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THE BARCLAYSAugust 24, 2007Rich BeemHARRISON, NEW YORK JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Rich, happy birthday. (Laughter) You followed up your round of 64 yesterday with a 68 today, playing in your sixth event here at The Barclays and off to a great start, two behind K.J. Choi heading into the weekend. He's trying to run away with it but you're doing a good job catching him. RICH BEEM: Yeah, right now I am. He's been playing great all year. And I haven't been playing great all year, so it's kind of a nice change of pace for me. For him, he's probably getting used to it. I've been hitting the ball really well, I think. I've been working hard on my game and it's nice to kind of get in a position where I feel like it's fun. So, you know, I can't put it any simpler than that. I'm having a lot of fun out there and hopefully it's showing. Q. Admittedly you've been a streaky guy when it's been going good. It must be kind of fun knowing what's on the table right now knowing you might have something coming with a pile of dough available. RICH BEEM: Aren't we supposed to talk about the pile of points I'm going to get? Q. Ultimately, yes. We'll use points as a euphemism. RICH BEEM: Yeah, I've been streaky in my career, something I'm proud of, but also wish I was a little bit -- that I wasn't proud of. But anyways, I don't mind it. I enjoy it when I get hot. I enjoy it because I play well, I don't think about much and I fire at pins and I'm able to do that. I've been pretty good today. I hit some wayward iron shots today and some wayward drives, but I got away with it all pretty much. Never got myself into too bad of a position. I had one bad hole on No. 2, which was just being overly aggressive on the green. But other than that, I plodded my way around the golf course, hit some good shots in there but also made some good putts. Q. What did you do on No. 2? RICH BEEM: I hit it left off the tee box and hit it in the right-hand bunker and hit a pretty good bunker shot to about eight feet and rammed it by about four feet and missed that one coming back and felt pretty stupid after that and got over it. Birdied my next two holes after that, so felt pretty good. Q. Do you feel like it's a case of playing good at the right time; you're getting it together at the right time of the year? RICH BEEM: Well, playing good any time of the year is always fun. But obviously now where I kind of have to to get into the next event up the road, you know, I know that unless I play well, finish well this week, I've going home. No offense to my wife or kids or anything, but when you're playing well, you want to stay on the road and I want to stay on the road because I'm playing well. (Laughter). Q. How much grief, if any, have you received over your television commercial from the Nissan Open with the ace? RICH BEEM: Hey, I won a car; I'm on national TV all the time. They are just jealous. Grief? No, just good humor, ribbing, but nothing more than that. Q. Have you seen it a few times? RICH BEEM: Yeah, I have TiVo over at my house, baby, check me out. In fact, I've seen it in entirety once. I've caught parts of it, but at home I don't watch a lot of golf. Q. Did you spike the car? RICH BEEM: I wasn't wearing metal spikes. I wish; that would have been fun. I was wearing soft spikes, they were out there buffing it. I'm sure Nissan was not at all disappointed. Q. When you watch TV at home or on the road, do you ever see an ad for like a Pocket Fisherman or something ever think it's something you can use? RICH BEEM: (Looking quizzically). Q. Do you know what he's talking about? RICH BEEM: You guys want to hear a funny story about infomercials? A guy comes home, good friend of mine, comes home late, wasn't really tired, sits down in his lounger to watch the channels. He gets on these informercials all about memory; listening to these tapes while you sleep at night it's going to increase your memory and this and that. "God, dang, I really need those tapes, my memory is so bad, I've got to get me some of those." Gets on the phone, calls orders the tapes; (they) come, puts them on the shelf. A couple months later, sitting down in the recliner, watching it on TV; "Memory tapes, got to get me some of those." Ordered them again. (Laughter). Q. That was really you, wasn't it. RICH BEEM: I wish I could say it was. No, I really haven't seen any infomercials that I thought was over the top that I really needed to have. I did buy one thing on the GOLF CHANNEL, not an informercial, that was pretty cool. It was one of those things where you put your laundry in a bag and compresses it all but apparently you need a vacuum hose or something like that, one of those Space Vacs, $19.99, right in the garage. Q. Have you actually sat down and thought about what you need to do in this FedExCup to move up, or are you just playing it? RICH BEEM: No, I know what I need to do. I need to play better. It's the bottom line from day one, from January 1, you've got to play well to get far enough up in points to be able to play in all of the events. And you know, I think as I said yesterday, I think some of the guys started getting -- I think they always think, "Well, I can make enough points, I can make enough points." But after a while they realize, hey, I need to go out and play a little more golf so I can make some points. I think some of the guys that are not playing this week certainly know that know and there might be some different attitudes changing about what events they play in. Because it's kind of a big deal. I mean, $7 million for three straight weeks, that's a lot of cash we're playing for. It's not only helping you out in points, but helping you out towards Top-125 on the Money List, helping you out, Top-40 at Augusta, now Top-30 -- Q. Top-40 Money List, yeah. RICH BEEM: So it helps you out a lot of different ways. To have to sit at home for three straight weeks when everybody else is playing for 7 million bucks, that stinks. Q. It almost seems like these Playoffs are for the Top-70 and they are kind of inviting the rest of you guys along for grins; and if you play well, so be it. But once it's starting to happen, and I think it sets in that you've really got to be ranked high to have a decent chance, can you see guys playing more in '08 than they did this year, or will they stick to their guns and try and play better, or stick to their routine? RICH BEEM: Probably a little of both. Guys that always seem to be on the from fringe, like myself, I might add a few more, trying to get all the points, and then hopefully I'll be far enough in the points on the FedExCup so I can play all three and then probably take a little more time off at the end of the year. Because that's what they see most of the guys doing. Probably Mickelson is going to play one event after THE TOUR Championship at Grayhawk, and I don't know about the other guys. I think you want to play better just overall anyways, but certainly it's got to be a big deal, this FedExCup thing. There are a lot of things that are good and bad about it. Q. For what you do you think will be a greater sense of desperation, trying to do things now to get to Chicago or maybe if it doesn't work out, the fall, heading into next year. RICH BEEM: Getting into Chicago I think. I don't want to say it's desperation, because it's -- I want to play my way in, and I'm having fun trying to do that. I mean, I know that every shot counts, and I know that I've got to play well but if I play well this week; and if I get into next week, I've got an opportunity and I've got an opportunity next week to get into Chicago. If that happens, that will be probably as gratifying as anything that I've done in a while. Q. Do you think it's possible to stop making fun of this thing after the first year is completed? RICH BEEM: Absolutely not. (Laughter) I mean, it's not, it's just -- I mean, it's so funny. I get asked so many questions about it, after a while, it's just like, I can't answer anymore questions about it. There's a lot of good things about it and there's a lot of bad things about it. They need to go in and what they really need to do is they really need to ask the players. Because if the players understand and the players enjoy it, then we're going to be able to tell Joe Public about it. But if you have a lot of players kind of not knowing what's going on or saying I'm not too sure how this works or that works or whatnot, it's hard to get Joe Fan that excited about it. If you listen to Vijay and those guys at the beginning of the year, well, I'm not going to worry about it until it comes time. Sure you're not, that's not a big deal. But they are not worried about it, either, because they don't really know how to explain it, how it all works. And so I think it needs to be, obviously they need to do some tweaking on it, see how it goes the first year and they will probably have to tweak it after the first year and this and that. I played on Wednesday with some guys that just didn't know much about it. I think once the first year happens and we kind of know how it all works out, then I think they will be able to go back in Ponte Vedra and say, this is what we didn't do right, this is what we did do right, let's build on this and change it up a little bit. Q. Is there one thing that you would tweak that seems obvious? RICH BEEM: Honestly, yeah, I think that I would make the point value bigger during the regular season. I think that the reason being, 25,000 points, we deal in numbers. Winners usually get say a million bucks per event now but we're only getting 4,500 points. To me that seems -- the winner should get like 10,000 points or a 100,000 points, make it a fraction of whatever. But I think that the more points you have, I think fans would like bigger numbers. Even though they say it doesn't really matter, I kind of think it does. I think one of the things I think fans might like would be bigger numbers. Other than that, I don't know. I honestly have no idea how to make it where the fans would be any more attracted to it or understand it any better. It's hard to say. Q. Should it be tweaked to the point where you're going to get everybody here? People talk about Tiger not being here this week, which is his prerogative obviously, but defeats the purpose of what this whole thing about is getting these guys to play. RICH BEEM: Let me ask you a question. Do you think that he deserves, that he has earned the right not to be here, though? Think about it. He's the leading point-getter all year long by 11,000 points. I would think that he should have X amount of lead where he could take a week off, you know, if need be. Q. So you're saying maybe create a bye system? RICH BEEM: Might create a bye so you create guys that want to play a little bit more. Maybe he gets a bye to THE TOUR Championship. You play well, listen, Top 3 guys on the FedExCup point list can skip the first event and still be guaranteed to get into THE TOUR Championship, even though you're going to get in any ways, but just do something like that. But I've heard a lot of people saying, you know, Tiger is not here, Tiger is not here, Tiger is not here. Honestly, if I was in Tiger's position, I wouldn't be here, either. The guy has played phenomenal golf all year. You know he's going to play well at both Deutsche Bank and Chicago, places he's won; I probably wouldn't show up either. Forcing somebody to show up doesn't seem like it's fair to me unless there's a reason behind it. Q. It seems like that was one of the main reasons this was put together is to get those top players here for those four events to create the relevance -- not that it's irrelevant -- RICH BEEM: How many times has Tiger Woods played in four tournaments in a row in his lifetime? Q. Maybe is there a point they could tweak it -- RICH BEEM: I think if it would be losing some of the concept -- I think this is a wonderful idea. I think we should end THE TOUR Championship when we do and things like that. But I also think that the word, "Playoffs," is a bad word. I think in golf, I just disagree with that word when it comes to the final four tournaments. And I don't know how you could change it, I'm going to have to sit down and order a few beers and think about it, because that's when I get really smart. (Laughter) But I literally don't -- I just think that playoffs is such a bad word, and I've always thought that from day one since we've had these meetings last fall talking about the new playoffs. Q. Wasn't it originally supposed to be the Championship Series? RICH BEEM: Well, they threw around a couple of times, I don't know how, but just -- and then the Playoffs came, and that's when we had to go from 144 to 120 to 70. And I was kind of opposed to that, and I guess the players said it was okay because if you're going to have a Playoffs, you need to eliminate some people. Do you need me to be quiet now? (Laughing) Q. Unrelated question, I don't know if you've heard, K.J. says he's going to give a large percentage -- some confusion on his part -- but a large percentage of his winnings to charity. No pressure on you, but what kind of respect do you and players in general have for someone like that? RICH BEEM: You have to understand, K.J. is a phenomenal guy. He's probably one of the nicest guys on TOUR. I compare him to a guy like Nick Price. You always see him, he's always smiling, shakes your hand, "How you doing, how you doing, my friend, good to see you." I have the utmost respect for K.J. and for him to say that, that's fantastic. He comes from Korea, so I'm sure if he can give the money to worthy causes and charities over in Korea, I'm assuming he'll make some in Houston, as well. That's phenomenal. You say that, it's like, you get the $10 million away if you win it -- how do you give away an annuity? I guess you can. But it would be nice, you know, like I said back in the day when they played the old Tournament of Champions at DI, they came up with a wheelbarrow full of silver dollars. Put that cash on the 18th green, watch some guys -- throw it in a big old did you feel bag, hop in a plane and go to Vegas, baby. Q. Do you have any history here at Westchester? Not with the police or anything, just the golf course. RICH BEEM: Got history here. No, playing well, I don't think so. I think my rookie year I played, probably my best finish, I finished 25th, I remember distinctly I birdied the last two holes on Sunday to finish 25th. The reason being is because my caddie, at the time said, "Well, what do you think about this shot?" "Well, it doesn't matter." Doesn't matter? I moved up like 15, 20 spots, whatever it was. He's on his way out already. (Laughter), "Doesn't matter." "Beemer, I need a check from you." "Oh, it doesn't matter." JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Okay, Rich Beem, thanks. End of FastScripts |
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