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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIPMay 11, 2011Jerry PatePONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA MARK WILLIAMS: Jerry Pate, thanks for joining us. 1992 champion here, but just before we get underway with talking about the 30th playing here since your victory, I know last week you were at the Champions Tour event, the Regions Tradition, there for a certain purpose to hit the ceremonial tee shot to open the event at Shoal Creek with Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Talk about that experience first before we start talking about THE PLAYERS. JERRY PATE: Well, it was really a great week for me. I was involved with Shoal Creek starting in 1997 and was asked to represent the golf club by hall Thompson, the chairman, and was able to help bring the PGA in 1994 to Shoal Creek as one of the founding members. We all go back -- in fact, last week going back to the 1990 Championship, and I think that was a time in history that changed golf and changed the way people look at golf and access to memberships at golf clubs. So it was really a great week for everybody in Birmingham. The irony of that whole time was there were probably not many golf course private clubs in America that didn't discriminate. I think it was just Birmingham that was looked upon differently because of the whole civil rights era. It was unfortunate for Hall Thompson. He was a great man. Did a lot for people, did a lot for golf, but it was great for the game to move forward past that and to grow towards the next generation of golfers, which if you look at what's happened since then with the First Tee initiative and all the educational learning and opportunities for kids to come out and play golf that wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity, I think we've moved into the next millennium definitely in the game. I would love to have played. I would have been eligible to play, but my son got married on Saturday in Tallahassee, my youngest who's 27. So he didn't want to move the date, and so his marriage came before playing in a major championship. MARK WILLIAMS: How nervous were you on that tee shot? JERRY PATE: It was kind of funny because after playing competitively for over 35 years, you don't get nervous as much as you used to, even though in certain situations you're nervous. But I think as we stood there early that morning, Condoleezza and I were talking, and the way it was hyped up and you look at the emotional moment of Condoleezza as a member being the one hitting the opening tee shot and what she's done for Alabama, what she's done for our country. And I grew up about 40 miles from there in Anniston, Alabama. I think she's one year younger than I am. And to see her accomplishments in her life, and then reflect back to the opening tee shots in 1977 where Hall Thompson, Jack Nicklaus, Hubert Green and I, three major champions. So my mind was just racing, and then all of a sudden I got up and thought, oh, my God, I've got to hit this shot. I've never felt so nervous in my life. In fact, I can't remember when I have. She hit it right down the middle. I sort of bailed it out to the right and sort of hit a tree down the fairways a good ways, hit the limbs on the right-hand side and it bounced in the middle of the fairway, and everybody laughed and thought, membership bounce. MARK WILLIAMS: You obviously had some nervous moments winning here in 1992. It's the 30th playing at TPC Sawgrass on the Stadium Course since then, and just give us some memories of that time and reminisce a little bit if you would. JERRY PATE: It was kind of funny, I played a practice round with Ed Need and Tom Weiskopf, which both players had beautiful swings and were great ball strikers. Tom gave me a secret early in that week about taking the club away. I was playing well coming into that event and played well after that, and then, ironically, come May, I tore my shoulder up and that was sort of the end of my career. It's sort of interesting how that all just came together at that time. But I hit the ball just beautifully all week, and the only shot I can remember in the entire tournament that I really missed, I hit a 5-iron actually on Saturday. We had a long wait playing to the 18th green, the pin was on the front left tucked up against the water, and the wind was a little bit into us right to left or cross right to left. And I hit this 5-iron, hit it on the green and just rolled over and went in the water, and I made double bogey. Ironically, coming in on Sunday I had the same shot, 5-iron, the pin was in the back, and it was a little easier to get to it when it was in the back left center, a lot of green to work with. But I don't even remember being nervous. I think what made the difference -- again, I was a good ball striker, and we had a pro-am that year. As I recall I birdied 17 in the pro-am and I birdied it three of the four days in the tournament. So out of five rounds of playing, I think I birdied it four of the five days and I birdied it on Sunday. So I can't remember, but I'd have to look back and look at all the scores. But I can remember that 17 really didn't intimidate me. It was just a little cut 8-iron shot, 140-yard shot, so that was -- I birdied 17, birdied 18 and won. Q. Mark O'Meara was in here yesterday. He's in here because he won the Senior Players, and he was reminiscing back to the first year here and the description he used about this course back then was it was wild. He said there are now much more opened areas off the fairways. They've cleared them off. Describe what Mark was talking about and how -- you said you weren't nervous, but there was still some scary spots on this course and some untamed areas. JERRY PATE: Well, you just had to pay attention, and I think the concept was to build a low-maintenance golf course with a limited amount of acres of fairway to be groomed, target golf, tees and waste areas and fairways and waste areas or untamed areas, and then the greens. Well, as it evolved after the first year and it was such a success, there were concerns in the areas off the fairways that, well, somebody is going to get bit by a snake, alligator might grab them. It was a pretty wild place. It was just unfinished. As the tournament grew, so did the maintenance and the areas became wider off the fairways. I can remember playing with somebody that hit a big duck hook on the first hole or maybe on the second hole hit a block to the right, and there were palmettos that were six foot tall on the left of one and the right of 2, and if you hit it, which obviously would have been on the left and right of 2, I can remember starting out just looking for golf balls. Just tough. You didn't have a shot. You either took an unplayable lie or went back somewhere or you went back to the tee and teed off again. It was wild and woolly. But I described the golf course as diabolical. It was really a diabolical golf course by Pete Dye. It was designed to challenge the best shot making. And if you look at the history of who's won here, just about all of them are pretty good ball strikers. Not all of them are long, not all of them are short, but they all could hit the ball straight. They could work the ball left to right and right to left. I think that was the key to playing well here, is striking the ball and knowing where it's going when you hit it because if you hit it off line you were going to pay the penalty. Q. We all know you predicted publicly that if you won you were going to do what you did. Can you recall where you were and when you first got that thought in your mind? JERRY PATE: Well, people think that was the first time I jumped in the lake. I did it in Memphis in '81 the summer before and it was about 110 degrees. The hottest place in the world, Memphis, Tennessee, in June. I had gone about two years with ten second place wins. So I just thought what the heck. I'd make it light. The guys at CBS were good friends of mine. You had Summerall and Venturi in the tower in Memphis and Frank Leiber and Ben Wright, but a crazy bunch of guys, Jack Whitaker. And I used to go out to dinner with those guys a lot. I sort of joked about it on Friday night in Memphis at Curtis Person's home. It's so hot, if I won here I'd jump in the lake. He put it in the pressroom on Saturday, and when I'm leading Saturday evening, hell, it's in the paper on Sunday so I've got to do it. We come here and it's a little different circumstance. You really need to go back and look at that field in '82 and see who missed the cut. It was incredible. And all the top names in golf complained the golf course was too hard. We didn't need to be in the golf business. It was unfair; it didn't reward great shot making; it was all about luck and all of the above. And the comments Nicklaus said, it was like trying to land a 6-iron on the hood of a Volkswagen and stop it. You just had to make it stop. So there was talk in the locker room that we were going to fire Deane Beman on and rebuild the golf course. And of course they started the next year, formed a committee, Crenshaw and Ed Sneed were on the committee and several other guys to rebuild the golf course and soften it up. Because if the ball went off the green, it literally rolled 30 feet down into a big hollow, into a big depression, and it was really, really diabolical. I won't call it unfair. The game is unfair. And so I just decided, what the heck. I saw Alice Dye on 10, 11, 12, the par-4. I birdied 12, and it looks like I'm about to get into the lead, and she's walking from 12 over to 13. It's a pretty good walk, and she patted me on the back and said, Come on, you can win this thing. Pete really wants you to win it. I said, You tell Pete I'm going to throw him in the lake. That was it. Q. At any point did you feel like, you know, this is won? You birdied 17 and 18, but was there a point that day where you -- JERRY PATE: I didn't birdie 16, and 16 -- Q. Did you ever make that assumption out here? JERRY PATE: Yeah, I should have birdied 16, and Lietzke, my brother-in-law was coming down 16 behind me, he was in the last group, and I didn't birdie 16. And I thought, well, it's going to be pretty close coming down the wire, and I'm on 17 tee, and he hit a second shot as I recall. And Bruce had a big cut, and I think he hit it in the water, and I remember seeing Gory Glenns, who's passed away, who was an official from Pensacola over there marking the ball in the water. And I thought I've got him. He's in the water and not going to make birdie. I think he had and 8-iron in and sank the putt on 17 and then drove it middle of the fairway on 18 hit it on the green and of course I hit it two feet. And that was probably, for my career, that was probably one of the most meaningful shots. Because I had had some great shots in golf. You know, the hole-in-one at Cypress Point with a 1-iron, the hole-in-one at the U.S. Open where the four guys made hole in ones and then the Open shot with a 5-iron. But when I hit the shot in there, I don't know if people remember, but in the pressroom under the old clubhouse they had -- where you have your opening statement -- I said, yeah, I guess I pulled another 5-iron. Because people for years had said that to hit it this close on the last hole of the U.S. Open with the pin on the left and the water on the left you had to pull it. Nobody would do it. I said, Hey, at 22 years old you don't know what pull is. You're just, boom. You see the kids out there today, every shot is right at the pin, and needless to say I wasn't short on confidence. And I thought I was a great ball striker, so I just fired it right at the pin. That was a great rewarding moment for me was to hit that 5-iron on the last hole here two feet from the hole and be able to say that in the pressroom. I guess I can bench you guys now that I can hit the ball. Q. I was wondering if you could talk about the par-3s on the back side. The 13th hole, strategically, how would you play that hole today? JERRY PATE: I think 13 is one of the most difficult holes on the golf course, especially if there's some wind. Of course, you're not going to see the wind -- you might see it Friday, Saturday with this weather coming through, the rain coming through. But historically in March, 13 was really difficult. The wind would swirl around the Live Oak trees, and if you hit it a little too far to the right it would hang out on the right and if you got it down left front part of the green too far it on the back. With all the undulations, it was just a bear of a hole to get the ball close to the hole. You just have to try to hit it in the middle of the green there. If the pin is on the left, you hit it in the middle, you usually funnel towards the hole, but you can't play too safe because right is not good, either. Q. And what about 17? Of course everybody knows it's the island hole, but late in the tournament -- JERRY PATE: You know, if you think you're one of the world's best players and you miss that green with an 8- or 9-iron, shame on you, you're not one of the world's best players, you've hit a bad shot. I don't remember seeing the winners coming down and the best ball strikers in the game missing that green. You see a lot of tragic bounces there when the green gets hard. But you've just got to stand up there and block it all out. You just have to focus on that shot, and you can stand right on the range all day long with an 8- or 9-iron and hit it within a six foot circle hitting ball after ball. These kids hit it so far today they're hit wedges. It was an 8-iron 30 years ago. So I'm sure -- my son hits it two clubs longer. It's a wedge for all those guys. If they miss that green with a wedge they don't deserve to win, and that's about all I can say. It's not that tough a shot. You just have to stay focused. Q. Can you give a sense of how different the golf course plays now versus '82 and if you've played here recently? JERRY PATE: Well, it's obviously a bit longer. I don't think it plays much longer because the equipment has allowed guys to hit the ball longer for a guy like me it would probably play the same length, but for these guys it plays shorter because, gosh, they hit the ball so long it's crazy. The difference would probably be the firmness of the greens, the new ultra dwarf greens can allow the firmness to be more dramatic. In the old days, I say old days, 30 years ago, we had 328 Bermuda. Well, we had TifDwarf to have been Bermuda overseeded in March, so the greens would be at times much softer. But they could get them firm, but I think all these greens have been rebuilt at least twice, so it's not the same golf course. You know, I made that comment last night. We had a small get-together upstairs with Tim Clark and the commissioner, some of the sponsors. And Tim spoke, and then he asked Deane and me to say a few words. I commented on what a great concept and idea for Deane to do. This is Deane Beman's baby. He does not get the credit for what he's done for this Tour, and Tim has made it ten times better. Where we are today and where we are 30 years ago, gosh, it's just amazing the improvements. The golf course is a much better golf course. It's fairer, it's challenging, and it's in absolute pristine condition. MARK WILLIAMS: Jerry, we appreciate you coming in and making the time to join us, and all the best. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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