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OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE PRO-AMFebruary 24, 2006Gary McCordLUTZ, FLORIDA DAVE SENKO: Maybe just get us started, 4 under today, maybe talk a little about your day and then we'll get some questions. GARY McCORD: I shot 67. You want general? DAVE SENKO: Just how you played. GARY McCORD: The golf course was, the wind came up a little bit. The golf course got the greens are very receptive, you can get the ball on the green. They are not going to roll off. The ball is stopping on the green, so it wasn't that difficult to play in the wind. When it gets tough out here, it gets fast and these greens are fairly small, so the ball will wander off the green. But today was because the greens are a little slow and have been receptive I didn't play that well, I didn't hit that well, just kind of got it around. That's kind of the general overview. It wasn't anything sterling, as they say. DAVE SENKO: No. 12, two putts, the par 5. GARY McCORD: Yes, I hit it on and 2 putted. 14, I hit it a foot and a half. GARY McCORD: Yeah, I put it in the water the second shot with a 6 iron, not very good. Really awful, in fact. Really awful, because the water is not in play. And then I knocked one in from 23 feet. I hit a good 3 iron on 17 and made that. 1, I hit it about ten feet, made that. 5, I hit it about four feet. Then I just kind of limped in from there. It wasn't very pretty but I got it in. Q. How hard is it for you to go back and forth between playing and not playing and TV? GARY McCORD: Last week was the first time I played in the last four months and I had been in the tree house a month prior to that doing television. So last week was just what I call a sterling glare. You sit there and you look at it and don't know what you're doing and you try and remember what you did, but it's been so long ago, you couldn't remember. So I got the 73 out of the way early, and then I played really well the rest of the last 36 and got a nice flow to it. It just doesn't take that long. I've been doing it long enough now that it's no big deal. It's really no big deal. It's getting in shape to do the walking and the hitting balls that you don't do up there in the tower. You're just doing your thing, you know, so that's the thing that's hard is finding time to do that, get ready without hurting yourself. Q. Have you ever thought about how you might have played out here if you didn't have TV? GARY McCORD: No. No. I've got two of the greatest, easiest jobs in the world, and you never think about what would have been. I've had a ball out here. This will probably be my last year, like Gary Koch. He's going to be on CBS and we're going to play full now starting in 2007. So there's not going to be much time to play, at all. So this will be a fun year just to have some fun and enjoy it and probably we're going to be up to our nostrils in golf on television. Q. When you do play well and you're in the hunt for a tournament, how much fun is it? Are there any exchange with the guys at CBS or that you remind them how well you could be playing? GARY McCORD: Oh, no, they don't care. They could care less. Feherty will call me on whatever, he'll just call me. Really, if they watch it, they might call me. They only call me when I'm really screwing up or when I've done something stupid. It's never when you're playing good. It's: "What did you 3 putt that one for on television, you idiot" and that's about it. Just some snide comments and remarks, and they hang up and it's on my voicemail and I don't return their calls. That's about it. There's none of the CBS pom poms and all that stuff. They really couldn't care less, I think. Q. But when you're off the tube GARY McCORD: The problem is when they are doing it, if they are doing a tournament I'm in, I'm choking my guts out because now I'm getting cross checked up there by everybody, my guys. So I really have to play attention. But luckily we really only play one a year that CBS does, and I played pretty well in that tournament, The Players Championship, the last couple of years, I've done okay. But it's more fun for them to give some fodder just to cut me up anyway. That's always fun. I'm cutting everybody else up, so they might as well have fun with me. Q. Don't you wish Feherty was still playing so you could get back at him? GARY McCORD: Actually I played golf with him the other day, which is the first time second time in seven years, and took him out to our golf course out at Whisper Rock during the Phoenix Open. He did okay. He did all right. Wasn't bad. Q. You were talking about having a full slate next year, are you going to be sad to leave this, or at some point you have too many balls in the air? GARY McCORD: I'm at the age now that the travel is becoming less and less fun, so just pay attention to what I do and television is what I do. This has always been fun to come out here and play, see how you're playing, put yourself next to these guys. Luckily I have a golf course I play at home where we get 20 tour pros and we play all the time together during the off season, so I get plenty of that. So this is just fun, just fun. Q. You're very comfortable at being thought of as an announcer rather than a golfer? GARY McCORD: Yeah, you know, that's the one thing I want to do, and when you come out here, there's nothing more than for me. It was for me to, you know, I changed my golf game and I work hard on it to get rid of ready on the Champions Tour and I was doing the television and the first year I won two tournaments, played in the Tour Championship. That just proved to me that, okay, all that hard work that I should have been doing when I was younger but did I it when I was getting ready for the Champions Tour played off and I was accepted it; okay, you can play, that's it, just for your own ego, that's all it is. It's fun to play out here all 13 times I get to play a year. Q. Was that the difference, the effort, or was there maybe or more of a calmness or not the pressure? GARY McCORD: There's a lot to do with having a paycheck every week. But prior to that, I had made a substantial leap on my ability to hit a golf ball practicing doing, you know, practicing basically what Mac O'Grady was trying to get me to do. Then that was the whole thing, you power up and you see if you can do it. If you can't do it fast, then you just go away. So I wasn't going to play out here, I was going to have fun and play a couple of events. And I won, what, the third event I played in, and all of a sudden your whole deal gets changed. So then I became a semi player out here. I wasn't going to do that, but semi player out here for I think my ninth year. So it's been fun. I have no regrets whatsoever. Q. You mentioned getting a lot busier next year with the new TV deal. What are your thoughts about what's come down on the PGA TOUR with all of that, is that going to be good, good for you personally, good for the TOUR? GARY McCORD: Well, the TV deal, you can take a look at what it is. It's good that there's an interest in golf so the networks are willing to put up the money to put golf up on television. That's always the good deal. It's always nice to have a lot of events, a lot of really good events that CBS has. And on the other hand, I'd like to have less events so I could play a little bit and it would be kind of fun, but that's not the way it is. That's the way it goes. I've got a couple of jobs, so everything is cool. |
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