CANON GREATER HARTFORD OPEN

July 5, 1998

Olin Browne

OLIN BROWNE: I'm not sure I'll know how it feels until tomorrow or later. I'm, obviously, exceedingly pleased and excited at the moment, and I'm trying to think before I flap my gums too much.

OLIN BROWNE: Maybe, maybe not.

OLIN BROWNE: It was -- it was a little lower in the green and a little straighter. The one before I had to kind of ease it up over a hump. It bent a little more. This was more uphill and less left to right. As a result of where I chipped from earlier, I had a good idea what it was going to go do.

OLIN BROWNE: That ball never stays on the green when it ends up here. Have you been here? You've been here before. That ball never stays up. I knew once it got up that high, it was going to look like it was going to stay and weasel its way down into the hollow. The infamous collection areas of TPCs.

OLIN BROWNE: I think he doubled 15; is that right?

OLIN BROWNE: As soon as he doubled 15, I was thinking birdies. I made a good birdie on 16, nice seven-iron about eight feet and made the putt. I had a good putt on 17. It just burned the edge of the cup. I was obviously trying to get one more. I just as soon would made one more coming in and avoided this whole hysteria. It didn't work out that way and it worked out in my. Favor I'm feeling very fortunate at the moment.

OLIN BROWNE: I was -- I haven't had a lot of experience in playoffs. I've only been in a couple. They weren't even in professional golf. Anybody can look at Stewart's record over the last two years and know he's a really fine player. Certainly, one of the best players, young players, especially on the TOUR. And he hit the ball 18 feet right below the cup. I'm pretty sure he's going to make that putt. That's the only thing I was thinking about.

OLIN BROWNE: I wanted to hit the best shot I could hit. I had a good beat on it. I had a good feel what it was going to do. I wanted to hit the best shot I could. It happened to drop.

OLIN BROWNE: 40 feet, maybe. I don't have any idea; 35. I just don't know.

OLIN BROWNE: It was one bad swing out of -- I think I drove the ball pretty well this week and hit some pretty crisp shots. Unfortunately, you know, I was leading at the time, but, you know, bad golf shots are just part of this game. There are -- there's no way around that. It was -- at that point, I think the golf course was playing fairly tough. It happened on a fairly tough hole. I don't feel like I lost that much on that particular hole. It was a six, yeah. It was a double. Pars are about four and three quarters on that hole anyway today. I messed up and made it a little more difficult on myself. It might have relaxed me, too, might have taken a little tension out of what was going on and I was able to keep it together and make a couple more birdies coming in.

OLIN BROWNE: How about that? How about that? I'm going to say that more often.

OLIN BROWNE: Family roots in New England. My mom's from Providence. I still have a lot of cousins who live in this area, friends in Hartford. My wife's family upstate New York, Albany. This is a little triangle here and a lot of people came down to cheer me on this week. It's been fun.

OLIN BROWNE: I worked at New Seabry (phonetic). It's kind of how I got hooked up in golf after my freshman year in college. I needed to make a little dough. I got a job at New Seabry. I ended up going crazy over the game. I thought I would take the easy way out, wouldn't have to work for a living, turn pro, made it hard on myself.

OLIN BROWNE: Worked in the bag room. Guy Tedesco and Danny Coon were the pros there.

OLIN BROWNE: I feel my game is young and in this day and age, you know, good medicine and good physical therapy, I think that we can last a little longer than we have in the past. And you know, if your timing is right and you take care of yourself, things can work out in your favor. I don't think that any reason, just cause I'm 39, doesn't mean I can play good golf from here until who knows when.

OLIN BROWNE: Larry's a class act. He's as class a guy as there is. I met Larry Mize in my rookie year in 1992. I played with him, played with him in the Buick Open in Flint, Michigan, and I remember Larry was down in a bunker, just a testament to his character. He was down in a bunker out of sight of the rest of the players. He came out of the bunker and told -- I think he told -- I think I was keeping his card. He told me that he wasn't sure what he made on the hole, because he had to consult with an official about a possible infraction. Nobody had seen it. There was -- some grass had been growing in the bunker. He brushed it during the swing. He assessed himself a two-shot penalty on the spot. I cannot say enough positive things about him. I think he's a gem.

OLIN BROWNE: Absolutely. I think -- it's been a while for him to play well, too, and I'll be honest with you, I was happy for him that he was playing as well as he was. And I was surprised that he ran into as much trouble as he did coming in.

OLIN BROWNE: I tell you what, I don't know if all you heard me say this, but my caddie Mike Harmon, has won three times here now with Lanny Wadkins with D.A. and me. I got to that 15th hole every year and I grabbed my driver like an idiot, and I hit it on that hole every stinking time. I made five as much as I made three, if not more. And we made a determination early in the week to lay up to a good wedge. I birdied the first two days and parred it the last two. I think if you go over my history, I beat my scoring average by two or three shots for the week. You know, he earned his money this week and I can't give him enough credit.

THE WITNESS: H-A-R-M-O-N.

OLIN BROWNE: Those last holes scare me half out of my wits. You stand up on 17, first of all, you have to climb that stinking hill, right? I've never been able to pull a good club on 16, always ended up being long or in the water. He got me through those holes this week. I think I played 15, 16, 17 and 18 under par for the week. In fact, I'm sure I did. All four of them, each one under par. So he gets all the credit for that. And to stand up on 17 and, you know, be somewhere near the lead of the tournament and have to hit the ball in the fairway there, just, you know, make you cringe.

OLIN BROWNE: He's my regular caddie.

OLIN BROWNE: Bribed him.

OLIN BROWNE: Uh-hum.

OLIN BROWNE: On numerous occasions.

OLIN BROWNE: Yeah.

OLIN BROWNE: I don't know Larry as well as maybe I'm letting on here. I know him out here on the golf course. I know him well enough to jive with him a little bit and chew the fat and, you know, I tease him a little bit. He teases me. He's a good man. I respect him. I have a lot of good things to say about him.

OLIN BROWNE: I was watching it. What a shot had you. In my mind, that's still the greatest shot I've ever seen or heard of because it was such a dramatic moment.

OLIN BROWNE: Little difference.

OLIN BROWNE: Well, God, you know, it looked good when it started getting up towards the hole. Then it hit the pin and dropped, and magical moment. I mean, just all the things that we really work on professionally, okay, you know, family and friends aside, you can't -- you separate that from what you do out here. But, obviously, everything that we do is geared towards playing the absolute best golf we can play. And this game is so hard on people. I heard the fans yelling at Grant Waite today. I was playing with him. He had a rough day. They were giving him a hard time. They don't grasp this game. This game is so complicated, so hard, so capricious. One bounce one way, you make a double; bounces the other, you could make a birdie. It's that fine a line. You can play great and end up falling short all the time. Look what David Duval did for three or four years. He finished second every week and guys were giving him a hard time. Then lately he's played absolutely wonderful golf, you know? He's gotten a handle on it. There are little steps you look to get over in this game. And certainly winning your first tournament is one of those big hurdles.

OLIN BROWNE: Quad Cities the next week and take the next week off. CVS also.

OLIN BROWNE: I'm not in.

OLIN BROWNE: It ended last week.

OLIN BROWNE: I'm going to Quad Cities and I'm happy to do that.

OLIN BROWNE: Congressional was a -- Congressional was a great experience. It was -- it was the first time in all the time I played out here because the course was so difficult, you know. It was the first time in all my play out here I really understood that I could play well on the TOUR. The other times you know I was eeking out a top ten, whatever. I finished fifth at Congressional, but I was in it the whole tournament. I got better every day and moved my position up. At various points in the tournament I was tied for the lead or two shots back, I mean, I was right there. And you know, Congressional was a boost for sure.

OLIN BROWNE: You know, you like to be positive and say no, you always keep your head down, you always know this day is going to come. But, yeah, you question what's going on. There are guys -- a lot of guys who are better players than I am, who spent a lot of time and a lot more time trying to figure out how to win a tournament. You know, or how to -- there are guys who can't keep the cards, who can really play golf. It's a funny, strange game that way. I mean, look what's happened to Chip Beck. He's gone to top five in the world, to absolutely looking for any way to make a cut to pick up a check. I have a huge respect for this game and the more you play it, and the harder you work at it, and the more walls you bump into, the more that respect grows. I don't want -- I want to say this right: The game teaches you resilience and it teaches you to really -- to accept defeat, which is a hard thing for an athlete to do, because you know you get hung with a loser moniker, man, it's a hard way to go through life. Think of all the times the great shots you hit. If you have one great shot, you have ten mediocre shots, and five horrible ones, and the learning process is so demanding and the learning curve is so extraordinary, the game humbles people in a hurry.

OLIN BROWNE: I was on the putting green until my caddie came over and told me he had missed the green, and so I came over to watch what was going on, and he looked like he had a pretty tough chip, he hit it over the green or something, and kind of had to burn it into the hill and get eeking down that hill, I thought he made the putt. I thought he made a beautiful putt, thought it was dead center.

OLIN BROWNE: I started playing golf when I was about 19 years old and --

OLIN BROWNE: I don't know. I grew up in Washington, D.C. I didn't really have anywhere to play, I messed around with it a little bit, you know, spring break whatever.

OLIN BROWNE: Played football and basketball and you know, stupid stuff.

OLIN BROWNE: Da, dumb-dumb sports. You know, so to answer your question, my focus was to just learn the game, it was to see how good I could get at it, and you know this is -- this is like pretty cool, you know, this is pinnacle. It's taken me a long time, taken me 20 years to get here. And it's been a long, hard, but very rewarding and satisfying experience. The answer is, no, sorry.

OLIN BROWNE: It was after my freshman year. I was looking for a way not to work for a living. I'm not trying to to be funny. I didn't see myself sitting behind a desk. I don't have the temperament for that. The funny thing about this game is that you know those are the things that, you know, hitting the books properly and you know deciding what your major is going to be, deciding what kind of road you want to take in life, those are the things that require real discipline, and I didn't have any of that. The more I played golf, the more it taught me about this. It's funny, because I didn't think I had the discipline to focus and channel my energies in such a way that I would achieve this level of success.

OLIN BROWNE: I needed a job. I had a contact who got me the job, and one thing led to another. I have to say a few words about somebody very special to me. I hope I don't bore you people here with this. But there's a man, his name is Tom Walsh, and he died last August. And from 1991 until the PGA Championship last year, he was my guide. He was from Boston, Chicago. He lived in Boston. He was a very, very close friend and a confidant and he explored the game of golf through kind of a different route than conventional, you know, and I'd just like to credit him with a great deal of this.

OLIN BROWNE: He did a lot of things; played jazz piano at the top of one of those clubs downtown. He was -- he managed money for one of the pension funds there. He was a different breed of cat. He was an explorer, and in the modern age it's not that easy to do that. You know, things have been pretty much explored. He explored unconventional thinking, and for some reason I related to that. And I think it's been a tremendous help, and especially in reference to your question about giving up. You know, there are all kinds of ways you can get dejected in this game and he never let me do that. I owe him a great deal.

OLIN BROWNE: He was friends with my folks. And I met him back in the early 80s, I guess.

OLIN BROWNE: I played in college, I went to Occidental College, it was a division three school. The golf program wasn't very strong, and I was able to play and practice and develop my game and, you know, I really worked hard at it. I worked a lot harder I than I worked at going to college, but it's gotten me a little farther.

OLIN BROWNE: I don't know. Both those guys are a lot younger than me. I mean, I don't think -- I don't have the level of talent. I don't think that I can go to a golf course on Tuesday and prepare myself and say, you know, I'm the guy to beat this week. In fact, I'm sure I don't have that level of talent. I go to a golf course I try and find some rhythm with my golf swing, some clue as where my shots are going and a good putting stroke. If I can do those things and take it on the golf course, things will unfold and develop however they develop. I don't know, maybe this is the start of something, I don't know. If it is, I'm all for it, but the game has a way of beating you up, and it has a way of pushing you around. So, I'm here in a very humble mode right now, and I'm thanking the golf gods, and I'll make the appropriate sacrifices this evening to them.

OLIN BROWNE: I was kicking myself. When Larry was trying to make the putt on 18th, I was kicking myself when I was walking back to the 18th tee. Hey, I could have avoided all this stomach upset, but at the time, like I said, it was a hard hole, it was playing particularly hard today. I thought I was -- I felt like I was playing under control and I was hitting some good shots, so I just wasn't going to let that bother me.

OLIN BROWNE: The best bird was on the 19th hole. My son is sitting right here in the front row. I draw a lot of inspiration from him. He has a tremendously positive attitude about life. He's enthusiastic about everything. That's part of the beauty before being a kid. Everything is an eye-opener. I think sometimes we can get caught up in our own personal struggles. If we look around and see what other people are experiencing, we can draw inspiration from those things, and I certainly draw inspiration from my two kids and my wife. Great people. I'm very fortunate.

OLIN BROWNE: Everybody was hollering at me on the way back there. I did that because I had been sitting around for 20 minutes. I didn't really hit any balls. I felt it was like a good way to losen up and maybe pick up some good vibes on the way back. It worked out.

OLIN BROWNE: Oh, man, I was jacked.

OLIN BROWNE: No, but I wasn't going to stress about it either. The best way to deal with stress is take your mind off whatever it is stressing you out, go do something else. We had a putting contest. My daughter and I beat Patrick and Olin. You didn't get your last putt, I'll give it to you when we get back out there. You know what I'm saying. I tried to -- I tried to relax a little bit.

OLIN BROWNE: I played mini tours. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the PGA TOUR starting Hogan and NIKE TOUR. I was at a crux in my life, we had Olin and all of a sudden this TOUR came around. I ended up making, I think, $43,000 bucks my rookie year in 1990, a little on the side. I finished second with Tom Lehman on the money list. Those years, '91 was the first year I started playing better, make strides towards playing better. I was able to put money in my pocket, too. Which is a significant event at the time. My wife has been a wonderful support. She's a lawyer and has her own profession. At that time we were both kind of breaking into that. I was breaking into golf, she was breaking into her practice. Well, she's a prosecutor. It was, do something positive or move on to something else at that point. And I tell you, I've been very fortunate because a lot of things have fallen into place timing wise. Like that chip on the last hole. I mean, you can chip in all you want, how much better a time is it than right then?

OLIN BROWNE: I moved to Florida because that was the only mini TOUR, played some golf in you New England. Played the Mass open a bunch of times. This is nomad life of an inbetween player. Not in college or the TOUR, you play where you can play, where you can cough up $250 or $300 bucks to enter a tournament. Where they have a purse, you can pay your bills. It's a road a lot of people take, few people come out of college and they achieve a level of success on the PGA TOUR, but if you look at the list of collegiate all-Americas who are wallowing on the mini tours and on the NIKE TOUR, you get a real good idea of how competitive this game is. A lot of really great players who are just looking for the opportunity to play up here.

OLIN BROWNE: Never a point I was ready to give up, but I'm saying these things happened or I happened upon them at a really good time for me. I never up to this point have had to look at myself in the mirror and say, you know, you got a go do something else.

OLIN BROWNE: I worked at the Dorset(ph) Field Club in Dorset, Vermont for my friend Ken McDonald in the summer of 1985, so for six months, yes, I did work in the golf shop other than, you know, summer jobs.

OLIN BROWNE: Let's see. Started out of the box birdie number one, which is a really nice sign, I drove it into a divot off the tee. Had 172 yards to the hole. Pulled out a seven-iron, my caddie grabbed it from me and made me hit an eight. I had to kind of trap it. Hit a good shot, good five feet, made the putt. It's a wonderful way to start your day on the Sunday on the PGA TOUR and then birdied the first hole. Made a solid par on number two, and number three I drove it in the first cut of the rough on the right side of the fairway and hit a nine iron over the green, right on the edge, you know, six inches in the fringe and made it from 35 feet, which is really a nice way to follow up birdie on number one. And then, let's see, made a good save on number four up and down on the bunker. Number five I hit a three-wood in there, today hit a great shot about four feet and missed it. In a -- about six feet, I guess, birdie number six, hit a L-wedge about two and a half feet made the putt. Then what happened, doubled ten right?

OLIN BROWNE: Doubled ten, that was fun.

OLIN BROWNE: I tried to hit a five iron Hail-Mary shot out of the trees, it didn't work. I had no good shot. If I go left, I'm out of bounds, if I hit it right goes through the trees, I hit it the only place I could.

OLIN BROWNE: I hit a driver, five iron, eight iron, L-wedge and two putts.

OLIN BROWNE: It was one of those things it hit the last branch. Those kind of things you see the golf ball moving in slow motion. You see it coming. So I knew it was going to happen. Then what happened?

OLIN BROWNE: 13 I hit a good tee shot there. Hit it other the green into the bunker, and drew kind of a cuppy lie. I thought I had a good shot. I made it coming back I think that was a significant birdie. You know, I have an opportunity to go for a par five and two. Hit a shot as good as I hit it. Excuse me, and don't walk away with birdie. That's the kind of that's the point where you kind of go you know maybe this isn't going to work out today. But I ended up making the putt which was really helpful. And then 16 I hit a seven iron shot about eight feet and made a good read on the putt and made it. You know, couple of pars on the win.

OLIN BROWNE: I hit it right where I was on the chip-in, six feet further up is all, left off the green.

OLIN BROWNE: About like that. Four or five inches.

OLIN BROWNE: Four iron both times, yes.

OLIN BROWNE: Unknown makes good. Thanks guys, ladies, thank you