JACK NICKLAUS: Well, you know, you're talking about the bunkers, obviously. And really the whole idea, and whether it's correct or whether it's not correct, I don't think is really the issues were that we asked the Tour what they wanted to do, and they said they would like to make the bunkers more of a penalty. They've been telling players they were, and I said, "Where have you done it?" And they said, "We haven't." They said, "We'd like to start at your place if that's what you'd like to do." I said, "That's great." Whether it's dead right the way we did it, I don't know.
We basically took a hay rake, and a hay rake and we had other rakes made, but they were not the same width. That's why they took the extra spoke out to try to make it the way they raked in the morning, if they raked in the morning one way, and another way in the afternoon. They want to be consistent. They wanted to be consistent all week.
What we really were trying to do was make the golfer we've been spending a fortune every year redoing bunkers, a lot of tournaments are doing exactly the same thing. And what it does for the membership of the golf course is it makes it very difficult. The members find it difficult when they have deep bunkers, because they're not that good of players. But these guys can do anything.
So the whole idea was to say, "Okay, you've got a pin close to a bunker, think. Do I want to hit that pin? Or do I want to hit the ball at the pin? Or do I want to play a little bit to one side to give myself the opportunity not to short side myself." You want to put a little bit of fear into the shot. And I think it did that.
And the fairway bunkers, they're not there for decoration. The fairway bunker is there, and if you put the ball into them, you really wanted to have a situation where you might get a good lie, you might have a half a shot penalty, you might be able to play it on the green. You've got a variety of different situations. And we thought that the better bunker player would be rewarded on both occasions.
So we knew that there would be less up and downs than there was before. We knew there was going to be gripes. I mean, good gracious, but why would we bother to do it if we didn't believe that the players had too easy a situation. That was why it was done.
And so how the Tour carries it forward, it's their choice to start with, whether they continue with it or don't continue with it or take it to other tournaments or don't take it to other tournaments. If they decide it's not what they want to do and next year say, "We don't think we want to do it," that's fine. If that's what they do, that's what they do. And we spend more money to do more things.
But it was very simple to me that I've got four bunkers on one that that need to be redone. Do I want to redo those bunker, spend the money to do that? Or just put a rake to them? Which makes more sense? Put a rake on them. Obviously. Because the rake does make a difference in the play. And so we'll just see as the year plays out what the Tour does.
I think if you look at I watched Mickelson today, if you saw where Mickelson drove the ball in 6, he drove it in the left bunker on 6. Now, he played that close to the hole on 6 (indicating.)
At 18, he hit it in the right bunker, he hit it like that (indicating), out of the fairway bunkers. He played some really, really good shots out of the bunkers. There were some other places he couldn't play the shots. 10 was one of those. You drove the ball in fairway bunker 10.
