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OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE PRO-AMApril 18, 2008David EgerVince GillLUTZ, FLORIDA PHIL STAMBAUGH: David, 33-33 and 66, right now the low round in the house at 5-under. I think your team finished, what, 7? DAVID EGER: Yeah. PHIL STAMBAUGH: So maybe general thoughts about how you played and how Vince played, and if Vince wants to throw any comments in, that would be fine. DAVID EGER: Well, Vince played very well, considering he hasn't played but a couple times since last year because the weather has been so bad in Nashville. But he was right there on every hole and made a couple birdies. Unfortunately he missed a couple. But my round was -- I drove the ball reasonably well. My irons were not real good. Luckily I putted very well. When I did hit a decent iron I tended to make the putt for birdie, and I got it up-and-down four or five times. I think I made six birdies, didn't I, a bogey and six birdies? So it's pretty hard when you shoot that score for anyone to touch you very much. PHIL STAMBAUGH: You want to run through the birdies real quick? DAVID EGER: Let's see, I started on 10 and I made about -- I hit a pitching wedge there and made about a 20-footer. Didn't birdie the par-5. 13, the short 4, Vince hit it up there about a foot, and I hit a sand wedge up there about six feet, made that. 14, I hit a sand wedge about 12 feet and made that. 15, a 6-iron about 30 feet I'd say and made that. So those three in a row were good. 16 I missed the green, got it up-and-down made about a 10-footer. I bogeyed 17 when I missed the green. And then coming around to the front side, 7, the par-5, I made about a 20-footer. And then 8, I hit a 9-iron about six feet and made that. Like I said, I drove the ball in play all day, and then my irons weren't very sharp. I did hit a few good ones and made some birdies and made some putts. PHIL STAMBAUGH: You played good here last year, and we had Scott in before you, and he said that the course is playing totally different with the weather and no overseed. DAVID EGER: Without the overseed on it, I think the fairways, they might roll a little bit better, the ball may roll out a little bit more, but the ball doesn't sit up as well. It's kind of nestled down. There's not much thatch to the fairway grass. And then the rough around the greens, if you're in the rough around the greens, it can be very, very difficult. So it's a whole new beast this year compared to when it was overseeded. Everything was overseeded when we played here earlier in the year. I think it's maybe a little bit more difficult this year. PHIL STAMBAUGH: Anything special about playing with Vince? DAVID EGER: He's great to play with. I don't get to play with him very much anymore. We used to play probably too much golf together, and now we only play a couple times a year. But it's great to have him take time out from his family to come all the way down here from Nashville and play hopefully for three days. He knows the Outback guys that run the tournament very well, so he likes to support it whenever he can. PHIL STAMBAUGH: Vince, anything about playing with David? VINCE GILL: Just fun to watch. He got off to such a great start with the putter. I think if you get to putting it great right off the bat, it gives you some pretty good confidence out there. He just kind of rolled a few in early and just kind of felt like all the putts were always going to have a chance to go in. A lot of them did today; it was fun to watch. Getting to play with Tom and Nancy Lopez was pretty hallowed ground for me. I had a blast, I just had a blast. I had a good time with the crowd, showed them a good time. That's why I'm here. Q. You guys have a history together. Does it go way back, or can you explain what that is? VINCE GILL: We were at Kapalua in the early '90s, I think. DAVID EGER: We met when we were both married to our first wives. VINCE GILL: I used to tour all the time, and I met David -- this is before he was with the Tour, he was with the USGA, so he had all these great connections to all these great golf courses across the country. I'd call Dave, "Hey, you know any good golf courses near here?" David is a huge music fan, and so we've had a great friendship and been hooking each other up with tickets to golf courses and me hooking him up with concert tickets. He travels on the bus with us from time to time. Everybody in the band knows him and likes him. We've been about 17 years, I think, something like that, a long time. Q. What's more pressure, hosting the CMAs or that twisting downhill 12-foot putt? VINCE GILL: There is nothing as gut-wrenching as this for me. Not only is it the fact that you play golf in front of people not very often, you don't very often -- I mean, I do some of this stuff but not a lot, and you get a golf club in your hand in front of people, and it's totally different to the guitar. I don't have a problem with a guitar and a microphone in front of people, but put that golf club in my hand, and all of a sudden it just takes your nerves and ratchets them up a little bit. It's also extra pressure for me because I aspire to be a very good golfer. I've been a scratch player most of my life and had aspirations of doing what these guys do and was never probably quite good enough. Had I applied to golf what I did to music, I might have been a decent player. But still, you come out here and everybody sees that you have a 0 handicap or a 1 handicap, so then all of a sudden there's extra pressure because they think you're going to play great. But just that element of people watching, it'll make me hit some shots that I can't believe (laughter). Q. Good shots or bad shots? VINCE GILL: Sometimes both. I had a downhill about a 60-yard bunker shot on a par-5 that was sitting down like this, and the green was -- I said, I've got one chance, and I pulled it off. You could give me a bucket of balls and I wouldn't have hit that ball up there within ten feet of the hole. Some good, some bad. I got one on hole 8, I hit it way right in the junk over there, and I hit about a 40-yard cut over a tree and sliced it back on the green about 25 feet away. Nancy came over, and she goes, "Man, that was a good shot." I said, "I'm used to those. I do those all the time." Q. I'm sure you've played a lot of Pro-Ams with amateurs that weren't as good as Vince. Is it advantageous for you to play with somebody you know and somebody that can really play? Does that work to your advantage in a tournament like this? DAVID EGER: I think it works to your advantage. Even though the amateurs play different tees, Vince and I hit the ball just about the same distance with every club, and he putts the ball well, so if he has a putt on my line or anything like that, he can show me. So having Vince with as well as he plays is a tremendous help, I think. I'm not saying that my partners here who haven't been Vince were not helps, but I think Vince is more of a help than they were. Q. In your past life when you were playing amateur events, you played some very high profile ones, but nonetheless, it's still not a professional Tour. When you came out here, was there a period of catch-up, or do you feel like you are there, that you're back on even footing with the guys who have been out here? DAVID EGER: I think there was a little catch-up. I quickly took some very intense golf lessons and whatnot with David Leadbetter and now Jim Hardy, so yeah, I feel like now I've caught up. I feel like I belong. Now, there's some times I've played during the course of the last few years when I've felt like I haven't belonged, but I think that goes with the territory when you play 26 or 27 weeks. You can't always be up there like Tiger is all the time out here, at least not me. There is a difference between amateur golf and this certainly, but I feel like I've caught up to a lot of guys out here. I'm certainly not the best player out here, but I think I can hold my own pretty well. Q. In contrast, the guy who was here just before, Scott, he's basically played regular Tour, came straight out here, no lay-off at all. Can you contrast yourself to that? DAVID EGER: Well, I think since I didn't play so much competitive golf that my desire was actually -- I never had peaked out on desire, and it wasn't until I turned 50 or so that I've gotten in that mode of wanting to play competitive golf a lot. I think a lot of guys who play for 20 years on the regular Tour sort of get burned out from time to time, and so when they come out here, sometimes they don't come running full speed; it takes them a while to get acclimated and get the competitive juices flowing again. But I think with the lack of my golf, playing a lot of golf, I think I hit the streets pretty interested in playing and excited about playing. Q. The biggest part of the catch-up stretch, was that mental or physical? DAVID EGER: I'd say 75 percent physical. My wife would say 125 percent physical. Q. Vince, I think I'm correct here, was it a few years ago that Golf Digest named you the best celebrity golfer? VINCE GILL: Maybe. Q. Did you roll your eyes and go, "How the hell do they know?" VINCE GILL: Actually it's all based on handicap, and I've been a scratch player forever. Out here, you're going to tee it up and you're going to get beat half the time and you're going to win half the time, so the whole point of who the best is seemed silly to me. I enjoy the game, I love it. And I'm not a gambler, I don't really enjoy being that competitive with other people. I love being competitive with myself, telling myself how I have an expectation that I want to play to, and that's where my frustration comes in is just playing to the level that I expect to play to. Q. You mentioned that at one point in your life you considered maybe you would like to try to play competitive golf. What was your background in competition? VINCE GILL: Well, I grew up in Oklahoma and they had a really good junior golf program there, and some of the guys out here used to beat me as kids, so it would be nothing new if I came out here and they kept beating me (laughter). You know, I love it, and way in the back of my head it's a dream, just like music was. I just applied so much more to my dream of playing music that my golf never got the same attention. But raw skills, as a player, I can hit it as far as most players. I have a lot of game, I just don't put the effort in like they do. PHIL STAMBAUGH: Thanks, guys. Good luck tomorrow. End of FastScripts |
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