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OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE PRO-AM

February 23, 2006

Jay Haas

LUTZ, FLORIDA

DAVE SENKO: Jay, this will be your fifth event.

JAY HAAS: Yeah, I played two in Hawaii, so this will be my third event.

DAVE SENKO: You had a couple on the PGA TOUR.

JAY HAAS: I played two senior events, and I played Sony and the AT&T, and so this will be my fifth event of the year, yeah.

I had a great three weeks in Hawaii. I played very well at the MasterCard. Got run over by Loren like everybody else has been run over. I played a lot of good golf in Hawaii, a lot of good shots, and it was encouraging. I missed the cut at AT&T and played with my son, Bill, there, and that was a real treat to get to do that. I was going to play last week at L.A. and my good friend, Dick Harmon, passed away suddenly, so I went to the funeral on Friday last week and pulled out of there.

I'm anxious to get started again. I feel like it's funny when I'm off a couple of weeks anymore. It feels like I've been off two months. Not knowing this golf course, it's fun to get down here and play. I was able to play a practice round yesterday afternoon and I played the Pro Am today. I really like the course. It's a really nice shape. I think it's pretty difficult, actually. The greens are tough, a lot of tight pins, different places, but I'm anxious.

Q. It was a gradual move over to the Champions Tour. Can you talk a little bit about just why you stayed on the PGA TOUR and maybe just how tough it was to leave?

JAY HAAS: Well, I was just in there having some lunch and watching the Match Play tournament. I was in that the last couple of years and I was in the Masters. I was in the U.S. Open. It's just kind of hard to say, well, I don't want to play in those or I'm going to ignore those.

So I guess I feel like if I do one or the other, I need to be pretty committed to either one. I can't just kind of go half and half. I don't think anyone has proven that they can do that very well, or as well as they would like to do it.

I'm not full here. I guess I'm still going to play seven tournaments or so, seven or eight events. I'm going to play Hilton Head which is a week off of the Champions Tour I think. I'm going to play in the Wachovia, which is not a week off, but I still have a lot of ties there in Charlotte to that tournament. And some really good friends and I'm on the board of the tournament and all that. I feel pretty committed to playing that tournament. But I'm in the Memorial Tournament, which I just love that event. And there's some events, Hilton Head will be my 30th time playing will there, so I can't just not play in that tournament.

That being said, I feel like now this is where I should play and be committed to this on this tour.

Q. When you play on both tours, what's the criteria you look at when you're selecting a tournament you're going to play at? What made you decide to play here? What had you heard about this tournament?

JAY HAAS: In the past on the PGA TOUR, I would go my criteria was pretty much only how I performed there in the past. There are places that I just love to go to but I have never done very well there, so I stopped going. Pebble Beach, you know, I just loved going to that place. I know that I've ever had a Top 10 at that tournament and maybe not even a top 20. It's just one of those weeks that just doesn't suit me. So in that regard, that's kind of my first thing I look at is my past performance.

Now, I've never played here, so I don't know, and I'm learning a lot of these new courses; they are new for me. From what I've heard from certain players, I talked to Curtis, talked to Tom Purtzer, a lot of my friends out here, "What do you think of this place, what do you think of that?" But there's only 28 events. To me that should be like NASCAR, we could probably all play every one of them. It would be nice to find a job where you have 24 weeks a year off.

Q. A lot of guys look at the Senior Tour as a fresh start. The tradeoff of being on the Ryder Cup and being competitive, maybe at the beginning was it a letdown?

JAY HAAS: I think that's something that I kind of struggled with. You know, do I really want to do that, do I want to commit full time or turn my back on the PGA TOUR. That was just a lot of things that I was struggling with. And in the past two or three years when I've played well on the PGA TOUR, I feel like I can still do that.

But then when I played poorly, I said, what am I doing. I should be out there, I should be playing on the seniors tour, on the Champions Tour. So you know, I struggled with that. At 40 or 42 or 45, there's no option. You just deal with your struggles. But I think any time I don't play well, I have a letdown and I'm disappointed and all that. That was a little bit of what I suffered from.

I guess when I first came out at the beginning of last year, I guess, on the Champions Tour, I didn't play very well at all. My first event was probably the Legends and I played so so on the PGA TOUR and went to the Legends and realized that if I don't play well no matter where, it's not going to happen for me. I need to play my best to stand out here and obviously on the PGA TOUR.

I don't know if I had a letdown, but

maybe Ã¢ï¿½Â¦

Q. Focus?

JAY HAAS: Maybe focus, yeah. You're right, some of the guys maybe had to play a lot of Tours from 45 to 50, maybe don't play as much, but I was playing pretty much full time. So that was kind of coming in with a different mind set probably than the other guys.

Q. Did knowing the Champions Tour was out there keep you playing through your 40s? I know there was a little dip maybe around 45 or 46.

JAY HAAS: Yeah in, 2000, that was probably my worst year ever, and I was 46. I had that Top 50 lifetime money winner, the get out of jail free card that I didn't use because I wanted to wait until I was 49 to try to get more competitive and all that. If I was going to taper off steadily from 46 to 50, then I needed that one time exemption.

But I won't say it kept me going, but if the Champions Tour was not there, if none of us got to play, if this thing wasn't happening, then I think you would see more guys playing into their 50s. You look at Loren, what he's done here the last month, you know what would he have done had those tournaments been on the PGA TOUR or Tom Watson if he was still competing on the PGA TOUR. I think he would be very, very competitive. Hale Irwin in ten years, I bet he won four or five events.

I don't know, it's a different mind set now I think. Now they are athletes, guys are taking better care of themselves and they are going later into their careers. But all that being said, I think that having that 50 tour available certainly keeps our interest.

Q. Can you be happy out here just feeling like you're playing well, or do you have to win?

JAY HAAS: I guess in my experience well, there's nothing like winning, but at the same time, I had a great week at the MasterCard in Hawaii and shot 22 under and I said, I couldn't have made many more. I was about as good as I could have done. I was pretty pleased about that. After a steady diet, maybe I'll have a different attitude, but I think for golfers, for me, if I play well, if I think I've done as well as I can do, and competed well and not given away any strokes and all that, then I'm pretty satisfied.

Q. Just to follow up on that, I would think that it was a whole lot easier to be satisfied not winning on the PGA TOUR.

JAY HAAS: Yeah, I think you can get into that rut. There are guys that are setting records all the time now, most money won without winning a tournament and all that. Ultimately, that's what we're all out here for is to win events.

But does it change who I am or who my kids think I am? I hope not, one way or the other and I think that's the bottom line for me.

End of FastScripts.

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