THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

June 3, 1999

Billy Andrade

BILLY ANDRADE: I played with Corey Pavin last week, and I was plus 10 with four holes to go on the second round, kind of embarrassing myself at a tournament that I won in the past. Then I get paired with him again this week, so I'm thinking, geez, I have to -- not just show him, show myself I maybe can still play this game. (Laughing) I was promptly 3-over after 6. I don't know, I have a love-hate relationship with this course. Either I play pretty well or just play awful. It looked like after 6 I was in that -- I wasn't showing any signs, really, of a whole lot of good stuff I had. But I birdied 7 and 8, and turned one over and, I don't know, I just started getting more confident as the day went on and it really showed on the back nine. Last week, the back nine both first and second rounds I played horrible so to come back this week, you know, you always want to start well on the first day, get things going, and I'm really happy with the way things turned out today.

BILLY ANDRADE: Nothing. (Laughter.) You know, it was seven years since I won the last tournament on the TOUR. It was a huge win for me. And it just proved to myself that, you know, I could do it again. It was a long time. I had some good tournaments in those seven years, but to crack the winner's circle just seems to get harder and harder the longer you don't do it. It's not like you forget how, but you almost forget how. I think my best friend, Jeff Sluman, is kind of an example of that. I think he went through a period there, when you don't win, it just eats at you a little bit. And come back and win like that is, you know, puts you in a great frame of mind at the beginning of the year, then I played so much leading up to the Canadian Open and I played so much after you win, you play so much because you're on a roll. Then I played so much at the beginning of this year that I took a nice month off in May and I'm just trying to come back again. I kind of hit the ball there in Greensboro, so I'm looking forward here to the summer and Pinehurst and the British and those tournaments. So it's a huge win. It's a huge confidence builder to show to myself that I can do it again.

BILLY ANDRADE: Probably last year in Milwaukee, I shot 3 over the first round, and I finished 64, 65, 68 to finish 9th.

BILLY ANDRADE: One round, I can't think offhand, of a bigger swing like that.

BILLY ANDRADE: Well, you know, I worked with Rick Smith yesterday, and I have an idea of what I want to do and it's real easy on the range. It's real hard when you go to the first tee. The first six holes the bogeys I made were, you know, mental mistake at 2. 4, I hit a good shot in there and it kicked into the bunker into a very awkward lie. I hit it out to 4 feet and missed. Then 6, I hit a bad drive to the right and just chipped out. So those were my three bogeys. I was feeling that all I want to do is not get myself in a really bad mood right now. That's what I told my caddie. I said, you know, whatever happens, I just want to have fun. When I have fun, when I'm having fun out here, I play well. When I start getting pissy and getting down a little bit and, you know, thinking of, you know, having your mood resulting on what you're shooting, then I can't play. I'm not a very good golfer. And I know that. I've done this long enough to know that and I made a conscious effort walking out to par 5 off the tee. I said to Ziggy, you know, let's talk about what you did last night. Let's just get my mind off of what I'm doing at the time. I think that helps. That helped me today.

BILLY ANDRADE: I birdied 3 of the last 4. But, you know, who cares?

BILLY ANDRADE: Yeah, it wasn't a total embarrassment. The 77, 76, 75 turned into a 72, so it really looked good in the paper. All my big fans back in Bristol, Rhode Island, were real happy that I came back with that 72, but it doesn't mean shit when you miss the cut. (Laughing) You can birdie them all. I should have birdied the 9th hole. I missed the little putt there to go to plus 6. But anyway, 7 birdies today, I don't think I've done that in a long time, so that was really nice, too.

BILLY ANDRADE: Birdied 7, par 5, hit a driver over the corner and hit a 3-iron on the green and 2-putted. I hit a 7-iron to 8 about 15 feet, beautiful putt there. I hit a sand wedge to 11 about 4 feet, I made that. And then at 12, interesting at 12, the wind died right when it was time for me to hit. And I said what do you think. So I hit 9-iron really fast, and knocked it up there about 15 feet and made it. 14, I hit a sand wedge about 10 feet, and made it. 15, I hit a 4-iron about -- just on the right fringe and had a little chip, chipped that to, you know, a couple of feet. 16, I missed about a 4-footer, I missed the green, chipped it up to about 4 feet and hit a pretty good putt and it broke and missed. 18, I made a -- I don't know -- it was about, what, 10 feet, 12 feet?

BILLY ANDRADE: 50 feet. (Laughter.) I hit 3-wood -- yesterday, I hit 3-wood and hit just right through the fairway. And then I hit a 2-iron and then today we got to the tee and it really wasn't blowing, so I said what do you think. After Corey hit 3-wood, I hit 3-wood. And it went so far down, I hit wedge into 18, which is -- I've never hit wedge into the last hole. I mean it just went forever. Thank God it was straight, because if it was a little more to the left, I would have jumped to the left.

BILLY ANDRADE: Ziggy said hit it, go. When I hit it, I didn't hit it hard enough. I looked at it from the other side. It was pretty well downhill and pretty fast. I was just trying to get a good line on what it was going to do. You're just trying to get close. You're just trying to 2-putt obviously from that distance. And, you know, it went in like it was supposed to. It was beautiful.

BILLY ANDRADE: I had 121 to the front, 120 to the false front, and like 131 at the pin. When you get that false front, you're like, well, you got to get it in. That was my thought. Then I hit it and it kind of started drawing a little bit, the wind kind of got it. I wasn't very happy with the outcome, where it ended up, because that's a hard 2-putt back there. When you think with a wedge, geez, can't you get it somewhere in that plateau. So obviously I didn't. But it didn't matter.

BILLY ANDRADE: I had -- yesterday I had the 2-iron and hit a 7-iron. Or 2-iron -- yeah. This was in the practice round.

BILLY ANDRADE: 6-iron, I think. 6 or 7-iron.

BILLY ANDRADE: Correct.

BILLY ANDRADE: I think pitching is very, very similar to golf because you're on your own. A lot of variables can happen to your mindset. You can hit a beautiful drive, you could hit and kick in the water. It can hit and go in a divot. You can do everything possible to hit a great shot and it turn out terrible. That's the same way with pitching. You can throw the perfect pitch, the guy will hit a homerun or gets an ERA and keeps the inning going and all of a sudden you're down to 3 to nothing. It's very similar. I've talked to him a little bit about it. I've talked to the pitching coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, good friends with McGwire, I know all those guys from Oakland. It's very similar to golf, yeah. You've got to get result-oriented and get into a process -- not be result-oriented, you have to get into a routine and just whatever happens happens. That's why David Duval is so great, I think. Because he really is -- he has mastered getting into the -- getting into a great routine and whatever happens happens. He doesn't care. He's so leveled with his emotion, and I think that that's great in this game. That you don't let, you know -- at times, I'm a little emotional. I get maybe too high, maybe a little low, and I try to work on that. But I think David is the best at it so far of what I've seen this year. You know, he just is calm, cool and collected. He hits a bad shot, it's like, you know, I hit a bad shot, I'm going to go hit another one. O'Meara talked about the Lincoln Trophy last year, David had a one-shot lead and hit a shot in the water and he blew it. O'Meara said what do you think; he said, I'll get in this position again and I'll probably hit a better shot, no big deal. O'Meara was thinking he'd be devastated by it and he wasn't. That's just the way -- I think that's what we're all trying to get to, that level. That's fantastic. That's the way in pitching you want to be. You can't let all these other things bother you; just pitch. If it's good enough, it is. If it's not, try again in five days.

BILLY ANDRADE: I think I've 4-putted, I've done that before. Maybe one of the 4-putts was just, you know, the third putt you kind of slap it and you miss and then you regroup and make the fourth one. But you know, John, you talk about the other end of the spectrum, there it is. There's a very emotional person. Sometimes he lets it get the best of him. It's unfortunate that he does that. It looks like he gives up sometimes and that's not great, I don't think. And, you know, he just gets -- he gets so bundled up. He's got a lot of issues that he's dealing with, a lot of demons there. And I think we all -- we just all love him to death. We just like to see him, when he gets to that point where he's going to break, that he could think of something and not do it. But it's really hard. He's got a hard road and, you know, we all love the guy to death and we hope the best for him. But it's hard when you get to that point. You know, he did the same thing at the Skills Challenge last year. He just kind of gave up there. You know, you hate to see that happen. You just got these demons in there and it's too bad. He's a good man.

BILLY ANDRADE: I think he's successful because he's got an unbelievable work ethic. I remember my first -- I remember the first five years -- I've been friends with him since 1987. I would say from '87 to '92, he didn't even want to go out to lunch with a hitter. Then I got him out to lunch with McGwire a couple times, that was a big turning point in his career. He just hated hitters. That was his mentality. I think he softened up in that area as he's gotten older. But he's a work horse, and he's a grinder. You know, he's the ultimate, ultimate grinder in what he does. His work ethic is unbelievable, what I've seen.

BILLY ANDRADE: I don't know. I got to ask him that. I wonder. You know, he'll probably say he'll start another streak, you know. He's just tickled to death being in New York and having a chance to really win the World Series, and he --

BILLY ANDRADE: Yeah, sure, you bet. Old, broken down sports writers. (Laughter.) We've had lunch before.

BILLY ANDRADE: Sure, 9 o'clock at night with a glass of some port, whatever that was, waiting for me at the British Open.

BILLY ANDRADE: We met in Kapalua in '87. I was a big Red Sox fan, I am a big Red Sox fan. So we met back in the old days, when he was with the Sox. His family, we've all grown up together, his wife's really good friends with my wife. And, you know, we've kind of all grown up together. Now I'm in my 12th year, he's in his 13th, 14th year, and he's a good old Texan boy, good old Texas boy.

BILLY ANDRADE: I've played it quite a bit. In college I played it all the time. We used to go down there a lot and play the North South a lot, go down, played the ACC Tournament there once. Played THE TOUR Championship there in '91 and I went down there about a month and a half ago, during Greensboro I went to check out all the new changes that they made.

BILLY ANDRADE: I think it's going to be very, very hard. It's going to be very difficult. It's going to be very different. Really not give you that open feel because there's hardly going to be any rough around the greens, the way they're going to have it set up. I think that that's going to be really interesting to see. The balls are going to be gone. They're going to hit the greens. They're all egg-shaped. I think they are a little more raised, a little more sloped than they used to be, or it seems that way. And I think that depending on wind and weather and firmness, you know, I would take even par right now and you could probably hand it to me. I'll let you all kiss it and we can all drink out of it, but I think that even par is going to win the tournament.

BILLY ANDRADE: Well, I won the North and South in '86, I lost in the Semis in '85 and lost in the finals in '87. My most memorable probably was in '86. I beat Jay Sigel in the quarter finals and he was the man. We had a hell of a match. I beat him on the last hole. It was probably the most memorable of all those matches. That was fun back then, playing in those North and Souths.

BILLY ANDRADE: I think I tied for the lead a couple years ago.

BILLY ANDRADE: Because Joe was sitting in that seat right there. (Laughter.)

BILLY ANDRADE: I think I was tied for the lead after the first day, shot 73, 71 and Vijay won on that Monday, Monday finish. I think that, I finished maybe 9th or 10th.

BILLY ANDRADE: He's domesticated now, Joe. He doesn't have any Yellow Pages in his house. Stupid, stupid. I didn't ask him how the ladder fell, I don't know if it was too close to the garage or -- I think it must have -- there's no way a ladder could fall if you have a pretty good angle on it. I think it was probably too close, he was up there. He said it started wiggling. So he said well, geez, I better get down before I fall, he started going down and then he fell. And probably this far, he said. You know, and he landed that way. Clean break. Left hand's not good. So...

BILLY ANDRADE: Our celebrity one is July 6th. I don't know if he'll be back for that. Then our CVS one is in August and he should be fine for that.

BILLY ANDRADE: Thank you.