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MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 6, 2004

Arnold Palmer

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA

BILLY PAYNE: Ladies and gentlemen, we are once again honored to welcome Arnold Palmer for the 50th consecutive time competing in the Masters tournament.

As you all know, the holder of 92 worldwide golfing titles and championships, four times the winner of the Masters.

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I'm happy to be here, as always, and to see so many of my friends from the media. Some I haven't had the acquaintance with, but it's always nice to be here at Augusta, and I'm looking forward to this year. This will be my last Masters. And I will open it to your questions.

Q. How hard was that to just say, my last Masters?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, it's not easy. When you think about it, after this year, that will have been 50. And, of course, there's all kind of reasons why that should be the end. I hope to come back and be here at the Masters.

My game, you know, I suppose that if I made the cut this year (Laughter.)

You know, lightning hasn't struck lately, and I'm not sure that it's going to this year. But I hit the ball pretty good today. Didn't play particularly well, but I was encouraged; I reached all of the fairways off the tee. (Laughter.)

I even made a few pars. So the next Thursday and Friday will be fun for me. I suppose it's a bittersweet type situation. I'm going to miss coming and playing in the Masters, as I have for 50 years. You do anything that long, it's like getting married. You get married and have a great time and then things go, sort of cool down, and you start it up again. Who knows?

It's been great. It's been a 50 great years, and I don't think that I think that that's enough. I think that's it.

Q. Were there ever any close calls where you didn't play, like when you had the cancer scare or anything like that, or where you were sick way back in the day and almost snapped the streak?

ARNOLD PALMER: No, not really. I suppose the cancer situation was one that might have kept me from playing, but that's probably as close as I came, and I played Bay Hill before Augusta. It was a foregone conclusion that I would come and play here.

Other than that, there was never really a time that it was even close, that I would not play.

Q. You won four, but how many do you think you left out there that you could have won?

ARNOLD PALMER: A lot more than four. You mean that I thought I could have won? Oh, yeah. Well, there was a couple of obvious ones, and there were others that weren't so obvious.

I could go back, oh, probably even before I think in '57 or '56, I had a shot with nine holes to go and didn't perform very well, and then after that, from '58, oh, God, almost up to close to '70, maybe with a few exceptions, I would have had a shot every year.

Q. Are you leaving the Masters in good hands? Are there things that you're worried about that they need to address in the future, distance of the ball, etc., Something that perhaps concerns you as you make your exit?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I think there are always things that you probably have some concerns about. I don't think that has really much to do with the Masters itself. I think it's golf. I think it's the competition. It really, in my feeling and opinion, like it or not, I think the ball needs to be slowed down. I think the best thing that we can do, rather than continuing to try to extend the real estate and make the golf courses longer and longer and longer, we really need to look for a way to slow the ball down a little bit, and rather than if you don't slow it down, as time goes on, it's going to get the problem is going to become more severe because these young people are growing stronger, and equipment and the modern world is going to get better, and I'm not talking golf ball. I'm talking just equipment, the things that they do to shafts and clubs and heads and all within the rules.

The one thing that they can do that would be very key to competitive golf, and that is slow the golf ball down, either the initial velocity, or I suppose there are numerous things that you can do to make a difference. You can probably lighten it a little. You can probably enlarge it a little. There are all kinds of ways to look at slowing it down. But I think that if you're going to try to do something about the distance these people hit the golf ball, that's where you have to go.

Q. Can you talk about the achievement of playing 50 Masters? What stands out as being significant in that number for you?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I'm not sure what direction you're going with your question. To answer that, there's a lot of directions that the Masters and playing in it, and I assume this is where you're talking about, and how you do that.

We were talking today about the golf course. Well, I don't think that I've ever seen it much better than it is right now. I think the condition of the golf course is fantastic. But then you relate or you go back to a few years when the bermuda grasses were the dominant grass on the greens and they were overseeded. They couldn't get quite the speed that they can get with the bent grasses now.

But they also can't get the ball to go into the green the way it once did, either, if you're talking about how it receives the ball. Now, I can remember winning and playing in the Masters when the ball hit the green with a long shot and it would bounce ten feet in the air. You don't see that now because the bent grasses, it will break the surface of the green, where it didn't when I was playing back in my early days, the surfaces did not dent hardly at all, and particularly if it had not rained, if it were dry.

Of course, when people talked about my winning the Masters, they really didn't give me much of a chance because I didn't hit the ball up in the air. And to get the ball around the pin on this golf course, you generally had to hit it up in the air. So I figured out another way. I was so determined that I found another way to play the golf course. And I also learned to hit the ball up a little bit more through the years.

And that's what we were talking about today. I don't think the greens have ever been faster or will be ever faster than they could make them this year.

Well, you've got to be careful about that because then all of a sudden you could get to a point where you're fringing on something that isn't quite fair. I'm not saying that; I'm saying that it's close. If you get, you know, what we played today, if you're looking at a green, if you hit a good shot into some of the holes and you spin the ball and you spin it as some of these young people do, and it starts spinning backwards, a lot of the good shots that are spinning right will spin right off the green into the water in some cases.

So there's a fine line there where you have to really be kind of careful. But if the greens bounce and you have the same speed as you have now, then you've got another situation because now you're going to really have to spin it and to stop it, to keep it on the greens.

And I say that's a fine line there that you have to talk about. When they were hard and not quite as fast, that was another situation, too. Learning to play the golf course and learning to figure out your own psychology for playing this golf course is something that these people are going to have to do, and particularly right now, this year. I assume that's what you were looking for when you asked that question.

Q. I also wanted to know, what do you see in terms of longevity or determination to keep coming back here? 50 years is just a large amount of time.

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, you heard the story about there were a couple of pros my first year on the Tour, when I was practicing in Detroit for the Detroit Open, and they were standing in back of me and they were guys that you all know I won't tell you who they were, but you knew them. They were veterans and they weren't playing actively on the Tour when they were watching me. One said to the other, "Who is that kid down there hitting balls"?

And he looked at him and he says, "Oh, that young guy, I know him. He's Arnold Palmer."

Then he says, the other guy looked at him and says, "You'd better tell him to get a job." (Laughter.)

Now, that's pretty significant after 50 years.

Q. On that same note, obviously it made an impression on you, what was the week like the first time you came here for your first Masters?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I suppose my gut feeling was I was so relieved and so happy to be at Augusta. I had played the Winter Tour, and a lot of things happened. One, I couldn't take any money I won because I had to wait six months. It was a relief to get here because I knew that if I won any money, I'd get it, and that was important.

The other thing was that I played golf courses coming across the sweep in the South that in some cases, I started on the golf course at 5'10" and ended up at 6'0" because the mud on my shoes had built up a couple of inches.

And the greens, the greens on a lot of golf courses there was no grass; they overseed in the winter and it didn't work.

So to get here where everything was impeccable, it was beautiful. The golf course was beautiful, the club, the facilities, and I was relieved. I was looking forward to it so much.

You can talk about it, but you can't really tell someone how relieved you are. It was an inner feeling, and I knew that I had a chance to do something; that whatever I did play wise I was going to get rewarded for, and that was something I really looked forward to.

Q. Can you give us a little history lesson? Tell us how the world?

ARNOLD PALMER: Things were so different, it's hard to explain that. In '58, I think the total money on the Tour, counting Masters and everything, was less than $1 million or right at $1 million. First place here was $14,000 that year.

Well, hell, I had not seen $14,000 in my life. There's no question about that. That's a fact. Of course, one of the funniest things that happened was when I won, I gave Winnie the checkbook, and I said, "Here, write Ironman a check and give him ten percent," which was $1,400. And Winnie wrote the check for $14,000. (Laughter.)

Now, that's funny, but it wasn't funny at the time. (Laughter.) And when we finally realized that, why old Ironman was headed out the gate because he knew no one here would cash it here for him. (Laughter.) The good news is we caught him and gave him the right number. But that is one of the things that's changed.

The other thing is, of course, and again, it's difficult sometimes to put into words what the difference is between then and now. A lot of the pros, let's just take Claude Harmon for an example, who won this championship in what year, '48? Claude Harmon only played a few tournaments a year. He was more of a club pro and a teaching pro. He played a few, but he won the Masters. Well, you know, how many club pros are going to win the Masters now? You think about it, zero. That was a difference. Not that he didn't play well and wasn't qualified to win; he did and he was, but the difference is humongous. It's tremendous now versus what it was then.

The other thing is that I suppose I see and I enjoyed very much about coming to Augusta was the Masters Club Dinner. When you went to the Masters Club Dinner, the guys that were there now, maybe I was just sort of a green kid and didn't know a hell of a lot about it, but I had great respect for the guys that played golf, like Hogan and Nelson and Snead and Sarazen and that gang that were in there. And to be in the room with Bobby Jones and cliff Roberts and that whole scene was one that you can't ever copy. You can't duplicate, you can't reproduce it, not in any way put a room of characters together like we had when I first won the Masters.

My first appearance there was in '59 at that dinner. I was speechless. It was so nice and it was so good, listening to those guys talk. Craig Wood, hell, most of you don't even know who Craig Wood was. But think about it. He was the Open Champ probably longer than any other person in the history of the Open Championship. You probably can answer that question, too, some of you.

But that was a thrill for me, and to be there with those people and to see what was happening.

The authenticness of this club was never greater than it was then. I mean, the integrity, the feeling was so great for someone like myself to come here and play in this championship. It was a thrill of a lifetime, one that today, with all of the accolades and all of the things that have happened, the greatest thrill was back then when those people were here and I had a chance to win the tournament and be with them.

Q. Earlier today, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson talked about their memories as youngsters coming here and playing practice rounds with you and how you took them around, you gambled with them and how much that meant to them. Could you talk a little bit about the responsibility you felt to take younger players under your wing and whether maybe that's changing now with so much money at stake?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I don't think that is changing. I played with Nathaniel Smith today. He's 25 years old. He's probably going to turn pro somewhere along the way. But there's no guarantee. And I will play with him the first two rounds of the tournament.

We had a good time. We talked about things, and I could tell just watching him and seeing the expressions on his face that he was having a ball. It was fun for him, and of course, the other thing that happened today was the fact that I played with Fred Ridley. Well, here is a guy that won the National Amateur and is here for that reason, and he's now President of the United States Golf Association, which is another thrill, and something that Nathaniel Smith and I revere.

The fact that we could play with a man who has as much influence on golf and the game as Fred Ridley might have, and to be a great guy and the combination of that, with a great guy like he and Nathaniel Smith, a young guy, really not positive as to what his future is going to be, but he had a look at it today. And he'll have a look at it this week playing in this championship and he'll probably come out of here the end of the week with a pretty good idea where he's going and what he wants to do. And that's the thrill I get out of seeing these young people come along.

Q. Have you always felt that, like a responsibility for you?

ARNOLD PALMER: I always say one thing, that if I can teach a young man coming along, and I've seen a lot of them, Tiger, then I can go back to Nicklaus and others. If I can teach them to leave the game better when they leave than they found it when they arrived, then I've been successful.

Q. You've played with royalty and presidents and all of the great championships and won them. What's been your very best day on a golf course?

ARNOLD PALMER: A single day? I've had 50 years of single days. (Laughter.)

Q. I'm doing a story on Doc Giffin. Talk about the impact he's had on your life.

ARNOLD PALMER: Who? Doc, who? (Laughter.) You sure it isn't Griffin? (Laughter.)

That's a favorite of ours. Doc has been fantastic for 35, 36 years. Of course, he's taken a lot of the worry off of me that I've had until recently, and now he's putting it back on me; I guess he's trying to get even. But, no, he has been as you know, he was the press secretary for the PGA TOUR and came to me 36 years, 38 years ago. It's worked out.

Now, you guys might look for a job like that. You could be successful, you know. (Laughter.)

Q. How important is it for you to have your grandson on the bag this week?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I mean, if you have children or grandchildren, you know there's nothing more important to you than that. Just having him there, you know, he's like any 16 year old. He's working hard in school trying to keep up. Taking a week off this week is a big deal for him. It's a bigger deal for his mother, I can tell you that. They are going to be working hard when the week is over.

Most important to me is the fact that he is going to get a look at something that he might be doing the rest of his life, and I don't mean caddying. (Laughter.) That's something that is important to me, and I hope it's a lesson to him. It just depends on how much he watches and observes and how important it will be.

Q. Some of the most famous and successful athletes have not always been supremely comfortable embracing the public. Was there any time in your life that you doubted that you would be so comfortable with people when you were younger, and if not, can you pinpoint what's made you so innately

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I suppose it started because my father taught me and beat me in the head a few times. No, he never did well, he punched me out a couple times. (Laughter.) That was nothing. That was sort of well, what he really drove home was in my youth long before I ever had any idea that I would be playing professional golf or be in a position to have people worry about how I treated my fans or anything else.

What he taught me in my youth was for my well being, for my life, regardless of what I did, whether I played golf or worked in a steel mill or cut fairways or was a professional at a club or whatever I might have done. What he taught me was manners, to be polite and to treat other people like I would like to be treated. And he drove that home.

If I were sitting out there and talking to me like you are, to be polite and answer your questions as best I can and as honestly and as straightforward as I can.

This was long before I ever thought that I'd be sitting here talking to you people and doing it for 50 years, no less. But it was something that he never let me forget. As long as he lived, that's the way it was.

Q. For a while there, I think everyone in this room thought it was a foregone conclusion that Tiger would beat Jack's record of 18 majors; that he would win more than you and Jack together. He is now entering a phase of his life where he has other interests. Do you still think it's a foregone conclusion, and what do you think will be the most difficult thing for him to stay motivated and focused, given his level of financial security at this point?

ARNOLD PALMER: Can I ask you a question? What are the other interests?

Q. She's probably walking around out there somewhere right now. (Laughter.)

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, that's closer to what I thought you were asking. (Laughter.)

You know, of course, I think that my opinion of Tiger and his golf and where he's going is not any less than it ever was. I think that he has the ability and the stamina and all of the things he needs to go on. But to break Jack's record or to win more than Jack and I won together, that's tough. That is a tough situation. And it wouldn't matter how good or how great he stays or how long he plays. It's going to be tough.

The other interests, you say, that's life. That's just the maturity into life's habitat and into the domicile of living with someone and doing things differently than you once did. All of those things are going to be a combination of what's going to affect his life, his well being. His financial status in the world is going to have some effect.

I think that those of us who knew Tiger, and know him as we do, know that somewhere along the way, there are going to be some hitches, and those are going to be some of the hitches that are going to affect how he plays.

What is he, 27, 28 now? 28, yeah. Well, of course the thing that can happen between now and 35 be could the absolute best years of his life. It would be very easy for that to happen, meaning that he could double or triple what he has done in the past in those next seven years.

But at the same time, the other things that you're talking about, whatever it might be, are going to have some influence on him, and how much, no one knows. I can't crawl in his brain and tell you. I'm not sure he can crawl in his own brain and tell you what that's going to mean. But it's going to have an effect.

When you're young and you're set on a course, it's a lot easier from 19 to 28 to set a course and stick with it. As you say, now there are other interests which are natural, and that's part of maturity and that's the things you've got to face.

Q. Who is your swing coach, your father, you or somebody else?

ARNOLD PALMER: I only had one, my father. The only alternative to that was or change, let's call it, that I made, when I was playing in the North South Amateur back in the late '40s and the early '50s, I had a fairly strong grip, meaning my left hand was to the right side and my right hand was somewhat to the right side, also. The thing that happened in that was that occasionally, when I got quick, I would hook the ball and hook it severely, which you see a lot of young people do now, particularly under pressure.

When I was playing in those days, a friend who was a brother to Lou Worsham, and that was Buck and Herman Worsham, he suggested one year in the school year, really when I was at Wake Forest, he said, why don't you set your left hand up on the top of the club and hold it a little firmer with the left and you'll stop duck hooking the ball, and I did that. That was a major change for me in my golf game. But I was strong enough that I overcome it, and I overcome it in six months, but it was tough.

I won in Pittsburgh in those years. I won in the amateur tournaments, and it started working for me. Of course, what it did is then I started blocking it and played most of my career blocking it. That's for the high finish that I had, and a lot of people didn't like that. A lot of people could have cared less. I was hitting more fairways and more greens than anybody playing it. It didn't bother me too much. I said, well, he said I would hit another 20 yards, but I was outdriving everybody anyway, so that didn't bother me anyway. And it worked.

This is predictable. Now at 74, I have trouble hitting 300 yard drives. Every once in awhile I get one. (Laughter.)

But it was, too, as you get older, it became a bit of a penalty. Now I'm going back to the stronger grip and trying to hit it. That's just a personal thing that I'm enjoying doing. It's fun for me.

Q. Have you thought about how you want Friday to unfold for you?

ARNOLD PALMER: I know exactly how I want Friday to unfold, no question. That's the easiest question I've had today. (Laughter.) I want to see what my starting time is on Saturday. (Laughter.)

Q. You're one of the few contestants here who are also a member of the club. Moving forward, do you have any desire at all to become a little more active as a member maybe in the policies of the club or the administration of the tournament?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I haven't really given that I am just very happy to be a member and enjoy the club. It's a privilege I never thought I would have.

I think the only significant change in the future will be that as I give up playing competitively, and of course that's coming probably faster than I'd like, I'd still play a tournament here on the Champions Tour. But as that goes away, I will probably come here and play more golf and enjoy this club. I enjoy being here and I enjoy the people. I have a lot of friends that are members. And I will try to spend more time here.

As far as becoming a factor in the administration, I really don't think that I will. I might walk around with my green jacket on and watch the tournament sometime, but that will be about as heavy as I get.

Q. How much are you looking forward to Thursday and how do you think you'll be feeling on playing your last Masters?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, there will be some sentiment, but that sentiment will not be obvious in any way, shape or form until maybe it's over.

I will be playing like hell. I'll be doing everything I can to make the cut, and that's very important to me. And I will make that effort, stronger than maybe I have in the last few years.

Q. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit, we've been talking about making the cut and the inevitability that every great player becomes less great. Can you talk about the process, the adjustment in expectations and whether you sort of fought for a long time and became at peace with it at a particular moment, or is that a gradual?

ARNOLD PALMER: Again, you're asking a question that is difficult for me to answer.

I can only tell you one thing that I do know for sure, because I've been associated with me for a while, (Laughter) and I am a dreamer. There are not many people that will recognize or want to recognize the fact that they are dreamers in their own life. I continue to get up in the morning enthusiastically and go pick up a golf club with a thought that I can somewhere find that secret to making the cut, and that's just an example, but it applies to other things in life, too, and that's the way I live and the way I think and the way I feel.

Q. One of the bigger stories this week besides this being your 50th Masters is John Daly's return, and a lot of people are saying the people's affection to him is a lot like when you first started. What do you think about John Daly being back at Augusta and the way that people Love him?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, first of all, John Daly is a friend of mine. I like John.

Second of all, I suppose that he's more realistic than our society is willing to accept sometimes. The other thing is that John Daly, he does what he wants to do and he does it the way he wants to do it. I think people like that. I think that people have seen him and they like what he does. They like the fact that he hits the golf ball a long way, and that is where it all starts, the intrigue to the galleries, and that is something that makes John Daly a commodity that people like.

I think it was a little mean, and I'm just saying something I wouldn't say normally, but I think it was mean that they put that picture in the paper the other day of him with a cigarette in his mouth since I'm leading a coalition against smoking in America, I'm swinging. But that's John Daly, that's the way he is, and he likes being that way.

And what has happened, the people like him for being that way. He does his own thing. Who suffers the most when it's all done? John Daly.

Q. How much is 50 going to stand up? Can you see anybody out there, Tiger or anybody else, playing 50 Masters?

ARNOLD PALMER: I can, I suppose. It's difficult to answer. I see a lot of young people take Adam Scott for an example. Here is a young man, 23 years old, that is here, and I think it's inevitable that he will win the Masters.

When you think about it, if you just go from now, well, he'll still be fairly young when he's been here 50 years. So that will afford him that opportunity. And he could well be playing quite well at that age.

Tiger is another one. He would be quite young, also, and probably hitting the ball pretty well. So I don't think that there will be a lot of people playing 50 Masters. I think that it's very conceivable that there will be a number of them in the years to come that will play in 50 Masters. I hope so, at any rate. I'd like to see that happen, only because the people coming after them would enjoy that, as I have noticed in my 50.

BILLY PAYNE: Thank you very much, Arnold, and good luck this week.

End of FastScripts.

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