THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

May 29, 1997

Jack Nicklaus

JACK NICKLAUS: I'll go through some of the highlights; if you want them, a couple of the lowlights. First hole was -- I got a nice up-and-down out of the front bunker, made about an 8-footer for par. Then I got sort of a bad break at the second hole, hit it down the left edge of the rough, the ball just stuck right there. I could barely even get it out, made bogey there. Third hole, 2-putted for par. Fourth hole, I had a pretty good chance for birdie, didn't get it. I got a nice break at the next hole, tee shot probably a little more solid than I would have expected to hit it. I hit it solid. I felt like I could get home in two. And I couldn't catch the second shot, it hit low and hit the water and jumped out. I wedged it about five feet and made birdie. That was a nice break. The 6th hole, I hit 4-iron in about 12 feet and made that. The 7th hole I hit a pitching wedge in about three foot and made that. So I made three birdies in a row. Longish putt at 8. Longish putt at 9. Missed about a 10-footer at 10. A pretty good 7-iron in there and didn't make it. On No. 11 I thought I hit a pretty good wedge, but it didn't carry. But I got up-and-down, nice bunker shot. Parred 12. 13 I hit a nice 6-iron in, about 20 feet and I nearly made that, hit a good putt, lipped out. Hit an all right tee shot, too close to the water than I liked it. Bad 8-iron at the next hole and put it in the left bunker. I took my 5 and moved on. Nice tee shot at the next hole, sort of halfway between there and -- I felt like the smarter play was to lay it up and take full wedge into it, rather than taking a chance hitting to the green from the left. I did, laid it up, hit a pitching wedge in and made a birdie. Next hole, hit a 4-iron, that was probably 28, 30 feet left of the hole and right in the bottom, made that one. The next hole I hit a 7-iron in about 10 feet and made that one. It was kind of fun every once in a while to make a putt. For quite a while I haven't made too much. I hit a bad tee shot on the next hole. I hit it into the trees and dropped down by the trees and I hit 7-iron out of the rough and wedged it about 20 feet behind the hole. Almost made that putt, but it didn't go in. But it's kind of fun to hit a putt and look up and it's going where you think you should hit it. And I haven't been doing that much lately. I switched putters at the last round of the PGA Seniors and I didn't know how I would putt with it when I got here, but it's similar to what I was used to, it's a slightly longer blade. And I think that I putt better open-to-shut, rather than putting sort of square-to-square, which is what most of the putters today force you to do by design. And so I just went back to that type of putting and I putted better, I didn't think I would putt that way, but I did.

JACK NICKLAUS: A little bit of both, Jim. I think it's the type of golf course that you can attack on occasions and certain holes. If you get some holes downwind you can go after them. But I think for the most part this is a golf course that you better darn well keep the ball in play and try to take what it will give you and not try and give anything away. It's got so many shots that are sitting on the edges where you could miss it the wrong side and you're in the water or someplace else, or an area that you can't recover from. And if you play the golf course smart, that's, I think, the way to play it.

JACK NICKLAUS: You can get more aggressive with the ball staying on the green, no question about that. I think you'll see some fairly decent scores today because the ball is going to stay on the green.

JACK NICKLAUS: More of me?

JACK NICKLAUS: Furman, I like to think a lot of me goes in every one of them. And I think a lot of me does. And I've changed my philosophy -- not philosophy, but the way I design as time goes on, it's evolution. This course is 25 years old. I don't do some of the things today that I did here. But I spent a ton of time here on this golf course. I have a lot of areas on this golf course that are very difficult to recover from. In other words if you hit the ball over the green at one, three, to the right at four, over the green, just into the rough at six, over the green at nine, a lot of holes like that where you really have almost no recovery. I don't do that very much anymore. I think that I'm probably a little -- got a little softer with age. And try to feel like -- you're designing a course today more for everyday play than tournament play. This golf course was primarily done for tournament play rather than everyday play. We've adapted the course more to the membership rather than vice-versa. I think that I probably got -- I've probably got a dozen courses I think I probably like as well as this one, that I've done, maybe a couple dozen, I don't know. But I like this one, obviously, a lot. I like the feel that -- my philosophy on this golf course was that there was enough trouble on this golf course around the green that I gave them enough room off the tee to drive the ball or to place the ball in the right position. I created a lot of dangerous second shots or Par-5s that you can gamble on. I think it creates a little more exciting golf. I don't think it's all that different from the philosophy at Augusta. I think Jones at Augusta had the philosophy to give you enough room off the tee and make the scoring shot with your iron and putter, and I think I do a little bit of the same thing here.

JACK NICKLAUS: I've got one good round in, I don't know what I'll do tomorrow. I didn't expect to shoot a good round coming today, although I felt like I was playing fairly decent. But I haven't played in so darn long, it's been six weeks since I played. I shot 69 here a couple of days ago playing in practice. And I was kind of proud of that, but I didn't think I'd ever do that in the tournament, but I did. What it does from this point, I don't know. I feel it's awful hard for me to compete against these kids anymore. But you never know, I might get a round or two in every once in a while; get a lick or two in.

JACK NICKLAUS: This course?

JACK NICKLAUS: I think a lot of new courses do in their early years. Two things on that, Jim, in the early years of this golf course we had -- we didn't have as much rain. We had the -- the course would get firm, and when you missed the green the recovery was -- it was like if you missed the green at 14, in the bunker, you probably had a 50/50 chance whether you could keep it on the bank or in the water. If you hit it over the green at 9 you might chip it back into the water. Those were the kind of things happening. And when you hit the ball in the water on your second shot and the places you had to drop it, the shots you had were very, very difficult. And guys were making a lot of big numbers that way. And as any golf course matures you clean it up, you do things to it that -- you're probably trying to make fewer big numbers for your membership. Your membership can play it. And as a result -- because you don't think that your tournament is really going to make that much difference. You don't expect something to hit the ball 35 yards off the green in the tournament. But when the odd person does, it used to be they couldn't find it. And now membership hits it there, we need to find it and hit it on the green. You make the adjustments on the golf course, because they really for the most part don't affect a tournament, or shouldn't. You can still make some pretty good numbers here. There's enough -- there's enough -- if the greens -- if we don't get much more rain and the greens dry out from the wind we have, by Saturday this golf course will start to have some spice in it.