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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 24, 2005

Steve Jones

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

TODD BUDNICK: We thank Steve Jones for stopping in after an opening 8 under, 64 THE PLAYERS Championship. Steve has played 14 made 14 appearances here at THE PLAYERS, and this 64 today is the best round since his 66 in his first round in his first Players Championship in 1987. Talk about today, no bogies, and you went through seven birdies over eight holes at one stretch.

STEVE JONES: Yeah, that was pretty good, wasn't it?

TODD BUDNICK: That wasn't bad.

STEVE JONES: It was a funny start. I was just really patient today and I knew a couple under would be a good score, actually just in my mind, especially after parring the first holes. I didn't pressure it much.

And first thing I birdied three in a row. Had some funny pins out there today with the way the ball was spinning on the greens. You had to be careful. So actually my caddie and I really clubbed well today.

TODD BUDNICK: Talk about that stretch, the seven birdies.

STEVE JONES: Let's see, well, I think I didn't the one big key for me today was I didn't I don't think I missed any fairways. I don't know if anybody checked stats, but my driver was really good today. My teacher, Scott []zones and I have been working on my bounce and staying level.

I felt pretty good coming into this week. And then I guess when I got to 16 I hit a good drive and hit a 5 wood. I actually thought it was going to be about a foot for eagle. And it went in that swale and chipped it up a foot for birdie.

17, I was first up. Back pin, a little bit of wind so I hit it about probably 90 percent 8 iron and it was the right club and made a good stroke on it.

And then 18 I hit a really good drive and kind of flared a 7 iron out to the right. I must have had 60 feet or something and just tried to get it tried to get my speed right, tried to get it close. And sometimes they go in. It did. Probably the first putt over 30 feet I've made this year.

And then went to No. 1, and it was a tough green. It was real wet and muddy and the ball spun off the green. Made a good 2 putt from the fringe.

And then I started birdieing again on No. 2 where I 2 putted for birdie; driver, 3 wood there, about 250 to the pin, 2 putted from about 25 feet.

And No. 3, I hit a 7 iron, probably 12 feet, had perfect speed on it, good read.

And 4, I hit it down the middle, right in a sand divot, and that was a big turning point for me, because I could have set there and complained about it, and I just said, you know what, you know how to hit this shot. And I just choked way down on a pitching wedge, and I was only 90 yards, you have to hit it fat, it's going to look like you hit it fat, it was straight down on the ball, because it was in the sand over water, and I hit it a foot. That was a big turning point, because that could have been an easy bogey or double from that lie.

TODD BUDNICK: Another bomb on 5.

STEVE JONES: I was in between 4 and 5 iron. I took the 4 and hit it a little hard so I went past the pin and just it must have been a 12 foot break, and I tried to get the speed right, and I did, and the line was right, too. So I got two bombs today.

I missed a little one there at 6, I thought I could have made but I misread it. I guess I didn't birdie until No. 9. And I hit a 9 iron about ten feet.

Q. Steve, give us a little bit about the elbow injury, and was there any point last year, late season, where you could have played some golf but you decided just to hold off, maybe a combination of the injury and the Ryder Cup duties?

STEVE JONES: No, there was no way I could play last year. I was pushing it to start the year at the Hawaiian Open. I wasn't ready at the Hawaiian Open. But I knew if I wanted to try to play decent at the Phoenix Open, then I felt like I needed to get a couple of tournaments under my belt. And I had to get that competition under my belt and mentally had to get going. I didn't want to wait until Phoenix because there's so many people there.

Anyway, I was playing come September, I was playing about once a week it all. So basically that's like hitting a bucket, 30, 40 shots.

Q. What was the injury?

STEVE JONES: I had a brevis tendon that was off and they had to sew that back on. I hurt it in '02 and I played with it for about nine months maybe eight months. And May 1st of '03 was when I stopped.

Then I had about three months where I was trying to do other therapy on it, not to do surgery, to avoid surgery, and finally I just said, nothing is working, I have to go in. I went to a doctor in Montana August 7th, I think, and he went in there and he said, no wonder it was hurting, you've got a tendon that was off the bone.

So he sewed it back on and cleaned up that bone, and about seven months later I could straighten my arm. And then in June of '04 I was playing I just said I'm going to start playing once a week, after a couple of weeks I was chipping and putting a little bit and trying to get my hand strength back. And then I started playing once a week in the summer, and by September, October, I started playing twice a week, and then December, I upped it to about playing three times a week and practicing one day a week.

Hawaii was the first time I walked four straight days and played four straight days. So I was pretty happy with holding up in Hawaii for four days. I still get sore, and I'm about 50 percent practice level right now, maybe even less. Normally I go out and hit some balls and putt right now, but I'm not going to do anything. So that's where I'm at.

Q. And how surprised are you right now?

STEVE JONES: I'm surprised, the best round in the year. I don't know what I've shot my best round. But I knew I was close. I've always felt close when I've played well or won, I've felt like something is going to happen soon. And I had that feeling that something is going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen the next three days, but I felt like I had a good one in me, I was due. I've been doing the right things, and my teacher and I have been working on some things, the right things, thankfully, not overanalyzing.

Probably the big boost mentally was I talked to Hale Irwin a couple of weeks ago and I flat asked him, you know, why do you win so much? And I had talked to him before, but I said, mentally I'm just not doing what I need to do. He gave me some suggestions on what he did when he was in his late 40s and about to start, now, Champions Tour.

And last week I put those thoughts in play and felt pretty good. I had a lot of bogeys from the fairways, but felt okay, but this week, obviously today I felt really well, was focused and didn't get ahead of myself, and I'm going to have to try to keep those thoughts.

Q. I guess can you just expand on what some of those thoughts were, it's more than technical stuff, it's more motivational?

STEVE JONES: The only thing I'll say, I'll tell you the first part of it was I do want to play golf. That was my first question to you, do you still want to play golf? Because any comeback you do is hard. And the older you get to come back is harder. The players are better, they're hitting longer. I get older, I get injured. It's tougher. And you have to ask yourself do you really want to do this anymore. And I told him I do. And then we went into some other stuff, and that's just for him and I.

Q. Just expand, what was it

STEVE JONES: The main thing he wanted me to do is to be positive, don't be a complainer.

Q. What made you want to stay with it, what is it that says I really want to do this despite how much it hurts?

STEVE JONES: I'm not ready to retire, I guess. I feel like I can still play with the right amount of practice. Obviously you have to practice to do the right things, and I haven't been able to practice a lot, so that's probably what's surprised me more than anything. I haven't been in this situation today for years. But my focus was good. And so no matter how I feel mentally or physically, if your focus is good, you can surprise yourself with some good play. And I didn't miss any fairways, either, and that's a big key on this golf course no, I did, I missed No. 11, darn it, I just thought of it. It was a big hole.

Q. I think this dovetails with what you were talking about. Looking ahead, you've gotten the first round out of the way, but that's one fourth of the way. How do you approach mentally the rest of the week to maybe make this a big victory for you?

STEVE JONES: No. 1 is not to get ahead of myself and think about the victory, you know. But it's easy to get ahead of yourself and say, okay, you're playing good, let's keep it going, let's get in contention on the weekend or whatever. For me right now it's one shot at a time. And the more I focus in it does get harder as Sunday approaches to do that. But I try to have fun, whatever happens, happens. I've given myself this whole year to get ready to come back. I've got two years on my exemption left and I told myself that's why we moved back to Arizona. If my injury healed good, we'll move to Arizona and I'll practice, give myself a little bit better chance than playing in Montana over the winter. If in two years I still want to be out here, I'll keep playing, if not I'll hang it up. So that's kind of where I'm at.

Q. 17th hole, you made birdie there?

STEVE JONES: Yeah.

Q. Do you have any history there of good, bad or indifferent?

STEVE JONES: I've had both. I've birdied there and a couple of years ago they were showing highlights, and you can find it, I hit three in the back with the water, the green was hard and all three they kept showing me, I kept putting the tee down with the same club. I was missing the cut at the time so it didn't matter, but I wanted to hit the shot. That's a tough pin out there today, and the only reason it's easier is because it's soft. If you land up on top it will stop.

But probably tomorrow afternoon it might be a little harder, and it might not stop as well. And then by Saturday it could be real firm, and it could be a whole new golf course and a whole new hole.

Q. What did you make on your score that time? You put three in the water, right?

STEVE JONES: I don't know, seven or eight or something.

Q. Did you go out of your way to seek out Hale? The reason is obvious why you sought him.

STEVE JONES: I've been thinking about talking to him for a long time. He lives in Phoenix. And Kirk Triplett had a Pro Am, Dave Thomas Pro Am in Phoenix, and he brought in all a lot of bigwigs and Hale was one of them. And when I saw him, I've been thinking about it a long time to talk to him, because I'd been struggling mentally, and I wanted to find out what he was thinking about, and it was very enlightening. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was something I could manage to think about on the golf course, and it was good. It was good. The main thing was more positive and stay focused and things like that, along that nature.

Q. Had you made any contingency or fallback plans had you not been able to come back? I read you considered teaching golf or doing something different.

STEVE JONES: Well, in the last year and a half I've actually actually the last year I have kind of become a developer of sort in Montana. I did a commercial development up there, hope to be selling most of it this summer. And I kind of got into the real estate, just a little bit. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my injury, might not play again, didn't know.

This is the third time I've been there, where I wasn't sure I was going to play again. So I kind of said, what am I going to do. I actually bought into a painting company, I was 50 percent owner of a painting company. I painted last spring, and from March to May of last spring I was actually doing light painting stuff and houses. I wasn't doing more than a couple of hours a day because I'd switch off left hand, right hand, almost like a rehab. It was pretty funny, really. But we've sold that company since; three months ago we sold it.

Q. You mentioned on TV you had finally hung up the Bull's Eye after 23 years. What led to that, and do you have it in a safe place in case you need to get it back?

STEVE JONES: Yeah, it's in my hotel room. I used it this morning just to warm up. I've been kind of struggling a little bit putting the last five years well, the last two years I haven't played, but before that, you never know if it's your how far you're leaning over the ball, if you're too close, if you're too far away, is the ball too far forward. And you're like, you've got to look back at tapes and try to find out what you've done in the past that works.

And for me I have kind of gone back and looked at some things. But I just felt like after I've switched maybe a total of, in 23 years, maybe a total of four months, which equates to like 16 tournaments I've probably switched, in 23 years. Kind of put it in the closet and say, behave yourself, come back better the next time. But this time I just picked up this putter last Tuesday afternoon, the Scotty Cameron, it feels good, my caddie likes it. Not the caddie that's with me but the caddie that's been with me, and he got one also from Scotty Cameron.

I had good distance with it and technology was better, mis hits were better. It was rolling better the first two feet. Bull's Eye I had a tendency to hit down on it and it would pop. So just some things like that, and the main thing about putting is if you feel comfortable with the putter. Today I hit some pretty good putts, had a good line and it went in. Could I have done it with my Bull's Eye today? I could have. But did I? No.

I used the new putter and it felt good, so who knows how long it's going to last. You hear those stories all the time, a guy switches a putter and he wins a tournament.

Q. When you're away from the Tour for extended lengths of time, what's the biggest void you feel of not being out here? Secondly, do you ever feel like almost like it was a different person that won the U.S. Open nearly a decade ago, with all the things that happened in between?

STEVE JONES: How do you know those things? That's pretty good insight. That's exactly how you feel. Who did that? Can I ever win again? Hale Irwin said the same thing about himself in his late 40s, I don't know if I can ever win again, to answer that part of it.

The void part, not being out here, for me it's just the camaraderie with all the guys. There's 150, 180 guys you know out here, and you see them for years and years and years and all of a sudden you're not there for two years. I keep in contact with a few of them, but it's not the same. That's what I missed the most, not being around my friends out here.

Q. You talked about the patience. You win U.S. Opens by being extremely patient, and that's not so far back in the past that you can't be able to call on some of that, if you stay in contention this week. Do you think some of that will is still in you, some of the attributes you were talking about that won an Open?

STEVE JONES: The way I hit the driver today was very similar to how I won the U.S. Open. When I put the club down, I put the ball on the inside of it, and it wouldn't allow my club to go out to the right and hook it. I was more swinging around myself at the U.S. Open. So I wasn't hooking as much.

In that respect, yeah, it feels similar, other than you have to shoot a lot lower here obviously than at the U.S. Open, and the course is real wet. But we had that huge rain storm Wednesday of the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills and we almost couldn't play on Thursday, if you recall. And it was really wet for two or three days, and then it got really hard on Sunday. So maybe that was a good omen.

Q. This injury and the motorcycle injury, what was the other injury that kept you off?

STEVE JONES: I had thumb surgery in '82 on my rookie year.

Q. How long did that keep you off?

STEVE JONES: That was it's funny about that, it only took I didn't play for about six, seven months and took almost a year by the time I started playing competitive golf again with that one.

Q. Steve, is this you face a lot of challenges in your career. I remember you as a penniless starter out here?

STEVE JONES: Still am.

Q. Still are? Is this the biggest challenge of your career, though, considering you've tasted it before?

STEVE JONES: It could be. What's funny is I feel like I'm hitting the ball better than I have in my career. Is that technology? Is it because I'm swinging the right way for me, now, finally, instead of the way I used to swing and wasn't very consistent? I feel like I'm a more consistent ball striker now. Does that mean tomorrow I go out and hit one fairway all day? It could happen, but my swing feels a lot more comfortable.

There's a few areas that obviously I'm still working on all areas, but there's a few areas that concern me. About 210 to 230 yard area, that concerns me quite a bit in my golf game right now. So there's a lot to work on, but I definitely feel better hitting the ball right now than I ever have in my career.

Q. Phil Mickelson was talking about during the Ryder Cup you had mentioned, he and a couple of other guys, sounded like the Ryder Cup rekindled your desire to play a little bit more. Can you talk a little bit about that?

STEVE JONES: He's exactly right. It's easy to say something, you know, back in September I was playing once a week. Boy, I see what I miss for you, not being a member of the Ryder Cup team. And I said I'm going to go have a talk with Tom Kite because he didn't choose me that year, kind of jokingly. But it's an honor to play on the Ryder Cup team, and I saw, you don't realize it, I've never been to one, and you saw what it was like. I said, you know, this is going to really motivate me to get in gear and to work hard.

I had to be real patient, unfortunately, because maybe good in one way because I couldn't start practicing right away, seven days a week, 500 balls a day. I was hitting 10, 20 balls to warm up, and that was it.

So a lot of it right now for me has to be mental. I have to tell myself I don't need to hit I don't need to be Vijay to play good golf, because I'm not able to do that, first of all, physically I can't do what Vijay does right now. I'm doing about ten percent, maybe, nine percent of what he does, practice wise is what I'm saying. But my mental side has to be so much tougher. And that's where Hale Irwin gave me some good insight.

Q. If you don't hit any balls this afternoon, what do you do to remain limber for tomorrow? Are there any residual effects from the elbow if you play two, three, four days in a row?

STEVE JONES: Yeah, I mean when I played 36 last Friday it was the first time I had played 36 holes in two or three years, at least. I was pretty sore. A lot of guys were sore Saturday morning waking up. But I was definitely sore. I took Saturday off, came over here, played 18 on Sunday, just kind of started working some things out. Does that answer

Q. Will you undergo any therapy this afternoon?

STEVE JONES: Well, the guys at the trailer, I do stretching twice a day. I think I have a routine now that feels comfortable. I'm not working out as much as I used to. I was working out quite a bit when I wasn't playing out here, I guess March through December I was working out quite a bit physically, weights, not heavy weights, obviously, but my legs, core, and I still need to do a lot of that.

I realize now how important that is, especially for your stamina for the week. I mean these guys are fit out here. These guys really look like track stars. A lot of them, not all of them, not me, but a lot of them are fit out here, and people don't realize how much work they do after hitting balls and playing 18 and spending seven hours out here.

Q. I wondered if when you won at Oakland Hills, that's known for its greens and difficult holes. Is there any other place you've experienced that could compare to like 17 here? What I'm trying to say, is 17 different from anything else in golf?

STEVE JONES: 17 last week was pretty tough, too. For some reason this little hole, here, I think the reason it's so tough is because it's so short, you think, I shouldn't hit it in the water, it's only a 9 iron or whatever. But it's the conditions on this course that make it so difficult. But I don't know of any other hole other than you go to 16 at Cypress Point where we used to play, 3 wood or driver, you know, to a big area. But this one is so small.

I think sometimes it puts a little pressure on you, the people are right there, and you don't want to be the one that hits it in the water. And I think probably everybody has done that in their career, they've hit it in the water somewhere. But it's a fun hole and you just you want to you've got to stay focused and hit it and when you're on the green you kind of blow a sigh of relief.

TODD BUDNICK: Thank you, Steve, and good luck the rest of the week.

End of FastScripts.

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