U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 13, 2000

Bobby Clampett

BOBBY CLAMPETT: Thank you, Les. This is a strange position for me. This is not something that -- I've not been in a position like this for many, many years. But I had a great deal of inspiration this year in wanting to qualify for this tournament. I've only played one tournament in the last 21 months. I've only played one tournament. And I often get asked: Why did you try to qualify for the Open this year? I'm not one who usually attempts to qualify, and I did try last year, in that the U.S. Open was at Pinehurst, North Carolina, near where I live now. This year, there was something very special deep down inside of me, wanting to come back to Pebble Beach, the place where I grew up; these fairways that I had had a chance to live and breathe on a day-to-day basis as a kid. Thinking back to the days of the pro shop, and I was a little 11 -, 12-year-old brat playing junior golf, and couldn't afford to pay the green fees. Even though they weren't that much back then, they were a lot more than I could afford. And Ray would oftentimes let me go out with some of the high school kids about 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. He'd say, "Go play the 2nd hole or go play the 4th hole," just don't tell anybody. And it was just a great place for a kid to grow up, to have an opportunity to learn this great game that we all have grown to learn to enjoy. And it's a very special place for me. I'm extremely excited to be here. There's no doubt about it. There was divine intervention that came in part for my being here. Because as you probably know, I work full-time for CBS Sports and cover all the golf for CBS Sports, and this has been the meat of our CBS schedule, seeing Tommy Spencer that works for us in the back. He knows, because he's been out on the road with us for the last ten weeks. And I didn't work last week, but I worked eight of the last nine, and it's just a very busy time. I've got a busy time at home, building a new house, trying to keep ours on the market, kids' schedules, graduation, all that kind of stuff. And in the meat of our golf season, I decided to throw in trying to qualify for the Open on top of it. And it just so happened the first qualifier went into a playoff, local qualifier that's only 18 holes. It was held in Cary, North Carolina, and I went into a qualifier, or into a playoff, eight guys to two spots. Originally, there were 100 guys for seven spots, and I tied for 6th, and shot 73 on a windy day. And I ended up as the second alternate. I've never been in an alternate position. I knew nothing about what chances does an alternate have of getting into a sectional qualifier. But we were covering the Kemper Open with CBS Sports two weekends ago, and I decided since I was slated to sectional qualify there, right next to where we were doing the Kemper Open -- I should say Kemper Insurance Open, but it was very close by, and I had an opportunity. Since it was a pretty light work schedule for us, only five hours of live coverage on the weekend, I slipped over and played a few practice rounds. And I just thought that I better get ready, because you never know. You never know, an alternate could get in. You think the day, John Daly was 9th alternate to get in the PGA Championship in 1991, and went on to win. And in this day and age when golf is so competitive, you just never know. So I showed up that early morning, and sure enough, a bunch of people went through, and ironically three days before Billy Glasson had sent me an e-mail, and in that e-mail Billy said, "I want you to have my spot, because I'm not going to qualify." And I e-mailed him back and said, "What do you mean, have your spot? I can't have your spot." "I don't know -- you've got to qualify first. You need to qualify. This is Pebble Beach; you should be there." But I think that Billy and I are good friends, and he really wanted me to have a chance to qualify. Sure enough, I ended up getting his spot. I was 4th alternate, and he was the 4th one to withdraw. So I got Billy Glasson's spot there. But I have a lot of mixed feelings about even being here. I was thinking the other day, it's a little bit like signing up for college on early September in the fall and deciding not to go to class for a whole year, and then showing up for final exams at Harvard. When you don't play, and you don't practice that much, and then you get the test like what we're going to be facing this week, it -- I have very little expectations, but I can tell you one thing: I'll give it 110%, because I love being here, and it is the U.S. Open, and it is Pebble Beach.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: You know, when we played in high school, this was our home course my freshman year in high school. When we played after that, we played Spyglass for our home course, but we played all our matches in high school here. I won two State Amateurs, the Spalding. We played the Spalding for many years here. As a kid we used to come out and play 8 holes, 12 holes. In high school we played 12-hole matches in high school, or whatever daylight would provide for us. We'd never play 18 holes. It's difficult to put a number on how many rounds I've played: 15 AT&T's, probably 7 or so Spaldings, and a couple of State Ams, and we had Junior Tournament of Champions here every year. Roughly a couple of hundred rounds. But I've only played one round here in the last five years; and so I've seen a lot of differences in the golf course. And really, I was out there these last couple of days -- when you play in U.S. Open conditions, it's a different golf course. The guys that think because they play the AT&T can come here and tee it up fresh and play the golf course, it's a different golf course altogether. The greens are a totally different speed. The ball runs a totally different way. And over the years, we've also seen some settling in the greens, and there's some minor changes that have occurred, some design changes, I'm sure you would know about, as well. But for me, it's really having to learn the whole golf course again.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: The last year I cashed a check -- about '98. I played one tournament last year, and that was the Carolina Classic, BUY.COM, and I made the cut there. Shot 1-under par for 72 holes. And I think I made 500 and something dollars. That was my prize money for the year in 1999. But it's something else. It really is.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: It was other people's expectations, for one. In a nutshell, I struggled with my golf swing. Things started to happen in my golf swing that I had no rhyme or reason why they were happening, but my golf swing changed as I grew older and in my early 20's. I was trying to get better. But essentially, it was a mechanical thing. A lot of people claim that this game is 90% mental, and 10% mechanical. But the reality is when your golf swing is in play and in the right sequence, even your worst mental attitude days, you're still going to play some pretty good golf. If you're doing the right things with your golf swing, you can do so much more on the golf course. I hear a lot of what Tiger is talking about, how he continually works on his golf swing, and he's still progressing. He's got long-term goals and short-term goals. He's going about it the right way. And that's the way I tried to go about it, but in trying to make some of the changes, I couldn't make the changes that I wanted to make, for whatever reason. So I look at it as it was meant to be that way, and the life I've had lately is just -- has been a wonderful opportunity for me to work at CBS Sports, and to cover the broadcasts that we've done, and still be involved in golf. I still love this game and love to come out and play. And it's difficult to say exactly why. But I believe everything, like Paul Azinger was talking about, things happen for a reason. And I honestly believe, you know, if you put God first in your life, all things work together for good. And certainly things have happened that way for me in my life.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: Well, I've been keeping track of -- the Transportation Safety Board has still not issued their final release yet as to what has happened. The primary conjecture that I hear now is the cabin never pressurized to begin with. And there's a few different theories there as to what happened, but oftentimes in a cabin that doesn't pressurize, my understanding, I've never had that happen in my situation in my airplane, but apparently it's very difficult to detect, when you're climbing up. You can feel it when you're going down a lot more than when you're climbing up, when the cabin is not pressurizing, as far as ears popping and pressure changes. So it's very easy to just kind of fall asleep and lose consciousness in that situation. That's one theory. They still haven't ruled out the theory of carbon monoxide poisoning in the cabin. That's a possibility. Different things can cause that. And certainly, they haven't ruled out also the fact of rapid depressurization. So it's got to be something of those three.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: I was thinking about that the last few rounds I've had a chance to play here. The thing I think makes this so special for a U.S. Open Championship, is every player would like to carry about 17 or 18 clubs in their bag, because this golf course requires you to hit so many different types of shots; yet they only allow 14 clubs. And you just talk to players, and some have three wedges, and they have to take the 2-iron out, and they need a utility wood, but maybe they take that out. And they are constantly looking for -- everybody wants to carry 15, at least, here, but they've got to take one out. And I think the different shots that you have to play, iron shots into the green, these are the smallest greens they play on TOUR all year. When they add firm conditions for that, you've got to be -- control your trajectories so well with the wind and different lies; so many different shots that it's a shot-maker's golf course.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: You're talking about Ben?

BOBBY CLAMPETT: Have I talked to Ben? I talked to Ben about four or five days ago, and --.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: He was excited about me playing. I was the one who was just blessed with a lot of people, when I was a kid, that really spent a lot of time with me. Ben Doyle was one that really treated me as his own child. Lee Martin was another. Those people are very special people to me.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: Well, it's unpolished right now. I think mechanically it's better. I'm able to do some things that I haven't been able to do in a long time. I've gotten my length back. I can hit different shots that I couldn't hit for a long time. But the way I've been playing lately, to be able to compete at a national championship, I don't think so. I have to raise my game to another level to be able to do that. But it's just fun to have a chance to work at it real hard for a couple of weeks.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: I think everything happens for a reason. And certainly when I was in the lowest point in my golf career, it was a time where I really, for the first time, just really saw my priorities and where they needed to be, and for the first time knew what it was to have a relationship with God that I never had before in my life. So that is something that came out of that, which was a very difficult circumstance for me to be in professionally. But that was something that was really good that came out of that that gave me a foundation and a better understanding and helped me to set my priorities in my life and vision for my life. And it gave me a basis to be able to handle those things, because those things were much more difficult to handle before then. And having that foundation, I think, is a very important thing in anybody's life.

BOBBY CLAMPETT: 24. One thing I did forget to mention, another one of the things that's unique about being here is having been involved with the Payne Stewart Memorial, doing a Kids Across America campaign that we announced at the press conference earlier at the AT&T. Seeing that come to fruition, and the USGA getting behind it, and tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. thomas Kincaid, the famous painter of light, will be there with his canvas, and he'll paint the scene of the ceremony tomorrow, as a special one-time offering with all the proceeds from his originals, and also the copies, 100% of it will go directly toward paying for The Memorial, Kids Across America for Payne. And it's really a neat thing that's come out of this. Which will triple the size of the inner-city youth camp there in Branson, Missouri, and give kids a chance to establish that foundation that Payne wanted so much for inner-city kids to have in their life.

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