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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPJuly 27, 2011Bruce LietzkeTOLEDO, OHIO PETE KOWALSKI: Good afternoon, and we'd like to welcome our 2003 Senior Open champion from here at Inverness, Bruce Lietzke. Probably pretty nice to be pulling in here when you arrived, right? BRUCE LIETZKE: It is. I told a couple of people that coming here, it's the reason that you go to your old high school after 30 or 40 years. You kind of want to see the old building. Dorr Street doesn't look any different to me than it did in 1979 the first time I played a major here, and that clubhouse hasn't changed one bit that I can tell. It's just a good feeling. The Champions Tour, we go to a lot of new real estate developments, and we see new courses and modern architecture and all that, and it is really cool to come back to historic venues like this, and in my case it's pretty historic. It was a real big win for me in the not-too-distant past, eight years ago, which is still quite a bit. But yeah, everything appears to be the same until I got out on the golf course, and it does appear that they've changed a few things on the golf course, and it's really going to play a lot different than it did in '03. There's not a whole lot of distance added. They've added some tee boxes and all that, but the difference in the fairways is pretty dramatic. This golf course in '03 with really firm fairways, I hit lots of 3-woods, I hit lots of utility clubs off the tee, and the ball just chased and chased and chased. One example, the 8th hole is a par-5 here, and on Sunday I hit a 5-iron into that green because I remember I made eagle and that kind of restored my four-stroke advantage. Yesterday I hit driver, and I laid up with a 3-iron and then still hit a 9-iron into the green on the very same hole that the year before -- eight years ago I hit 5-iron for my second shot. So the fairways are not bouncing. There's almost no roll, especially for a guy that fades the ball. My drive doesn't roll very far anyway. So this golf course is really playing dramatically different off the tee. You're required to hit a lot more drivers than in the past, and you're going to be hitting a lot more utility clubs. I'm sure a lot of guys have been telling you, because of the reconfiguration of the holes, this is going to be a back nine. One of you clever writers is going to have to come up with a name for the closing nine, or at least the closing eight holes on this golf course. The last seven or eight holes are just mean, monster holes, and somebody is going to have to dub the back nine here. They've reconfigured it different than any other year we've played here, but it has got -- the last seven holes for sure have got length, penalties, water, diabolical greens, and somebody is going to have to come up with a name for it, and I'm not clever enough to do it. You'll get some really -- guys that are playing good, you'll hear some clever ideas, and then the guys that play the back nine in 14 over par, they'll have their names for it, too, and you will have to decide which ones you want to use. But this is a mean back nine on this golf course now, playing much, much longer than it did in any of the years that I've played here prior. PETE KOWALSKI: What's your favorite memory from '03? BRUCE LIETZKE: Believe it or not, it's probably a couple of hooks that I think of, and one was the eighth hole on Sunday playing with Tom Watson, and I think my lead had been -- I started Sunday with a four-stroke lead, and I think I came to 8 with a two-stroke lead, and I hit a great drive all the way to the end of the fairway, but I was blocked by some trees on the left side, and I actually had to hook a 5-iron. Not a big hook, it was about a ten-foot hook, but it was the only way I could go at the pin was maybe hitting a hook. And I hit a nice little hook, which most of you know I don't like to do. I hit it about 15 feet from the hole, made the putt, Watson didn't make birdie, so I kind of restored my four-stroke advantage. And then there was another hook, and it was on No. 14, and I hit a tee shot into the right trees, and I learned later -- I saw the telecast and Roger Maltbie had gone over to see my lie in the right rough, and I was underneath the trees, and Roger tells Johnny Miller, Lietzke has got no shot at the green, he's going to have to hit a little low punch shot back to the fairway, and he didn't look up in the trees off to the right because there was an opening off to the right, but I'd have to hit a hook. And I think Roger just assumed that I wasn't even going to look that direction, and that was my only shot. It was either a pitch out back to the fairway or hitting a 7-iron through this opening to the right, and I had to hook it about 25 yards. And I decided that was my best alternative. I didn't want to lose that much distance. I thought I could almost knock it on the green. Anyway, I executed a real nice hook 7-iron, hooked it right back into the fairway right in front of the green, and I got up-and-down for par, and again, kept my momentum going. I really think those are the two shots that come to mind, an eagle on 8 from a hooked 5-iron and then a really good par save on 14 with a hooked 7-iron. Eventually I birdied 16 to restore my four-stroke advantage, and I played kind of relaxed golf on 17 and 18, just trying to make nothing worse than bogey, and that's what I did; I bogeyed 17 and 18. But those were kind of in control most of the time. But those two hooks probably saved the tournament for me. That eagle on 8 was real big. Q. Including those two, how many hooks have you hit in your career? BRUCE LIETZKE: That's Nos. 7 and 8 since 1975, so I keep track. It's still under ten. A lot of those were executed at Colonial on No. 3. I had to use about four of my allotted hooks. Lee Trevino likes to say he's killed 12 squirrels on that tree on No. 3 at Colonial. You'd have to see it. It's a dogleg left. Not many hooks. And in one round, that's unheard of. Two hooks in one round is absolutely unheard of for me. Q. You stepped away from the game a little bit and joined life in Texas. What's your life like now? How much are you enjoying life on the ranch? BRUCE LIETZKE: Yeah, this is only my third tournament of the year. My last adventure on the golf course was at The Legends tournament in April, and I've done two junior clinics since then, but I haven't played a golf hole since April. The fishing has been good. I've been mowing my pastures in an air-conditioned tractor. I'm not going to be -- it's been way too hot in Texas to be in anything other than an air-conditioned tractor, so I'm not going to act like I'm out there toughing it. But I do a lot of maintenance on this property. I've got 630 acres in Texas that has three large lakes on it, and I'm finding out, maintaining property and trees that get blown down and stuff like that, it -- I'm spending a lot of time doing that. I'm not just sitting around watching Maury Povich and Oprah or anything. I stay busy, but the golf clubs haven't been out other than I did a junior clinic in June and a junior clinic in July, and that's the only time the golf clubs have come out of my garage. I've got some kind of a shoulder issue. I'm pretty sure it has to be fishing related because it can't be golf related. I haven't done anything golf wise to injury it. I made some phone calls and I just came in the trailer. I suffered through two things called frozen shoulder, one at the end of '03 right after I won here, my right shoulder, and then my left shoulder in 2004, and I'm feeling the same kind of symptoms now, and I'm actually meeting with a guy, a doctor in Minneapolis on Monday. I'm playing in Minneapolis next week, and I was just talking to the trailer guys, and one of the encouraging things they said is it could just be tendonitis, and I'm hoping that's what it is because the frozen shoulder actually shut me down for six months the first time at the end of '03 and four months at the end of '04, and I don't want to go through that again. I don't like being shut down. Now, I'm pretty good at handling off time, but I don't like being forced to skip tournaments, and I've still got three tournaments. I'm playing Minneapolis and I'm going to play the two Texas tournaments, and I hope it's not a frozen shoulder again. It feels exactly like that now, and it hasn't loosened up. Yesterday I just kind of attributed it to stiffness from not having played, but it was worse today. I'm going to have to have it looked at, but I am not near 100 percent. I wish I was playing a little better. I've got a wonderful young local caddie this week, a kid named Adam Reny, and I am finding out he is a wizard on these greens. If I can just get my tee ball to the fairway and on the green, I normally read greens myself all the time, but this kid is a wizard at reading the greens for sure. He's an Evans Scholarship kid, and to those of us that have played the PGA Tour a long time, those are some special words. The Western Open played in Chicago all those years, mostly at Butler National in the years I played, that was always the -- most of the proceeds always went to the Evans Scholarship fund to put kids that liked golf and liked to caddie through college. My son was supposed to caddie for me this week, and he canceled out about a week ago, so I called Judd Silverman and asked him if he had a local, and this kid is a great kid, just graduated from Ohio State on that scholarship. That Evans Scholarship is a great deal. I think it's really promoted golf in a great way, not only in the Chicago area, but obviously they've sent some of that money to other parts of the country, and this is a great kid that's just out of college. He wants to do something in golf, golf management. He's a heck of a caddie, I can promise you. I hope this shoulder gets a little bit better and I can show him something. He'll be reading a lot of greens for me this week, and that normally never happens. So I'm hoping to have a good week just for him. Q. Is it hard to have a lot of expectations when you haven't played a lot and when you're physically maybe not feeling real well? BRUCE LIETZKE: Well, the physically not feeling well, yeah, my expectations. But yeah, I actually love coming to a tournament having had 10 weeks off, 12 weeks off. I've played some of my best golf after long, long layoffs. So I didn't come in here -- now, I've only played two tournaments this year and I haven't played real well in those, but coming off a long break away from the game, that never has stopped my confidence before. And I've been real lucky to have been mostly injury free my whole life. I've never had back issues or anything, and those two frozen shoulders are the only things that have really kept me from playing the game at the times that I've wanted to play. I knew I was going to play a very select number of tournaments this year. I only played 13 last year, and I chose these six or seven tournaments early in the year, and that was going to be my schedule, and that's kind of -- that's the way it's going to stay. I just turned 60 last week, so you've got to slow down sometime. My two mentors were Miller Barber and Don January, and they didn't put their clubs away until 70, so I'm going to try and do a better job of retiring than those two old guys did. But I'm ready to start slowing down and I'm going to kind of pick and choose the few courses or tournaments that I really like to go to, and that's kind of the way my PGA Tour -- my last four or five years on the PGA Tour, I just reduced it down to the tournaments that I wanted to be at, and I didn't want to play three or four in a row anymore. And that's why Tom Watson is not here right now, and I believe he has earned the right to pick and choose his own tournaments, and he's been very loyal to the USGA. I don't think you can question what his decision has been to be at the Greenbrier this week, and I think it's about time for me to just start doing it a little more the way I want to and relaxing a little bit and just playing golf when I want to, and I'm just hoping this shoulder doesn't keep me from playing the few events that I still want to play in. But if it means home time and more fishing time, I will adapt, boy. I'll be just fine. Q. Two questions: One, how much practice time have you put in prior to this week for this event, and two, why do you think you've had such good success after such long layoffs? BRUCE LIETZKE: Well, I've had -- my golf bag has been out of my garage two times since The Legends tournament, and that was April 13th or 14th I want to say. I did a 20- to 30-minute junior clinic the second week of June in Beaumont, Texas, and I did a 20- or 30-minute junior clinic in Tyler, Texas, the second week of July. So I haven't played a golf hole since April, and I did two junior clinics, and I came in here Monday evening, and my first time to swing -- to play a golf hole since April was yesterday morning. So I've had no -- and those two junior clinics, I didn't feel any kind of issue with my shoulder then. Actually I hit balls in the morning yesterday, and I didn't feel anything, and as I got on the golf course is when my shoulder started tightening up a little bit. So I've literally had almost no golf exposure. But like I said, my expectations are still pretty good. I've taken weeks and weeks off before and I've won tournaments within one or two weeks of coming from a 10- or 12-week layoff where literally I just don't touch a golf club, and that's been my practice really my whole career. I think it's because I don't change my golf swing, I don't change equipment very much. I literally haven't had a lesson -- I've had a golf teacher my whole life, he's my older brother, and the last time I worked on my golf swing or anything in my swing was 1974. I don't have swing thoughts. I don't change anything, so it's the same swing that -- my swing kind of evolved in '74, it changed, and that's exactly the same swing. Now, it may have changed. I don't have video. I don't know what my swing looked like in the '70s on the Tour, but I have not changed one thing in my swing. I found out I could take one week off and I could either practice for a whole week off and then go to a tournament and be ready to play by Thursday and then I found out I could take one week off and not touch a club and my game by Thursday would be exactly where it was the last tournament I played. So I just decided it was good for me to mentally get away from the game, and I started testing it. I was good for one week not to touch a club and then I was good for two weeks. The ultimate test was 1983, my son was born in -- I quit playing in August. The PGA was my last tournament. My wife was pregnant, and she couldn't travel after August, so I stayed at home. I never played a tournament after the PGA. He was born in October, and my first tournament back was the Bob Hope tournament, and that was five months, and I did not touch a golf club in those five months. Came back to the Bob Hope, and actually if I remember right, I shot 65-67, and then I pulled a muscle in my chest and I withdrew from tournament after being 9- or 10-under after two rounds, went home and recovered from that, and I'm sure it was from the inactivity. And the next tournament I played was the Honda Classic, and I won. And that was it. That's when I said, man, I'm on to something now. I've just had five months off and I haven't had to test it since then. I can take a month off or two months off or whatever. That was the one that finally proved it to me. Q. Two parts: As your career winds down, who have you met that most resembled you in terms of being able to take those long periods off, if anyone, and do you think it's just because you had that gift or do you think it's an example that in this increasingly technical age that some players could benefit by your example? BRUCE LIETZKE: Like if Tiger Woods would just give me a call? If we could go find his 2000 swing, do you think Tiger would like to have his 2000 swing back? I think he would. He might tell you that that was the reason that his knee -- and I actually read that, that he thinks that it was too violent of a swing for his knee. I'm betting he would take that 2000 swing back, and that's exactly what I would tell him, that you have found a swing and you can put the ball in the fairway and you can knock it on the green, you don't need to go looking for other stuff. He was already the greatest at it. Yeah, I could talk to Tiger about that. There's been a couple. There's been a couple of high-profile guys. Nicklaus would take weeks and weeks off, and he didn't beat balls and he didn't change his swing very much. Of course he had a little more talent than I've got, I think. And Freddie Couples is a little bit like that. Boy, he'll go home and lay on his couch for six or eight weeks and come back out and play good. But when you first started that question, you said, how do you -- is there anybody that you kind of followed or that does the same thing, and as you were saying that, the name Byron Nelson was -- I didn't know if that's where you were headed, but I'm a Texas boy, and Byron Nelson's name by the way means an awful lot around here. Byron Nelson played just enough golf to be able to go home -- to buy a ranch, and by the way, his ranch was 630 acres, my ranch is 628 acres, that kind of blew me away when I finally found out, and that's why he played golf was to buy that ranch in Roanoke, Texas. He's one of my very favorite people in all of golf. A lot of you in here had the pleasure of meeting him. He walked right away from the game. Those of you who know the record, the year he won 11 in a row, he won 18 for that year, which was 1945, and at the end of the next year, he retired. And I mean, he walked away. I had some face-to-face talks with him, and one time I looked him directly in the eye, and this was when I was in my 40s and I was wanting to start cutting back, and I said, did you ever regret walking away from the game and retiring at an early age, and he had the most beautiful blue eyes you can imagine, and boy, there was no hesitation. He looked right back at me and he said, "I never regretted it for a minute." Boy, that sent chills, because that's what I wanted him to say. And you know, that kind of gave me some of the justification for me to start cutting back on the PGA Tour, which I did, and it -- I still feel justified that I can start doing it now. But Byron Nelson -- and again, we're talking about a talent level that's way beyond mine. He was unbelievable, but he picked his time to walk away, and he decided to go to a ranch in Texas, and it just so happens that's exactly what I've decided to do. The closer I can do things to the way Byron Nelson did them, I think I'll probably be a better golfer for it. We know what a great gentleman he was, and he's a great guy to -- if you can follow the path of any guy out here, he'd be the one that I'd choose. Q. I don't want to be confrontational, but since you brought it up, I agree with you, I think most people agree Tom Watson has earned the right to do anything he wants to do, but is it difficult do you think to explain to fans of a tournament that a legendary golfer opts not to play in a senior major championship? BRUCE LIETZKE: Yeah, I bet the fans, a lot of the fans, would love to see Tom Watson here. And that's fair. If I was a golf -- you want to see the top guys here. But if you let me talk to those people and you show them the loyalty he has showed to the USGA, man, there is no doubt about it, he's been a huge supporter both on the PGA Tour and out here, and if I remember right, he did play the U.S. Senior Open last year opposite Greenbrier, is that right? So if he wants to do an every other year, I think he's entitled to do it. But yeah, I know there's some people -- I'm going to say he is the big draw out here, especially he's still so competitive, both on the PGA Tour events that he plays and out here. So that's a fair assessment that a lot of the people would love to see him out here. No problem with that at all. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but more than likely you'll see him at next year's U.S. Senior Open, and I think he's done a pretty good job of doing it both ways to please his sponsors and to make sure that he pleases the USGA, which he's done a great job supporting all these years, a long time. Q. Not to belabor it too much, but Tom is a head pro emeritus at Greenbrier for 32 years. Have you ever had that difficult of a decision, I mean, a golf course perfectly suited to your game and a major championship and a 32-year relationship you've got to support? Have you ever had that kind of conundrum? BRUCE LIETZKE: Well, those are the same -- it'll probably pale in comparison, but Muirfield Village, two hours from here, two and a half hours from here, is my all-time favorite golf course, No. 1 on the list. But that started -- and that tournament was normally in May. And the years that my son was playing little league, and again, I don't want to make this sound trivial, but if my son had two or three little league games the week of the Memorial Tournament, I was torn whether I wanted to go to my very favorite PGA event or if I wanted to be at home and be an assistant coach for his baseball games. If Tom is nearly as torn as I was, and you're right, he has a corporate deal with the Greenbrier, so I know he gave it a lot of thought. When I did find out that he did play in the U.S. Senior Open last year and skipped the Greenbrier, then that made me think that he really has made the right decision, and I feel pretty confident he'll be -- well, you can't question Tom Watson's judgment. He's been too solid all these -- he's never been a flake. We've got some guys that are a little flaky early in their career or they're a little flaky in their later years, and Tom has never suffered from any of that. His judgment and integrity I don't think has ever been questioned. I think the fans are going to be disappointed, but I think most of us understand that he made a pretty good decision, and it was a tough one. But those are the kind of deals that I was dealing with, but it was little league games or whether the bass were spawning back in Texas or something. That wasn't quite as important as little league games, but it was right up there. Q. Sounds like you do a lot of farming and fishing. Do you have any car projects in the works? BRUCE LIETZKE: I still have my cars. I haven't sold any of them, but I find that owning property, I come home and I've had, whatever it is, I've had 13 weeks off, and I just find myself jumping in the tractor and knocking crap down all over the place and not getting much work done in these cars. I've got a '69 Dodge Super Bee that the body has been restored, it's been painted, and now it's my job to redo the wiring and put everything back on the car nice and new and redone. It's been ready to work on for a couple of years now, and I just find that working on the property is just as enjoyable as working on the cars. It seems to have a little higher priority. My cars are still there. I built a real nice barn to keep them in, but they don't get much attention ever since I bought that tractor. That tractor takes up a lot of my time. PETE KOWALSKI: Bruce, thanks so much. Good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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