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WORLD GOLF HALL OF FAME INDUCTIONNovember 12, 2007Hubert GreenST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA JANE FADER: Hubert, kind of tell us how the experience has been and how your day is going so far. HUBERT GREEN: It's a tiring day, but it's been a great experience. I came here with my three boys and my two grandchildren. It's a great thrill. Yesterday we played golf, first time I've played golf with all three boys at one time because they're spread across the country so much. Two of them don't play golf much, one of them doesn't play golf at all, and we had a great time. We just had a great time. It was fun. Children are children, but to see them get to the point where they're adults like you and they're picking up the tab, they're buying drinks and tipping the girl, instead of always being daddy, daddy, coming up with the cash, it's just fun to see them become men. You don't see enough of that because your children always are children, and to see them go to that point is just to me a great thrill. Being out here this week is just fantastic. The problem is I'm so tired, we're staying in the four bedroom condo, they have a great condo here for us, and when I'm finished doing the all I'm supposed to do, we go back to the room and watched the football game last night, and all of us together are just chewing the fat and being boys or young men or old men or whatever. It was a lot of fun. Q. You have been upstairs to see the inductee exhibit, and you were very gracious to donate, or loan, I should say, over 150 items I think there were. What are some of the more special ones in that exhibit? HUBERT GREEN: Well, there's a big trophy up there about this high (indicating five inches) that I got when I won my first -- that was my first trophy. I didn't win, I finished runner-up in the B Division, that was 10 and under, in the Futures National Golf Tournament. This will be in my speech tonight. But Link Harper, our club pro in Birmingham now, holed a 3-wood on the next-to-last hole for birdie on a par 5. He made a 3-wood. He ended up beating me by one shot. I was awestruck and upset. I won't say mad because you're not mad, you're just shocked that this could happen to you. On the ride home back to Birmingham, that little trophy maybe this big, five inches tall, felt like the Wannamaker Trophy, it felt so big. It had been at my mother's house for years. I remember that trophy being so big until I went back and I saw it, and I thought, that itty-bitty thing, it's not engraved, it's just a plain little trophy, but it was just my first trophy, and it was big in my heart. And then there's a Japanese headdress, warrior's headdress, which was given to me by the folks in the Dunlop Phoenix golf tournament. I played there 20 straight years, but as of the 12th year I was considered the godfather of the tournament over there, and they honored me with this headdress, the same type of headdress that was given to President Reagan that same year. It was just a very unusual gift but very, I think, magnificent. Q. 1977 was obviously a huge year in your career. I'm thinking of Southern Hills and then Turnberry where you won, and then the other tournament, and then you went on, and then obviously you won the Irish Open in August of that year. What are your memories of those three months? HUBERT GREEN: Well, I mean, the English Open of course being my first major was fantastic. Going over to Turnberry -- the story, I was with Dunlop at the time, and Dunlop had the Dunlop 65 golf ball, which was Henry Cotton's score back when he won the British Open in '34 or whatever it was. It was such a great score, Dunlop made a golf ball with 65 to honor Henry Cotton, a Dunlop player, with his great score. I was a Dunlop player and had just won the English Open so I was getting a pretty good name. And then in the second round Mark Hayes had just shot 64 or 63 from the States, and I, through about 11 or 12, it was a par 70, was like 6- or 7-under par. I was shooting lights out. I was really playing good golf. And as you should never do, my mind started wandering, and I'm thinking, Henry Cotton, 65 golf ball, Hubert Green, I'm shooting 64 right now, and I've got a par 5 I can hit with a driver and a 5-iron coming up, and I'm playing good. I'm going to shoot 62, Hubert Green 62 golf ball. I'm thinking about this. About that time I three-putted, didn't birdie the par 5, and it seemed like 3-under par was still in first or second place to the third round. You should never let yourself get too far in your mind. That was one of those perfect times in your mind where I'm a superstar, I'm great, I'm good-looking, I'm sexy, and now I'm no longer. In the third round I played with Roger Maltbie, and right in front of us was Jack and Tom, Nicklaus and Watson. And after about the fifth hole, there was nobody watching Roger and I play golf. It was unbelievable. I thought, here I am in the last group at the British Open on a Saturday afternoon, and in front of me is a cloud of dust and a Hi-Ho Silver because there was a drought going on, and it was Jack and that gallery and Tom, it was just dust up in front of us. We couldn't see. We had no one with us to watch us play golf. It was like, I can't believe this is happening, and it did. But I won the, quote-unquote, B division there. I finished third, ten shots behind Jack and Tom. Portmarnock is one of my five favorite golf courses. Portmarnock is one of them. Great golf course. The worst thing is the next year going over there, 18, there was like three pot bunkers on the right side of 18. I felt like if I birdied 18 or parred 18 I had a chance to win. So I drove this first pot bunker. I said, okay, get a shot out, get it to the front of the green, I can make par and probably tie. Well, I hit the lip of the bunker and it goes in the next pot bunker. I said, okay, still a chance to make par, still got a chance to win. Went in the next pot bunker. And I said, "let's go home." My chance to win was gone. But it was a great time. And when I won the Irish Open, the guy I beat was a great footballer. But I had a lot of fun, a lot of great times over there, a lot of the Irish people, and I love Portmarnock. Q. What's it like winning three tournaments in a row? What's your recollection? Is that process going from week one to week two to week three? HUBERT GREEN: It's very exhausting. What happened, I won the first tournament at Doral. I said, dadgummit, you've won one tournament and you know it's going to be a letdown next week, barely make the cut or whatever. Let's hang in there and play good the second week and see what we can do. I didn't play a real good first round, shot 1-under par or even par, but I came back and played better and better and won, and then I was real tired. My oldest son was with me at the time, he was an infant. Infants don't sleep much at night and he was with me. I guess he was about eight months old at the time. I was getting phone calls from the press, 6:00 a.m., wanting me to do TV or radio interview, which I was doing, and it got to be a very exhausting time. I was very fortunate to win my third tournament. But it's very hard. You see a lot of players take time off, and the next week was Greensboro, and I took the week off because I was so tired, and I wouldn't play good at Augusta if I did. I had to play Augusta, and then the next week was the Tournament of Champions, and I was ending up playing nine in a row, and I didn't want to do that, so I wanted to take Greensboro off. Q. What was it like, obviously a player of high caliber, playing in an era, and you were just talking about the stampede in front of you watching Jack and Tom and you also had Arnold and Lee and Miller and all those guys that were sort of -- I mean, there was just a whole bunch of guys that you had to battle week in and week out. It seems like there's a little bit more separation these days. HUBERT GREEN: I think so. We had a whole slew of players that could play good golf, Hale Irwin, Ray Floyd, Johnny, he was almost phenomenal, Trevino was not real bad for a Mexican, for crying out loud (laughter). We had just a great bunch of guys that could really play golf. But golf is a different game now. We played the ball on the ground. We hit the ball with hooks and fades. Now it's a strength game, they just blast it out there and just keep on going. The game has totally changed. There were just so many more players that could win a lot. Now there's just two or three guys, Tiger and two or three guys, and the rest of them are all in the same category. Q. You were always kind of characterized as the little scrappy guy, feisty, never gave up. That was sort of your persona. Are there comparable guys to you still playing these guys? Is there room for the little guy, Corey Pavin maybe? HUBERT GREEN: Well, Corey is almost middle-aged now. Corey is a ground player. He played the ball on the ground. He's one of the last guy that maneuvers the ball real well. Tiger can. Tiger can do it all. I mean, Tiger -- it's ridiculous the way Tiger plays the game of golf. I don't know the players that well now to compare it. People are always talking about Tiger and Jack, and Tiger should break Jack's record if all things go well, he stays healthy. If he keeps focused and keeps doing it. But when Jack was playing the game -- Tiger had a standard to shoot at, and that was Jack winning 18 majors. Jack, his standard was Jack. Every time he played he was the standard. I don't know how if Jack was told when he came out if you win 40 majors you'll be a great player, he might have won 50. He had 19 seconds. Some of those seconds might have become wins if he had a goal to shoot at, instead of being the goal itself. Every time he played he raised the bar one more notch. So you don't know how good Jack could have really been had he had something else to shoot at besides himself. To me it's always harder to play when you don't have a standard to get to to try and do better. I'm sure not trying to criticize Tiger, I'm just saying. Q. How many people in your entourage with you? HUBERT GREEN: You mean how many tickets did I -- Q. How many people are here with you this week? HUBERT GREEN: Will be here tonight you mean? 70-something, I believe, as a round number approximately. Q. Did you bring a town or something with you? HUBERT GREEN: I have gotten phone calls -- especially in the last week. Well, one guy, Vic Schumacher, who had cancer like I had, we had our treatment at the same time. He called me up and said he was going to be here, just out in the gallery. Actually it was probably more like 80 because I got a call from Hall Thompson bringing people down with him today, not even for the gala, just come in and fly in and fly out. Vic said he'll be out in the gallery. I said, -- well, I sent him his email to me, and I said if you want to come to the party, come on. There are two of them, he's bringing his son. I'm not complaining, but it happens. We were allotted 50 tickets. The last I heard I had 73 coming, and that was before Vic, and I've had more phone calls since then. Hall Thompson, the guy from Birmingham, he's coming by himself and his plane holds ten, and I got a call from his secretary at lunch today saying he's bringing seven or eight more people. I tried to explain to her best I could that I could not get you another seven or eight people into the party tonight. One, I don't have their names. I'm at lunch. I can't write it down on a napkin or a tablecloth. But there will be a lot of folks. And there's more folks I'm told that are coming -- that aren't in the hall, just coming to the big function. What's open to the public is what they're going to be here for. But I'm very pleased. I didn't think I'd ever get 50 to come. Maybe there are more like 85 to 90 because I've got Tom here and Margaret. There are some folks here that I won't get a chance to see them. I know they're here, but when you finish on stage, we're taken straight to the champagne cocktail thing with Commissioner Finchem, and these folks are out there that I can't get to talk to, and they're not included in the group to come to the big party. So it's sort of frustrating, I need to at least go by and say hello and thanks for showing up. Q. When you were paired with Fuzzy Zoeller it was kind of great fun for the spectators. Was it ever a distraction when you guys played together? You seemed to be having a world of fun. HUBERT GREEN: We had so much fun together on and off the golf course. But in the Ryder Cup play, we were horrible. I have lost, I think, three points in Ryder Cup play. I've played with Fuzzy three times. We're not a good team. And the worst part about it is this year the team event is in Savannah, next year it's going to be an official money event. I just told Fuzzy today at lunch, my nephew is getting married that weekend, so I can't play with him (laughter). I don't know if he'll play with me or not, but I can't play this year. Hopefully he'll let me play with him next year, we'll see. But we've had a lot of fun and probably don't play as well together as we do -- we probably play together better at night than we do in the daytime, put it that way. Q. Are you giving Fuzzy free reign? Have you looked at any of his remarks, or are you just letting him go on tonight? HUBERT GREEN: You know Fuzzy, you can't chain him up anyway. But remember, I'm in, he's on the outside (laughter). If he ever gets in, I may be giving his speech for him, as I can be just as bad as he can be. I may be a little worse. We have a pretty good bond about not telling too many things outside of the circle. JANE FADER: Hubert, thank you very much for your time this afternoon. End of FastScripts |
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