MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 11, 2024

Jack Nicklaus

Gary Player

Tom Watson

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: You have been idols in the golfing world for decades, and what's really, really interesting, you've been brilliant over these many decades, it's just not limited to within the ropes. It's what you have done, all three of you have done as ambassadors of golf for your entire career after your playing days were put to rest. All of us appreciate and love seeing y'all.

This Honorary Starter ceremony to a lot of us is one of the most cherished traditions in all of golf to see our heroes come back. And, gentlemen, you are the most beloved ambassadors in the game of golf. Thank you so much for who you are and what you have done.

We will open it up to questions.

Q. My interest is in the trophy, the three-dimensional trophy. And I'm sure that each of you won in different eras as when there were different iterations of that trophy or different versions of the trophy. So I would ask Jack, but I would certainly encourage the others to tell me about that trophy, where you put it at home, you have multiples, and anything associated with the clubhouse trophy which a lot of people don't know about.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I've got four of them. And you know, I couldn't afford the other two. So I have one at home, I have one at the Bear's Club, one at Muirfield Village, and one at the Jack Nicklaus Museum. They are beautiful. I don't know what the percentage is, but I would guess it's around 30 percent probably, the trophy.

TOM WATSON: Close to that.

JACK NICKLAUS: And of course we had a black before, and this is far nicer.

Q. So can you describe what it feels like to put on the green jacket each year when you return to the Masters?

GARY PLAYER: Who was that to? We didn't hear. Was that to me?

Well, obviously, having been here or associated with Augusta for 67 years and having come here for the first time in '57 and met one of my heroes, President Eisenhower, because as we all know, he's a man who believed in freedom, and what he did for this great country, you can't describe it. I had such admiration for him.

And then Jack Nicklaus always told me about Bobby Jones, and I never quite understood the greatness of him. And then I obviously read a lot about him, and he won the Grand Slam in four months, which is quite -- it will never be done again.

So the wonderful memories that I have of this golf course, from the beginning, memories are so important in your life. They say it's the cushions of life. And so it's gratitude. I think having been very poor as a young boy, and suffered a great deal as a young family, coming here and putting on a green jacket the first time and then a third time and then I was second on three occasions, it's been a wonderful -- I think the best way to describe it, which is really apt, is gratitude, how fortunate we are. And I've traveled more miles than any human being that's ever lived now, and my eyes have seen things that are enjoyable, but also very sad.

And so you come here to this great country of the United States, the greatest country that God ever made, and that's a privilege, and an honor, and to be part of this tournament is something that is much appreciated.

Q. Tuesday Tiger Woods sat right up there and said, you know what, I think I've got another one in there, and I can do it if my ankle doesn't hurt; the weather is warmer; I prefer it when it is warmer, I think I can do it. And if he does, obviously that would tie your record of six green jackets. So I guess my question is: Do you think he can do it? Maybe not if it's this week, could he do it in the future, or do you think your six green jacket record is safe?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, there's many answers that I always say, the proof is in the pudding, you know. Tiger is quite capable of winning. I said in here 20 years ago, Tiger had a chance to win more than Arnold and I had put together, and that would have been ten.

And you know, he probably did if he had not been injured.

I think he's got a tough way to go to win. You know, I think he'll certainly hit the ball well enough to do so. Whether he physically can handle what has to happen with it, and he's also got to be able to score better than everybody else, too. That's part of the deal.

But anyway, he's a very special, talented athlete, and I wish him well.

Q. This is for Jack and Tom. Jack, out of your 19 runner-up finishes, there are two players that were responsible for eight of them. One is sitting next to you, he was responsible for four. Can you talk about what you learned from your losses to Tom. And, Tom, could you talk about what you learned from your wins over Jack in those cases?

JACK NICKLAUS: Do you really have to bring that up, Alex?

Q. Sorry, Jack.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I don't know whether -- you try to learn from what you do. You know, I think that Tom got me on a few occasions, and probably more than I probably got him as we came head-to-head down to the bottom. But you know, each one of those occasions, it was generally one of us made a mistake of some kind.

I'll just try and go through -- I don't know what they were, '77 here, Tom birdied 17 and I had a shot, 6-iron into 18. I had 163 yards to where the pin was, and I had a 6-iron in my hand and wanted to hit it to the right of the hole, and all of a sudden he hit it in. And I changed my mind, and I shouldn't have. So I made a mistake, put it in the bunker and lost the tournament, or lost a chance to tie. Tom just had to bogey the last hole to win.

At Pebble Beach, Tom took it away from me. I remember sitting at -- Jack Whitaker was interviewing me on the 18th green. He says, "Well, it's great to be in the company of somebody who won five U.S. Opens," and all of a sudden there's this roar at the 17th green and the impossible chip that he hit that went in the hole.

TOM WATSON: It wasn't impossible (laughter).

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, let's put it, unlikely. However, Tom is a great chipper and he's always been -- when he gets into contention, he's always done well. Turnberry in '77 coming down the stretch, who made a mistake. I made a 5-footer at 17.

TOM WATSON: You finished second in '81, here.

JACK NICKLAUS: Did you win in '81? Well, I obviously must not have been that close. What did you win by?

TOM WATSON: I won by two.

JACK NICKLAUS: I was somewhere near.

TOM WATSON: That's the thing, the question you asked is really reflective on how many times he finished second in major championships.

JACK NICKLAUS: What did I learn? Probably not enough.

TOM WATSON: We all learn from our mistakes, that's the thing.

JACK NICKLAUS: Yeah.

TOM WATSON: You go out and you play a round of golf. I always -- I almost always wanted to practice after a round of golf because I had mistakes fresh in my mind. I was warmed up. And that's the way I operated. But what I learned in victory, probably the most important victory I had was against Jack at Turnberry, coming off the 18th green, Jack grabbed me around the neck, and it wasn't a nice soft grab --

JACK NICKLAUS: I wasn't trying to break your neck, but I thought about it.

TOM WATSON: He looked at me and said (in Jack Nicklaus impression), "Tom, I gave you my best shot, but it wasn't good enough."

The thing is, he followed up and said, "Congratulations, I'm very proud of you."

At the moment in my career, I had just -- in the beginning of that year, I had changed my golf swing so I could have more trust in it, and I won a bunch of tournaments. I had a couple tournaments before the Masters, and then I won another tournament before The Open Championship. I was flying pretty high, but I learned to trust my golf swing. And when Jack said that, coming from the best player in the world, I said, you know, to myself, "Maybe I can play with the big boys."

And that was a defining moment. I can compete against the best. That's what I learned in my victories.

JACK NICKLAUS: Who was the other one, Trevino?

Q. You had to know it was Lee, right?

JACK NICKLAUS: What?

Q. That he had four, too.

JACK NICKLAUS: I'm not hearing you, Alex.

Q. You had to understand that it was Lee that had four wins, as well?

TOM WATSON: You were second.

JACK NICKLAUS: I was second all four times? Really? Shame on him (laughter) or me, one of the two.

Q. For Gary and Jack, your anniversaries are always celebrated around here. This is the 60th anniversary of Arnold winning in 1964, it would be his fourth green jacket and his final major. And, Jack, I believe you were runner-up there, and he would put the jacket on you a year later. But I was wondering if you two had some specific memories to the '64 Masters?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I remember that nobody was in contention but Arnold. I think that, if I'm not mistaken, I tied with Dave Marr for second, six shots behind. Arnold shot 66, we shot 282 or something like that. But Arnold won the tournament going away, and Arnold was dominating. He won in '57, of course '62 and '64, and I got to put the green jacket on him, in '64, and won in '63, and Arnold put it back on me in '65, and in that period -- Gary won in '61 in there and Gary won later, also, a couple more times.

Arnold, I think Arnold and Augusta were really meant for each other in many ways. I think that Arnold helped put Augusta on the map, and I think that Augusta helped put Arnold on the map. And it's just about the time of television really getting into, and here comes this swashbuckling gambler along, and people involved watching him play, watch him hit it out of the trees and everything else.

Arnold didn't particularly drive the ball well during those years. He became not a very good -- from not a very good driver but a great scorer to a great driver, and then couldn't make the putts. It's a change of how you're -- how you evolve.

But during the years when Arnold won, and in contention other times, too, he was a big force. He was hard to beat here, that's for sure.

Q. Address this to Tom. One of the big topics of this Masters, in particular, is bringing all the top players together for the first time since The Open last July. And I guess my question for you is, what you've meant to the TOUR all these years, what is it like seeing what's going on in golf from your vantage point?

TOM WATSON: Well, we all know golf is fractured with the LIV Tour and the PGA TOUR doing the different things they are doing.

You know, I got up at the Champions Dinner, and it was really a wonderful event. We were sitting down and we were having great stories about Seve Ballesteros and people were laughing and talking. I said to Mr. Ridley, I said, "Do you mind if I say something about being here together with everybody?"

He said, "Please do."

And I got up and I said -- I'm looking around the room, and I'm seeing just a wonderful experience everybody is having. They are jovial. They are having a great time. They are laughing. I said, "Ain't it good to be together again?"

And there was kind of an appall from the joviality, and it quieted down, and then Ray Floyd got up and it was time to leave.

And in a sense, I hope that the players themselves took that to say, you know, we have to do something. We have to do something.

We all know it's a difficult situation for professional golf right now. The players really kind of have control I think in a sense. What do they want to do? We'll see where it goes. We don't have the information or the answers. I don't think the PGA TOUR or the LIV Tour really have an answer right now.

But I think in this room, I know the three of us want to get together. We want to get together like we were at that Champions Dinner, happy, the best players playing against each other. The bottom line; that's what we want in professional golf, and right now, we don't have it.

Q. Along those same lines, there's just so much joy in the game and particularly seeing you all together. Maybe some memories of the camaraderie when you all played and how different it is now compared to when you were all friends and rivals.

TOM WATSON: You know, we always had fun playing the game. At times when we were not playing the game, we struggled. But we had fun playing against each other. You know, we were tough competitors, Gary and Jack and Tiger, tough competitors.

Bottom line, we were all inside that curtain. We all knew what we were trying -- we all knew the stakes. We all played the game. And that made us all kind of the same.

You know, I jokingly say, I am so fortunate to be able to play a game for a living. You all work for a living. We play a game for a living here. How great a deal is that to be able to play something, a game that you truly love?

I'm sure many of you truly love what you're doing, so it's maybe not as much work as somebody just trying to make ends meet and make enough money to exist on. So we are all very fortunate to be able to do what we love to do.

Q. YouTube has allowed us who were not around in your prime to see your greatest shots at the Masters. I saw a shot you hit on 12 in '67, a sideways shank --

JACK NICKLAUS: '64 (laughter) it was an 8-iron and I almost killed Bob Jones and Cliff Roberts. Shanked it right over their head in the last round.

Q. I can't imagine you've shanked too many shots in your career.

JACK NICKLAUS: Not too many, but I've shanked one or two. That was one. Jones and Roberts came down to watch us at the 12th hole. Their cart was out in front here about 20, 25 yards on the right side, and I put it right over their head with an 8-iron. I nearly made three.

Q. What did you do when you hit those kind of shots, rare as they were, to steel yourself --

JACK NICKLAUS: Go play the next one. What can you do? You know, you hit it. You've got to go chase it. There isn't anything you can do. It's a little embarrassing. I always -- I use that as one of my most embarrassing moments in golf.

I think the other most embarrassing moment in golf I had was my birthday, I don't know what year it was, but we were at Pebble Beach and Crosby was on. We were having a little group together down at the room. And in our room, probably eight or ten people are there, and a friend of mine calls, "Hey, Jack, happy birthday. Somebody wants to say happy birthday to you."

And a guy got on the phone and sang "Happy Birthday" all the way through, and I could barely hear and so forth and so on. He said, "Happy birthday, Jack."

And I gave it real businesslike, as I might in those days, "Who am I speaking with, please."

"It's Bing Crosby, Jack. Happy birthday."

I'm sitting there listening to Bing Crosby sing "Happy Birthday," and I don't even know it. That 8-iron shank was embarrassing, too.

THE MODERATOR: Can you talk about how you overcame a horrific shot, either emotionally, mentally, physically.

GARY PLAYER: Well, I believe, to win majors or to win the big tournaments, that you had to love adversity because you're going to face up to it. Doesn't matter who you are.

And I just felt that it is impossible to play a round of golf without hitting bad shots, so it was actually part of the game. I taught myself to almost enjoy it, but enjoyed it, maybe in I don't know what fashion, but it's part of the game.

Now, why do we practice all this short game to recover? And this leads me to say, you listen to people today talk about -- the father talks about his son, or a coach: Well, you should see this young boy. He hits the ball 380 yards.

You never hear him say how great his short game is how great his mind is. Hitting the ball is an asset, but it's not a necessity. But putting, if you have to hit it that long, it counts as much as a 400-yard drive.

But where are we going, you look at the TOUR, in 30 years, plus, minus, they will all hit the ball 400 yards because there's such great incentivization. They are going around the college, gyms now doing weight training. Rory McIlroy showed me yesterday, he does a dead lift, 400 pounds.

So this is where we are going, and this is where we need the R&A and the USGA and the PGA to get together wisely in making a decision about a golf ball because golf is -- nothing about the game today, not one single thing, is the same as when we played. Not one single thing.

And so we've got to cut the ball back 60 yards, 50 yards. Otherwise, the whole concept of the game, the history of the game, the par 5, par 4, par 3, that's gone. There are no more par 5s. These young guys are hitting 8-irons to par 5s.

So we are changing the whole history of the game. Now, they are two different games, the R&A never agreed with me that they are two different games, professional and amateur. Go watch Jack Nicklaus in his prime or Tom or Tiger. You'll see how different it is to the way you guys play.

They have to cut that ball back, I don't know what's going to happen. They talk about making golf courses longer. The world is running out of water, seriously, and the costs of the machine, the mower, fertilizer, labor, why do that? It's so simple, just cut the ball back. Very, very simple.

And so I'm quite concerned about where the game of golf is going.

THE MODERATOR: Mr. Watson, any thoughts on?

TOM WATSON: Yeah, I'm going to ask Gary and Jack, how many times did you whiff the ball on tour? Fresh air. Fresh air. Because I did it. I've done it --

JACK NICKLAUS: Once or twice.

TOM WATSON: Three or four times.

JACK NICKLAUS: Once or twice.

TOM WATSON: Trying to get out of a bush.

JACK NICKLAUS: Under a bush.

TOM WATSON: Under a bush, you get out there, practicing a swing and your real swing gets hung up in the branches and it goes right over the top of it. Done that. Did that in Australia.

JACK NICKLAUS: I did it in the British Open at the 17th hole at Muirfield.

TOM WATSON: Really?

JACK NICKLAUS: I take it -- I went under that one. I did one at, I think it was the 15th hole at Sandwich. It was just love the left side of the green in the high grass, took a wedge shot and ball dropped into my divot.

GARY PLAYER: I played with a lady the other day --

JACK NICKLAUS: We've all done --

TOM WATSON: Right underneath it. This is a total whiff, right over the top. Fresh air.

JACK NICKLAUS: I've been in the bushes a few times, too.

GARY PLAYER: This lady I played with the other day, I was playing with her, she got on the first tee, she was nervous. She whiffed the ones once, twice, she says, "Hell, this is a tough course." (Laughter).

Q. Do you believe Rory McIlroy will win the Masters in his career, and as he attempts to do so and become only the sixth player to win the career Grand Slam, have you any insight into how to close the deal here as a six-time winner yourself?

JACK NICKLAUS: The answer to that I think is yes. I don't know whether -- what was it about the -- the sixth player to win the Grand Slam, I understand that but what was --

Q. As a six-time winner yourself, do you have any insight into how to close the deal here and get it done.

JACK NICKLAUS: I think closing, I closed the deal, as you say, when I was 26 years old. And Tiger closed it when he was probably younger than I, and Gary, I don't know how old were you, Gary?

GARY PLAYER: 88. (Laughter).

JACK NICKLAUS: When you won --

GARY PLAYER: 29.

JACK NICKLAUS: Now, Rory is 33 maybe.

Q. 34?

JACK NICKLAUS: As he gets older, he gets tougher because all of a sudden it's a conversation, the talk, Tom had -- you had the PGA; right?

TOM WATSON: I had a five-shot lead.

JACK NICKLAUS: Arnold had the PGA. You know, it isn't -- I mean, is Tom Watson good enough to win the Grand Slam? Absolutely. Was Arnold Palmer good enough to win the Grand Slam? Absolutely. Rory McIlroy good enough to win the Grand Slam, absolutely, but they have got to do it, and they all know that, and do I think Rory will win here? Yeah. He could win this year. He could win next year. He's just too talented not to. But then again, they were too talented not to win those, too. You just never know.

Q. For Jack, thank you so much, you received honorary citizenship in St Andrews in 2022 and people in Scotland love you so much, and even issued the five pound notes with your portrait on it. We know that both Augusta and St Andrews are very important for the game of golf. So my question is: Could you please talk about and compare your feelings when you play these two courses, and also, when will you visit St Andrews again?

JACK NICKLAUS: Give me the last part, when was that?

Q. Will when you visit St Andrews again?

JACK NICKLAUS: I still didn't catch that.

TOM WATSON: When will you visit St Andrews again.

JACK NICKLAUS: Oh, when will I be at St Andrews again? Well, I frankly don't have any plans to be at St Andrews again. I had -- when I retired in 2005, I had no plans to go back. And then I said, you know, I finished, I retired from St Andrews, I don't want to go back. I've had enough.

And then they made me an honorary citizen, and there's no way I'm going to say no to that. So I went back two years ago for that. And it was a wonderful honour, and -- but I love St Andrews. I've had great memories. I don't want to go back at my age and tarnish memories.

The only thing I can do is do something worse. So I want to leave it -- it was very special. I want to leave it very special.

Q. None of you are young anymore but you look fantastic.

JACK NICKLAUS: Oh, really?

Q. I know it's obvious. But you look great. Can you tell us the secret, please?

TOM WATSON: Gary, come on. Why are you so young?

GARY PLAYER: We will, I tell you, that's an interesting question. First of all, I love life and I love people and I love my job and I'm extremely happy. And I went to India. There was a gerontologist there that I spoke to, and he gave me, I think, the secret to longevity; and there's a man on this earth right now that will live to 140, 150 years of age because they are going to have cell transplants, new blood in your body, etc., etc. It's a fact, not maybe you're dreaming of something and he gave me ten things to work on and I do and I adhere to every day of my life.

And so far, so good.

But no, I'm very fit. I still push 300 pounds with my legs. I run the treadmill at max. I read a lot. I laugh a lot and I have love in my heart. That is very, very important.

I have an ice cold bath every morning of my life when I'm at home. The ice bath now is taking away and doing miracles for the world. They now call it cryotherapy like they just invented it. The Japanese have been doing it for thousands of years in Asia.

So I adhere to ten things every day, and the most important thing, to live a long time, is undereat. The gym is important but only a quarter as important as undereating and that's a medical fact.

Q. I missed the last.

GARY PLAYER: Undereating.

TOM WATSON: Undereating.

JACK NICKLAUS: Undereating.

GARY PLAYER: It's your choice. It's your choice.

THE MODERATOR: Share your views on how you stay in such great shape.

TOM WATSON: I think you surround yourself with people you love, and you eat responsibly. You do things in life for other people, and you try to have fun, and like Gary said, you've got to laugh.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I've got 5 kids, 24 grandkids, and 7 great-grandkids. They keep you young.

THE MODERATOR: I think we have time for three more questions.

Q. This question is for the three of you just real quick. Do you guys have an idea what happens to the golf balls from your tee shots this morning?

JACK NICKLAUS: We sign them and they go into a case here I think. They certainly were not damaged. They will be all right.

Q. Another question about the future of the game, this time to Jack and Gary, as Tom has already spoken so eloquently about it. There are ongoing negotiations about the future structure of the game, decisions to be made about the PGA TOUR and LIV Golf. What would you both like to see happen? What's the best outcome for you?

JACK NICKLAUS: The best outcome is the best players play against each other all the time. That's what I feel about it. And how it's going, I don't know, I don't think I'm -- I don't want to be privy to it. I talked to Jay not very long ago, and I said, "Jay," I said, "don't tell me what's going on because I don't want to have to lie to the press and people that ask me questions."

I said, "How are you doing?"

He said, "We're doing fine."

I said, "Okay, that's all I want to know."

If Jay thinks we're doing fine, we'll get there, I think we'll get there. And I certainly hope that happens, the sooner the better.

GARY PLAYER: It's very simple. Anytime in any business whatsoever, not only in the golf business, there's confrontation, it's unhealthy. You've got to get together and come to a solution. If you cannot -- it's not good. The public don't like it, and we as professionals don't like it, either.

But it's a big problem because they paid all these guys to join the LIV Tour fortunes, I mean, beyond one's comprehension and the players that were loyal, three of us and others.

Now these guys come back and play, I really believe the players, that if they are loyal, should be compensated in some way or another; otherwise, there's going to be dissension.

Q. For Mr. Watson, going back to the career Grand Slam, I was just wondering how much of a burden did that become to you in that quest over the years? Did it become a bigger deal every time you tried to do it? What mistakes maybe did you make that you wish you could --

TOM WATSON: It really wasn't because every time I teed it up in a golf tournament, I was trying to do the same thing. I was trying to play my best golf in that tournament. And did it put any pressure on me to win the PGA? No.

When I played in the major championships, it elevated my passion, I guess, maybe for that tournament. But not winning the PGA didn't elevate it any more than a normal major championship. Because when you prepare for a tournament, you want to go in there confident in your golf swing, to know what you're doing. And you know, it just didn't work out for the PGA with me. I had a five-shot lead, as I was telling Gary, at Oakmont in '78. Drove it into a divot on the 10th hole with an iron right in the middle of the fairway, and the only place I couldn't leave it was short of the green, which I did.

I hit fat out of a divot and left it short of the green. Just to get it on the green, I had to almost take a full swing. I took a full swing, caught it a little bit more and went over the green. Made double-bogey. John Mahaffey made bogey. Now I'm only two shots ahead.

Got in a playoff, and John won. But that's kind of the history -- my history in the PGA.

These gentlemen, they got it. They won their tournaments, and it is a feather in your cap when you win all four major championships. But is it something that I regret? No, not really. If I were destined to win the tournament, I would have won it.

THE MODERATOR: Our last question.

Q. I want to ask you, being the Honorary Starter here is perhaps one of the finest acknowledgments of some great legacies in the sport. Do you all have a say in who goes after you? And if you did, how do you see that following your great legacies, somebody else taking on these responsibilities in the future?

TOM WATSON: Is the question, how do we see our legacies, what to do with the game? Is that what you're asking?

Q. Do you have a say in who goes after you, this great legacy of Honorary Starter?

TOM WATSON: I'll start. What we try to do, what I try to do, personally, is try to get more people to play the game. I've created a program specifically called Watson Links which is a mentorship program which takes kids on the golf course with a mentor to play nine holes. The kids sign up, the mentors sign up. They all meet up and they play nine holes for free.

And I think this is a great bridge between what the First Tee teaches the kids, gets them started in the game, to playing golf on a golf course. That's where I'm focusing my attention to leave, as I've done all my career. When I first came out on the Tour, I saw caddies diminishing and the carts taking over, so the caddies were not the people who were -- they weren't learning the game. We didn't have that influx of new blood in the game like that.

So I tried over my career to create programs that we get people involved with the game, especially kids. And I think we have hit on the right note right now, we want more people to play the game. We want to have the game very important in people's lives. I don't know the percentages, but is it 15 percent of the people in the country play golf? I don't know. You probably would know. I would like to increase that to 20 percent and have people love the game like we do.

It's the greatest game of all. We go back to the point of taking responsibility for your shots. It teaches you that you have to take responsibility. When you're on the golf course, when you hit a good shot, yeah, man, you can pat yourself on the back. When you hit a bad shot, there's nobody else to blame but you. And if you hit a bad shot, you'll go to the practice tee and work for the next time you have the same shot; you don't hit a bad shot. That's what life's all about, you learn from your mistakes.

It teaches you a lot of life skills, the game of golf, the etiquette of the game, treating people with respect. You look at the players on the TOUR, on the 18th hole, what do they do? They take their hats off and go over and shake hands, whether they have been trying to beat that guy's brains out or not, they give them credit for winning the golf tournament.

That's the legacy of the game that I want to see continue. I don't want to get too far from that. You know, we go around in life, the way you treat people is your legacy.

THE MODERATOR: Any closing thoughts, Mr. Nicklaus?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, just a little bit, to add a little bit on what Tom just said there.

I think that we all, you know, I know Gary and Arnold and I, and Tom, too, comes a little behind us as far as generational, but we try to play as much around the world as we could. We tried to promote the game wherever we could to grow the game. It's all about growing and bringing people into the game in the right fashion.

Golf is a great teacher, and Tom is absolutely dead right. You're responsible for your own mistakes, and you can absolutely be proud of the accomplishments that you make.

The game is a great game. It's the only game that I knew. It's how I ended up playing golf. I played all sports, and the one that I found that I could put as much effort as I wanted to put in, I would be rewarded from the effort that I put. And I don't think there's any other game that is as great as golf in that way.

And that's why I love it. That's why I played it. That's why I played it all my life. That's why I'm still involved with it. We have programs that we're involved with all over. I think First Tee, when Tim called me about First Tee, Barbara and I had a foundation that was with the PGA of America called our endowment fund and we had raised money, putting things out, a little thing here, a little thing here, a little thing here.

And when Tim Finchem called me and said, "We are getting ready to start a thing called First Tee. We would like to have you be involved in the thing," I immediately called the PGA of America, told them I would like to take the monies that we had in the fund, at a little over a million dollars, and add it to the First Tee.

At that time we were working with the Royal Bank of Scotland. They wanted to help us with how they could help in this country. I said, First Tee. They put in 2 million. We started off with $4 million. Tim remembers that very well, I'm sure, and other people did so, too.

But the programs they have done and kids they have helped, through the years -- I've spoken in front of Congress several times that First Tee brought that long, they didn't have to be golfers, but by the game of golf they were brought; and the way they lived their life, the way they grew, the way they came out. Some of these kids, I remember in Washington -- a gal, and the boy I think was from Oklahoma City, I could be wrong on that, but they both went on to be a doctor and an attorney, and it only happened because of First Tee. Didn't have to be golfers. But they played golf, and golf brought that -- them through that.

There's many other ways that the game of golf helps people. I just think it's a wonderful game. And you know, looking at Gary, 88 years old now, and he couldn't think of anything he'd rather do. Tom is 74. I'm 84. You know, we owe most everything that we've had that's really good to the game of golf, and we love it. We love being part of it, and we thank the game for it.

THE MODERATOR: Mr. Player?

GARY PLAYER: I think there's a great saying, I think it was Shakespeare said "The youth of a nation are of the trustees of posterity."

Why I admire these two gentlemen and Arnold Palmer so much, because they set such a good example to the youth of the world around. And we all are not interested in just playing in America as so many young guys are, or their respective countries, we went around the world promoting this game that we were so grateful for what it did for us.

I think what Tom said is marvelous to, to have respect, to teach these children to have manners, learn to take your hats off and greet people properly and have a good education.

Personally, I don't believe in legacies. If you take my all-time heroes, Winston Churchill, he was probably the greatest leader for the last 200 years, without going into the Ottomans and all the great leaders and William the Great. But if it wasn't for Churchill, we wouldn't be sitting here today, and they are defacing his statue in England and calling him a racist, etc., etc.

So if you think that people are going to remember you, you're dreaming. Every thing shall pass, it's a true saying. We do our best here. We contribute to society, and we leave the best possible legacy that we can for young people, and it goes on. Ben Hogan, I never saw a man hit a ball like Ben Hogan. He's the only man I ever met in my life that knew the swing from A to Z.

He knew more about the golf swing than anybody because he hit more balls and practiced harder. These young guys, they talk about him like he didn't have a modern-day swing, and he knew ten times more than any coach in the world today. So legacies are something in my mind are here today and it passes.

JACK NICKLAUS: Let me add one thing. Gary mentioned Churchill. Churchill was a golfer. He played golf on a vacation one time, and he got back to Parliament and they said, "Mr. Churchill, you played golf on your vacation?" He says, "Tell us about the game of golf.

He says, "Golf" (clearing throat) "is a game in which one plays and takes a very small ball and tries to put it into an even smaller hole with an implement singularly ill-designed for the purpose." I always loved that quote. It is exactly basically to most people what the game of golf is.

THE MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jack Nicklaus, Mr. Tom Watson, Mr. Gary Player (applause).

Gentlemen, we treasure every moment with y'all. Thank you so much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.