|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
WORLD GOLF HALL OF FAME INDUCTIONNovember 12, 2007Curtis StrangeST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA JANE FADER: If you'd just want to open up by telling us how the day is going so far, how the year has been, how you're feeling. Are you ready for the speech? All that stuff. CURTIS STRANGE: Yeah. You know, it's been fantastic, it really has. The last couple days have been -- you know, thoroughly enjoyable. I was anxious to get this thing moving, get down here and get this thing rolling a little bit. We've had a couple of nice dinners and friends have been down here, everybody got down without any big hiccups. All of them have somewhat behaved. We played golf yesterday, had a nice dinner in the Hall of Fame last night. As somebody said I thought was interesting, everybody there was golf last night, so it was kind of a neat dinner. Everybody was golf. Everybody could talk and get along, and it was very, very nice. So it's been great. And now we've been busy today just with some, I guess, cleanup and getting ready for the ceremony. Q. Is the speech finished yet? CURTIS STRANGE: Speech has been finished. I have way too much time on my hands (laughter). I redid one word in there a little while ago. Just way too much time on my hands. Tirico has been giving me some advice. You know, it's different because it's -- you know, we're not reacting to questions, we're kind of acted out up there tonight, so it's a little bit -- I'm apprehensive. It's almost a bit like TV work because you've got to present something instead of just react off a question from playing or something. So I look forward to it. There's nothing but friends out there, and you know what, if we screw up, we're still going to get in the Hall. My brother is nervous. I just left him, and I said, Allan, it's almost like your wedding. The preacher is going to be there, and even if you screw up nobody knows it. He's going to tell you where to go and how to do it. He'll be fine. JANE FADER: You were generous in giving us I think over 200 items for the exhibit upstairs. CURTIS STRANGE: I didn't give anything, y'all took. JANE FADER: And you lent it, there's a difference. We'll probably display it for the year and probably longer. CURTIS STRANGE: They came in six weeks ago, two months ago, and everything -- we moved four years ago, so everything was in the attic in boxes, which is where they were going to stay. The only thing I had in my house is the two Open trophies that we had replicated, and the Ryder Cup trophy that the players gave me as captain. That's the only thing that's really in the house in the little area. So everything else was in boxes. They came up and were taking everything out in this U-Haul. I don't know what they took until you get here, and I have to say it's well-done. It's very impressive and well-done, and they tell the story. Even the little writings are very nice, which do tell the story. I was very pleased and found out where some of the stuff went (laughter). You know, it still is -- it's hard to put into words and it's hard to envision and it's -- even though you're here, it's hard to think it's actually happening because it's such a big, big honor, and it's the biggest thing that could ever happen to me. To honor 30 years of playing and to be voted into a very exclusive club is very special. How do you put into words your emotions and the way you feel, and this particular couple of days and then afterwards? This never goes away. It's hard to put into words that I'm actually in the same building with Snead and Hogan and Nelson and Nicklaus and all the rest. Some of you heard me say this. I know firsthand -- and I'm the first one to admit, you're not going to confuse my record with the other ones that are in this Hall of Fame, a lot of them. I know that. But I'm under the same roof, and that's fine with me. That's good enough for me. Now we can all go out together and drink beer and talk about our Hall of Fame adventures, right? Nicklaus and all of them. Q. How many people did you bring with you? I asked Hubert that question expecting it to be between 10 and 20, and he's apparently brought like half of the state with him. CURTIS STRANGE: Well, I don't know about Hubert. I know that we kept it small. You know, I want Sarah to enjoy this, too, and not be overwhelmed with everyone. We had three foursomes on the golf course yesterday. Everything relates back to golf, doesn't it? We had three foursomes on the golf course yesterday and spouses. So that was plenty. Q. After the round yesterday when Tom kind of walked away and went to the range, they all razzed him about being the old man's son -- CURTIS STRANGE: What does that mean? Q. How big was that mentality in terms of your success? CURTIS STRANGE: Well, I think you have to work. Obviously you have to work to excel at the game. There's some that do and there's some that don't. The ones that do beat the ones that don't. It's not brain surgery out there. There's some that are more gifted than others, naturally. You know who they are. Some of them don't work as hard as others. But I think you get out of the game what you put into it. But I enjoyed it, it wasn't work for me. It was work but it wasn't work because I enjoyed it so much. You know, to -- I'm going to give you some speech now. But it's got to be a passion, and you can't just love the game. You've got to be in love with it because there's going to be a lot of times it doesn't love you back, and you've got to be able to pick it up, you've got to love to go to the golf course the next day and the day after and the day after that. Sometimes it's just practicing, and it's practicing in the weather conditions, it's practicing when you're tired, it's practicing when you've just played poorly and you'd rather go beat your head against the wall. But I always enjoyed it. It was always something else to figure out, and it's important. It was very important to me. You know, I guess I was not near as talented as some and probably a little more talented than others. I wouldn't have a clue how I stacked up, and nobody would ever know. But there's been some players out there that we have seen over the years that should get an enormous amount of credit because they don't have a lot of talent, God-given, but they have worked so hard they become nice, good players, tournament winners, big tournament winners. They have a big heart and they have a lot of intestinal fortitude and have gotten to maximize their ability. I kind of took that approach at it. Q. You mentioned all the people you don't belong in the same sentence as. Maybe only one of those guys did what you did as far as the back-to-back Opens. CURTIS STRANGE: I know that. Just kidding (laughter). Q. Talk about the magnitude of that, and has that grown, do you think, in the 17 years in your mind, that this is a major, major thing that you've done? CURTIS STRANGE: You ask a good question. You know, when I was doing it, it didn't seem -- it was a big thing, don't get me wrong. But I think as we all get older we reflect on some of those things and times and rounds and wins that we don't stop and smell the roses back then. We can't, nor should I. Because you had another tournament to play. But to answer your question, you know, I always said, and I truly mean this, it's not so much what I did winning back-to-back, it's what some others didn't do, Nicklaus and Hogan -- well, Hogan did do it, but all the greats, Palmer and Watson and Nelson, they never won two back-to-back Opens. I didn't think it was that hard -- just kidding (laughter). I think I've tried to answer your question, but the farther it goes from my time, wasn't it wasn't such an easy thing to do. Maybe I was lucky, I was at the right spot at the right time and played well, and I know all about that, and that's the game. But there's certainly a guy out there that we all expect to do that. But maybe he won't, who knows. Q. Supposedly the '72 Dolphins all get together and celebrate whenever the last undefeated team gets beat. I'm serious, whoever the defending champion is going into the next year, do you ever pay close attention to what he's doing, and will you put the hex on Hale next year? CURTIS STRANGE: Well, I have this roomful of voodoo dolls -- I actually root for him, I actually do. It would be tremendous. I'd be the first one to call. I'd be the first phone call when they get out of the pressroom, maybe in the pressroom. Q. Were you worried about Tiger in '01 or '03? CURTIS STRANGE: I don't worry about him too often. I think he's okay on his own. I should send him a box of chocolates when he doesn't win back-to-back. I'll be the first one to call. I think it would be fantastic. Q. Would you talk about the why in your opinion it is such a rare feat and why it's so hard to actually accomplish? CURTIS STRANGE: Well, I think first of all you have to have a game to play well consistently in a U.S. Open. You know, it's always set up pretty much the same way. It's much, much longer now than it was in the '80s and early '90s, like all courses are. It goes to a different venue every year, and some venues are better for certain players, even if they're Open players or not, and it is a different year. I mean, it sounds kind of too simple, but it's a year removed. You have to be playing at the top of your game in order to beat the best players in the world 12 months later along the toughest test there is in my opinion. At times the British Open is extremely difficult, but at times it's not. The U.S. Open always is. You've got to be up, physically and mentally, and you've got to be playing well, you've got to like the golf course, and you've got to be lucky. Hey, I was lucky the second time. I'll be the first one to admit it. Tom Kite made triple bogey on the fifth hole on Sunday afternoon to put me back in the ballgame. You need -- I don't mean you need help, but you do need -- when you're behind, you do need help, and the Open does that. I don't thank Tom in the speech. I wanted to, but I didn't think that was proper (laughter). Q. Who was the first person to call you after you won your second U.S. Open? CURTIS STRANGE: Snead called, left a message, which made me feel really good. You know, obviously I talked to friends, and my brother was there in the playoff, but he left. You know, I really don't remember to be honest with you. Sam called, and Chandler called, but other than that, I don't remember. Q. Given all the energy you put into trying to get the third one in a row after that, you've talked about that over the years, was there a downside to winning two in a row, given that it sort of became a fixation for you? CURTIS STRANGE: I know what you're saying. I don't think so because I didn't play well after that. I don't think so. I've thought long and hard about it. I think it was just a lot of burnout. I played well enough to win a number of times after that. But I didn't play well. If I would have, you wouldn't have asked that question. But because I didn't, we're talking about it. I think there was certainly a letdown after the third one, not winning, especially when I had a chance. But there was no reason not to come back and play well, and I just didn't play as well as I would have liked. Q. If you get one mulligan in your career, where do you use it? CURTIS STRANGE: You know, I got asked that earlier today (smiling). It was nowhere in the third Open. I wasn't playing well. I wasn't playing well enough to win at Medinah, but it would be the second shot at 13 at Augusta. It would have to be. I'll tell you how I answered it this morning. I took offense to some people who questioned my judgment on the golf course at that time. I was playing well, I had the lead, I hadn't hit a poor shot in two and a half days. This was going to put the tournament away, I thought, make 4, it was a 4-wood from 218 yards. It seemed like a fairly easy shot. I made 6. Now, fast forward to my eight years in the TV booth, now I understand exactly where they were coming from (laughter) when they questioned maybe this isn't the proper judgment call. Well, we all make mistakes. I would have laid up now. But I'm 52 years old and hopefully I'm smarter and wiser and all of the above. But you do what you think is right at the time under the heat of the gun. Sometimes it's right and sometimes it's wrong. But if I pull it off, I win. So it was a bad shot at the wrong time. I don't know, I might even do it again because I get stubborn sometimes. Imagine that. I might do it again just from the standpoint that's the way I am, goddammit, I'm going to do it this time. I messed up before, but I'm going to do it this time. I'm serious. Maybe I'll jerk it left and make 6. That's such a hard shot. The ball is so far above your feet, and it's also downhill. I mean, TV honestly doesn't do it near justice. Your tendency is to think, I'm going to jerk this left. So we always hang on to make sure it gets down through the ball to hit it solidly, and she hangs a little bit. I always missed that right, I never missed left. Anyway, we're off the subject. Q. To get us back on the subject, in your career as either a player or a captain or a commentator, did you care what people said about you? CURTIS STRANGE: Yeah, yeah, I did more as I got older. But I couldn't help it. I played hard. You know, if I had -- another question I had today is if you had a do-over in your career, not a shot, but I would be more aware of image -- I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I would. I'd be more aware of the fans and TV and image for that only reason, not for anything else than everybody wants to be embraced, and at times I was the good guy, bad guy kind of thing, I guess. And it doesn't -- it was too separate lives I led. I played the way I played on the golf course, as hard as I could physically play and mentally play, and then away from the golf course I felt like I was okay. But that was the guy that the public knew because of TV or paper or through the media or anything. Q. Would you have been the player you were had you been nicer? CURTIS STRANGE: I don't know (smiling). I'd probably answer no, but how do we know? Might have been better. You know, I don't have any -- my gosh, I mean, I'm sitting here today, and I wish I would have won more tournaments, or played better I should say. Q. Billy Harmon, I think, once said about you that he never met any other player who hated to make bogey worse than you. Would you agree with that? And was there a certain type of personality you had to bring on to the golf course to get the most out of what you were trying to do? CURTIS STRANGE: Well, there's a lot of guys that didn't like to make bogeys or lose strokes to par. I just thought that don't ever give up on a hole until it was over. I never got upset at myself until the hole was over because you can always make a putt or chip in or something for par. I don't know, I think that's just part of staying in the game all the time. I wasn't perfect. I gave up sometimes, I got madder than hell at myself, and not so much lost interest, but the game gets to you. Most of the time you just kind of stay in the game. You know, I played well. I'm not saying I won tournaments, but I played well and finished well just by staying in the game and shooting a good Sunday round, coming back on the weekend. It's all staying in the game and wanting to do well each day. There's nothing like playing well on Sunday, shooting 65 and finishing fifth or tenth or whatever it might be. That carried over to the next week many, many times. Q. In your experience in television, how do you think the game of golf is served by various elements of the media? CURTIS STRANGE: Well, we certainly wouldn't be near as big as we are today if it wasn't for the media coverage, honestly. I don't think when you're in your playing career you quite understand that. Maybe some do, but you don't really digest it. I think when you get older, and in my case you go to the TV booth and see the media coverage, when you go down to the TV compound at the British Open or the U.S. Open, you see the print media coverage, you see the TV stations from around the world, you see the trucks. It's a big deal. It shoots it to every corner of the earth, and it's a big deal, it really is. Now it hits home that this is a big sport and only big because of TV and print media and all the rest. Now with XM Radio and golf on the radio, everything, it certainly wouldn't be near what it is -- look at what it's done. Look back 50, 60, 70 years ago, golf was -- actually y'all can answer better than me, still quite a bit of media back then, but I guess the broadness of it is not near what it is now. Q. The Country Club, '88, what's your lasting memory of that? CURTIS STRANGE: You know, I really have a lot. The lasting memory, I guess, that pops in my mind all the time is walking up the last hole. I was very fortunate to come up the last hole in the playoff needing to make par or needing to do something. I could enjoy the walk (having won) and the people and give the high sign to Dave Marr in the TV booth and he popped his head out and did the same thing back to me. That's when I got emotional is when Dave's head popped out, things like that. That's what pops into my mind there. Q. The playoff between two guys, on-course demeanor pretty much the same, very focused, I don't imagine much was said. CURTIS STRANGE: No, couldn't have been any better. Two guys going at it as hard as they could go. That was the way it should be. It wasn't the time or the place to be asking about how the wife and kids because at that time I really didn't care. I do, but at that time I didn't (laughter). It couldn't have been any more professional, seriously. It was great. I didn't want to be talked to, much less did I want to talk. Q. One more on the idea of trying to win the three in a row. Is it too strong to say that your quest for that is what set you over -- pretty much ended the real competitive portion of your career? CURTIS STRANGE: I would think maybe a bit too strong. Maybe. How do we know? Q. That's when you had the problems and were losing weight -- CURTIS STRANGE: There was a lot of pressure and tension, and for a good while leading up to it. But maybe. That's a question I can't answer. I really can't. Hindsight, possibly a part of the equation but not all of it. I wasn't playing well at the time, either. Q. You seemed to have done most of what you did in that period. Do you wish you had maybe sustained it -- less of a spike and more of a steady, longer career? CURTIS STRANGE: I don't think we have -- we're not given the options. When we turn pro, I'd take it any way I can get it. It was fun to do well in a short period of time. Short period, I feel like it was ten years, nine or ten years I played well. Nine or ten years I felt like I could compete. You know, I'm just fortunate that those ten years came around. I'm not going to be choosy. Q. Of the three things, physical, mental or emotional management, which did you have the easiest time with and the hardest time with? CURTIS STRANGE: I had the hardest time with the physical part of it. I always worked on my swing, I always was messing around too much. That's probably the kicker is messing around with it too much. But I had the hardest part with the physical. You know, I've got to tell you, the mental side of it, I was kind of -- you know, how do I say? Q. Brilliant? CURTIS STRANGE: No, that's not the word I'm looking for. I would get hot under the collar quick sometimes on stupid things I did on the golf course. But if it got down I felt like I was mentally under control when the heat got on. I felt comfortable. I really did. I don't mean to say it now. I mean, I don't know. Last hole with a chance to birdie to knock out four guys at Memphis, I couldn't wait to make birdie to knock out four guys at Memphis. That was exciting. All these guys are sitting on the side line thinking they're going to be part of a playoff, that kind of stuff. I was playing Hubert that round (laughter). That kind of stuff is fun. I enjoyed that. Never personal -- well, maybe sometimes (laughter). Q. Has Allan shared with you any of his remarks for this evening? CURTIS STRANGE: No, he hasn't, but he just read my speech. I let him. I don't know why, but it's too late to change now. But I have not read his, nor do I want to. Nor do I want to see him, but I will. He will be in the green room. I would prefer not to see him on stage before I come out. Q. Is your next goal to get into the Fishing Hall of Fame? CURTIS STRANGE: Yeah, that's going to be harder than this golf gig was, okay? You know why, because it's a whole lot more expensive. JANE FADER: Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. We appreciate it. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|