THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY MERCEDES-BENZ AND MICHELOB

October 29, 1997

Davis Love III

DAVIS LOVE: Well, the golf course is long. I'm sure you've heard that a few times. It's in great shape. The greens are very good. Much like 1990, some pretty good, rough, pretty challenging golf course. I mean, you forget about this golf course a little bit, but it's not really in a U.S. Open rotation or PGA, but it's a great, great golf course. Going to be very difficult this week, especially if the wind blows. It could play very hard if these greens get dry and fast. Nice to be back here in Houston. I haven't played here in a few years. It's nice to be back, so I'm excited about it.

DAVIS LOVE: Well, I've been excited about it for a long time. Being on the board for five years, there's been a lot of talk about it for a long time. It's great that all the tours have gotten together and gotten it going. Obviously spearheaded by Greg in the beginning. And Tim, as soon as he came on board, started working for more things like this, expanding the world of golf and getting the purses up. What a great opportunity for somebody, you know, that's starting on the tour right now, or is a current good player. Just great opportunities coming up. I think it's great that we'll play against the rest of the world guys a few more times during the year, and that these tournaments -- I think it's important that they're not necessarily U.S. events, that they'll move around some. I think in the future, if it happens to grow a little bit, you know, there will be more events around the world rather than focusing in on the U.S. Right now, most of the guys in that group are U.S. players, so we're pretty happy that at least half the time they'll be at home. The guys that I've talked to that didn't really know what was going on the last few weeks, were waiting on this announcement. They've all been very, very excited about it. It's just kind of hard to believe that we're going to have that many big purses when we look forward to the Players Championship or The TOUR Championships and now we're maybe talking about five at that level in '99. It's very exciting.

DAVIS LOVE: Well, I don't know what people wanted. I mean, that "world tour" is kind of a pretty generic term. If you leave out a few of us that don't like to travel around the world, like Freddie or Greg or Nick Price, the guys at the top, now Nick Faldo, they play all over the place anyway. It's not necessarily on a specific circuit that takes them through ten different countries, but they play all over the place. I think this is just a step at bringing all the tours together to where everybody can get a hold of it. It's kind of hard to say that Greg, Freddie and Nick are at Dubai this week. It's kind of hard to follow that. But if you've got the four majors, then you've got three or four or five of these events that everybody knows what's going on, and if there is a world money list and a world ranking, everybody kind of follows along. It gives it a lot more meaning than maybe five U.S. guys popping over to a European event. But, yeah, I think -- it certainly satisfies the players now. Past that, everybody's going to have their own take on it. The fans will enjoy it because it's going to be on TV in every country around the world. They'll be able to follow it. If you're the Top 50 or 60 guys playing against each other a couple more times, I think everybody is going to be more satisfied and hopefully it will grow from that.

DAVIS LOVE: The World Championship Series Invitational, even though you change the criteria some, you know, hopefully it's going to make it harder, probably. It's going to be hard either way. Making one of those teams is difficult. Winning a tournament is difficult. That one has still got to be one of the tricky ones to get in. For a guy who is playing pretty well, the matchplay is going to be probably the easiest one to get into. I think for me, that one is the most exciting because it will be something different. You know, stroke play events, no matter how the criteria, Top 60 or Top 50, whatever that one is at the end of the year, is more like a regular event. So I think the one I'm most excited about is the matchplay. I never really played -- maybe one time, played the Tucson as a matchplay. You know, 1 against 64 is pretty exciting. I think that format is going to be pretty interesting. That's the first one. I think that one will get a lot of interest.

DAVIS LOVE: I think those one or two guys do. You know, the last thing we ever wanted to do is give the impression that the players felt like they should be paid. I mean, if the PGA of America came to me in 1999 and said, "Look, you know, we didn't sell as many tents as we thought we were going to sell, the expenses have gone up, we're going to have to ask you guys $50,000 to play." I think they'd get the same team, pretty much. I want to play for Tom Kite and I want to play for Ben Crenshaw. I don't care if you have to buy your clothes. We never wanted to give that impression. But, you know, you say, "Wait a minute, you're taking some money from the PGA of America's take on the Ryder Cup and it goes to the tour. Should that go to overall purses? Should it go to the retirement plan or into pay the purse of the event that these guys are going to play in? It's probably logical. It's more equitable, you know, than spreading out to all the other players. A player comes in and says, "Wait a minute, we got 20 percent for that event, and now somebody else is going to go win a tournament and get the money." I think that works out very, very well. But I think it's just more a neat way to get into that event rather than -- it's a way for the fans to say, "I know who is going to play in that tournament, I saw those guys at the Ryder Cup last year." I always had an easy time figuring it out when the looking at the Masters and the Walker Cup team, I know how they got in there. I think it's great that we'll get, you know, more out of that one week of competition, because then you'll carry it over into that event. One of the two will be just finished being played, and one of them will be obviously coming up. So I think it will be very good for the event and good for the players to get in that way.

DAVIS LOVE: I never felt like we should. The PGA of America as an organization of club pros that basically run -- they don't run the events we play in, but they run the rest of golf for us. I mean, Tad Weeks here, the head pro, what do you think he's done for us this week? If the PGA of America can run their organization off of one or two events that we play in, the PGA Championship has a pretty good purse, too. It's not like they're stiffing us. If you win the PGA, I found out from experience, you get a pretty good bit of exposure out of it, pretty nice feeling. It's not like they're not doing anything for us. The Ryder Cup week is just -- the whole week -- I mean, I'm not disappointed that I was on the Ryder Cup team or disappointed in the week. I had a great time. And two points won or lost is not going to make me not have a good time. They put on a hell of a show. I mean, riding on the Concord, first class everything. If you say, "I'd like a different brand of water tonight for dinner," they'll go get it for you. They take great care of you. I never thought that we should be paid for the privilege to play on that team. But, if there's a way to say, "Okay, next year, guys, maybe we're going to do a couple other things for you to make it even better because we are making a lot of money," which the PGA every year, they do something more. They can't give us enough gifts. Next year they said, "Maybe we'll do this, this and this." You know, the event grows and what we get out of it grows. I know when Jack Nicklaus played, they probably got four pairs of pants and a couple sweaters. Now we can't haul all the stuff home that they give us. Next thing, only thing they could give us possibly more is a car to drive to the airport and back home from the airport, because they give us everything else. It's just more doing something -- you know, a few years ago, we didn't have any money coming in from the Ryder Cup, just like they didn't. Now it's just figuring out what to do with it and how to fairly distribute it. It is more commercial over there than it is over here. I'm obviously -- I tell Mark O'Meara, whoever brings it up to me, I'm coming at it from a different perspective. My dad was a PGA of America member. I know how hard the Georgia PGA and the PGA of America struggled when my dad was a member just to stay afloat. If now they can get to the point where they can run their organization the way they want because we play a couple weeks, we get benefit out of it, too, then everybody's happy.

DAVIS LOVE: I think golf should be an Olympic sport, but I don't think it should be professionals, I think it probably should be amateurs. We've got our Olympic golf, and that's the Ryder Cup. Amateurs have the Walker Cup. It would be nice if they had something more. Maybe take the World Cup, like they do, take two-man teams and play it as an Olympic sport. I'd love to see Buddy playing for a gold medal rather than, you know, Fred Couples and Tom Lehman. To me, we do that all year long. We play against each other. To be honest with you, U.S. Olympic basketball, I have no interest. I'd much rather watch the women's gymnastics, because at least you know there's some kids working hard to reach a dream. The NBA guys are taking a couple weeks off to go over there and wear people out. I think U.S. golf would be more -- obviously it would be more competitive because if you took five-man or ten-man or two-man teams, obviously we're going to have a tough time against Australia, England, Scotland. It's not going to be easy. But I sure would like to see Walker Cup. I think it had a chance once, and I don't think it has much of a chance with the pros anymore. I mean, they were talking about Augusta and all that. It came close. There just wasn't a whole lot of interest. I think 20 years ago when it was more amateurs in the Olympics, it would have had more of a chance, but it seems like now it's a professional deal. We have a lot of that. I don't know if it would have quite the impact as everybody thinks it would.

DAVIS LOVE: I've said a few times, I always visualized winning a major and dreamed about it, but it never really got past that last shot into the 18th green or the last putt. You stand around and say, "This putt is to win the PGA," you knock it in on the putting green. You don't say, "Now, I've got to go do a bunch of interviews, talk on the telephone, sign a bunch of books." You don't see past it. The reaction has just been incredible. I mean, I don't know if I'll ever catch up with the mail. You hear Greg Norman say, "I got 15,000 letters." You go, "Oh, come on." I understand how you get 15,000 letters now. It has been incredible. I've gotten a thousand copies of newspapers, the front page of every city in the country's newspaper. People send them to me. It's been overwhelming. The fans, my friends, people in the media, everybody, they've just been wonderful about the whole thing. To sit down so many times and people say, "That was my best moment of the whole year," when Tiger winning the Masters was pretty special, have so many people be so excited about it, has been amazing. How has my life changed? It's just been neat to be introduced on the first tee of all these tournaments as the PGA champion. That gives you a little thrill every time that happens. You know, to be talking to Justin Leonard today about going and playing in the Grand Slam, things like that, it's just really hard to believe still a little bit. But, you know, my time has been taken up a lot with a lot of outside stuff. When I came to The TOUR Championships in 1990, I could practice and do whatever I wanted. Now, there's a whole lot of people want to talk to me, things I have to do. It's great, you know. I see now how guys a year after a major championship get worn down. Hopefully, I've learned a lot from that that I can manage my time a little better. It's been an exciting few months. I haven't come down off of it yet. I've still got a very high confidence level from it, still real excited about it. The way it ended and all that, I don't think it's going to wear off for quite awhile.

DAVIS LOVE: I think it will be. You know, for me, I've played a lot anyway. I think this means I won't be able to cut back as I get a little older for a while. You know, I've always played a lot in the fall, so I don't think it will affect really my fall scheduling. Like the Presidents Cup being in December, things like that. The new event is the first week in November, that won't really affect me. Kapalua, just replacing that week basically. So it's going to be interesting looking at your schedule. You're going to be trying to peak for an event in February rather than trying to peak for an event in April. I think it will be a few more balls hit over the winter to get ready for the west coast swing. With opportunities this year on the west coast swing and then '99 with another event, the purse is going to go so high. The west coast is just going to get stronger and stronger the next few years. Then the fall events in '99 will get much more stronger. It's getting tore a year-round thing. Guys that used to take two months off, a month off in the middle of the year, I think it's going to get harder and harder for them to be competitive. It's not that you can't do it; you just might not be able to be as competitive as you could be.

DAVIS LOVE: Laurel Island was our second one to get in play. You know, we've had very good reaction. I've been surprised at the reaction, had a lot of fun doing it. . Both developers, getting ready to open another this winter, all three of thrilled to death with what we've done. Come in on budget on all of them. The two that are being played, they're thrilled. Everything we've been done we've been lucky that they've come out good, everybody likes playing it. It's nothing new and earth shattering, just good, solid, traditional golf courses. They've enjoyed them.

DAVIS LOVE: Well, we can't do too many because, kind of like Ben, you have a whole lot of things going on. You don't want to take away from golf, which is my main focus. Our goal, we're doing one a year basically right now. Our goal is to do two to three a year and no more than that. That limits you a little bit because you have to be picky on what you take. So we've missed a few opportunities because we haven't been aggressive enough. We're picking good projects, trying to pick in our area, try to do like learn from Fazio, try to stay in an area that you know. We're growing steadily and enjoying it. If we can do three a year, we can handle that. Cut into the fishing time; won't cut into the golf time (laughter). That's our goal, to grow this company without affecting my golf game.