MICHELOB CHAMPIONSHIP AT KINGSMILL

October 6, 1999

Hal Sutton

HAL SUTTON: Well, it has been a good year. Sure was got a lot better two weeks ago when that Ryder Cup went our way. I don't know really what to say about it. I was looking for the win. I got that in Canada. I'd like to be a multiple winner. Seems like several people have been multiple winners this year so why not try to do that too.

HAL SUTTON: Well, I hope not. If I had -- if I didn't feel like I had a chance to win I wouldn't have come here. I am coming here going to put forth the effort that it takes to win. I like -- I have got a lot of good friends here. I like the golf course. I think Anheuser-Busch and Johnny Bender run a great tournament here, so I am happy to be right here in Williamsburg, Virginia this week.

HAL SUTTON: Yeah. This golf course is putting different than it ever has played. Since it has moved to the fall we have got all those memories in our memory banks of the golf course playing a lot shorter and the greens much slower and much softer. This year the greens are faster and firmer and golf course is playing quite a bit longer, so we are playing a different golf course than what we have got in our memory banks. We have got to watch those downhill putts where we have been in the past here, you would always hit them pretty hard even if they were downhill.

HAL SUTTON: No. I don't mind talking about it. That is going to be a very high spot in my life. It always will be regardless of what happens from this point forward. I think that what I have noticed over the last ten days is that everybody, every American took pride in that, even if they were sitting on their sofa at home and they all got up from their sofa when that putt went in. So I like talking about it. I think that, as I said yesterday, I was proud to be an American. I was proud to be on that team. I was proud of all my teammates because it was a team effort. Those guys are all my friends. They will always be my friends. So I was proud of that effort by everybody. Mr. Potter, how are you?

HAL SUTTON: Well, I don't know if you shoot for it or not. I don't think there is anything that I do that would better my position on being a captain. All I can do is do what I do best everyday and that is go and play golf. If someone at the PGA of America thinks that I'd make a good captain one day, well, then I'd be honored to be their captain. But I don't think that is anything that I'd change my daily routine to be. I am not going to solicit the job or anything else.

HAL SUTTON: I am not going to campaign for the job. I would be honored if they asked me, but, you know, I think Curtis will make a great captain.

HAL SUTTON: Well, we can chew this up and spit it out a lot of different ways but the bottomline is that the way our system is set up, when you ask two players to go in there, I mean first of all, they are not soliciting the job, they are asked to go and everybody is going to always put forth their best effort. There will be guys that go there that have earned the spot or have been asked to be there that for whatever reason might not be playing their best at the time. But that doesn't prevent them from putting 110 percent internally into it. Maybe they don't get the job done; maybe they do get the job done. But the thing that I have noticed the most about it is that I don't know what it is. I guess I don't read the European papers and tabloids and everything else. I don't know if it is the same way for them over there. But we in the United States, can get criticized beforehand and we can get criticized afterwards both in winning and losing, that is the damndest thing I have ever seen in my life. I mean, I always want to say: Where is everybody going to be happy. At what point -- I mean, you know, the funniest thing to me about the whole thing is prior to the tournament, everybody said that we were all 12 individuals that couldn't be a team. Then when we formed the team and you could see that we were right there cheering one another on, they criticized us for that. I don't know where we are supposed to be. I don't know what would make everybody happy. I think the American people are happy. I think and I will just be as frank and honest as I know how to be, guys pushing the pencil, I am talking to you right now, absolutely you have the responsibility to, I mean, you can sway peoples' opinion about how they feel about this. If they all got an opinion, you could change their opinion. If they don't have an opinion they can see it your way. When I think it comes to writing about this, I mean, the American players are in a Catch-22 position. I mean, we are going to get talked about in winning or losing basically. The thing that -- I picked up the paper I read about when they started knocking the shirt. I thought that person that is knocking the shirt missed the whole point of what the shirt was about. The shirt had every U.S. winning Ryder Cup team on it. It makes no difference if that thing had been purple and green. It was the intent of the shirt. It meant something to all the players on the team. I am not mad about anything, that was the greatest experience of my life. I just -- I feel bad that we can't actually relish the sunlight from the win. I mean, it is almost like a tainted win. I didn't feel that way when it happened. I thought this is the greatest thing in the world but as I have read everything afterwards I am like, how can this be so tainted like this. I feel bad for my teammates. It is not me. I mean, I am talking about for my teammates and everybody. There was no ill intent when everybody run out there when Justin made the long putt. I mean, if you really want to know the honest truth when that putt topped that hill, there wasn't a player sitting on the back of that green that didn't know that putt was too hard. That putt was going six or eight feet back. We are all thinking in our mind, stop, stop, stop, stop; oh, my God, it is in. Just like this. We are hoping it is going to stop close enough to even make the next one basically. Because there is a tremendous amount of pressure on those putts. I mean, I am sure that there were people that be got absent minded at the point saying, it is over with. I, for one, realized that Jose still had that putt to make. This is my position. Even my wife was one of the first people to run down the side of the green after everybody else jumped up, I am still there, I am thinking, well, Jose's got to make this putt. If someone sees me sitting back there and the rest of the team is going down there, they are going to say what is the matter with Hal. There was no ill intent involved in that. I mean, I have seen them celebrate in 1987, I stood in the fairway on 17 Muirfield Village while they celebrated in front of us. Seve Ballesteros closed out Curtis Strange right there in front of me to win the Cup. So I mean, you know, I am not sounding off guys, I just think it was a great thing that our U.S. team did and I think somehow it has been pulled down a little bit.

HAL SUTTON: Well, I don't know. Let's take your great paper there. When that lady wrote that article said it looked we all married the same woman and you know, that is offensive, that is offensive to the players. So I am calling a spade a spade. Everybody calls it a spade a spade whenever I am out there. If I hit a bad shot, I mean, let's face it, I get told that it was bad. We don't cover it up much. I just feel like there are certain people that are underdogs a lot of the time. And we were the underdog on Saturday night as it turned out. But then all of a sudden the firepower came to the surface that everybody thought the U.S. had. All of a sudden everybody realized again who the underdog was. And everybody felt bad about the way it happened. I don't know, I don't want to cut down the American people on this because frankly their crowds are rough, man. They have rough crowds. In 1985 I played at the Belfry, I came home, said I never wanted to play another Ryder Cup because the fans were so unmerciful. I mean, the signage around the greens they beat on it as we teed off. I mean, I am sorry, I don't have that short a memory. I remember those things. That is part of the Ryder Cup. I had already adjusted in my mind that if I did something wrong, someone might be on me that I could not have let that affect me that we had a larger -- the whole scheme of things was much larger than one moment allowing that to tear me down. I played Colin Montgomerie when one of those guys hollered out at him and he made the putt. He needed to make it. It was about 8-footer to tie so on the hole he made it. When he walked off the green he was angry. He said: I don't know why these people do this - I am not going to quote him exactly because you couldn't put it in your paper, but he said, I don't know why they do it because all that does is make me madder and make me that much more motivated to get the job done.

HAL SUTTON: Yeah, but I would say that you could generalize that even further than that and say it in sports period. I think you can even go further to say that is not just true in the United States, but that is true all over the world. So my point is still the same point. We are really getting tough on the Americans here, but it is really rampant all over the world. This is not a U.S. problem. This is everywhere. Would you not agree with that? I mean, they kill people in England, soccer games, stuff like that, people die over there.

HAL SUTTON: Well, I guess my point is and maybe I am sounding off here a little bit, but, man, I am so proud, I mean I emphasize, I mean, just boldly right proud of that team and the effort of that team and I mean, I hope that all 11 members of that team and our captain and our assistant captains feel as prideful about that performance as they should because; that was a great performance. I guess maybe the thing that disappoints me the most is all that has been talked about Europeans have never said, ever that we just got beat on Sunday. I mean, they are making every excuse under the sun and I am -- probably if I were in the same position I might too, but they have made every excuse under the sun as to why they didn't win. But the facts are and I have said it right here in this article right here yesterday there were some F14s, secretive F14s that flew over on Sunday afternoon in the form of golfers (sic), the U.S. showed the firepower that they have. And that was a neat experience.

HAL SUTTON: With all the ugliness that has gone on and written about since that point in time it has kind of gotten overshadowed to the point that I didn't even notice it. There was never any big deal made out of the fact the Colin said on Saturday night to all of you, you do realize this is over with, don't you. Did he say that or not?

HAL SUTTON: Okay. That is what I was told that he said. That is what I was told that he said. Tape.

HAL SUTTON: Well --

HAL SUTTON: I wasn't pointing my finger at anybody in here because I don't think anybody in here wrote that article. I am just saying, as you are pushing this pencil, we have an opportunity to change the attitude of how the people feel about this. Everybody that -- as I walk down the fairway there is not a single person that didn't say with all the pride in the world I was so proud and happy for that performance. I think that is the overall feelings of everybody and I hope we don't lose that feeling because that was -- I mean, to me, to see David Duval showing the emotion that he showed that was a special feeling for me. I am a competitor of David Duval's but I was really happy for David Duval because he had the true feeling of what that competition was all about at that point. When he made that putt on the back of the 10th green there, I will promise you that all the things that David Duval has won, he has never had that feeling before. Ask him about it. One thing else I might say to you is that everything was written about how the people wanted to be paid before -- that was before we went out there. I promise you if some -- if there was some way to say -- I will tell you what I will do, I will give you a million dollars for the experience, but I am going to totally -- we are going to destroy that memory from your memory banks, nobody would take a million dollars for that. That is how special a feeling that was to every player that was on that team.

HAL SUTTON: Yeah.

HAL SUTTON: No. I worked with a lot of different people. But I should have had my butt kicked all my life for not working with him solely, but I worked with him in college and I worked with him first couple of years I was out here; then I drifted away from him. He is not a strong personality as some of the other people I was working with so they tended to gravitate towards stronger personalities, I guess. But I started working with him again about three and a half years ago. His name is Floyd Horgen.

HAL SUTTON: Yes.

HAL SUTTON: No, I don't take that. I guess I was an impressionable person as a youngster and the more dominant the personality and the more convincing the personality is, as an impressionable person you are going to gravitate towards that. He was one of those kind of guys, he threw it out there; if you sipped it up, well, then great. If you didn't he wasn't going to stand there and beat it into you. I guess I was -- I don't know what I was, immature, basically.

HAL SUTTON: That is probably a good way of putting it.

HAL SUTTON: Well, it is, but what I have learned the most is that I have an opinion about this too. I have certain things that I look for in a golf swing too and I am not going to totally discard all the things that I feel. In other words, I am not going to throw all my cards out on the table and forget I have had a hand. I have got an opinion and I am going to -- as he is telling me what he thinks I need to do, I am going to evaluate whether I think that is the right thing to do see. What I meant as a youngster is I was impressionable and weak of personality, I guess, I don't know a better way to put it. But I just -- whatever they said, that is kind of what I tried to do basically. I just turned my life and my career over to him. That's a pretty neat thing when you have got a youngster that basically has got a lot of talent and he is going to turn his life over to you if you can really send him to the top you are going to get a lot of credit for that. But I mean the thing I guess -- that is kind of funny about the whole deal is that whenever someone hurts somebody they never have to be responsible for it. That is the thing in golfers you feel really aggravated about that we are held responsible for every shot we hit on the golf course. We can't throw the responsibility off on anybody else. But everybody else around us seems to be able to throw the responsibility every other direction, whether it is an agent; whether it is a guy working with you on your golf swing; whether it is somebody else writing a story about you or whatever else. They can say, well, this is what I meant or this is whatever, you know. I mean, the fact are is that our shots tell the truth. We can't lay the blame anywhere else. If I chili-dip a shot, I can't blame anybody else. If I double-hit one, I can't blame anybody else. If I addressed the ball and the ball moves, count a penalty stroke against myself. I am the responsible party; nobody else helped me do it. I guess as guys fail in their careers and they have worked with a different instructor or whatever else, it is always the guy's fault. Seems like the instructor, all you ever hear about is the guy that the instructor makes; you never hear about the ones that go by the wayside.

HAL SUTTON: I see him about every 6 to eight weeks.

HAL SUTTON: Yeah.

HAL SUTTON: Yeah.

HAL SUTTON: He was with me for three days before I went to the Ryder Cup. A lot of guys took whoever they were working with up there. But I kind of -- I don't seem to perform quite as well whenever he comes out. He does it often. It is always like the second or third week that I actually can get it where I want it. It takes a day or two for me to get it digested and get it in there.

HAL SUTTON: He work with Brad Fabel some. He is retired. He doesn't do it much. He just does it for fun. He actually retired from Florida went up there to ski. He skis 100 days a year and he just--

HAL SUTTON: Bozeman (phonetic) Montana.

HAL SUTTON: (laughs) I tell you what.

HAL SUTTON: Well, it is a good shaft. I would never ever say it is not a good shaft, but I doubt very seriously that anybody can go out there and put those shaft on the clubs and all of a sudden they, you know, that is my point. See, you just made my point for me about what I have been talking about right there.

HAL SUTTON: I am glad you did.

HAL SUTTON: It is a great shaft. But the point is that you know what, the responsibility still lies on my shoulders. That putt still has got to go in the hole the end of the day or whatever else. That is my whole point about the Ryder Cup. Man, don't give me any credit, give all the rest of the guys the credit. I have been on two losing Cup Ryder Cup teams. I know what it is like to be on the losing side of that. It is an ill feeling that you carry for two years with you. You don't make the next Ryder Cup team, you carry it for a lot more years. I think all -- every guy on that team deserves to be proud of that performance. That is all I am going to say about it.

HAL SUTTON: Thank you.

HAL SUTTON: I can't wait for tomorrow morning 7:47, that is my tee time. I like this game.