THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

May 25, 2000

Gary Nicklaus

GARY NICKLAUS: Wanted to come out today and get off to a good start. Obviously my first Memorial Tournament. Very excited about that. Got off to a good start, 2-under on the front nine, and I hit three bad iron shots on the back -- actually, all of them 6-irons on 13, 16 and 18. I hit them all left and made three bogeys. But other than those three shots and a couple putts that could have gone in, it was a pretty solid round.

GARY NICKLAUS: When did it open? '75? So I would have been five.

GARY NICKLAUS: Well, if you want to call that playing. (Laughter.) I hit golf shots on the golf course.

GARY NICKLAUS: I have a lot of memories of this place, and a lot of the GMs that have been here don't like some of the memories that I have. (Laughter.) Cleaning out the messes that my friends up here and I made in the junior locker room and stuff like that.

GARY NICKLAUS: Yes, it was. But I had grown up a little bit by then.

GARY NICKLAUS: For the most part. I lived on campus for the first three years, but I spent a lot of time out here all the years.

GARY NICKLAUS: I went home and tried to figure out why I missed four cuts in a row.

GARY NICKLAUS: Played a little better today, didn't I? I was planning on not playing any golf when I went home, but I actually went out and practiced and still had time to go out for a nice dinner out on the boat.

GARY NICKLAUS: They are -- a little more speed to them today than they had the during rounds. If you get above the hole, you've got to be pretty careful. Which, like here on 18, you know, I hit above the hole and left of it, and the thing probably had a 15-, 18-foot break coming down the hill. And I hit a pretty decent putt, but the strong wind came up which kind of held it short of the hole, so I still had a 3 1/2 -, 4-footer still going down the hill. And if I had -- if I'd hit that hard and be aggressive on that putt and don't hit the hole I've got a 6- ,7-footer coming back, so you couldn't be aggressive on downhill putts at all.

GARY NICKLAUS: I kind of -- something clicked when I was playing my practice round yesterday, and I started playing well about the last 12 holes of my practice round and felt pretty good about what I was going.

GARY NICKLAUS: Just the swing. Just figured out how to hit good golf shots. I had been hitting -- last four weeks I've been hitting good shots, but I've been also hitting a lot of bad shots and not consistently. And when I say that, I mean not consistently left or consistently right. I've been, just -- like a shotgun, just scattering everywhere. And when you're doing that, you have to kind of figure out to kind of close the golf course down a little bit where you can get rid of one side of the golf course or the other. And I haven't been able to do that at all. And I feel a lot better with my game at all, my good shots are better and my bad shots are better than they were, and that's what you're looking for.

GARY NICKLAUS: No. It was -- actually just came from playing -- played a practice round yesterday with Aaron Batteley and Billy Andrade. We were walking down the second or 3rd hole and Billy looks at me and goes, "I love how these young kids coming over from, like the Swedish Golf Federation and Australian Golf Federation starting these kind of regimented training at a very young age, and their backswing is perfect right to the back. No nonsense, just right there." And I just kind of -- that's kind of what it should be. Just no nonsense, just take it back to where you want it to go and hit it. And that's kind of what I just started -- taking that thought in my own mind and I started hitting the ball well.

GARY NICKLAUS: I just did not hit them where I wanted to at all. 16, 13 and 18 were all three the same shots, same club. All pulled hooks.

GARY NICKLAUS: 15 was a bad putt. I did not misread it. I just hit a bad putt.

GARY NICKLAUS: I spent a lot of time up here watching this golf tournament and knowing what this golf tournament means to my father, to my mother, and what it has grown to mean to me over the years. I've wanted to play in this tournament for a long time. It's very special for me to be here.

GARY NICKLAUS: It's all of the above. The rough is pretty thick. So if you're missing fairways, you can't get it close to the hole. The fairways are narrow. Some of the subtle changes in the greens. Some of the greens have little bit more pitch to them, not a lot.

GARY NICKLAUS: The 5th hole is no longer a two-shot hole. It can be, if the pin is in the right position, but you're going to see a lot more guys that are within the distance that they would normally hit at it will lay up just because of the severity if you miss the green. And the greens will no longer become soft, where the golf course used to be if it rained. It would take a couple days for the greens to dry out and get firm. And when they got firm, they probably were harder than they will be now. But now they will be more consistent and -- if it rains six inches tonight and then stopped, you know, tomorrow they would still be pretty firm, just because of the construction of the greens and the way they will drain the water.

GARY NICKLAUS: I've been on the inside of the ropes here twice before. I played as a marker two years when I was in college. I played with Hal Sutton one time and I played with Vijay Singh -- actually, I played with Vijay two years ago. So I've been inside the ropes playing during the tournament and kind of seen what it's like. But it's still a golf course. It's a golf course that I played a lot, and you still just have to go out and shoot a good score.

GARY NICKLAUS: No. I just tried to keep out of their way.

GARY NICKLAUS: I wasn't second in X-school. I was 12th. I was 12th at Q-school, but when I finished second in Atlanta, that put me up to No. 2 in the reshuffle from Tour school. But as far as getting in the tournament, it wasn't -- I know it's Top-70 from last year, and all the other, you know, past champions things like that and then they fill the field from this year's money list. And I didn't know where I was going to fall. I didn't think that I would have gotten in after missing he last four cuts, even though it was pretty high up on the money list.

GARY NICKLAUS: Yeah, on the first tee kind of started out a little shaky on the first shot and my opening second shot. The bunker shot, it almost went in on 1; kind of settled things down a little bit and went to work. Forgot about the surroundings a little bit and got in my zone and just started playing.

GARY NICKLAUS: Not extremely happy with how my year has gone. I've had one good tournament. I've had a couple mediocre tournaments, and then I've had, you know, quite a few missed cuts. And there's a lot of room for improvement in my game. And that's what I have to work on and that's what I have to get rid of, the mediocre and not-so-good stuff and have a lot more good tournaments. I mean, financially, my year is going okay, but as far as my play goes, not real thrilled with that.

GARY NICKLAUS: 28 to 30.

GARY NICKLAUS: Lowest I can remember is 68. But I might -- I might have shot a couple -- I might have shot 67 at one point, I'm not sure.

GARY NICKLAUS: Just playing.

GARY NICKLAUS: A little bit. When he's around and I need some help, I'll obviously ask for his advice. But I've played, what, 15 tournaments this year and he's been at two. So, there hasn't been a whole lot of interaction between the two of us because we're in two different places. But, I mean, he knows my game very well. And he -- he and I do have some different ideas of where we think that we should be -- or where I think I should be and where he thinks I should be, but I kind of leave that arguing up to he and Rick. But he understands what I'm trying to do and he understands what Rick (Smith) and I try and do. So when Rick is not around, his eyes are good. And when, you know, Rick is around, his eyes are obviously good, too. So it's -- I've got a couple people that know my game and can help.

GARY NICKLAUS: I'll never know how much it really helped me until the next time I get into a playoff or a position to -- coming down the stretch to win. But I would think that when that time comes, I'll be able to reflect on what I did then and what I did wrong and how I can improve it.

GARY NICKLAUS: No. If I got to do that over, I might have choked it a little bit and tried to hit it hard because it was a smooth 8-iron and wasn't a big one at all. And I kind of just tried to make it real smooth, and I think that under that circumstance, if I'd have tried to hit it hard and been more aggressive with the shot, I might have got a better result.

GARY NICKLAUS: It was about two or three feet. Probably three feet. It landed about a foot short of the lip -- and above the lip, there's about -- about that much of slope against you, and then that's what kind of -- where everything started; so about three feet.

GARY NICKLAUS: He may have been at more than that.

GARY NICKLAUS: I don't know if that's by design. Those are tournaments he's chosen to play in, and he wants to come out and be at some of the tournaments I'm playing in, which I enjoy when he's around. So, I mean, it's whatever -- whatever fits into his schedule, between his design -- design business, the company at home, the senior events that he wants to play in, and, you know, the TOUR events that he wants to play. I mean, there's one other tournament later this year that I would love for him to be at, is Loch Lommond over in Scotland, but he's got the SENIOR TPC. I'm sure that he'd like to be at Loch Lommond, but he also wants to play all 8 majors, four SENIOR and four regular TOUR.

GARY NICKLAUS: I am staying at my parents' house.

GARY NICKLAUS: Sometimes. That's why I said sometimes we have different ideas. (Smiles). Even though he's the greatest player that's ever played, he's wrong

sometimes, at least in my mind. (Laughter.) But he is getting smarter as he gets older. (Smiles).

GARY NICKLAUS: We don't disagree that often. But we're both pretty stubborn.

GARY NICKLAUS: Really? You figured that out?

GARY NICKLAUS: He thought I should have been here on Saturday and I wanted to go home on Saturday. He wasn't real happy with me; I wasn't real happy with him questioning what I wanted to do. We talked about it and that was the end of it. I was already home before we talked. (Laughter.)

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