THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT

May 29, 1997

Jesper Parnevik

JESPER PARNEVIK: I was very pleased with my day, of course. I went over to Europe last week and played there, and I played really bad, actually, probably worse than I played since I turned pro. I struggled badly and I missed the cut there. So I came here with no real expectations of doing that great. And I was actually one over after a few holes. And when the balls started to drop and you get that mindset, when you all of a sudden get your confidence back it's a lot easier to play.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Bogey on 3. I hit a terrible drive, big hook, was actually lucky not to hit it into the water. And I tried to hit a stupid shot through a tree, under a tree, around, out of the deep rough, and actually I only moved it about 30 yards, but just over the water, way left. And chipped up to about five feet and holed the putt for bogey. Then I hit a good shot on the next hole, 6-iron to about four feet and made birdie there. No.7, I hit another hooked drive into the bunker, actually pitched out with a wedge, then hit a 5-iron to about 12 feet and holed that, which was a different way to play the hole. And then No. 9, I had a real good 7-iron to about three feet. No. 11, I laid up. It was playing long. And I hit a sand wedge to about 12 feet. Then on 13, I hit driver, 6-iron, I would say to about 25 feet, holed that one. 3-wood, wedge to about 15 feet on the next. Then a driver, 3-wood on the Par-5, chipped it to about 4 feet and made birdie.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Oh, yeah, I had quite a bit, but one, I had a good chance for about 10 feet. Let's see, 10, about 10 feet again. 12, from about 15 feet. 18 was, maybe 15 feet again, but it was a little bit downhill.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yes.

JESPER PARNEVIK: It all depends on what you wanted. I guess you can play a round a year, if you want to play with a pink ball. (Laughter.) The courses are in good shape maybe two months, and they're still probably not good if you compare it to American standards. It's probably about four on the stimpmeter if you roll the greens. But the southern part of Sweden you can play -- you can play maybe eight months, but it's not very nice. Stockholm where I'm from, I would say five months -- but it's pretty bad -- you can play in April, May, and you can play in September, but it's terrible.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yes. We have a big tent in Stockholm and you have basements and things like that, you will put a net up. Sometimes I think it's good, especially when you're a kid, not to play around the year. You don't get focused on this one game too early, you do different things, you play soccer, and ice hockey, tennis and things like that. And so you don't really have, what should I say, the pressure of doing so well in this particular sport. You mostly play for fun until you're about 15. And then you can fly out to Spain, come over here on a scholarship and things like that. There's different ways.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Well, I actually never did that. I started actually coming over to Florida a couple of weeks every winter to play and practice.

JESPER PARNEVIK: That was around 20, 19.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Maybe a month sometimes.

JESPER PARNEVIK: It would mean a lot. But sometimes there's not much you can do about it. The runner-ups I had this year, I really don't feel I had a chance to win yet. Steve Jones ran away with it in Phoenix, and Nick Price ran away with it in Hilton Head and Brad Faxon ran away with it in New Orleans. The only real chance was in San Diego, if I finished birdie, I would have won. One of these days -- then you have different scenarios, I won other times when the guy who was leading is playing bad and you make a few birdies and all of a sudden you win by three or four. It's such a small difference between first and second -- or first and 20th.

JESPER PARNEVIK: I don't know if it would matter that much. I think it more depended on Olazabal, how he's playing. I think Seve is going to have a tough time not picking him to play the Ryder Cup in Spain and all that, the way he's playing right now, if he would have made the team -- I feel pretty sure he's going to make the team, but I think that would be the worse case if Olazabal wouldn't get on or Nick wouldn't get on.

JESPER PARNEVIK: That was about five years ago. And it was actually in Florida. And I came from Sweden to go and practice for a few weeks, before the European Tour started where I played back then. And I was very pale, because it's pretty dark in Sweden in the wintertime. And I flipped it up to get a little bit of a suntan and I started putting better, because I didn't see the edge of my hat. And my coach saw me, I have a Swedish coach that was over with me, and he started laughing and said it looked funny, but thought I should try it in the first tournament. That tournament was Majorca and I ended up losing in a six-hole playoff to Seve. And I've had it ever since then.

JESPER PARNEVIK: I don't know. I was a little bit tired. I think it's tougher to go that way than come this way flying-wise. I guess I was not really, I don't know how to say, we just had a baby and so on, so I hadn't practiced for three weeks. I was not really so keen on going. I was tired and, I don't know, just small things and you play terrible.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah.

JESPER PARNEVIK: No. Just find it again, kind of. It got lost on the flight.

JESPER PARNEVIK: I just hit balls on the range here and tried some things out, and just started feeling better yesterday.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah, but he doesn't really want to -- he keeps it pretty low, tries to keep it low key. I think he wants to keep his options open and not really tell anyone anything until September comes.

JESPER PARNEVIK: No, they told me what kind of options I had. And they wanted me to come back to Europe and play. Just some things, they tried to change the rules a little bit and so on, so I could come over there. But starting this year, I already decided I was going to try to play fairly full time over here. If I would have known about it earlier, maybe, and things were a little bit different, I might have gone back to Europe this year and played.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah --

JESPER PARNEVIK: That could be true. But the same thing, I told them also that I would come over and play if I got to count the Lancome money from last year, when I won in Paris. And they said I couldn't do that, because I was not a member, then, even if I rejoined now I could not count my money from last fall.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Actually I think Titleist was my first sponsor, and they were not really so keen on the idea at first. But after a few weeks they thought it was all right, I guess.

JESPER PARNEVIK: That could have been maybe, '94.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah.

JESPER PARNEVIK: No, I've always pretty much looked at the scoreboards. It was one of those things that happened at the British Open, not really that I didn't look, it was more that I was pretty focused on making birdies, and I cannot miss the scoreboard.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Maybe my seven years on the European Tour helps, because we play in this type of weather a lot more often than you do over here. It's more just I accept it, not really be frustrated by the weather, and just kind of grind. But definitely because we play in much worse conditions in Europe it could be a factor.

JESPER PARNEVIK: I don't really like wet weather, I'd rather play in the sunshine.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah, it used to be 11 tournaments straight, you had to play 11 tournaments. It used to be less, but then it went up to 11 again. And now they talked about making it 11 but you can count all the majors, so in a way it's seven tournaments, plus the four majors. So that's what I did.

JESPER PARNEVIK: No, I cannot qualify. I can get picked on the wild cards but I cannot qualify on my own.

JESPER PARNEVIK: They can qualify on your own, I think Olazabal can get in.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah. I can get one of the wild cards, but it looks much better for me if Olazabal or Nick gets on the team by themselves, instead of having to use the wild cards.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Not like over here. It's a fairly new sport in Sweden, it's booming a lot, but the newspaper interest is mostly in ice hockey, soccer and tennis still. But it's growing. They kind of mention my name sometimes now, even.

JESPER PARNEVIK: I think I'd beat Tiger, too.

JESPER PARNEVIK: It's always been a dream of mine. My family came over here in 1980 to do kind of a vacation, tour. And I watched the golf on TV all the time then. And I kind of always looked forward to one day maybe play over here sometime.

JESPER PARNEVIK: It tastes like sand. I haven't done that for a while now. I think my last cure was at Doral, I guess.

JESPER PARNEVIK: From Sweden.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Like I said it's booming a lot, yes. And we're getting more and more players every year. When I grew up I was pretty much the only kid -- well, I was the only kid in my school who played golf. And none of the neighbors or anything like that played golf, so it's grown a lot since then.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah. If you're good enough they have kind of a system where you qualify for the youth team and boys team and they play against Spain and France and things like that and England. So you get to travel and play against other kids your age and so on, which is very good. Kind of gets you motivated to practice and so on, so you look forward to these trips.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Oh, the British Open, definitely. And Nick could finish second. (Laughter.)

JESPER PARNEVIK: Well, as much as I want to play on the team, I really can't be disappointed if I don't get picked because the decision I made was to play over here, so it's kind of -- if my main goal for this year was to get on the Ryder Cup team I would have rejoined the European Tour and played over there. So whatever happens I just have to take whatever comes to me, I guess, because I put myself in the situation where I have to get picked. If it would have been the other way around I would have probably been disappointed.

JESPER PARNEVIK: If he would have had 12 picks and I wouldn't get picked I would be very disappointed, yes.

JESPER PARNEVIK: It's kind of a hobby of mine, I picked up about six months ago, a lot of fun.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Mostly cards and coins and things like that. I met a lot of magicians and they're very interesting people, very fun to be around and I just enjoy watching close up magic when people do things, right in front of you, you can't figure out what they're doing.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yep.

JESPER PARNEVIK: It's more of a cleansing process, I would say. How should I put it?

JESPER PARNEVIK: Well, it is, the way it tastes, maybe. It's supposed to clean your inside, your intestines and all that. It's supposed to absorb a lot of the heavy metals, like mercury and things like that, and kind of flush it out, I guess.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Actually once, yeah. I had to -- I didn't have -- I used to have it in like a box, but this time it was in like a white plastic bag. It looks like something else.

JESPER PARNEVIK: Yeah, but it looked like something else. They took a piece and they let me go through, actually.