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AMERICAN CENTURY CHAMPIONSHIP

July 12, 2019

Stateline, Nevada

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Peter Jacobsen, Jon Miller and Notah Begay.

Jon, you talked about it earlier this week. Could you talk about the bigness of this week with the 30th anniversary of the American Century and having these guys next to you as part of the broadcast team.

JON MILLER: Obviously, we're excited and we're thrilled to have the A team here. I mean, these guys, as soon as this is all over, all jump on planes and fly over to Royal Portrush. So the fact that we get them the week before is good.

I think you'll probably see a little bit different weather when you go over there. So I will tell you you're not going to get anything as this. But keep this in your memory bank when it's howling and swirling and messy there.

As far as this being the 30th anniversary we talked about it a lot this week. I think the real star of this event is the Edgewood Golf Course and the Lake Tahoe community. And all the volunteers who help make this thing so special.

We have a great field of 91 celebrities from all different walks of life and sports and entertainment. But it's come such a long way since we started in 1990. We had 45 players; 2500 people in attendance. We had nobody out on 17, either boats or spectators.

And last year we were at 57,000 spectators and 350 boats. We have a long waiting list of players who want to get into this. So we're thrilled to be part of it, and we're excited for the next 30 years.

Q. Peter and Notah, talk about this event before we go over to the Open next week. Just talk about being here at this event, and also from you guys, because you guys are both professional golfers, professional athletes, these guys are professional athletes in other sports, but they love golf. Talk about that a little bit.
PETER JACOBSEN: We have a chance, when we play on the PGA TOUR, to play with a lot of athletes and celebrities and entertainers in the pro-ams. And the pressure's off.

They want to play well, but they're having more fun. They're giving of their time and doing a lot of autographs. It's interesting to see the turnaround here now when they're competing inside the ropes, trying to win the championship.

And it's interesting to me to see how serious some get. Some don't change. Some continue to have fun. But when I was asked to do this I think three years ago by Jon and the NBC team, I jumped at the chance. I'm a Portland, Oregon boy. I've been in the greater Lake Tahoe area many times.

And I've been here at Edgewood Tahoe quite a bit. So for me to be here, kind of feels like old home week. This is just a wonderful week, and what Jon and the whole team has done for the past 29 years, this being the 30th, it's incredible to see how successful it's become, and this is clearly the number one celebrity event in the game.

I watched it on TV when I wasn't here doing the tournament, just to watch the competition and just to watch to see who could make that putt under pressure and who couldn't.

So, it's really an honor and fun for me to be here.

NOTAH BEGAY: And from my standpoint, just this is my seventh year and very rarely, almost never, do you catch lightning in a bottle. And this is a perfect case or example of an event that has caught lightning in a bottle.

And it's come through a lot of years of dedication on behalf of the Lake Tahoe community, NBC Sports, the golf course, as well as the celebrities. I mean, it's a perfect venue for this type of event.

And I'm close friends with a lot of the contestants, and this is their major. I mean, we've got four majors in professional golf. They've got one.

And you can see it. You see players that elevate their level of performance from what they normally play back home at their clubs, and you see players that you think should contend on a regular basis, they struggle with the conditions. They struggle with the pressure. It's a big-time pressured event for these guys and it's fun to go out there and watch them navigate, just like a professional golfer would, the different tactical decisions they have to make and try and really navigate the golf course in a strategic fashion to get as many points as possible, when and where to take risks. And this golf course gives you a lot of chance to make some big moves on the field, but you also see some guys stumble. And I think that this is one of the most fun events for me to cover every year.

Q. Quick question on some of the top players that are here this week. Especially defending champion, Tony Romo. Peter and Notah, you both know him really well. Notah, you've played with him a lot. So talk about Tony's game, especially and, Notah, you've talked to him a lot this year, about him playing on TOUR, him playing in these different events to get prepared for this week and his chances in defending this week?
NOTAH BEGAY: Well, Tony is a competitor. He loves golf. I think that's been the huge benefits of him transitioning into the broadcast booth, he's gotten to play a lot more golf, and I think he's really happy about that.

He wants to come out here and win. He's thrown his hat in the ring on the PGA TOUR. Just recently played in the Northeast Amateur up in Rhode Island. And it's tough. I think he got a real sort of live dose of just how hard the game is at the upper levels, whether it be amateur, college or professional ranks.

And he certainly has to be the favorite this week, but you can't take anything away from some of the other contestants that really have improved their games and are really looking forward to sort of take Tony off that pedestal. But he holds it as an important event in his mind and he knows he has to come out here and compete and usually win.

PETER JACOBSEN: He made a change with his coach. Went to a young man out of Dallas named Chris O'Connell. I know him very well, watched him grow up. Chris caddied for me a little bit on the PGA TOUR.

And last year I remember Tony talking about the changes he made. Every day I was on the range with Tony watching him and he was so excited about what he was doing with his golf swing, and he was hitting the perfect shots. Most notably his wedges.

He was really dialed in with his wedges. So it was no surprise that he won the tournament, because he was so amped up and ready to go. And you could really see it, the way that he competed, as Notah said, he elevated his game. Obviously he's quite a competitor.

But when you see somebody like that get excited about what they're doing and how they're swinging the golf club and how they're approaching the strategy of the golf course, it was no surprise to me to see Tony win, and to see him compete now, on more of the national stage, having a chance to play more PGA TOUR events and Korn Ferry Tour events, he's got all the talent in the world.

I don't know if he could ever get his card and play on the TOUR, but he's talented. He knows what he's doing out there.

Q. Peter and Notah, how are you two enjoying Tahoe this week?
PETER JACOBSEN: Love it. Love coming to Tahoe.

NOTAH BEGAY: All I have to do is look out that window right here. Every time I drive up here, I actually relax for a change. It's a beautiful place. Like I said, one of the most fun weeks for me from a variety of angles. And it's fun to call this type of golf, because you see these guys grinding every bit as hard as the PGA TOUR players.

Q. Notah and Peter, what do you think is the toughest part of this course? Is it the putting? Everyone talks about the greens. What's the real key to winning this tournament?
NOTAH BEGAY: For me, from what I've noticed, it's two things: it's dealing with the altitude and making those adjustments. Many of the players live in Scottsdale or closer to sea level.

So the conversions on your short wedges aren't as precise and it takes players a while, even a couple of years, to get used to that. I think that's what you saw Tony struggle with the first few times he played here, is the wedges were either flying too far or not far enough.

And so guys have gone into different strategies. Some guys are carrying four wedges this week, just because to deal with -- so that the separation is a little bit more equal, they can make more full swings and create the yardage that they're interested in hitting.

And the second is when and where to put the gas down. I think guys come out here, they see the conversion and the overall yardage, they're like I want to hit driver on every hole. That's just not a winning formula.

You have to know when to pull the driver out and when to lay up to a good number. And guys that contend here, Mark Mulder, who has one here multiple times, got really good at that. Not only did he improve his wedge play as he developed into a high-level amateur, but he also knew when and where to try and be aggressive on this golf course.

PETER JACOBSEN: To me, to add on to what Notah just said, I think every player's different with how they impact the ball and how far they hit it.

So the key is to figure out what you need to hit off the tee to be able to have that full shot to the green. But in my mind, Edgewood loves the slice, doesn't like the hook. Everything should come off the tee with a little left-to-right bend.

And I think that as aggressive as a lot of these athletes are, they want to bomb the driver. That's not the way to play this golf course. Some of these players can hit it a long ways. A lot of these athletes hit it a long ways.

So you really need to know when to, as Notah said, put the gas pedal down. But putting the ball in the fairway. Some of these fairways are tight. So discretion is the better part of valor.

Put the ball in play, put a wedge or a short iron in your hand, to give yourself a chance at birdie or par and pick up points.

Q. Notah and Peter, it's been 20 years now, Notah, since you won here in Reno, historic win. Peter, I know you obviously are involved in the Reno-Tahoe Open with the management back then. Can you just talk a little bit about it being 20 years ago now and what some of your favorite memories are of that first one?
NOTAH BEGAY: I was driving past the golf course on my way up here, I'm like holy cow that was 20. I was thinking about some of the shots I hit.

And we just did covered the golf when Nate Lashley won, with a big lead going into Sunday. Reminded me I had a four-shot lead going into the final round. Actually ended up losing the lead on the 11th hole but somehow ended up pulling it out.

But just how far the Tour's come. I think for me it's been the biggest thing and how quickly things change.

You never prepare for the end of your career, but I was blessed to be able to be brought into the NBC Sports family and feel lucky to be a part of this team.

But just the purses and the players and just everything about the game is so much different now. And you just have -- it's so much power-oriented. You have new players coming in every few years, Matt Wolff just won a couple weeks ago, or last week. And these guys that just come in and can set the world on fire.

I think it's neat for the game that we have such a high number of high-caliber players, especially going into the Open next week, it's anybody's tournament to win.

PETER JACOBSEN: I was part of the team that founded the Reno-Tahoe Open back years ago, and we managed it for some six, eight years.

And I've been involved in the area a lot. I helped design Genoa Lakes and Gray's Crossing up in Truckee. To be a part of something like Jon's done here and NBC Sports create this event, there's a lot of pride in that, that you put something together that has legs and has longevity and it becomes successful. And somebody like Notah Begay, who I hate to tell you, but he was my little brother when he came out on Tour. We had a big brother/little brother program.

He was my best little brother.

NOTAH BEGAY: I still ask him for money. (Laughter).

PETER JACOBSEN: Never had to bail him out of jail, not one time. (Laughter).

But it's satisfying, especially in the game of golf, because we go through these stages in our career -- and I came out on Tour 22 years old -- I'm now 65. And I went through my Tour career. I played on the Champions Tour. And like Notah I was fortunate to be asked to join the NBC broadcast team, which has been an absolute blast for the last 10 years.

And it's satisfying to go through those different stages of your career and be able to sit here and look out at Lake Tahoe and continue to have fun.

Q. Big brother/little brother, Oregon, Stanford, how do you get past that?
PETER JACOBSEN: He's a lot smarter than I am.

NOTAH BEGAY: We're only at odds one game of the year. The rest of the time we're pulling for each other.

Q. This tournament has had guys who've also done PGA-level or open-level golf, Rick Rhoden and those guys. This year I think there's five or six guys out there that have attempted that or played in that. Do you see this as probably the highest level talent era of celebrity golf right now as well?
PETER JACOBSEN: I think that's an excellent point. I didn't realize that. But you're right. One of the things I'm a big fan of, whether it's the Reno-Tahoe Open or Barracuda, or any tournaments the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic, there's eight sponsor spots in each tournament. Those sponsors can do whatever they want with those exemptions, they can give them to up-and-coming players or to players who are trying to remake their career.

But what I love to see is when they give a Tony Romo or a Rick Rhoden or a John Smoltz an opportunity or a Steph Curry an opportunity to play in an event because it's going to raise local interest. It's going to raise the awareness of the event and get a spotlight on that tournament for that very reason.

So when you look at this field, there are quite a few players that have played at that level, and they've done fairly well. Maybe they haven't made cuts and they haven't contended, but they've beaten PGA TOUR players during the week. And I know they take a lot of pride in that.

NOTAH BEGAY: The way I look at it is, I mean, these guys are the finest athletes in their sport at a given period of time. They're wonderfully gifted athletes. So having the access -- so they have the benefit of broadcast television in terms of NBC Sports and their coverage of all the golf that we cover. The Golf Channel.

One thing that surprised me when I came out here a few years ago is the teaching shows are some of the more popular shows that these guys watch.

Playing with the Pros, the different teaching segments we run throughout different broadcasts, because they want to learn from the best players because that's where they want to be, because they don't know anything different. They're wired to be competitive. They're wired to be the best in their sport. And this is a great place for them to be able to act upon that and they work on, they work hard like Tour guys maybe more they're infatuated with golf. Peter and I are past that. We want to talk about other sports; they want to talk about golf.

Q. Peter, I remember some years ago with your good friend Payne Stewart, you had Jake Trout and the Flounders, do you do anything with music, do you get up on stage and play?
PETER JACOBSEN: Jake Trout and the Flounders, obviously when we lost Payne, we decided that we should end that group name. But I still get up from time to time and play. In fact, thanks to my friends at NBC and our producer, Tommy Roy, they've let me write a few songs about the 16th hole at the Waste Management Open the last five or six years. And this year, I actually wrote a song about Johnny Miller, Johnny Miller's last broadcast at the Phoenix, at the Waste Management. I wrote a song, did a music video, the song was called I think I'm going to Miss Johnny Miller. We ran it on the broadcast and sold it on iTunes and gave all the money to Johnny Miller's foundation.

So, Jon Miller and everybody at NBC, they give me a big, long rope.

JON MILLER: I think we'll have him write a song on 17, for 17 here. (Laughter).

PETER JACOBSEN: Don't ask me twice. I'll do it. (Laughter).

Q. Jon, from an overall NBC Sports 50,000-foot level, NBC Sports makes, whether it be the Indy 500 or Sunday Night Football, makes big events bigger. Talk about that from NBC's sports standpoint as we look ahead to the Open next week.
JON MILLER: The Open Championship is a relatively new property for NBC. We've had it for four Open Championships now. We continue to invest and make it bigger and better. We bring the entire company to bear. So we use all the assets of NBC Universal and of Comcast to make sure it's as widely available and promoted and marketed and hopefully viewed as possible.

It's led by Tommy Roy, who is a brilliant executive producer, and probably in my career I've never seen anybody who approaches Tommy Roy's levels of expertise. We put so much into what we do at the Open and making it a big event.

Now that the PGA TOUR has changed their schedule so that the Players Championship moved into March and the PGA Championship moving into May, this makes The Open Championship the last major of the year.

So it takes on that much more importance, that much more relevance and that much more of a sense of urgency for those players who really need to raise their game and get to the highest level.

So I think you're going to see that. Going to Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy and Graham McDowell's home course, it's going to be a real treat and exciting thing for viewers and fans to experience because I don't think they've ever seen anything quite like Royal Portrush, and we're going to hopefully bring that home for everybody.

Q. Peter and Notah, follow-up on that about your excitement about going to Royal Portrush, leaving straight from here Sunday night to go straight there. So talk about from your perspective going to Portrush and the Open being in Northern Ireland for the first time in almost seven years?
PETER JACOBSEN: I don't know how many Opens I played in, but I've always found it to be the most difficult major championship to win. I never won any of the four, but I competed in all four.

And what it takes to win an Open Championship is everything. You can play in all kinds of inclement weather. You can get beautiful weather like this. You can get wind. You can get rain. You have to be prepared to play golf in shirt sleeves or in sweaters or in rain gear.

And I found that that was a challenge that sometimes it is hard to handle. But I really enjoyed that aspect. I really loved playing in an Open Championship. I've played Portrush before. I know they've changed the golf course a little bit the last couple of years, but having been involved the last four Open championships for NBC Sports, I can't wait to get there.

It is so much fun to be able to watch the players play. We were just talking about our favorites, whether it's Tiger or Brooks or Matthew Wolff or Kuchar or Rory, it doesn't matter, to be able to watch them compete and watch how they navigate their way through the day. And don't forget, a morning/afternoon tee time on Thursday or Friday could be vastly different from afternoon/morning in an Open Championship. You could get the luck of the draw. The luck of the draw over there probably has more impact than any tournament in the world, any tournament of significance.

So for me it's been my favorite major ever since I started on Tour, and I'm so excited to get there.

NOTAH BEGAY: Well, one of the more lasting memories I've ever had in following The Open Championship is when Tiger got knocked out of the field at Muirfield, because he was on the wrong end of the draw.

I don't know if you remember, but he had his hat on backwards because it was just drenched in rain and he had his rain suit on.

I think he shot in the 80s that day. Probably one of his worst performances in a major championship. And so it does, to Peter's point, bring out a necessary quality in the players that they have to deal with and have an open mind with what they're going to be facing that particular day.

But more so is it's a shift in mentality, because golf in the United States is more linear. It's very point to point, but golf in the UK and Scotland and in this particular venue, in Ireland, is going to be more creative. It's going to be more curvy. There's going to be a lot of unexpected challenges and some fortunate breaks and some bad breaks. And the players that I think mentally have the capacity to deal with those things on a day-to-day basis are the ones that typically put themselves in contention on a consistent basis.

So it's just somebody that has the ability to be creative and hit shots that haven't really practiced that much because it's hard to practice those conditions, because we never see courses like that here, not that firm and fast.

And so Lee Trevino showed me a funny thing at St. Andrews during a practice round. We were on the 10th hole and he threw a ball down from 150 yards, pulled his putter out and hit it 10 feet. The ball literally putted for 150 yards rolling over all the flat ground at St. Andrews and ended up 10 feet from the hole. And he (giggled) and said, see, you can hit anything out here. (Laughter).

Q. I was going to ask who do you like, who do you like to win it?
PETER JACOBSEN: Since we all just discussed the same player, I'm going to grab the player first. I think Kuchar is playing well. Kuchar who worked with Chris O'Connell, the same coach who works with Romo now. Kuchar just seems to be there all the time; he's consistent. He's got the attitude Notah was talking about; he's ready for anything. Anything can come his way. And he looks at it like, wow, how about that? That's interesting.

He's got a very consistent left-to-right ball flight. He can hit it high. He can hit it low. Remember what happened with Birkdale, with he and Spieth, I would've bet anything he that was going to win after Spieth had the trouble on 13, but Jordan had the greatest reset in golf I've ever seen to win. But I like Kuchar. Good luck picking somebody else; we all liked Kuchar.

JON MILLER: We were talking about it before, but the guy who I always see comes to the table to play is Justin Rose. He just finds a way to get his game in shape and gets himself up for majors.

I just love the way he approaches the game and loves the way he approaches what he's doing out there and the way he just handles pressure and handles mistakes. He kind of rebounds back, and you've got to do that at an open championship. So my dark horse, I guess, would be Justin Rose.

NOTAH BEGAY: Not so dark. I'm going with a not-so dark horse either, Ricky Fowler. I think players talk about windows that they have to hit the ball into, the high, medium and low. And Ricky can do it all. He can shape it both ways. Wonderful putter. Wonderful around the greens, exceptionally creative. I think he's done a nice job getting off to decent starts these last few times out, but the last 36 holes have really presented some challenges for him.

Now, if he can get off to a solid start again, catch some great weather, I think he's going to be sort of in a spot to win his first major.

PETER JACOBSEN: Just to jump in, common denominator on those three, Ricky, Justin and Kuchar, they all have great attitudes. You never see them lose their cool. They just keep it together from the first hole all the way to the 72nd, no matter what happens. It's interesting that we would pick those three.

Q. I'll ask about Brooks Koepka and then Tiger. So as we all see, it's Brooks kind of elevates his game to major championship level. We've seen it over the past few years. Next week at Royal Portrush, his caddie, Ricky Williams, grew up at Portrush.
PETER JACOBSEN: Ricky Elliott.

Q. Do you see it as an advantage for Brooks going into next week; and, two, talk about Brooks's overall game coming into the game next week?
PETER JACOBSEN: I don't know if your caddie growing up there has much of an impact on your game. It's going to depend on how Brooks sees the golf course. We all know that he can hit just about any shot. The key there is going to be keeping the ball down. There's so many cross-wind holes at Royal Portrush. So it's going to be about curving the ball into the wind or letting it go with the wind.

But I think it's going to help Brooks feel comfortable in the town because Ricky is so familiar with the area.

NOTAH BEGAY: When your caddie has that much knowledge of a venue, I think that's one of the things why you won't ever see a first-time or a rookie win at Augusta. Back in the day, you used local caddies. Well, local caddies, play and see those golf courses and know the greens better than anybody else because they walk the golf course every day.

And so in this particular case, with Ricky having extensive knowledge of more so the greens, the start lines off tees, because he knows his player, he knows the course, he's going to be able to match up those elements within the round of play; but where it's going to even become I think a bigger advantage is if the wind switches from day to day because players may not have seen that type of wind or it can switch at certain points in the day.

And Peter and I, it's frustrating having played over there, you can go be on the 11th or 12th hole and all of a sudden the wind switches and you're like, wow, I didn't practice for this; I don't know where to start the ball or how it's going to react on the green.

So I think it's worth at least a shot to maybe two shots a day for Brooks.

PETER JACOBSEN: The other thing about the wind at Royal Portrush as far north as it is, it is a heavy wind. It's a thick wind. There's a lot of moisture in that wind.

So when they talk about a one-club wind or a two-club wind, sometimes it could be a three-club wind. And that's really where Ricky and any of the experience of the players are going to know exactly what they need to do. They could be hitting a 6-iron from 120 yards depending on the strength of the breeze, but that is a thick, thick wind, thick breeze.

Q. Tiger Woods going into next week. Notah, of course you've known him for a long time. You know him very, very well. So talk about what your expectations are of Tiger going into the Open next week at Portrush.
NOTAH BEGAY: I expect good things. I've talked to Tiger consistently the last couple of weeks. The only thing that I think might be a bit of a challenge to overcome is he's only played 10 competitive rounds since the Masters.

So whereas probably everybody else is closer to 20. But what he's been working on in terms of working on elevating those ball flights and climbing that ladder and bringing the ladder down, it might almost be an advantage to him that there's these windows between the majors and that he doesn't feel compelled because of his back to have to play because then he can just focus on the final exam. He knows exactly what it takes to win these things.

And the biggest hurdle for him is if it gets cold -- and anybody that has a sore back knows that it just doesn't feel as good in the cold.

So if it does -- if he does catch a cold front or something, it might be a little bit harder to deal with, because right now he's practicing in 95-degree heat with 100 percent humidity. So he's going to have a pretty rude awakening when he steps off that plane next week.

PETER JACOBSEN: Last year, at Carnoustie, when he was leading on the back nine, I don't think there was anybody in the world that wasn't excited for what could be an amazing comeback, which we then saw at the Masters this year. And then he had a couple of problems coming into the back nine. But I'm a huge fan of Tiger. I just love to watch his golf swing. I think he's probably the best, maybe one of the top 3-iron players in the history of the game.

Seems to me that he's figured out how to put it in the fairway. If he can play from the fairway anywhere, I think he has a chance to win. So I've got my fingers crossed that he's got his driver in shape next week and come Sunday afternoon back nine that he's on the top page of the leaderboard.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

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