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OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE PRO-AMApril 14, 2010Hale IrwinLUTZ, FLORIDA THE MODERATOR: (Recording in progress.) Combined the PGA and Champions Tour this week to become the 12th player in history to do that, and first since Leonard Thompson did it last year at the SAS Championship. I have a few notes here. First start in a pro event was the '66 U.S. Open to the Olympic Club. Tied for 61st. HALE IRWIN: And made the cut. That was good. THE MODERATOR: First start as a professional 1968 Memphis Pro Invitational; 265, no prize money. HALE IRWIN: No prize money. They only paid the top 50. If you made the cut, they only paid the top 50, so you got the pleasure of spending a week in Memphis and leaving without any money. (Laughter.) THE MODERATOR: First check as a professional, 1969 Cleveland Open; 239; you made $457.41. HALE IRWIN: I could still use it. (Laughter.) THE MODERATOR: First top 10 finish was a tie for tenth at the '69 Memphis Open that year. HALE IRWIN: Memphis has been good to me through the years. THE MODERATOR: Ironically, the PGA Tour stop this week is at Hilton Head, and that was your first professional win in 1971, the Sea Pines Heritage. And your first major championship, of course, the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Anyway, congratulations on this honor. Just a few opening thoughts coming into this week. HALE IRWIN: Well, I was unaware of this, shall we say milestone, until I was informed at Cap Cana. I had never really thought about it, to tell you the truth. Just seems like as you go on in your career and you -- and I've never been a player that's played in every event, so never really kind of counted. If there were 34 events on the tour or 38 or 26, whatever it was, I played in the events I felt was appropriate for my time with my family and my -- and then time allowed away from them. So it was never something that I was concerned about numbers. But here we are, and it just doesn't seem possible that there's been 1000. I guess that doesn't count all the other things that you play in around the world that don't count in this thing. So, man, I'm tired thinking about 1000 tournaments. That wears me out. Wow. Let's see, over, I think it's 42 years next month, do the match. Somebody do that so we can figure how many that is a year. That's what I've averaged. Q. A lot of nights in a hotel room. HALE IRWIN: Yeah, and then the car, too. Don't forget those nights spent in a car. THE MODERATOR: You touched on it, but talk about maybe that first start as a professional -- and obviously you played the U.S. Open as an amateur -- but maybe that first start as a professional there in Memphis in 1968. HALE IRWIN: Certainly. I can remember it almost like it was yesterday. I don't think you ever forget your first event. I was a qualifier. I had qualified in the national qualifying school in April, and my first event was at Memphis. When I got to the site, they had taken the cut from two different events, one of which might have been the Masters, and if you remember, there was a tournament in Hattiesburg at the time. It was what they called a satellite event. They took the cut from both of those. So when I got on site, there were three spots and perhaps a hundred qualifiers or so. It was the first and only time in my qualifying career there I led qualifying ever. I when I teed off we had three spots. When I got in, Jack Tuthill, I dont know if any of you remember Jack, but he was one of our tournament officials. He had added six spots to the field to make it a total of nine. I learned right then that even when you lead a qualifier, it doesn't get you anything. All you want is in the field. The thing I learned from that was -- and in two and a half years of being a Monday qualifier, I missed qualifying only three times. I made a lot of cuts which advanced me on, but only missed three times in two and a half years. I think part of that came from the very first event when I found that you don't have to go out and take unnecessary risks, because those last few holes you have a feeling that you're gonna qualify. And I was a good qualifier. There was another event out in -- not Memphis, but in Los Angeles. We were qualifying on three different sites for a total of six spots, two per site. I got one of those two spots where I qualified, so... I think Monday -- any qualifier is a mindset. You have one day in which to get it done. I was reasonably proficient in doing that. THE MODERATOR: Maybe something about cashing your first check there at Cleveland. HALE IRWIN: Well, the first check went right to my sponsors. I didn't get to see much of it. Jack Vickers? Who I'm sure many of you are familiar with Jack. He was the guy that started the national event out in Castle Pines in Denver. He was my sponsor when I started the tour. In them there days, if you wish, you had to show either your own bank account or some bank account that you could make it with $20,000 over the course of a year. No imagine that. How much you think Phil spent last week just in one week? But anyway, you had to show $20,000 for the year. And Jack and another gentleman became my sponsors, so that check that you referred to went into paying back that $20,000. I got to keep a little of that beyond the 20, but it all went right back. Yeah, I still have a little ledger that I kept when I traveled that shows what the expenses were for the week. If my expenses went over $300 or $350 for the week, I was -- it was getting pretty tight. Pretty tight. That's why I mentioned some of those nights in the car. You bet. I spent some nights in the car. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Was there ever a time in the early years where you were discouraged or maybe thought, I've got to try something else besides golf? HALE IRWIN: Well, the discouragement factor, if you -- no. There were times when perhaps you might be overwhelmed with fatigue just from grinding and grinding and grinding. Because when I started out, we drove the tour. You know, very few guys -- I think Arnold and maybe Jack, had their own airplanes. Some people flew, but for the most part I drove for nearly three years in the car. Other than Memphis where I flew and the week to Atlanta and then I flew home, which was in Boulder, Colorado at the time. Traded in my 396 Super Sport -- God, wish I had it back -- for a big ole Pontiac Bonneville with a trunk as big as this tent, and drove to Toronto for my third event. From that point on, I was on the road, other than when I played in Hawaii. But I was never discouraged. I knew that coming out of my background, you know, having not played a lot of golf, a lot of competitive golf on the national scene, that I had a lot to learn. I felt that's what kept me going, was that -- there would be many times where I would go watch the guys that were the stars at the time. Just go watch them and see what they did. Can I make any body do that? I knew I couldn't swing like Jack, I knew I couldn't do what Arnold did, but I watched them to see how they went about playing. How they got around the golf course. I just kind of picked up things. I never had a coach, and still don't, so I just kind of adapted to what I could. Some was osmosis, some was just experience. Some learning trying shots and discarding others. But, no, I was never discouraged. There were times I was physically just worn down. I don't allow discouragement. That's never been part of -- if I feel like I'm getting anywhere near that, then I change the venue, I do something that makes me feel encouraged. Q. What were your expectations of your golf career when you took that first swing 1000 events ago? HALE IRWIN: When I stepped up to the tee in Memphis, I can remember being one Nervous Nelly. I was scared to death. In fact, that week, I had never hit a person with a golf ball in my life, and I hit two in that week. The very first hole I played -- and you folks won't remember the old, old, old Colonial that was downtown. They were all little push-up greens. First hole we played, second shot, hit it over the green and hit the lady right in the butt. But there was a lot padding there. Didn't hurt her. But the one that scared me was -- I think it was on a Saturday. I had hit -- I don't know why this comes to mind, but I hit it -- off the last hole I hit it left. I had to hit under a tree, and the ball went under a tree and skipped into some other trees. I'm walking up the fairway, and here comes an ambulance across the fairway. I'm kind of looking, and a marshal said, Your ball hit a little girl in the eye. Well, that just devastated me. I went over there, and there were three children that their grandmother had left them just to play in the trees while she went out and did her thing. This ball had skipped, skipped, and it hit her right in the -- not in the eye. It was right on the bone just below it. But fortunately it had skipped so it wasn't going with a lot of pace. But anyway, she came out the next day with a little bandage on her eye, and I was so relieved to see her. That ambulance will scare you to death. I don't know. What was your question? Expectations? Q. Yeah. HALE IRWIN: Expectations were realistic, let's put it that way. I knew that, going back to the question, I had a lot to learn. I was competitive enough to know, that, yes, I could compete. I had won the NCAAs and a lot of the friends that were out rookies with me I had played against some. Not a lot. But I qualified at the school. I finished fourth in the school. So I knew I had some raw talent, but it was trying to get that talent coalesced into something that resembled a more efficient golfer. It took a while to do that. I think some of it was just that I didn't have the background in golf. I wasn't refined at all. It was just kind of learning on my own. So my expectations were -- I've always said you need to set goals. They needed to be lofty, but so lofty that you couldn't reach them. You know, like in the carnival reaching the brass ring? It's gotta be out there, and if it's too easy to grab then it's not worth having. If it's too far out there you're gonna lose into in trying. It was just take it slowly up the ladder of success. I didn't have any real expectations to speak of other than to try my every week. That's all I could do. Kind of a no-answer to your question, but that's kind of what I'm getting better at. Q. Going through two and a half years I think you said of Monday qualifying, how different is that from what guys have to face today? You go through tour school and have to go through the three stages and the six-rounder, they say, is the biggest crucible there is in golf. To have to put yourself through this every week, how different is that, and how did that help you get to where you wanted to go? HALE IRWIN: Well, I don't know what the mindset is for just the one or two qualifying stages now. You know, I've never done that, other than when I qualified down at the PGA National in April of '68. You had one opportunity to make the tour. There were no mini tours, nothing else, so you either made it or you went back to doing whatever it was you came from. So in that sense, there was that it's make it or break it. We had eight rounds of golf. We had 18 on Thursday, 18 on Friday, 36 on Saturday; we got the sabbath off; 18 on Monday; 18 on Tuesday; and 36 on Wednesday. So that was pretty much of a grind. I happened to like it because being the old football player, Hey, I can do anything, I didn't mind that because I felt like I was in pretty good condition. Physically it wasn't a problem, but mentally I was shot because I had never been through anything like that before. That's what it ultimately comes down to. That's why I think I was a good qualifier. Mentally you have to get yourself ready for that. So I actually didn't mind -- there was talk then of should we not have just one or perhaps two qualifying schools and do away with Monday qualifying. I happened to like Monday -- I wanted a chance every week. If I didn't make the cut, I wanted a chance to make it the next week. I didn't want it rely upon one week in case I was ill or a family something. There could be something that week that was devastating to the whole year. I didn't mind having an opportunity every week. That was my mindset. Q. How much has the game changed? Equipment obviously. HALE IRWIN: Since the Guda Percha days? Q. Yeah. Yeah. (Laughter.) HALE IRWIN: Well, in my career, let's put it that way, we've gone from big white wide belts to narrow, and now we're back to big wide white belts. What goes around comes around. I think equipment has probably been one of the bigger ones, particularly the golf ball. But, yeah, I don't think we ever talked about this, but the agronomy, what we're seeing with the superintendents. They're scientists. What they've done with turf quality now. We're seeing tees now that we used to putt on that were greens. They're so good. So that's changed, and one of the reasons we see such lower scoring. I think the attitude of the players. Maybe not so much out here because we kind of remember what it was like playing for far less money. But I think the attitude of some of the players might be a little more expected of them to get more things than maybe having to go out and really earn it. But I think golf is very much a lifestyle that people have enjoyed. Even in today's economic times, I think people still come and we still have golf tournaments and we still enjoy them. But the biggest thing, more than anything else, is that we're all more under the microscope. All of us. Doesn't matter what you do. You're under the microscope more and more with today's smaller and smaller world. The communication/information system are so -- I mean, you punch a button and you pull up this stuff. There's so much of an awareness now of everything. Every little swing that you make out there somebody's seen it on YouTube or have been filmed. What went wrong with that swing? Well, you can barely remember what the swing was. So I think the details. As they say, the devil is in the details. There's been so much analysis now. And I say that simply because the golf ball, let's take that. We didn't used to have wind tunnel testing golf balls and computerized dimple patterns. You pick a ring, you pick a golf ball, and it would slip through the ring. You put it in your pocket for the par-5s. If it was an egg, you kind of set it aside. Out of a dozen balls, you might have three or four that you go out and play with. Now they're just all perfect. So just things like that. Q. When you were wearing those white belts the first go-round, there was no such thing as the Champions Tour. What were you thinking you might be doing at this, the senior tour stage of your life? HALE IRWIN: Well, when I was 40 years old that was old as far as competitive golf goes, and that's when I started my golf course design company. When I was 40, 1985. I had just won the Memorial event, and I thought, you know, how much longer am I going to do this? How much do I want to do this? Because there wasn't really anything on the horizon. I think -- I don't know when the senior tour started. THE MODERATOR: '80. HALE IRWIN: 1980. So it had been about five years of kind of this show out there. It was competition, but it was really kind of a show. I didn't really know if I wanted to be part of that. It didn't seem to be a very lucrative thing to do. I had always thought about the design work and thought that's where I'm gonna go. I kind of got into that in '85. But I gave myself 1990 if things didn't get better, i was gonna say bye-bye. I'll see you. I'm gonna go do my design work. And as I refer back to that sitting down with a legal pad and writing those things down, kind of turned it all around. But it's been quite a ride. I'll have to say that. But would I have ever thought the Champions Tour and the old senior tour would evolve to what it has? No. I think the people that went before me that kind of put it all in motion really did us all a tremendous favor. It always seemed like it was the same people that kind of got the regular tour away from the PGA of America. Always kind of the same group of people that were the -- built the foundation for the rest of us to enjoy. Q. Hale, couple things: Any piece of advice you got when you started playing that you still recall to this day from one of the players? And did you have a kind of a mentor? I know you and Dale had gone to Colorado. Anyone that helped you when you started? HALE IRWIN: Well, Dale Douglas was a friend of mine from Colorado. Dale and I played in the 1967 U.S. Pro-Am together in Ohio and we won. I was the amateur and he was the pro. Again, I felt like I contributed to the team as much as he did. You know, I felt pretty spunky that I could create some birdies and perhaps make it out on the tour. But like I said earlier, I've never had a swing coach or trainer or anything like that. So it's all been pretty much on my own, with the exception -- it's no different going out on the practice tee here. Phil, take a look at this swing. Where am I aiming? You know, kind of get a little something here and there, but no real coach. But Dale was a guy that more than anything else, okay, we set off from Toronto and next stop was Cleveland. Dale, how do you get to Cleveland? Where do you stay in Cleveland? He would say, Well, here, stay at this place or stay at that place. We didn't have housing and transportation committees. I remember going to Columbus, Ohio one year to play if sort of precursor of the Memorial event. I went round and round -- I was like, I'll just go to Columbus. It's not a very big town. I went around and around Columbus trying to find a place to stay. When I finally got to the hotel they had never heard of me. I wasn't on the list. One of the officials said, Hey, come on down and play. I thought I was in. But I was just there as a backup in case somebody didn't play. He get me $50 of show-up money, and I didn't play. I won't even say who that was. We know who it was. But those kinds of things in the early days you just learned. You picked them up. I won't say it's the school of hard knocks. That's just how it came about. And the advice, I would say probably was from my father. He said, Don't start something that you can't finish. That's always been sort of the motto I've had. If you start it, see it through. I think that lesson came very clearly to me in 1976 at the Florida Citrus Open in Orlando. I think I had opened with 74 or 76, some not-very-good score. I went to Wade Cagle, and I said, Wade, how do you withdraw? He said, Well, you've informed me; that's enough. I said, Okay. I went into the locker room, and I was tired. I was like, I'm gonna go home and see the family. I'm a U.S. Open winner. I can do these things. Then I started taking my stuff out of the locker, and something just didn't feel right. I said, this is not right. Again, my dad, see it through. I said one more day, see it through, and then go home. Well, I went out and shot 64, made the cut, and shot a pair of 66s on the weekend and then beat (indiscernible) in a playoff to win. So that's why you see it through. Q. What makes this tournament, the Outback, special to you? HALE IRWIN: We have great feelings fields. The golf course itself is one of our better golf courses. Amy Hawk and her staff are all friends of ours. We've known them for a long time. Outback and Chris and Bob have been so good to us through the years. The community. We get a lot of people to come out. There's a lot things that go into success of an event. There's probably no other event that's better than this event on the Champions Tour. There may be some just as good, but not any that's better when you throw in all the things that come about: The enthusiasm of the people, the community itself, the charities. I think it epitomizes what the Champions Tour tries to do. the visibility in the community. You tell me. As far as, you know, we're here for just a few days and we're gone. It seems like it's a longer-lasting event than just the three or four or five days of play. It takes more than that to make an event successful. All of these people wearing orange and you in the media, it all comes together nicely here. Comfortably, let's put it that way. There's not a forced fit at all. That's what we feel as players. Q. Talk about what Fred Couples has done. He's won three straight obviously. HALE IRWIN: Sheriff is here. You got to watch what you say. Q. Just how Fred has burst onto the scene, I guess. HALE IRWIN: Well, Fred, it's hard to believe he has a bad back. I think that's a bunch hocus-pocus myself. But honestly, I've seen an MRI of Fred's back, and it looks like a road map. I know that he had some back issues. He goes in and out of that. But what he's done, aside from having a bad back, which just makes it ever that much more impressive, is that he's swinging so well. The best golf I played in my career was when I was 52 years old. Why? I don't know. Fred may be a little bit there. There was reference to John Cook. Maybe John -- how old is John? About 52 or 53? THE MODERATOR: Yep. HALE IRWIN: I think there's as point in your life where you still can physically do all the things and your maturity level -- mentally you're more comfortable maybe than you've ever been. When you put those things together, it's amazing what happens. Fred may be there. He looks always sort of slap-happy and pretty easygoing, but you don't know what's going on inside his head. . He may have some issues that we're unaware of. Maybe those issues are nonexistent right now. I think what happens outside of the game really affects you inside the game. I would say his life must be pretty comfortable right now. He's playing some awesome golf. What he did last week was just terrific. What Tom did at the British Open and what Tom did last week, I just think any time our players -- Fred Funk has done it. It's hard to go back and forth, though. I would say if you can go back and forth you're exceptional. I found it hard to do, but I had made an early commitment that this was where I belonged out here. I went over to the other side a few times, but felt that it was more appropriate for me to be over here. THE MODERATOR: Hale, thank you very much. Good luck this week. HALE IRWIN: Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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