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EDS BYRON NELSON CHAMPIONSHIP

May 9, 2006

Ted Purdy

IRVING, TEXAS

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Ted Purdy, defending champion of the EDS Byron Nelson Championship, thanks for joining us for a few minutes. Maybe some opening comments about coming back to Dallas and defending your first PGA TOUR title.

TED PURDY: Well, the first comment is I can't believe it was a year ago (laughter). It's been the best year of my life being defending champion of EDS Byron Nelson. Every week on Tour, every day I tee off, they announce me as Ted Purdy, the 2005 EDS Byron Nelson champion, so it's been a great round, great year.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Have you had a chance to play the golf course yet?

TED PURDY: Yeah, I played yesterday in the Pro Am, and as usual, the course is in great shape. The rough is very long, and with the rain the last couple nights it's making it a little thicker and tough, but it's in great condition.

The 18th hole there's a little change, nice finish with the lake on the left hand side, which is fun. Yeah, it's in great shape again.

Q. Do you allow yourself to really think back on what you accomplished last year? Going into the week everybody was talking about the Big Five being here, and when it ended you were standing on top.

TED PURDY: Yeah. I kind of struggled with my game prior to I had made a lot of cuts last year prior to coming to the Byron Nelson, and it's funny, I was on that range again and it was déjà. I kind of remembered some swing thoughts that I was doing last year, and just the energy of Dallas and of this golf tournament, it's unique to a lot of tournaments all year. It just seems like there's there's just more energy here. Everybody is having a good time, the players, the "red pants" guys, the Salesmanship Club guys are all having a good time.

From the top down, the people that run the golf tournament, it permeates through the galleries, through the locker room, and it's just a great event and a great place to come back to.

Q. Can you feed off that energy?

TED PURDY: Yeah, it's like we played the Wachovia last week, and we got rained on all day Sunday, and we kind of came in here waterlogged, and as soon as we pulled in the Four Seasons parking lot, my spirits lifted. I've got two little kids, and it seemed like they had a cold all last week, and their colds are gone (laughter).

Q. It's like good karma is coming on your side here.

TED PURDY: Yeah, it's a great place.

Q. They'll just have allergies this week.

TED PURDY: Yeah, those cottonwoods. They've got my wife right now.

It does just have a great feel. Not every week is even close to this much fun I don't think.

Q. As the first time as a defending champ, do you kind of have that little extra swagger and feel in your step this week?

TED PURDY: Yeah. I mean, you guys are talking to me. That doesn't happen every week. Yeah, I hope I'm on this podium Sunday afternoon again. That's the goal, get back here again.

Q. Have you thought about the difference in the energy that will be directed towards you now that you're the defending champion from everyone around you?

TED PURDY: Yeah, it's been kind of fun, too. Texas is like its own country, I think. If you win in Texas you become a Texan. When I played in Houston I had a lot of gallery that were following me because I was the Byron Nelson champion. When I went to Colonial the next week after winning I had a great following there. And down in San Antonio, they actually the people from San Antonio that run the tournament there, the Valero people, flew me in for an evening there because they were excited that I had won the Byron Nelson.

It's a great feeling, and Texas is just a great place to play golf. I kind of feel like a Texan now that I've won here.

Q. Does it do anything to you mentally? Phil and Tiger aren't here; do you look at that and say, hey, that's two big obstacles, that gives me a better chance to repeat or a better chance to win?

TED PURDY: You know, it's always difficult to beat those two players, Phil and Tiger, and Retief Goosen is obviously not here this year. You know, I want them in the field. I mean, you want to beat those players. I think it's better for the tournament, it's better for everybody. But they are hard to beat obviously. All those guys are really tough to beat. If they're not in the field it's just two less guys that we have to beat. But who knows, the guy that Phil Chris Couch, two weeks ago, I think he was an alternate guy in the field and ended up beating everybody.

Villegas a couple weeks ago was the first alternate. Chris DiMarco pulled out and he had a chance of winning THE PLAYERS Championship. Whoever took Phil's place probably has winning on his mind, too.

Q. You mentioned you were on the range and started getting some of the feel again. Characterize how your season has gone this year. What feels good, what doesn't feel good?

TED PURDY: I think to date I've made probably twice as much money this year than I made last year coming to this event. I don't know, it's just a tough game. Some days my driver is going in the rough, and then it seems like the days the driver is going in the fairway the putter is not finding the hole.

I've been shooting some great low rounds this year, but I've had also some uncharacteristic high rounds this year. And I've made a ton of birdies this year. I'm sure I'm up there in the birdie count again this year, but I won it last year.

If I can just eliminate the mistakes, I'm making enough birdies to compete any week, I think.

Q. Does the mindset of last year making more birdies than anybody else, cause you every now and then to shoot a 75 that perplexes you a bit?

TED PURDY: Yeah, maybe I'm aiming at too many pins that I shouldn't be. If I'm on, I'm hitting it close, if I'm off, I'm making a bogey. That could be a lot of it. In fact, when I won last year, I think on Sunday I had a pretty conservative game plan, and it served me well, so maybe I need to and the memories from last year coming back again.

Again, I was just standing on the driving range this morning, and I kind of remembered you know, it's windy here and I was remembering the things I was having to do to combat the wind on the driving range. Hopefully that feeling hopefully I've found that feeling again. It's just a hard game (laughter).

Those guys that compete every week are just we all respect them obviously.

Q. I think I saw you on The Golf Channel last night talking about a swing adjustment you made last year this time of year. Was it you and your caddie that did it?

TED PURDY: Yeah, my caddie last year on the driving range, he kind of remembered he's been trying to teach me, I think, the whole year, but I'm listening again, I guess, but he wanted me to hit more left to right shots, more cuts, and when it's windy out, he was trying to get me to work the ball into the wind. If it's a right to left wind, he wanted me to cut it into the wind. If it's a left to right wind he wanted me to draw it into the wind. It served me really well last year and on the range this morning. He said, you know, it's right to left wind, start hitting some cuts into the wind. He was a big factor.

He grew up in Texas, my caddie. He grew up in south Texas, so he knows how to play in the wind. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, where it doesn't blow very often, and if it does

Q. What's your caddie's name?

TED PURDY: Paul Jungman.

So that's what Paul and I were working on last year. And then we got out there this morning as soon as we threw the bag down, and it was like, let's hit some cuts again. He was a big help last year.

Q. What do you think the lake at 18 adds to the mix, and do you see some potential drama unfolding there on Sunday?

TED PURDY: Absolutely. Well, it's a difficult driving hole without the lake because if you hit it left, you're in the long rough behind the trees, and you had to probably chip out and try to wedge up and down. And those right trees catch a lot of balls, too, because people are so it was a difficult driving hole as it played without the lake.

Now if you hit it left, you're definitely going to make bogey because you have to drop it further back, and there's no option of chipping out and getting up and down. You're now dropping and trying to get up and down.

It's going to add a lot of dramatics, I think. You're going to see a lot more balls in those right trees, which is no bargain there, either.

I remembered last year when I stood on 18, I hit that tee shot in the middle of the fairway. I was just so happy to hit it in the fairway because it's a difficult fairway to hit. I think the announcers on CBS were getting on me for celebrating too early, but I was just so happy (laughter) to hit the fairway that it didn't matter at the time. I was pumped.

Q. I think you talked earlier this year about getting to know Mr. Nelson a little bit and getting a clock or something from him, one of his woodworking pieces?

TED PURDY: Yeah, I came in December to the Salesmanship they have their Thursday meetings, and they asked me to come and speak at one of their meetings, so I graciously came and I don't know what I did, but I mentioned to somebody that I would like a piece of woodworking from Byron. I said, "Can you buy it?" I was asking Peggy, how do you get a piece of Byron's woodworking. She said, "Oh, we just give it to friends and family. We don't ever sell any of it. It's just a hobby." Lo and behold, probably a month or two later, I got in the mail a wooden clock that Byron had made for me. It's really neat.

He's got this stamp that says, "made by Byron Nelson." He put it on the bottom of the clock. I wish he had just stamped it right on the face (laughter). That's going to be displayed. And he sent me a nice note, too. I'm going to display that proudly somewhere in my house.

Q. I was going to ask you along those same lines what it's like to win an event with a living legend a part of it, a guy who actually sends notes and stuff like that. What does it feel like to receive those kinds of things?

TED PURDY: He's just the ultimate professional. He's the ultimate southern gentleman. Every golf pro should emulate Byron Nelson, and probably every person should. He just is a genuine guy, and he's passionate about life obviously because he's still with us at 94. He's got great energy. Everybody around him just from the kids at the Salesmanship Club to the people that do his work for him, the guys that volunteer their time, I mean, he is an amazing, amazing person.

He even said to me when I was here in December, he said we were at the school, and he said, "This is my No. 1 achievement." He's changing 100 families a year or more. It's an amazing feat, to be able to say you can do that.

But yeah, and I've taken I don't know if it's fate or I don't know if it's how it happened, but in Phoenix, Arizona, shortly after winning the Byron Nelson I ended up getting aligned or associated with a similar program in Phoenix called the Steppingstone Foundation, and the Steppingstone Foundation takes at risk four year olds and provides the mother with a GED and English as a second language and provides the four year old with some preschooling before they go into public kindergartens. I don't know if it's the stars aligned and I ended up but that's my primary cause, too, and it's really fun to be a part of changing some at risk kids' lives. And you're changing the course of their lives, the lives of lots of families for generations, I think. I think it's an amazing thing.

Q. Is that an opportunity to presented itself to you primarily because you had won the Nelson in Phoenix, or had they approached you before?

TED PURDY: Who knows? I don't know how it happened, but it did. It's been a neat in fact, I sent the Steppingstone Foundation here to Dallas and had them tour the facilities here with Ken, the director over at the Salesmanship Club, and their response to me was, we learned more from the Steppingstone than they are going to learn from us because they get more parental involvement. They're more parental involvement focused and Salesmanship Club focuses more on the kids. And I think Ken at the Salesmanship Club is going to now incorporate they're becoming sort of teams. They're going to start incorporating more parental involvement, which I thought was neat.

I don't know, I was able to raise $40,000 for the Steppingstone at a golf tournament in December, and then the Salesmanship guys just out of generosity have been sending personal checks to Phoenix, as well. They don't have to do that. It's been a really neat family, marriage, between the two foundations. I'm proud of that.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: At this time I'd like to call up Mr. Pat Bolin, who's the chairman of the 2006 Byron Nelson Championship, for a presentation.

TED PURDY: Ping has never done this before. For the last 70 years, Ping has always had a white bag with black lettering, and for this week, they made three bags; Ping gets a bag, I get a bag and the Salesmanship Club gets a bag, and it's an EDS Byron Nelson defending champion bag.

Obviously it's black with white lettering and the gold and platinum accents. We want to present Ping and I want to present this to the Salesmanship Club to use as they want. If they want to put it in a corner somewhere they can, and maybe they can raise a couple bucks. There's only three of these made, and Ping is going to do this for all their champions. They had three last year, Calcavecchia and Heath Slocum last year, and they're going to do that every year for their champions.

This is the first one they've ever done, and you'll never see another Ping staff bag that looks like this, so here you go, Pat.

PAT BOLIN: That is a beautiful bag, I'll tell you. Should I call you Tex Purdy? Ted, you've just been the most gracious champion this year of the EDS Byron Nelson. We really appreciate you, and I, too, from the bottom of my heart hope you're on this podium come Sunday after afternoon. We accept this wonderful bag and we will do something miraculous with it. Anything we do will be raising money for children, which we have an common interest in.

On behalf of our EDS and Salesmanship Club and Youth and Family Center we thank you for this. In December he took a personal interest in our mission to help kids, toured our J. Eric Johnson Community School, and I knew from that point forward you were a very special person, and I look forward to getting to know you better, and your shoulders are a little broader, which you'll need on Wednesday to carry a couple of us on that Pro Am. We appreciate it.

TED PURDY: Hopefully I'm hitting that cut into the wind.

PAT BOLIN: They call mine a slice.

TED PURDY: Thanks. You guys have been great. I'm honored to be your champion.

PAT BOLIN: We're privileged to have you back in Dallas and look forward to a great round this week and look forward to being up here with you in this interview room.

Q. Ted, you're going to carry a bag like that?

TED PURDY: I carry a bag this week, just the same exact bag, and I'm only allowed to carry it this week. I was like, I want this bag full time, it's gorgeous. The Ping Company is only letting me because they're black and white, that's their deal, and they're only letting me carry it this week. I thought it was a great idea, and it really turned out neat. It's a beautiful bag.

End of FastScripts.

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