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FEDEX ST. JUDE CLASSIC

May 28, 2004

Michael Clark

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Michael, thanks for joining us, a couple unusual rounds. Let's talk about your round today, a 62, low round of the tournament so far this week.

MICHAEL CLARK: Well, obviously it's a surprise to me. I actually have been playing well, but my family has had some illnesses. We seem like we've been sick since 2001. Steve Sands, he just left, but I was telling him about it last week in preschool, that we just keep catching the throw-up bug.

But I didn't prepare as well as I'd like to coming in here and I knew I was swinging good, and I was playing so hard yesterday, and I made a swing change.

I got off to such a bad start, I was 5 over after six holes and somewhat panicked, I guess, I just kept going downhill. So today was a nice change and it showed some hard work paying off.

Q. What was your mind set obviously after your round yesterday? You've got your work cut out for you as far as making the cut, but you seem to have the right attitude, and look what happened. What was your mind set going into today's round?

MICHAEL CLARK: Well, I've got my bags packed and a flight at 7:30. The only thing that I did smart today, prior to the round, was call my hotel and tell them to hold onto my room because we might have a thunder storm and I might not be able to fly out until tomorrow. That was really it.

And the big reason I came back and played is I've had health issues for several years, and I feel like I've turned the corner with my game. I talked long and hard talk with my wife about whether I should go to my hometown and play the course I grew up on and just try to shoot a low number.

It's one thing to shoot 68 but it's another thing to be comfortable when you're 7-under through ten holes. That's something that I used to do, not a lot, but four or five times a year, and probably haven't been in that position since 2000.

So that was my goal coming in today was just to play well, build a little bit of confidence and see what happens.

Q. Could you tell early on just by the way you felt that at least it was going to be substantially better than yesterday?

MICHAEL CLARK: I knew odds are it was going to be better than yesterday. You know, yesterday was a day I fought and tried to get back into it and then I had a disaster at the end of the day making a quad on 9.

The only thing that I knew was that I had had a bunch of putting lessons over the last two weeks, and finally once I got into a rhythm of playing and I got all the teachers' comments out of my head and I started rolling the ball pretty good. That's really what I wanted to see today is if I could roll the putter the way I was rolling it at the beginning of the year. That was really one of my big goals.

The other one was just, gosh, I only hit two fairways yesterday maybe or something ridiculous, and maybe four or five greens. I just really wanted to give myself a chance to make some birdies.

I started off, trouble crossed one behind the tree on No. 1 and had to hit a rope hook 7-iron behind the green and then I two-putted.

The next two holes I knocked it a foot. Just one thing after another kept happening. When it did I kept feeling better with my putter. I hit some good putts on the back nine that didn't go in, but I also made quite a few, too.

Q. The book says you were important in Kingsport. Did you grow up in that area?

MICHAEL CLARK: No, they kicked us out as soon as we were born. My dad worked for Eastman Kodak and moved to sell yarn in Dalton, Georgia, a carpet company.

Q. Did you have a whiff or two on a hole yesterday?

MICHAEL CLARK: Yeah, thanks. There was a nice reporter, too, that happened to be standing there and I heard it made print this morning. And he asked me after the round, he said, have you ever done that before, and I said, well, no, because if I had I wouldn't have whipped it a second time. But I did.

Technically I only had it 79 times yesterday, but who's counting. The day was hard enough and it was, and that was downright humiliating and I immediately left the golf course afterwards because I couldn't stomach the way I finished yesterday, and really thought long and hard about what I was going to do to try to get prepared going forward because I'll get in some events this summer and just to do whatever I could to get my career going again because health-wise I'm starting to get better and my game is back. It's just sometimes days are like yesterday unfortunately.

Q. You've mentioned the health aspect a couple of times. What was kind of the lowest point, if you can take us through coming back from that.

MICHAEL CLARK: The lowest point was in 2002 when the doctor looked at my eye and said do you realize you have an eye that's sunk back in your head. And I said, no, thanks, I never noticed. Through an MRI and a CAT scan, they found what they thought at the time was a big giant polyp the size of a golf ball in my sinus cavity.

He put me on three weeks straight antibiotics, Flonase for six weeks, and I went to the Tour about a medical because I was suffering from dizziness every time I looked down. Also I had some problems with my left eye became like a bionic eye, so it overrode my dominant eye. I went to the Tour and got a medical -- to talk to them about a medical because I don't know anything about it, and they told me I was better off playing sick than to try to take a medical. So I did.

It probably wasn't the best advice, but I played okay the end of that year, and I really had a chance to keep my card, but the dizziness came back.

In Vegas I was near the lead and I woke up one morning, and when you have an infection in your body other things will break down I found out.

And the doctor did surgery in December, and he came out and told us that -- going into surgery I knew if he made a mistake my career was over, but I asked him point blank are you going to screw up, and he said no. I felt pretty good about it.

Then when he did surgery he came out and explained to my wife that my eye was really screwed up, that there was a lot of scar tissue, it had blocked off a sinus passage, and your eye is supposed to be a perfect circle of fat around it and mine looked like a star fish, just going everywhere. They never knew that was there.

You don't know. I mean, after surgery it probably took eight months for me to get my vision back to where I was comfortable. So a long story to a short question, but that was my low point.

Q. Can you just talk about how tough it is to reach the pinnacle when you finally win at John Deere and get on top of the PGA TOUR and then go through what you've gone through? You changed your body getting into great shape and to go through the struggles you've gone through?

MICHAEL CLARK: You know, that's probably been the most humbling aspect of what I went through, from '96 through 2000 I got better every year, considerably better. And to start the year in 2001, my wife was six months pregnant, I got off to a good start, Top 10ed at Mercedes, played decent at Sony, finished maybe 14th or 15th and then I made a couple cuts, not much, but then my wife started having labor problems and the baby wasn't due for quite a while, and when the baby came out my little girl stopped breathing at Hilton Head.

Really the hardest part of it all was the only escape I had from the trouble of our health was playing golf, and the game just wasn't any fun.

Beginning of 2001 I remember clear as a bell my goal was to make Ryder Cup and felt my game -- I knew I was good enough to do it, and I knew I had worked hard enough, but I wasn't man enough to own up to taking time off to be with my family when they needed me.

The long in short of it, it made me a better husband and a better father because I know that my family comes before golf. No matter how much money you make it doesn't matter if you can't spend time with your children. I kind of got my knock on the head, got my priorities back in place.

It's just taken a long time to really get back to where I was, and I'm still not quite there. I wouldn't have days like I had yesterday. But I'm getting close, really close.

As you remember obviously, I got my body fat down to about 8 percent, weighed 166, and that's when all my health went really bad. I've gained a nice 30 pounds back, so I'm back closer to my weight when I played well.

My family will still struggle with health issues, but the hard part about being in my category was that a week like preparing to come here last week, we couldn't eat protein, all we could eat was crackers and pasta because we caught some bug. They were throwing up, I wasn't, but I got here, I was weak and I hadn't played a lot, and in tough conditions it really showed yesterday. Fortunately I came out with a good attitude today.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Michael Clark, thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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