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FORD CHAMPIONSHIP AT DORAL

March 1, 2006

Davis Love III

DORAL, FLORIDA

JOE CHEMYCZ: We welcome Davis Love III to the interview area. Davis's 16th trip to Doral, coming off a runner up finish last week in The Match Play. Maybe just talk about the state of your game right now and we'll open up for questions.

DAVIS LOVE III: I'm very confident with it. I've been making great improvements in my swing, and the way I'm feeling about my game. So I'm excited about I said it last week, I'm excited about the Florida swing and the prospects for the year. So hopefully continue to build on what wasn't a great West Coast, but it was a very good West Coast. Accomplished a lot of my goals. Got my game back in shape and got some good experience and a lot of rounds in and I had a chance to win, so it was a good swing and ready for Florida now.

JOE CHEMYCZ: Guys last week on television were talking about you being physically more fit than you have been in a while.

DAVIS LOVE III: Yeah, 33 holes a day over the weekend, and right back to work middle of the day on Monday, I'm in the gym, and practiced yesterday with no lingering effects from last week. And that's a major step up for me, that I'm feeling better, I'm stronger, can play.

I played four in a row, took a week off and came back and almost won. This is the second of three in a row, so, you know, to start off the year with seven out of eight weeks tells you that I'm feeling better right there. And then to play well in the middle of that and play a long week of golf, maybe Geoff played more holes than me, but nobody else did, and I felt great doing it.

Q. When things were not going so hot last year, what was happening with the swing and what's improved the most?

DAVIS LOVE III: I was real inconsistent. I would have some good rounds but I would never have a good tournament. I missed a lot of cuts. That tells that there was a little more timing in my swing than I wanted. It wasn't as repeatable.

So we worked this winter on just tightening everything up backswing wise and turning more through it just so I could have some consistency. I was hitting the ball just as far, and like I said, I would have some good rounds and good streaks. Like at Washington, I hit the ball just incredibly well, but didn't turn it around. I felt like, if I don't putt good now if I'm hitting it good, if I don't putt good, I may lose it again. Now I feel like I'm building some consistency in my swing, and you have to have that to compete out here. You can't just pop up every once in awhile and play good.

Q. Looking forward to next year, is it going to be kind of weird giving all of your at bats in the tournament, it not being the first one on the Florida swing and all of the changes in the Florida swing with realignment and Honda first and WGC here I guess?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, we'll still be here. I guess it won't be the first one, right?

Q. It will be the fourth one.

DAVIS LOVE III: The fourth one.

You know, there's going to be a lot of changes next year, obviously, in order and where we're playing. I'll still look forward to the Florida swing as kind of a homecoming after being on the West Coast for eight weeks.

You know, I usually play four to six out there, and then come back here and you feel like your game is ready to go and you hit Florida, hit it running, the whole story was the Tour doesn't start until Doral. I think the West Coast, the last, you know, five or six years has really proven that you have to get a jump start out there, you have to get ready. When you do get to Florida, it became the lead up to The PLAYERS Championship. Now it will be more a lead up to the Masters I guess, starting in '07. But you really feel like this is an important part of the season when you hit Florida and work your way up to Hilton Head.

Q. On the subject of next year, it will be Honda, Tampa, Bay Hill and back down here, how will that affect your preparation?

DAVIS LOVE III: It will be great for Bay Hill. THE PLAYERS Championship has elevated itself so much that guys are starting to back away from Bay Hill a little bit because it's a tough, tough week the week before, basically, a major championship. You see that the rest of the year, you know, before majors, guys don't want to go get beat up before the Masters, a lot of guys don't want to play the week before in Atlanta because it's hilly and a hard golf course and maybe bad weather. Guys will make sure to be ready next week so they are ready for The Masters. Same thing is happening with THE PLAYERS Championship, Bay Hill is taking a little bit of a hit.

Next year will be great, because I'll have those four tournaments I know I'll want to play. Certainly moving THE PLAYERS Championship out will certainly take some pressure off guys with their schedule for Florida.

Q. Are you playing Honda this year?

DAVIS LOVE III: Yes.

Q. Do you know anything about the new course and will you miss Mirasol?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, we played the new course, us old guys, all the way back to the PGA Championship. I've played it several times in outings and stuff. So that will be easier than most moves for me in that tournament. I'll at least know where I'm going, where the holes go.

I've always liked that golf course. It's got a lot of water but it's a good, solid golf course, a known entity. A lot of the players know it, especially the guys that live around there.

Q. Probably won't be as hot as it was in '87, either.

DAVIS LOVE III: No, we hope not.

Q. There's a debate right now whether or not to overseed the Stadium Course for a May date. What do you think they should do? I think Fred Klauk told me it will be a couple of weeks before they make a recommendation; is there any consideration from the policy board on that?

DAVIS LOVE III: We'll certainly lean towards what Fred thinks that he can do.

I've grown up in this area. There's two transition times, as you know, and you're going to overseed and away from overseed. They know when those times are. It's just a matter of whether he which direction he wants to go to get the course in shape. You're going to be fighting either the bermudagrass or the ryegrass at that time of the year, one way or the other.

Probably leave it up to the agronomist. I would like to see it firm and fast and bermuda and get away from the four and five inch ryegrass that I don't think Pete intended us to be hitting in the rough and chopping out every hole. Hopefully we can get away from that and get to some, you know, some flyer bermudarough to be nice.

Q. Fred did say that if they do have the bermudarough, it will be cut down to more around three inches instead of four or five. Is that even a little bit too high?

DAVIS LOVE III: No. I think bermudarough at two or three inches is completely different than ryegrass. When it was wet last year, it got away from him and it just got so high that it became there's no skill involved. If you hit in it, you have to hack it out most times, especially around the greens. I don't think Pete really liked it, either, all of these big, steep mounds with this tall, tall grass on it and you see guys whiffing and going under it. I don't think that's the way the course is meant to be played.

Now, we're not asking for flyers into every green, into hard greens, but we'd rather at least be able to play, more the ball up around the green and chip more from around the green.

So hopefully, they won't go to overseed, and if it is, it will just be for a little color.

Q. I was going to ask about Mirasol, whether you're going to miss it and how you adjust your game over these two weeks?

DAVIS LOVE III: I'll miss Mirasol because they have been great hosts. It's a toss up, you're going from a Fazio to basically a Nicklaus course. Everybody likes different things. We'll miss the hospitality, certainly, of Mirasol.

That tournament has moved a lot of times. I think the position in the schedule will make the biggest difference for them, how guys organize their Florida swing. There will probably be again, a lot of guys like me that will probably want to play all four just straight in a row, especially guys on this side of the country. But preparation wise, no, it won't really change much. We're getting good at switching golf courses on this tour. We know how to get ready.

Q. This site has had such a rich history with the PGA TOUR. You're going to continue to be coming back, but in the future when it's a World Golf Championships, a lot of the rank and file guys may never play this golf course again. Is there some sadness, or celebration because it's becoming a World Golf Championships?

DAVIS LOVE III: I think it's a step up, certainly, for golf in this area to get a World Golf Championship. Hopefully those guys will all there will be a lot of guys like me that won't play here as long because it will be a World Golf Championships. You know, guys will move out of the top and new guys will take their place.

I think it's going to be nice to have a World Golf Championship in the Florida swing. I think it's going to be real exciting, and it will keep golf here at Doral and keep a really big tournament in the Florida swing. So I think it's going to be a positive.

The best players in the world will be here, and I think that's the main thing. It will give those guys even more of an incentive to make it here because it's a great golf course.

Q. Could you extrapolate on what you say, that every single stop on the Florida swing next year could conceivably improve; Honda is going to change its spot in the lineup and they will have the Jack and Barbara angle to work; Tampa is moving from a spot in the fall where it was not as relevant as it could have been; Arnold I guess maybe treads water and gets a few more guys; and obviously the big payday for Doral.

DAVIS LOVE III: Right. I think everybody is happy in Florida.

You know, my take on the whole season, after a year maybe of tournaments, a lot of tournaments not knowing what was going to happen, that everybody seems to be very, very happy. I haven't heard anybody saying, you know, we got aced in this deal. Everybody has improved, and that's the thing we've been trying to tell the players, is this whole new system has made all of our tournaments better.

If I was in Florida, yeah, I'd be real happy that you took a major championship and moved it out. Like Augusta is probably happy, get that big one away from us so everybody can focus more on us.

Certainly, now, Bay Hill and Doral and all of the tournaments, but especially Bay Hill and Doral think, hey, now we're the big tournaments in the Florida swing. We don't have to compete with the PLAYERS Championship. I suspect that Arnold and his team are very happy that they are not the week before the PLAYERS Championship.

Now, that does bring some foreign players, you know, that come over for those two weeks, but I think they have lost a lot of the local foreign players and the local American players because of just not wanting to play two really difficult golf tournaments in a row.

Q. But do you think that maybe it's a wash because with this being a World Golf Championships event, a lot of those international players would be coming for a similar reason, right?

DAVIS LOVE III: Right, but I think they will play I'm not sure exactly, is it before or after Bay Hill?

Q. Doral will be right after.

DAVIS LOVE III: I think it will work to that's two good ones to come over to play, rather than just coming for a week.

You know, the international players, even though they sometimes say we want them to go around the world, they do play in them when they are in the U.S. They will come, and I think they will play, not just come for one week play; play a couple.

Q. You mentioned you played in that '87 PGA; what was your experience like with that intense heat and the deep rough and burned out greens and the problems they had with that tournament?

DAVIS LOVE III: That was it. (Laughter) Intense heat, bad greens, a lot of problems.

That was my second PGA Championship, and it was just a shock to me because it was very, very difficult, and I didn't play very well.

Like I said, I've played a few other times there when the greens have been very, very good, and I wasn't going to beat Larry Nelson or Lanny Wadkins probably back then. It was a very, very tough, tough tournament, certainly. It's played a lot easier every time I've played it since then.

Q. Are they going to have to grow deep rough there, do you think, to make that course difficult enough for the Tour?

DAVIS LOVE III: You know, I don't know what they have done with it the last few years as far as length. I know they have had the Champions Tour that's played there and done some stuff, so I don't know what they have done.

I suspect that time of year, they will have plenty of rough, and they do a good job with that golf course, so I'm sure it will play pretty hard.

If it's not long, any longer than it was certainly back then, it won't be that hard.

But I'm not looking for it to be extremely hard. Doesn't have to be hard every week.

Q. What's your sense of the end of next year, with the PGA and Bridgestone and the FedEx events, there's a possibility of seven straight weeks. How do you think that will shape up? You have to go to Greensboro, don't you?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, every time I try four in a row or five in a row like I tried once last year, I'm thinking about seven for next year, because you might need it. I keep telling guys, and the more you talk to players about it, what would happen if you were in this scenario, oh, yeah, I might end up with seven in a row.

So the guys that are in good shape and are playing well, will probably play, if not seven in a row, play six out of seven trying to make a run.

You know, it's going to get as close as we can possibly get to the NASCAR schedule. You're going to see guys playing a whole lot at the end of the year to try to make that chase. Maybe the top three guys don't play Greensboro, but if you're the fourth, fifth or sixth guy and I can pick up 5,000 points or whatever it is to move up a seeding or two, then it's probably worth it.

Q. What's your sense of what the seeding means?

DAVIS LOVE III: It could mean anything, but it will be a slight advantage to be 1 versus 2, or 2 versus 3, or 3 versus 4. We don't know what the differential is going to be. There will be a value to be a No. 1, and obviously there will be a value to be 30 rather than 100th. So you'll need to play all year and play enough tournaments and get higher ranked, so, one, you can get in the FedEx, and two, you can get in the TOUR Championship after those four events. There's the possibility, you're 10th going in, and then if you don't play well, you'll get knocked out of THE TOUR Championship.

There's the incentives that are going to be built in to where if a guy doesn't play one of the last four, he's not going to win, even if he is ranked No. 1. They have got these big supercomputers figuring all the numbers out, you know. (Laughter).

Q. Has Tim (Finchem) laid out anything, Option A or Option B?

DAVIS LOVE III: If you haven't heard, the Pebble Beach tournament was four hours, which was a new record, so that was the majority of the discussion was how did the points work. We teased Andy Padzer, he ran out of paper with suggestions that we were giving him.

So as a board member, we've been looking at it for a year plus. The pack saw it, basically, the start of this year, so they are trying to get their hands around it, and then by the middle of the year, we should have the points figured out. Then we spend the next half of the year figuring out how to assign money to those points, how does the payout work. So hopefully in the next eight months, we'll have the whole thing figured out.

But the staff, certainly the board, we were focused on TV up until the first of the year, and we deferred the details, which are a lot, to certain timeframes. So we have goals, we have a meeting Monday in Jacksonville, we have certain decisions we have to make at certain times during the year. Certainly now the players are starting to talk and throw out ideas, so we have to digest those and get that done in the next six months.

There's two or three options and they all are very, very close and they all work. It's just a matter of, what do you do with opposite events and are the majors more important than THE PLAYERS Championship, those five tournaments more important than the World Golf Championships, things like that to debate back and forth. Eventually we'll come to a conclusion on those.

When you look at all I think there were four, maybe, scenarios that we looked at, and you plug them in to like the 2005 season which they did for the 2000 season, it comes out pretty close. You still have the same big names up there. It's just a matter of how they fall towards the end. We had fun watching the tournament, the FedEx Cup unfold for 2005 or for 2000 under the point systems that they were putting up.

Q. They just put last year's results of the scenarios?

DAVIS LOVE III: And they used the Barclays and they used the Western Open, and THE TOUR Championship, the actual results for those four tournaments. It was fun to watch. And then my name would pop up and it would go down. Every time my name went up, I liked it and every time it went down, I said, no, I don't like that scenario (laughter).

It was interesting and fun, and guys saw that if you weighed it different ways, what we keep arguing is Tiger Woods is still probably going to figure out how to get to the top, you know. The best player is still going to have a chance to win. It's just a matter of how do you tweak it so you get, like NASCAR, you get the guys in there you want, you get the best players that make it, and the best players are incentivized to play. The NASCAR thing wouldn't work, if you got seeded No. 1 and all you had to do was show up for the races and you would win; that's not exciting.

So they want you to make the Top 10, and they want you to race hard the rest of the season. That's what they want here. We want guys to race hard, get a top ranking and then want you to have to play hard to win, and play all of them. So that's the balance.

Q. So if you backload points to get all those guys to play six or seven weeks, what's going to happen to the middle?

DAVIS LOVE III: We don't backload. Everything is going to be pretty close to the same. You have to play the last four; is what we're saying. But if you want to get ranked higher, you have to play more towards the end of the year to get ranked higher. That's what we were saying about Greensboro, for example. If you were ranked 8th and none of the top guys ahead of you are playing Greensboro, hey, wait a minute, if I play well, that's just as good as we playing good in one of the final events because I'll jump up a thousand points or 2000 points or whatever the number is if I play well.

But I would suspect that they are going to be very level across the year with just slight increases for the bigger tournaments, so there won't be any you know, three weeks before it ends won't be better than three weeks into the season. It will be basically the same all year.

Q. Greensboro would be essentially the same as Phoenix?

DAVIS LOVE III: Exactly, it will be. And the PGA Championship, obviously will probably have some elevated status. Because if you have a guy that plays great in four wins four majors, and a guy wins four, you know, other tournaments, they shouldn't be ranked the same going into the final, we don't think.

Q. Is it a two tier, obviously the regular events are here and the majors here, what about the World Golf Championships and THE PLAYERS Championship?

DAVIS LOVE III: That's what we're discussing. We would throw THE PLAYERS Championship in with the majors, the players would. And then what do you do, should say World Golf Championships, match play with 64 guys, should that be worth more points than Doral, Doral as we know it this week? That's what we're arguing about. And how many do you give to the guys who played in Tucson the week opposite, do you give them half or do you give them three quarters. A guy gets beat it's the same thing as the money. If a guy gets beat in the first match in The Match Play, shoots 65 and gets beat, and a guy gets more points than him, or do you just give points to a guy for making the Top 64 in The Match Play. It's kind of a we've got to balance all of those things out, like we do, like we've done for years with money and exempt status and all that for opposite events or World Golf Championships. We're just having to balance all those things.

Q. Given the fact that guys might have to play six out of seven or seven in a row in the summer for the most part, do you think that that will force you guys as a whole to increase conditioning programs and fitness programs? Do you think that pushes the trend of you guys being more fit even more?

DAVIS LOVE III: I think it would, to keep up with the top guys. We're getting that way. You know, there's 15 or 20 different trainers out here. When I came on TOUR, there was 15 or 20 guys working out (laughter). So that's the difference.

I mean, just last week, there was five trainers in the gym, and there's 64 players, and that's not counting our tour guys that were there. Essentially there were seven trainers for 64 players last week, guys obviously bringing their own, their personal trainers. So, yeah, but when you look at the guys who are consistently playing well and they are at the top of the Money List, who is in the gym more than Tiger and Vijay and the top players? Nobody, so...

JOE CHEMYCZ: Joan.

DAVIS LOVE III: Yeah, Joan is in there a lot.

Q. On that subject, sort of, the new and reworked Tom Lehman is 10th in Ryder Cup points at this moment, and while there's a long, long, long way to go, do you think a guy could be a playing captain in this day and age?

DAVIS LOVE III: We talked about it a little bit last week. I think Tom Lehman could. I didn't even think he was old enough to be the captain had they picked him. I had to go back and ask him, "How old are you?"

I don't consider him out of his playing time. He's a lot like Kite. Kite was close in points and could have if he would have picked himself, I would not have gotten a lot of argument probably from the players.

I think if Tom continues to play well, I played with him a couple of times this year, he's playing great. And we said last week, he's ahead of the curve. He learned from the past few captains how much work was involved and they had to jump on it in the beginning and get ahead if he wanted to play. I think he spent a lot of time this winter doing Ryder Cup stuff to get ahead.

And he's very organized. It seems like, you know, he and Melissa were watching years ahead, knowing that this might happen, and they had to have a strategy. He's asked me a lot of questions, you know well, I probably shouldn't say, but he's stolen a few ideas that Robin and I had put away in the back of our heads. He's gotten ahead by thinking ahead, and I think he's prepared to play and do his job. That's good. He learned from how much work it was, from obviously being at the team. He was at the Presidents Cup, you know. He was watching. That says a lot. That says a guy is trying to get it figured out.

He had two meetings, dinners, before we played the Presidents Cup, so I would say you're ahead of the game

Q. With players?

DAVIS LOVE III: With players. If you're already doing that before they even played the Presidents Cup, you're ahead of schedule, so he's doing good.

Q. What do you see as your timetable for you to be a captain?

DAVIS LOVE III: My goal is to play in all of them until I'm 50. So I hope that I mess myself up and I don't even get to do it. I'd like to play a bunch more, because that's one of the thrills of my career is being on those teams. So I'd like to continue on.

I was happy to get enough points to move up the ladder last week, too. So I'm looking forward to getting some more this week.

Q. What's the difference in what you're doing work out wise from what you were doing in 2003?

DAVIS LOVE III: In 2003 I was hanging on and not feeling great and just trying to get through the year. One thing Tiger told me, he said if you keep starting working out and when you get hurt, you stop, he said you're never going to get better. He said eventually you're going to have to work through it and continue on. I got that push from him and from Randy Myers to say, hey, let's start getting better a little bit at a time and work our way through this. Randy certainly put me on a program that didn't feel like I was doing a whole lot in the beginning rather than what I was doing before I was jumping in heavy and contributing probably to my injury, rather than getting stronger a little bit at a time and having a plan.

You know, there's been a couple of times where like yesterday and the day before where I felt like, oh, I had a big week last week, I should take a couple days off. We went right back and did it.

I worked out yesterday and then practiced and felt great, and that's the difference. Before, I would probably, after last week, I would probably withdraw from this week, you know, and say, I've got to take a break or I'm not going to be able to make it to The PLAYERS Championship. I only had to do that once last year after the Presidents Cup. Years before that, I probably had two to four withdrawals just when I had a big week or a long week or wore myself out, I'd just have to withdraw and take a week off. Now I feel like I'm building up to something rather than crashing.

Q. So at what point did you make that commitment to work through?

DAVIS LOVE III: Well, last year was a year to get in shape. This year was a year to really try to put it to the test.

You know, I've got a long way to go. I've got two or three years, probably, to get in peak shape. You know, if I'm 80 or 90 percent now, that's better than what I had two years ago.

Q. Did having Winged Foot out there sharpen your focus?

DAVIS LOVE III: Not really. I'm excited about going back to Winged Foot. But there's a lot of big tournaments between now and then, you know. So I'm more focused on the year as a whole rather than just one week.

JOE CHEMYCZ: Davis, thank you. Appreciate your time.

End of FastScripts.

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