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DEUTSCHE BANK CHAMPIONSHIPAugust 29, 2007Rich BeemNORTON, MASSACHUSETTS STEWART MOORE: Rich Beem, thanks for spending a few moments with us here at the Deutsche Bank Championship in the second of the Playoffs for the FedExCup. Last week you finished T7. You survived an advance, so to speak, you moved up to 113 in the FedExCup Playoffs, but now it's really kind of crunch time for you in order to get to the BMW Championship. RICH BEEM: Yeah, I don't know exactly where I need to finish, but I know it's top two someplace. Anywhere between first and second I'll be all right, but other than that -- that's just the nature of how this works, you know? It's kind of exciting. Hopefully the fans are kind of feeling that same way. I mean, I don't know -- it's hard to kind of get a pulse, but I know for the players, last week did have a different feel to it, and right now it has a different feel walking down the range. You know there's some guys that aren't there that got eliminated last week and certainly got eliminated before it even started. It's nice to be able to survive. I played my way in, which is always fun, and hopefully we can continue that. STEWART MOORE: Have you been out on the golf course yet? RICH BEEM: I haven't. I just got here and taking my time, and with this Friday start it's kind of a nice change of pace. Instead of getting done on Sunday and going to the next place, it's kind of nice to not do anything, and that's exactly what I did yesterday. Q. Time to eat doughnuts? RICH BEEM: No, I watched a lot of TV yesterday. I think every movie I saw yesterday was great. Q. What do you make of this playoff system? Do you think it needs to be tweaked? RICH BEEM: I think being its first year out, there's always probably room for some improvement. Exactly how to go about that, I'm not too sure right now. As I said last week, the one strange thing about what we're doing is that when you say the word "playoffs," golf is probably one of the few sports that wouldn't come to your mind. Football, baseball, basketball, you name it, hockey, same thing, every game has a playoff. It's just a little different from this sport. I think it's going to take a while for the fans to get involved, the media has to embrace it, but I think more than anything the players have to embrace it in order to try to sell it to the public. Q. Do you see a day where all the players that are eligible are playing in all the playoff tournaments? RICH BEEM: No. Just for a lot of reasons. You still have -- we're still coming off of the British Open and the PGA Championship within three weeks of each other, plus a World Golf Championships event, then you have one week off and then four in a row, and then two weeks after that you've got The Presidents Cup and then Ryder Cup on opposite years. So that's a lot of golf for the world players. Even though we're flying in private jets going back and forth, I still think that's a lot of golf, and in order for them to be focused enough to continue playing well, a week off here or there is pretty imperative. Ernie Els played eight straight weeks in a row. That's why he withdrew. I know I'm a basket case after five weeks in a row. That's just a lot of golf to try to compete at our level. I don't see it happening. But that's not saying that it won't. But since we're not required to, we're all independent contractors; unfortunately I don't see us all playing every event. Q. Does that need to happen for the fans to really take the playoff system seriously? RICH BEEM: Probably. To be brutally honest, it probably does. But let's be honest about it, though. There's only one person that really matters in this playoff system, and that's Tiger Woods. If Tiger is not playing, you're not going to have a whole lot of validity it doesn't seem like. You have Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk, guys Top 10 in the world playing last week, Adam Scott, guys played last week and Tiger is the only one that skipped it. This week you've only got Ernie that dropped out amongst that core group of guys, and then you have some players that weren't there for various reasons. But unless Tiger shows up, I think that not only the fans but I think the media is going to put a lot of scrutiny on it. If he's not playing, then how serious can we be about this? I think that's a little unfortunate, I think it's a little unfair to a point. I think we need to give it a little time. But I'll be honest, I wasn't all on board, either, when it first came out for the Playoffs, just because I didn't like the word "playoffs." I thought there might be a better way to talk about it. But I think that once we get through this first year and tweak the points system however we need to tweak it, even the PGA TOUR said that we need to probably look at it after the first year and probably make some changes. What are those changes going to be? I don't know. But I think in order to have the validity, you need to have the top players show up to all the events, and unfortunately I don't see that happening. Q. For everybody 100 and over on the Money List, where do you forget FedExCup and start thinking about Top 125 for next year? RICH BEEM: I think it's probably after the PGA Championship everybody is starting to kind of jockey for position. But obviously it's going to come to the forefront as soon as the FedExCup is over with, once Turning Stone comes around. I think that's going to be the last gas everybody has got. I guess the one interesting thing about it, though, is that if you played last week, if you're from 144 to 120, and for whatever reason you didn't make it into this event, you're still not going to lose a lot of money. You're probably going to stay about the same on the Money List because you're not going to lose a whole lot of spots because there's nobody out here that's going to -- it's like I've got more points than somebody but I'm also ahead of them on the Money List so they're not going to drop any spots. I think that's the one good thing is there's a lot of guys that aren't losing a ton of space out there. Even though we're playing for huge purses the next few weeks, I still think you might see a little change in the end-of-year Money List, like No. 125 may not be as much money this year. I could be wrong. It'll be interesting to see. But I think that once all this ends and Turning Stone starts up, then you're going to see everybody out there that needs to make their money. Q. What are your plans? Say you have another good week this week and then end up 105th or so. Will you then change for the seven weeks after? RICH BEEM: No, I'm keeping the same list. My wife is pretty worried about that, too. She always says, well, you've got to play, you've got to play. Honey, I don't have to play. I'm going to do just fine. I'm not going to press any panic buttons. I know a lot of people have said, you're right on that 125 bubble. It's just like I've lived there for the last -- I've been out here long enough -- even though I had an unbelievable year in 2002 and I actually played well in 2003, unfortunately my career has kind of lived around those numbers, so they don't bother me. I don't get worked up about them. Obviously I would not like to be in that position, but I've been there every year, so it's not going to affect me. My schedule is not going to change. I'm still going to play the same events that I would normally, and obviously if things go well, and I put myself in a position where I can actually skip an event, I'll actually do that. But for the most part I'm going to go back and play the tournaments I enjoy playing in and I enjoy supporting and that fit into my schedule. Most of that is not going to change. Q. For this point in the season personally, how do you feel your game is? RICH BEEM: I feel fantastic. I'm really excited about everything that's been going on. Unfortunately I started off pretty hot at the beginning of the year, I played well, made a lot of cuts, and then I just got into a really bad rhythm. When you get into a bad rhythm and you're playing well and you're going to tournaments you like and you're not accomplishing that, that gets really frustrating. I think during the middle of the summer I got to a point where it wasn't that much fun. Then played well at the British Open and finally saw some of the work pay off, all the hard work that I've been doing, finally started putting a little bit better, hit a lot of greens in regulation, scrambled beautifully. And then unfortunately I go out for the two weeks after that and I missed the cut again. I just can't quite seem to get on a roll. But I played well in Greensboro, obviously played well last week, and just going to play late this afternoon and kind of take my time and look at the golf course because it's the only time I'll see it is today. I'm hoping I can get it around. I feel good about my game, and I'm having fun out there for a change. I think that's the biggest change in anybody's game. Kenny Perry said it the best; "When you're playing well you never want to go home, but when you're playing bad you can't wait to get on that plane." I'm not ready to get on that plane yet, but I know it's coming sooner other later and I know there's a chance I can stick it out for one more week, but I've got to play awfully well against a really quality field. Q. Just curious in your younger years, team sports, when was the last time you were in something that was a real-live playoff? RICH BEEM: Gosh, it's been a while. Probably soccer, probably back when I was living in Germany, played soccer and was actually in like the Germany championships where you played and if you got beat you had to go home. But it's been a long time. It's been -- how old am I now, 37? Probably 20-plus years ago, 21 years ago, 22 years ago. It's a long time. Q. But if you look at it one way, let's say you finish fifth this week, you're not going to go to Chicago, but you're going to get two back-to-back really good checks. You can at least owe that to you made the Playoffs? RICH BEEM: Absolutely. I think that's kind of the -- making them is the first goal. You know, I think for some guys, making them is the first goal because there's a lot of friends of mine that I've played a lot of golf over the years that didn't make it even to the first one. So being in the position that I was in, being 134th and then playing well enough to play myself into this event, that feels fantastic. Even if I finish fifth in this event and just miss out going to Chicago, that's still an accomplishment. At least I got the opportunity. At least I gave it my best shot. Even if I finish 45th here, whatever the case may be, at least I gave myself an opportunity to play my way into the next event. That's all I can ask for. That's how the PGA TOUR used to be a long time ago, you had to play well enough in a certain event so you could play the following week, otherwise you had to Monday qualify. Talk about a sweater from week to week. At least now I know I'm getting my start. That must have been really tough back then. We've got it easy (laughing). Q. A follow-up to that, as you said, if you do well again this week, that's two weeks with good checks, but how frustrating is it coming into this week knowing you played well last week but you have to finish no worse than second to stay in the Playoffs? RICH BEEM: That's the name of it, though. I'm not going to feel disappointed about it because at the end of the day, I should have played better at the beginning of the year; I should have played well during the middle of the year; I should have played well here or there. You can always look back at that. But I can't think about it. I'm playing well right now. Granted, if I finish fifth and I don't make it into next week, yeah, I'll be disappointed, but you know what, they're going to give me a nice check to go home with, and it'll be a nice consolation prize, that's for sure. As long as you have the opportunity to just build on something when you play well, you're trying to get better, you're trying to learn something, and the more you learn, the more confidence you're going to get going into the event you play in next. Regardless of whether I have the chance to play in Chicago, which by the way is my favorite city to go to, so you can be sure I'm focusing on this week. If I don't make it, that's too bad, and if I do, we'll have a good time with it, that's for sure. Q. Seth Waugh I think called this a mini-major now. Do you agree with that term? RICH BEEM: I think it's got the feeling of more of a major-type atmosphere with -- you've got to play well to advance, but majors are just so different to play in as far as -- I mean, the fan support, the media coverage, everything about a major feels completely different. From a player standpoint, I don't think that we would probably classify it as that, but certainly we know it's something different, I just don't know what sort of classification to put it into. Obviously it's more like an invitational, but it's an invitational that you've got to play well to get invited. There's no exemptions, there's no -- you play your way in there. So that's a little bit different. No sponsor's exemptions and things like that. You look at everybody here and they've earned that right to play here because of something they've done this year. We know that it feels different, but as far as a major-type atmosphere, I think it has a possibility of getting there, but right now I wouldn't classify it as that, but don't tell Seth that because I like him (laughter). I don't want him to be mad at me. STEWART MOORE: Rich, thanks for coming in. Good luck this week. End of FastScripts |
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