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U.S. SENIOR OPEN

June 25, 2019

Gary Nicklaus

Notre Dame, Indiana

THE MODERATOR: It's my pleasure to welcome Gary Nicklaus into the media center, Gary playing in his first U.S. Senior Open, qualified at the Bear's Club down in Jupiter, Florida, birdied his final two holes and won a playoff to advance to the championship. This weekend you'll be playing in your fifth different USGA championship, one more than your dad. How special is it to be playing in this championship this week?

GARY NICKLAUS: Well, turning 50 at the beginning of the year, I had some aspirations to play in some tournaments and play well, and obviously one of my goals for the year was to be at this event, and to go into the qualifier and birdie the last two holes, win in a playoff and be here now is -- it's very satisfying, and glad to be here.

THE MODERATOR: How is your game different now than it was when you turned professional and were playing professionally in the '90s and early 2000s? How would you compare the two aspects of your game?

GARY NICKLAUS: I hit it a lot shorter (chuckling).

But no, I think that when you go through your life and you play and you're playing competitive all the time, sometimes you kind of can't see the forest through the trees.

My game, I was working on it, playing professionally for 15 years, and it never got easier. It was I would say kind of jumbled. And then after I lost my card in 2003, I didn't pick up a club for four years.

And then when I came back and I started -- I didn't play a lot, but I played some amateur events, but when I came back, it was kind of almost like, well, oh, swinging the golf club is easy. Whether my brain took four years to process what I had been trying to learn for 40, I don't know, but I think the game is -- certain aspects of the game have become much easier. The putting aspect has still been kind of my nemesis, but I've been working on that, so hopefully this week we're going to get that back into the good side.

THE MODERATOR: And you have your son, GT, caddying for you this week.

GARY NICKLAUS: He's sitting back there. He's lounging out back there in the back. He needs a haircut.

THE MODERATOR: He caddied for you in the qualifier. He's back this week. How special is it to share this experience with a family member, with your son inside the ropes this week at the Senior Open?

GARY NICKLAUS: It's very special. I had the opportunity to caddie for my dad in a couple major championships, a couple British Opens. And I don't know how many more of these I'll get to play in, but for him to have the ability to come out here and spend some time with guys that are -- they're not on the regular Tour, but when they were, they were the best players in the world, and they're still pretty darned good. I mean, a lot of these guys you see, and they played on the regular Tour, they're still competing there.

But, you know, for someone who is an aspiring golfer, I think it's going to be very special for him to be out here and see these guys and to see how good they are and to see how much work they put into it, and also for me to spend time with him and have him on my bag and discuss strategies as we go forward through the week and hopefully coming down the wire on Sunday be somewhere close to the top.

Q. You're here this week with another teammate of yours, Chris Smith, who qualified here, and you're playing on a golf course where Susan Holt is the women's golf coach at Notre Dame. Is it kind of a Buckeye reunion this week?
GARY NICKLAUS: Well, Chris and I are going to play a practice round tomorrow. We were supposed to play today, but I had to go out of town for a day. But, yeah, it's great to be here, great to catch up with Chris. Great to have -- I think we have -- how many Buckeyes do we have in the field? I know John Cook, I saw him. Is Joey Sindelar playing? So we only have three Buckeyes? I would have thought we had more than that.

Q. At Notre Dame, some people might say that's enough Buckeyes.
GARY NICKLAUS: Well, I don't know if you saw my comment after I qualified that I never thought a Buckeye would be so happy to come to South Bend. But it's -- yeah, I'm very excited to be here.

Q. Have you been out on the golf course, and have you played some of it since you've been here? And what do you think of the golf course that Coore & Crenshaw created?
GARY NICKLAUS: I came in Friday, and I walked nine holes on Friday and chipped and putted. And then I played Saturday and Sunday and then again walked the course in the afternoon after I played. So I've been around it a lot. I like the golf course. I think that the golf course sets up with plenty of room off the tee, and the greens are pretty receptive to good shots.

You know, if you hit it in the wrong place, it can be pretty penal, which is good; but if you keep it on the right -- don't short-side yourself and think your way around the golf course, I think it's a very fair test of golf.

Q. Talking about your career, is playing competitive golf more fun now than it was? Was it more like self-induced pressure, expectations earlier, and is it different now?
GARY NICKLAUS: It's a lot more fun now. I mean, it was fun for a while when I was younger, and then it -- when you practice to prepare and you don't succeed and then you say, okay, well, maybe I need to practice harder and you practice more and you don't succeed, it's kind of like -- I don't know, what is it, the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? But I got to a point where I was practicing more and more and more and more and getting worse and worse and worse and worse and was like: This is just no fun.

Now it's -- I'm trying to become a regular on the Senior Tour, but it's not my job. I have businesses with my partner. We have four businesses that we own and operate, and so it's not a life-and-death situation. It's not a demand on my family that I go out and win this week to support my family. But it would be nice to win and put a little extra in there.

Q. You said you worked on your putting and you've been working on your putting. It's kind of been the bugaboo of your career. What do you work on with putting? How do you get better putting when you were talking about working so hard and maybe not getting results? What is it about putting that's not clicking for you? Other than it not going in.
GARY NICKLAUS: I think --

Q. Is it something fundamental?
GARY NICKLAUS: My putting is very streaky. When I'm putting well, I'm as good a putter as there is out there; and when I'm putting poorly, it's pretty ugly. And just over the years of trying to look at it, and I just think it's more of -- it's more of a mindset as you set up to each putt, and I've been working on my mindset as I hit a putt, trying to make sure that I hit the putt as opposed to kind of waft the putter through the hitting area and the ball getting in the way.

So my focus the last few weeks working on my putting has been trying to make sure that it's a more positive stroke and trying to get out of worrying about what's going to happen, if it goes three feet by, just less worry, try and be more confident and just try and make sure that I'm -- whether it's a three-foot downhill putt or a 10-foot uphill putt, be aggressive with the stroke and aggressive with the hit, even though I may only be taking the putter back an inch.

And kind of if you think about the way my dad putts, he's kind of a short back stroke and kind of pops it and hits it. Maybe I should have thought about trying to copy his putting years ago. It might have helped. But I wasn't that smart.

Q. We talked about GT caddying for you, and obviously it's fun having your son on the bag. But does he have a good set of eyes to help you with putting or your full swing, anything else on the golf course?
GARY NICKLAUS: Yeah, he's very knowledgeable. He knows my game. But it'll be fun out there. We'll talk about some things. We'll -- he likes to offer his advice whether I ask for it or not sometimes, so we'll have to have a little conversation about that, about what are the three "ups" in caddying: Keep up, show up, and shut up.

Q. I was wondering when you were caddying for your dad, what was it like? How many times did your dad ask you for advice on the golf course?
GARY NICKLAUS: No, he asked my advice a lot. I mean, who knows my game or his game better than the people that we play with most? And I play with GT as much as I play with anybody. I help him with his golf swing. I try and -- everything that we do is kind of the same philosophy. My coach on TOUR was Rick Smith. I've had him working with Rick Smith. So the terminology is the same. The kind of things we're trying to do are all the same. So that part of it just kind of goes hand in hand.

With my dad, he was always -- he was always wanting information if he asked for it. He wasn't wanting information if he didn't ask for it, and that's where kind of the fine line of being in a father-son relationship is when you're sitting at the dinner table and you're talking about things and information is flowing freely, that's one thing. But when you're sitting 150 yards out and I've got a club in mind and he has a different club in mind, I'm not really wanting him to tell me what his thought is unless I ask for it because I don't want to get conflicting thoughts.

If I pick the wrong club, that's my fault. But I want to be positive in whatever I'm hitting.

Q. Will you talk to your dad this week or will you hear from him, especially with it being a U.S. Open and pick his brain a little bit?
GARY NICKLAUS: I don't want any advice from my father this week, I would never want to pick his brain about four U.S. Open wins and -- I'm being sarcastic, obviously.

Yeah, I think he's coming in Thursday, and it will be a family affair and we'll discuss lots of things. I'm sure that you'll see me on the range with him after each round, whether on the putting green -- not so much on the short game area, but putting and on the driving range.

Q. I'm not sure if you had a chance to go into the Notre Dame locker room yet. I know that's where the players are coming through. Have you had that chance, and what was that experience like?
GARY NICKLAUS: I've done it twice. So the first time I went in with Robbie and Jenny as kind of their guinea pig. I did that I think it was on Saturday or Sunday, and it was a great experience for someone who has never been a Notre Dame fan. It's hard to walk away from that place not having an enormous amount of respect for what's happened here and the history of Notre Dame.

I can't say that I'm a fan yet, but I'm less of an anti-Notre Dame than I used to be.

But it was actually such a great experience. I said to a couple of the players, I was like, I can't tell you what's going to happen, but you're really going to enjoy the registration experience. So much so for me that I didn't register until today because I wanted to do it with GT so that he could go over there with me and kind of see what it was all about. So he and I went through registration this afternoon.

But it was very cool. Not as cool as Ohio State, but it's cool.

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