the same, trying to win a tournament out here as I did on the PGA TOUR. I'm playing against the same guys. A lot of times I'm playing the same courses. It feels the same. It's just that we're all a little bit older. These guys can still flat-out play. These are legends of the game, Hall-of-Famers, so honestly, I kind of pinch myself a little bit that I get to keep playing the sport I love for a living. And that winning feeling is exactly the same. So it's just been an absolute blast. But I do know that there is a finite time to do this. When I was 28, 29, 30, I really never thought about the end is near so much. Out here at 50, I see that there is an end at some point. Whether that's 60, 62, 65, whatever that may be, if I can stay in shape, I think I can be competitive for a long time. Like a Bernhard Langer. I feel if you can drive the ball fairly long, you can be competitive for a long time out here, and I do drive the ball fairly long and fairly straight. I should be able to -- barring any injuries or decide to do something else, I should be able to have a pretty long career out here. But there is a finite number, so I'm putting everything I can into it to try to do the best I can. JOHN DEVER: You talk about driving the ball and you have two victories this year already, but what facets of your game are you trying to tune up and polish at this point? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, I'm always trying to get better from 120 yards and in. I've always driven the ball very long, fairly straight -- I mean, straight enough. I've always hit good irons, but I've got to wedge it closer because I do have a lot of opportunities with wedges out here, and if I can do that a little bit better -- I don't have to be great, I just have to be average, and that will help out quite a bit. Putting, I putted well a couple years ago, Langer and I had some of the best stats that had ever been recorded. Last year I thought I just putted okay, and this year I've putted just okay. Again, I'm always trying to get better putting with a long putter not anchored, and some days it works great and some days I putt just as bad as anybody. Q. You talked about having fun on this Tour. How much looser is the Champions Tour, and then maybe on top of that, how much more serious does it get when you get an event like this that's a major, it's four rounds, you have a cut? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, I think the PGA TOUR Champions, most of us have known each other for a long time, and most of us know that we're not out trying to get the other guy's job, know what I mean? I'm pretty secure out here. Most of these guys are pretty secure out here. There's a lot more camaraderie. As far as that looseness, you might see that. I played practice rounds every Tuesday with the same group of guys, and we have about eight of us that rotate around with two groups, and we'll all go to dinner. So we're hanging out more now than maybe we did on the PGA TOUR, just because it's not as cutthroat. But having said that, it's very competitive. These guys are really good, and most of our tournaments with three rounds, you've got to go low right from the start. It's very difficult to win a tournament out here with just a mediocre one round. I mean, you've got to go low every day it seems like. And so coming into a PGA Championship, we've got four rounds, there's a cut, it's a big field, a lot of guys that we haven't seen for a while. So I think there's a lot more -- there's more media, there's going to be more gallery. We're playing a golf course that's going to play a little bit tougher than the courses we play week in and week out. So you know, that definitely gets your attention. Q. And then you talked about the course; when this event was here in '08, +7 was the highest winning score Oak Hill has ever seen, I think it's the highest winning score for any Senior PGA. You talk about how the weather makes it harder. Do you think we will see a tamer Oak Hill because of all those factors that go into it and how hard it was in '08? SCOTT McCARRON: You know, I don't know because I haven't got on the golf course yet. I wasn't here in '08, wasn't old enough, so I really don't know whether it's a tamer golf course or not. From what I've heard, the rough is up pretty high. Some guys played yesterday, which was almost worthless. We had 40-mile-an-hour winds. But they said missing a fairway here was chip-out rough. So I'm anticipating it being very difficult here again. Q. Scott, you've talked very openly about your season-long goal of dethroning Bernhard Langer in the Charles Schwab Cup. How do you balance that long-term goal with week to week, trying to win the tournament? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, it's a great question. Obviously Langer has kind of had a stranglehold on it, but then Kevin Sutherland won a couple years. So I'm not really just trying to dethrone Bernhard Langer, I'm trying to win the Charles Schwab Cup, and I want to be -- I want to be the best out here on the PGA TOUR Champions. Bernhard Langer certainly set the bar very high. He's a guy that I look up to. He's a guy that I see week in and week out working out, eating right, taking apart golf courses in practice rounds, how much times he spends. So I've learned a lot from him. Having said that, the week in, week out, you've got to do your job every day. Doesn't matter what job is, whether you're in marketing or whether you're in real estate, you have end goals at the end of the year, but you've got to do the right things and continue to focus on the process every single day. Whether that's working out, eating right, getting enough sleep, making sure you're rested, all those things that go in every single day to get to that end-up long-term goal. Q. You touched on your length already; what do you think it is or what do you think it's been that took you from being a very good Tour player, one of a bunch of good players, to being a guy out here that's got 10 wins and is one of the guys who maybe is the king of the hill or is vying for that? What's been different for you than the other guys who have made the transition? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, I think it's -- there's two things in that. That's a great question. One is I didn't feel I got as much out of my career on the PGA TOUR as I would have liked to. I felt I should have won more. I put myself in position and didn't get the job done numerous times, where I still look back on that and wish -- I felt I should have won more. I don't want to make the same mistakes again on the PGA TOUR Champions in that I feel I came out here very hungry. I wanted to win. I needed to win. I needed to play well. My last four or five years on the PGA TOUR I was battled with injuries, an elbow, surgeries, and all kinds of stuff that guys go through in mid-life. I came out here very hungry. I wanted to win. I wanted to win the Charles Schwab Cup. But again, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do until I kind of got in the mix again, and then learning from Langers and the Hale Irwins and Tom Kites and all these guys at that were my heroes on the regular Tour are the guys I look up to and seek advice from out here on the PGA TOUR Champions. I just came out here hungry. I wanted it. I'm working hard to get there, and I think -- the other thing, having someone in your life that really supports you day in and day out, travels with me quite a bit, marrying Jenny was probably one of the best things I've ever done. Having that person in my corner has also made a huge change and driven me to want to be the best that I can be. Q. You talked about the period in your career where you had a few injuries, and I know you did some work for Golf Channel, so I'm going to ask you to be an analyst and take Scott McCarron out of the equation. Who are a couple names maybe outside of the top 5 or top 10 that we might see that it wouldn't surprise you if they found their way to the top and are playing important holes on the back nine Sunday? SCOTT McCARRON: Well, I think I look at some of the guys that have been playing well, that know how to win, that drive the ball far. You know, Scott Parel has been a guy that has always been not one of the biggest names out here, but he's getting to be one of the biggest names, and I played against him in Houston just a couple weeks ago, and battled it out. This guy doesn't miss a shot. He was really impressive. I would think he's going to be somewhere in the mix towards the end of the tournament. My college roommate, Brandt Jobe, another guy I play every Tuesday with, which I'm heading out today. This guy drives the ball a long way, very good player, and he can be focused this week for four days, he's going to be there in the end. He had a chance at Benton Harbor a couple years ago but made triple on 17, I think, out of the bunker, fairly easy bunker shot, so I'll probably give him a couple bunker lessons this week to maybe help him out, get that Square Strike to get out of the bunker, we're not sure, or the Alien wedge. So those two guys, and another guy that's been playing well but hasn't quite got the job done on Sunday is Glen Day. He seems to be up there every week on our first day. He's right there in the lead or near the lead. Here's a guy that drives well, very, very straight, putts really well, just needs to get over the hump on Sunday. He's another guy that could be up there that people aren't really looking at for Sunday. Q. We gave Stricker a hard time about he's actually playing three majors in three weeks. You're playing two in three weeks, which is pretty tough. The major season is kind of condensed in general on seniors, but can you talk about what that's like to go from Traditions to -- you know it's going to be a tough track this week. What's it like to play back-to-back majors? SCOTT McCARRON: Yeah, it is interesting. I think last year we had almost like four in five weeks or something like that. I mean, it was crazy. It's a bit of a grind, honestly. For us, we're normally ready for three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and it's over. You come here to a major, you're here on Sunday night or Monday trying to play, and then you've got pro-am or practice round Tuesday, Wednesday. It's a long week. But it's actually a lot of fun. And all of us are kind of a little bit of a ham. We like playing in front of people. We like bigger crowds. We like having the media asking us questions. So it just adds a lot more to the tournament, and one of the things I think you've got to do is be rested, and when you're playing in majors, you've got to be rested and ready. We've all learned not to go out there and play 36 holes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to get ready for a major. You know, you play 18, you play nine maybe on Wednesday and get some rest and ready to go. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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