U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 12, 2001

Gary Koch

GARY KOCH: Well, I was very fortunate to make it through the sectional qualifying. I was actually in a three-way playoff for two spots down in Tampa. I was actually playing at my home golf course, at Old Memorial Golf Club there, which is backing up a little bit. It's really the only reason why I tried to qualify for this event this year. Working for NBC, it's not exactly like we have a lot of time to qualify and play, especially this week, where we're on the air for so many hours. It will lend itself to be a very interesting week. I was fortunate in the playoff to birdie the fourth extra hole and got one of the spots. So it was a long day. The qualifying actually took two days. We were rained out at the end of the first day and had to come back the next day and finish it off.

GARY KOCH: I do, indeed. In fact, I think we actually see some higher scores that way than when the guys automatically feel like they just have to pitch out. When you had it in the deepest rough and you pitched the ball out down the fairway, you would end up with a 90 -, 100-yard shot to the green. Most of these guys are proficient enough that they're going to hit the green, maybe make a par, maybe make a bogey. I think now as we started seeing at Pinehurst and last year, now again this year, with the rough the length that it is, it actually encourages you to go ahead and try to play to the green. Oftentimes, when you play out of that rough, you can't control the distance the ball is going to go. And I think at times, I noticed yesterday when I played my practice round, the ball probably ended up in a worse position, because I was able to try to hit the green, than had I just pitched the ball out down the fairway and played from there. I think it has added certainly a different element to the event, and I think it actually has the potential to make it play more difficult.

GARY KOCH: I think it's wonderful. To me, it gives the players -- you say the option -- it gets the player thinking more. And I think anytime you get a player thinking: "Can I do this, can I pull this shot off" versus, "oh, I'm just going to pitch the ball down here and play from there." Uncertainty is a terrible thing. When a player gets all these different thoughts in his mind, I think that just adds that much more to the difficulty.

GARY KOCH: I would agree with that wholeheartedly. And as you say, there have been a number of announcers who have gone on to play extremely well, especially on the Senior Tour. I think the biggest thing that I've noticed in the time that I've done television is that the guys who are winning tournaments don't always hit perfect shots. They don't always make all the putts. They just kind of seem to go about their business and just keep playing one shot at a time, and really not get overly concerned when things don't go right. I know when I played on the regular Tour, in my days, that was probably one of my great weaknesses. I tended to get upset with myself, tended to be a little too hard on myself. Hopefully the combination of having done the TV now and being 48 years of age, that will be a little bit different this go-around, and perhaps allow me to play well this week.

GARY KOCH: Well, they're all right here. They've been very supportive. And I was very fortunate. I first approached Tommy Roy, our boss from NBC Sports back in March. And I mentioned to him that the sectional qualifying was scheduled to be held at my home course there in Tampa, and asked him if it would be okay from NBC's standpoint for me to go ahead and try and qualify. Knowing if I did, that it perhaps would cause some problems. Again with all the hours we're on the air, and trying to cover those hours with different people, and having one less person there can make a difference. Tommy was very, very supportive, as were Ken Schanzer and Dick Ebersol at NBC, and I think they felt like -- and I do, as well -- now, that I'm here, that it is going to allow me to offer a very different perspective from an announcer's standpoint, having just come off the golf course, having just been under the gun and playing under the conditions that the players that we're now watching are having to face. For me to be able to hopefully add some insight from having just done it. So I can't say enough about my colleagues from NBC. I mean, here they are. They showed up because they were afraid there was going to be a press conference and nobody was going to be here. So they didn't want to allow that to happen.

GARY KOCH: Well, there certainly is plenty of overlap. And right now -- yesterday, I spent the day as a golfer. I got a chance to play a practice round. Got a chance to practice a little bit. Today is going to be a little bit of both. Tomorrow is going to be a little bit golfer and a lot more broadcaster. We have rehearsal, production meetings, et cetera, which I'll be involved in. And then once the actual event begins, I have two early tee times. So I'm going to definitely be a part of the broadcast Thursday, maybe not a great deal. But Friday, I certainly will be on the air a pretty good bit. Is it easy to separate the two? No, it isn't, because I'm going to take into the tower with me after I play: A, how I played, that has some effect on you; but B, again, I think it will give me a working knowledge that I wouldn't be able to have otherwise.

GARY KOCH: Fortunately, my friend Roger Maltbie is going to be in the booth when I'm playing Thursday. As a player, I'm fair game. That's all there is to it. And that's the way it should be. I mean, hopefully he'll look at me as a colleague when I climb back up in my tower later in the day. But if I'm out on the golf course and I'm making some mistakes that I probably shouldn't be making, or doing something in my swing that he spots that he thinks is wrong, then he's doing his job to say it. I won't take it personally.

GARY KOCH: Certainly as I now get closer to 50, which I turn towards the end of next year, November of next year, have started to entertain thoughts of playing more than I certainly have in the last few years. I've tried to make an effort to do that this year. Played at the Bay Hill Invitational on the regular Tour. I've played a couple of BUY.COM events, and will continue to try to play more throughout this year and in the next year. The big thing that Gary Koch has to decide, is this something I really want to do, to go back and play and make the commitment to do that. Right now, I thoroughly enjoy what I do. Doing television, I work with the greatest bunch of guys in the world. We get to televise some of the best events in golf. It has allowed me to stay around the people and around the game, and I make a very nice living doing it. Do I want to throw all that away, and go back and try to play 30 weeks out of the year? I'm not sure yet. Hopefully by playing a little bit more over the course of the next year and a half, I'll have a better decision to make.

GARY KOCH: Well, having played just one practice round, I like the golf course. It is Bermudagrass, fairways, rough, which I am very familiar with, having played down in Florida -- as my friend Roger Maltbie likes to call it -- it's a noxious weed. But those of us who grew up in Florida like that grass. And I do feel very comfortable playing iron shots off that grass. I feel comfortable playing some of the shots around the greens. So that's a positive. The negative, if there is one, is that I haven't played a tremendous amount of competition for a long time. The last Open I played in was in 1995. Over the course of the last few years, I probably played three or four tournaments a year and that's it. I can promise you, when I stand on that first tee on Thursday, there's going to be some butterflies jumping around in my stomach, and now it's: Can I deal with that or not. From an expectation standpoint, I'd like to go out and play well, but I'm certainly not going to be disappointed terribly if things don't go quite the way I'd like them to go.

GARY KOCH: On the scores? I don't know. They've been kind enough at this point not to fill me in on that. But, of course, I haven't been over to the compound yet. There's probably a thing on the wall where you can sign up. The over/under for Koch on Thursday. I think they will be very supportive. And I'm sure they'd like for me to play well.

GARY KOCH: Both the 9th green and the 18th, the slope from back to front is very, very severe. And you have to think that when the golf course was originally designed by Perry Maxwell back in the '30s, that he never, ever envisioned the speed of the greens being what they are right now. Yesterday afternoon I played late and I got to the 18th hole and putted some balls from the back ledge of the green down to where I thought they might try to put a hole in the middle front part of the green. I could not stop a ball from rolling off the front of the green. Didn't matter how easily I hit it; it would go off the front of the green every single time. I would think that the USGA would have to be very, very careful as to where they select their hole locations, on both the 9th and 18th greens. I'm sure they're very aware of it as well.

GARY KOCH: Let's put it this way: My wife is probably watching The Golf Channel right now. No way. It was the best thing in the world that ever happened to me. There's no question about it. She'll be here tonight. In fact, Dan, why don't you ask her that question when she comes in tomorrow.

GARY KOCH: Okay. No, my wife and I have been married over 26 years now. We started dating in high school. Dated all through college. Got married right out of college. And she has without a doubt been my biggest supporter through that period of time.

GARY KOCH: I haven't heard that yet. I haven't been over at the compound too much. I'm sure that will be discussed; that there is a precedent that has been set by another announcer from another network, and that perhaps we need to do a little bit better than that. I won't be surprised at anything I hear from my friends at NBC, that's for sure. They do tend to keep it pretty loose.

GARY KOCH: I would say, first of all, it's amazing how quickly you kind of get back into the mindset -- or, at least think you do. I played a practice round yesterday. And immediately, I started thinking about all the same things I used to think about when I was playing regularly: What target do I need off this tee? What club am I going to need to hit here? Once you're a golfer, and especially a professional golfer who has played for a living, I don't think that ever goes away. It maybe gets buried back there somewhere, but it can come to the forefront pretty quickly. So that -- from that standpoint, I feel very comfortable. As I mentioned earlier where I probably won't feel as comfortable is standing on that first tee Thursday morning when they announce "Gary Koch from Tampa, Florida." And the only reason I say that is because I just haven't been playing a lot of tournament golf. It's going to be a different feeling for me, that level of comfort probably won't be there.

GARY KOCH: I'm not going to try to kid anybody, and especially myself. I can imagine I'm going to be very nervous on that first tee. How do I deal it? Can I get through it, and control my emotions enough and allow myself doing what I think I'm capable of doing, which is playing some decent golf. The only way to find that out, I guess, will be after I do it, how successful I was at doing that. Expectations, all I can do is go out there and try to play to the best of my ability and do the things that I know I can control. And we'll see. Making the cut, sure, I'd love to. I think I'd like nothing more than to create an even bigger problem for NBC on the weekend that I'm out playing and they've got to figure out who's going to cover my holes. That would be wonderful. Do I expect that to happen? Realistically, probably not.