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WACHOVIA CHAMPIONSHIPMay 2, 2006Jay HaasBill HaasJay Haas Jr.CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: We'd like to thank Jay Junior, Jay Senior, and Bill Haas for joining us for a few minutes in the media center at the Wachovia Championship. Congratulations to Jay Junior for Monday qualifying in a playoff, correct? JAY HAAS, JR.: Yes. JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Why don't we start with Jay Senior with a couple comments about being here, sitting here between your two sons and having an opportunity to play the same event together. JAY HAAS: Well, as you can imagine it's pretty special for me. Yesterday afternoon when we got word from Jay that he had shot 68 and possibly could be in a playoff, Jan and I were out doing a few errands, and then we got pretty nervous and hoping for him and wishing he could win the playoff. Jan's brother Dillard Pruitt, who's a rules official, got word from another rules official who called Dillard, and Dillard called us, and we were in the car. Just goosebumps. What a thrill for Jay in itself. He's started to work a little harder at his game and it's started to pay off. You know, this is the big stage, and so for him to be here, and for me, I probably shouldn't even be here. I got beat up today on this golf course. It's just too hard for me. But for him to be here and Bill, again, it's just an unbelievable thrill. I just couldn't even imagine on that first tee today, I've done it with Bill a few times but never with Jay and never with both of them, so this is just a great week for me. JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Jay, is this the first time for you to tee it up at a PGA TOUR event? JAY HAAS, JR.: It is, yes. JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Make a couple comments about that. JAY HAAS, JR.: I guess it's always been a dream to play with my dad and my brother on the PGA TOUR, or just in any professional event, I guess. It's always kind of been what I've wanted to do. You know, I guess as my dad said, I started working harder at it, got a job for about four months there, started playing golf, decided I didn't want to do that anymore, and so I started working pretty hard at it, and I guess yesterday playing really well, I was really nervous coming down the stretch there. I really wanted to play with my dad and my brother this week. I don't know, I get goosebumps thinking about it right now. It's pretty special to me. Q. Jay Junior, can you describe the playoff yesterday? Was it a one hole playoff? JAY HAAS, JR.: It was two holes. There were three of us playing. My two competitors both hit it in the middle of the fairway and I pulled it left in the trees, and I was a little tight. Then hit a pretty good shot into the back bunker there, knocked that out to about ten feet, they both had 15 and 20 footers for birdie. I somehow rammed this thing into the back of the hole so fast, I don't know how it went in, and they two putted. The next hole I made par, and one of the guys made a bogey. He hit it way left and got a bad break and ended up making bogey. So that was it. Actually it was kind of anti climactic I guess you could say, but it was pretty exciting. JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Who were the two competitors that you were playing with? JAY HAAS, JR.: Derek Watson and I can't even remember the other guy's name. JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: But Derek was one that made it? JAY HAAS, JR.: He did make it. Q. Jay, you mentioned this course is tough, but you feel obviously coming off two wins on the Champions Tour, is your game you mentioned on Sunday you want to roll with it. Can you roll with it, or is this course too tough? JAY HAAS: Well, it's certainly different than the last two courses we played. It's much longer. Of course every tee today, we played it on the tip of every tee marker it seemed like. Every par 3 was long. The rough is much higher than what I've been experiencing on the Champions Tour. I'm going to need to drive it in the fairway. I think I can compete, but I'll need to keep it in the fairway. I'm just not strong enough to muscle it out and get it on these greens as long as the course is. Bill drove it in the rough a couple times today and he was still able to get it on the green. That strength is pretty important here and the length. But as it's shown over the last three years, there are all kinds of different champions here, all different of different players. I know the course pretty well. I guess I know what league I should be in, and I don't know if this is it (smiling). Q. Jay Junior and Bill, could you talk about when you were kids and competition between the two of you and maybe other sports besides golf and what it was like? BILL HAAS: I think it was pretty competitive. We're 14 months apart. Not that it was a bad thing, but I think every sports team, we played church basketball together and we played obviously golf together, little league a few years, not many, but we'd play on the same team. Usually it was the same team, so it wasn't like we were competing against each other on opposing teams. I think I always wanted to be better than him and he always wanted to be better than me, so that probably made us try harder and that kind of thing. Q. What about around the house? JAY HAAS, JR.: We had some heated basketball games, but we had fun. We had a good time. BILL HAAS: Except when it was heated (laughing). Q. Jay, did you have to pull them apart? JAY HAAS: Not usually when I was home. Maybe when I was on the road I'd hear stories from their mom, what happened that day. But I think it's only natural. If you've got any competitive spirit at all, you're going to clash and you want to beat the guy next to you and all that. Like Bill said, I don't know if it was a good or bad thing, but it is what it is. But I think they probably clashed a few times and still do. But they're brothers, they can't ever get away from that. Q. Can either of you boys remember the first time you came off the golf course and said, "I can beat my father now, I'm as good as my dad"? BILL HAAS: I don't know if it's happened yet. JAY HAAS, JR.: I'm still working on that. BILL HAAS: No, I think both of us have beat him, but whether or not we walked off and said, "Well, I can give him two a side," it hasn't happened. Q. Obviously you had some yardstick to look at to say this is how good my game is now. BILL HAAS: Yeah, I guess he's a yardstick. You want to be as good as your dad, just like anybody's dad. But I think once you get inside the ropes and are playing against other professionals, just anybody, if you can sit there and say not whether your game matches up, but at the end of the week if you're beating some guys that you see do pretty well, that kind of makes you feel like you stack up a little bit. Q. Jay Junior, when did you leave school, and can you talk a little bit about the decision to pursue or not pursue golf? JAY HAAS, JR.: I guess three years ago I guess it was, I wasn't doing very well in school, and I just kind of I talked to my parents and decided I wanted to play golf. Actually I did not play well. I had a couple of good rounds, but I don't think I worked at it hard enough, and I didn't want to bad enough. I think I really didn't realize that I wanted it as much as I did, probably until after I got a job and started working a little bit and realized that it's a great thing, playing golf. JAY HAAS: It's usually a good incentive for most of us, isn't it? JAY HAAS, JR.: I guess maybe I just took it for granted. So anyway, that's basically my progression. After I got out of school I turned pro and tried to play and didn't really work at it hard enough, didn't really make it, got a job, and hopefully things are going to work out better this time. Q. So the near future is like Monday qualifying? JAY HAAS, JR.: Maybe a little bit. Obviously I played well Monday. You know, I would love to play really well this week and get my confidence up. I'll probably play the Tarheel Tour, maybe even play the Gateway Tour a little bit and Monday qualify, and then hopefully try to prepare for Q school at the end of the year. Q. Jay, I imagine you'd be proud of your sons whatever profession they chose, but the fact that they're golfers and that they didn't rebel or do something else or hate golf, can you talk about the pride that gives you? JAY HAAS: I've said this before, that they both exceeded my expectations as golfers, I suppose. I just wanted them to enjoy the game, to be halfway decent where they could go out and have fun. I didn't think they would love it as much as I love the game. As a kid it's kind of hard to push golf on somebody. It's a lot of hours out there, a lot of times by yourself. So the fact that they've both pursued this and done quite well at it, again, they've exceeded any expectations or the expectations I had, how good they would be. Now, I think we can all get better maybe not me, I'm probably not getting any better; I'm going the other way. But it's fun to see them do this. Today was I won't say it was a dream come true because I couldn't have dreamt of doing this. This is great. Q. The fact that your dad has got two wins, is that inspiration at all to go out there and get your first win? BILL HAAS: I think so. I would love to win as a goal. But yeah, seeing somebody in the family, somebody close to you do well is inspiration. I have my own personal goals, and I want to reach those. It's nice to see somebody close to you doing well. It's uplifting. If my days are not so good, maybe at least he's winning or playing well, and that makes me at least forget about my round. Q. Jay Junior, what were you doing for work? And did Jerry try to Monday qualify this year? JAY HAAS: Jerry did. He missed at the section event. That was probably five or six weeks ago. Q. So you could have had four of you? JAY HAAS: Yeah, two years ago it was three of us, and Jerry was sitting there. So that would have been pretty cool. And Hunter didn't get in this year, so we could have had a whole row of lockers. But Hunter is no relation. JAY HAAS, JR.: I was working for a tool company called Professional Tool Products. It was a friend of mine's dad that kind of gave me the job, I guess. I was supposed to be in sales, but I kind of did a little bit of everything. What did we decide my job title was? JAY HAAS: Product manager. JAY HAAS, JR.: Yeah, that was my job title (smiling). Yeah, that was basically what I did. Q. Was there a sort of tipping point, just like a task that you were asked to perform where you said, you know what, I really wish I was playing golf right now? JAY HAAS: After the first two days he told me that. JAY HAAS, JR.: Actually it was the first day about ten minutes after I got there, they asked me to count everything in these boxes that were like this big (indicating five feet) and about five or six feet deep. After two hours of counting boxes and still having more left, I kind of decided, "aah, that's about enough."
JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: We'd like to thank y'all for joining us, and everyone play well this week.
End of FastScripts. |
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