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U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPJuly 10, 2012Gerry JamesLAKE ORION, MICHIGAN JOE GOODE: Good afternoon. Pleased to welcome to the media center Gerry James who is making his U. S. Senior Open Championship debut. Gerry is a PGA clinician in the Ponte Vedra, Florida area who shot a 70 during sectional qualifying to earn a spot this week. Congratulations. GERRY JAMES: Thank you. JOE GOODE: Gerry's road to the U. S. Senior Open is unique to say the least. Prior to professional golf he was a competitive body builder winning the 1990 California State title. He was also a professional wrestler just after that competing under the name Evil Agent Orange. GERRY JAMES: Wait a minute. That was before that. JOE GOODE: Before that. GERRY JAMES: Yeah. It was before that. And it was just Agent Orange. It wasn't Evil. I wore an orange hood. JOE GOODE: Anyway, Gerry will be playing with amateur Martin Rifkin and Mark Morse in the 9:20 a.m. grouping. Gerry, congratulations. GERRY JAMES: Thank you. JOE GOODE: We're happy to have you in the field here in this USGA championship. I've gotta ask you and given all these previous endeavors, should the rest of the field fear you? GERRY JAMES: (Laughs). Well, I doubt that. There is some ‑‑ most of the players out here are very, very high‑quality players, and I'm just thrilled to be a part of one of them, hoping to make it to Sunday, make a check. I don't have any expectations of grandeur coming into here. I realize I'm competing against the very best in the world. And so I will do what I can. I've competed against the best in the world before in different arenas, and so this is just another step. JOE GOODE: Take us through that evolution. Obviously sports has always been a part of your background here, and I don't want to make too much light of it, but tell us how you found your way into golf. GERRY JAMES: Well, I grew up in Northern Michigan, Muskegon area. So I'm familiar with this area a little bit, and as a kid I played all sports. I played basketball, baseball, football, wrestled. And then I played a little golf in the summer with my friend, Jay, who's caddying for me today, who is always lost. He's always lost. So he should be here. But anyway, he and I played a little against each other, and he used to throttle me pretty good in golf. So I didn't like that much, so I kind of quit the game, and then when I was 18 years old, I wanted to get out of the farm, away from rural living and moved to Southern California with $400 in a suitcase, wanted to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I just got around the guys and started working out at Gold's Gym and just kept working out and kept visualizing what I wanted to look like, and it took a long time, but I did. I ended up looking like what I wanted to look like. And a man is what he wants to be, whether good or bad. So you know, I'm a very, very strong Christian man, and you know, there's a verse in the Bible that says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And I really believe that. And never limited myself to anything. And so I've just after football initially because I went into ‑‑ I got signed in the USFL to play for the Oklahoma Outlaws and eventually got cut loose there, and I then I went into wrestling and made it as far into the WWF, and I didn't like the atmosphere there. So then I went back into body building and won the Cal. And after I won the Cal, I had a little boy. His name was Justin, and he was three weeks old, and I came home and I had two trophies, the heavyweight trophy and the overall trophy, and I wanted to watch that kid grow up, and doing as many steroids as I was doing to win the Mr.California Body Building Championship, I had a good chance that I wouldn't see him grow up if I kept on that track. Or I didn't know for sure, but you have to do the juice to win that level of a competition, and I did, and so I just quit. And I said, well, what now, Lord? You know, and I really went back to church and got serious about my faith, and started going to the driving range and just fiddling around, and started just hitting the ball real long, and I seen a poster for the National Long Drive Championship, and I went down to San Diego and won the district, and then went to Bakersfield and won the regionals and went back to the national championship. It was the National Long Drive Championship, and I think I took seventh the first time out, and since then I've taken sixth, seventh, second, third, fourth and then won two world championships. And then now the next step is to try to play the game rather than just bang the ball. JOE GOODE: Just an incredible story. Let's open it up to questions. Q. I wanted to ask when do they start making the movie, but can you tell us a little bit more about you were born in Fruitport, Michigan, as I understand? GERRY JAMES: Well, I was born in Grand Haven, but lived in Fruitport. Q. And where did you attend high school? GERRY JAMES: I attended Spring Lake High School, then Fruitport High School because my house ‑‑ my parents' house burnt and I went to live with my grandparents, and then I attended Fruitport High School. And then my parents built another house in Coopersville, and I ended up finishing in Coopersville High School. Q. And with your wrestling career, how long were you a pro wrestler, and were you a good guy or a bad guy? GERRY JAMES: I was both. Actually I started out as a good guy. It was two‑and‑a‑half years. Started out as Gerry America, and I went over ‑‑ wore a red, white and blue cape and had the red, white and blue Spandex and the big high boots. That was a good gimmick for Europe. I went over to Europe with Andre the Giant and wrestled Andre over there for Auto Vance, and then I came back from Europe and I went to work for Vince for a little while, Vince McMahon, and then just got out of the business. It wasn't really anything that I wanted to do long‑term. It's a very harsh business. Q. So it was in 1990 when your son was born; is that correct? GERRY JAMES: Yeah. 1990, same year as I won the Cal. Q. And that was the main reason that you made the change in life? GERRY JAMES: Well, yeah. I mean it was that and I was married, and you know, I just ‑‑ I got home, it's an interesting story, I guess. I got home from the Cal, was down in San Diego that year, and I lived up in Orange County, and I was sitting on my sofa in my condo complex, which I was renting at the time, and I got up and I was just sitting on the sofa. It was about 10:00 in the morning and my wife came out with a baby that I could literally hold in my hand. And I think I had $20 to my name at that time, maybe enough to buy formula and diapers, because everything that I had done up to that point was for my own ego, you know, to win this championship. I had blinders on, I mean blinders like you ‑‑ I dieted for this contest for six months straight, literally on egg whites, tuna, fish, brown rice and a few vegetables. It was an incredible journey of discipline, but I did it. And I got down to 3 percent body fat. And you know, the night of the contest I was still felt like I was holding a little water, so I'd even taken a little Lasix to get rid of the water. You do all kinds of things to make yourself look like that. And if you've seen pictures of me, or you can see ‑‑ the guys now are even more extreme than I was. I mean I was 263 with three percent body fat. Guys now are coming out 300 pounds. So you literally put your life at risk doing that because you're drying all the water out. I had this little baby there, and I thought to myself, my God, what am I doing, you know. And I started going back into church, and that's really when I said, you know what, that's it. I mean no more body building. And golf ‑‑ and really I believe the Lord just replaced my competitive juices with golf, you know. And it was long drive at first and now it's competitive golf as you see here. Q. Has body building ‑‑ did the body building help you with the long drive? GERRY JAMES: Yeah. Yeah. It really did. The training. I was so much longer then than I am now, but I had no technique. But when I hooked up with a ball, it was ‑‑ I could fly it 400 yards with a wooden club, in certain circumstances, I mean the wind being right. I mean I could really hit it. I know for a fact, without any doubt in my mind that at one time in my life I was the longest human on the earth hitting a golf ball, because of the body building. But I didn't have any technique to know exactly where it was going time in and time out. So that bugged me. And so I started to refine that, and thus I'm led to here. Q. What is your longest recorded driver that you know, even at altitude? What is your longest drive, and what do you drive it right now? GERRY JAMES: That's a good question. The longest recorded drive I hit in a competition was 473 yards two feet six inches, and that was officially measured. And that was Park Hill Golf Club in Denver, Colorado. What I hit it now, I probably if you took my driving distance average, probably in the 320 area. I'm probably longer than the tour average, you know, somewhere right around in that area. Q. Are there aspects to body building and wrestling that you've applied to the game? GERRY JAMES: Discipline. Not so much wrestling. Wrestling's a show. And I know how to do a show, you know. But body building is all about discipline. And the mental abilities that you draw within yourself to go where you don't think that you can. Q. I was there, I saw you take a poke at the ninth green over here. What did you hit, like a 9‑iron to get there or would you actually hit the driver? GERRY JAMES: No, no, no. I hit a driver. I was just trying to figure out what line I had to hit that driver onto hit the green. And it's not worth it, because if you're ‑‑ you know, you've only got a 15, 20‑yard wide landing area to the green. That's how wide the green is. And if you miss it you're going to have a hard time getting it up ‑‑ this rough is extreme out here, and you just have ‑‑ I mean I'm going to probably be using a lot of 3‑woods and hybrids off the tee here because it just doesn't lend itself to bombing it. Q. How old were you when you went out to California, and what led you to ‑‑ I mean what prompted you to be a body builder? What was it about it? GERRY JAMES: Well, I had a very low self‑esteem. I was 18 years old, and you know, my dad at the time was an alcoholic, and I had a very low self‑esteem. And I seen a picture of Robby Robinson, which was a famous body builder on the cover of a muscle magazine, and I said, man, I want to look like that guy. I said that dude, he looks like somebody. And so I just told myself I could and packed a suitcase and sold everything I had, and I had $400 left after I paid everybody there what I owed them and went to California. Q. Did you ever have a conflict doing the steroids? I mean was it easy at first? GERRY JAMES: I never used steroids until about four years after I was going hard on it. I started out, I went out there with all intent and purposes just to ‑‑ I thought I could be the biggest guy ‑‑ muscle guy in the world just training. And because I thought that's how they did it. And after I got around those guys and just working as hard as they worked, you know, after four years I think I was 235 pounds naturally. And I was probably benching 330. I think I benched 330 for a couple of reps naturally. And then a guy said, man, he said, I've been seeing you coming in here busting your tail all the time. He said, listen, I gotta send you over to a guy and you're never going to regret going to this guy. His name is Dr.Curran, San Gabriel, California. I don't know if he's still practicing. I'm sure he doesn't prescribe steroids anymore, so I went over to this guy and he prescribed me four Dianabol a day, and a shot of Deca a week and a shot of testosterone a week, one cc. And within six months I was ‑‑ well, I'll put it to you this way. I was renting an apartment at the time in Orange County. It was one of six apartments in a complex, and the guy that I was renting it from, he was a fire fighter, and he used to do maintenance on the apartment complexes. Well, I'd see the guy once in a great while, whenever something broke around the complex. I didn't see him for ‑‑ before I started the ‑‑ a year later I seen him. He didn't recognize me. He goes, can I help you? Who are you? I mean I went from 235 pounds to almost 300 pounds. I went from benching 335 naturally to over 500 pounds. So I mean I just ‑‑ I blew up, you know, under a doctor's care. But nonetheless, I guess because I had worked so hard before, my body just responded, and I get real big real fast. Q. Gerry, from your comments, you seem like a very disciplined guy, and you can hit the ball a long way. Does that mean that you've worked extremely hard on your middle irons and your long irons and what do you consider the strongest part of your golf game? GERRY JAMES: Well, I'll tell you, you're going to ‑‑ this is funny, but I think the strongest part of my golf game is my putting. I'm a good putter. My driving is ‑‑ it's driving and putting. You know, I never really paid a lot of attention to my short game per se. I have to pay a lot more attention to it now. But if I'm driving and putting good, I'm a hard guy to beat, on the right track. Q. And a follow‑up to that, how are you doing on the greens here at Indianwood then? GERRY JAMES: Good. You know, only time will tell what pressure does to you, because I mean you apply pressure to yourself basically because of your own ego. You know, you don't want to fail. And you have everybody in the world watching you, especially at a venue like this, in a national championship, the biggest national championship for seniors in the world. So you know, there's always that added pressure that you put on yourself. But you know, the greens out there I think are running probably 13, 14 on the stimpmeter, and there's severe undulations, and they probably will get faster. But the greens I qualified on were running 13, 14. So I putted well on those. I feel like I can putt well as long as I leave the ball underneath the hole. Q. Gerry, you're described as a clinician. What is it that you do exactly and what do you want to do? Do you want to be a tour player or what's the goal? GERRY JAMES: Yeah. Well, I'm trying to figure that out, too. I am a golf instructor first and foremost. I've studied the game. Whenever I do something, I do it kind of to the extreme. I believe if you do something in life and you're passionate about it, you should go all in. And I'm not on afraid to go all in. The Bible says, if you run a race, run it well. And I always have. So I studied the golf swing. I studied it from initially from a guy named John Insommel (ph). He taught me most of the stuff that I know, a lot of the stuff that I know. He also taught Tiger Woods at the same time he was teaching me, albeit I was 30 years old and Tiger was like 13, but ‑‑ 14. But went from Tiger to taking lessons with Ben Doyle Golf Machine, started learning a lot of that. And I've taken a lot of other instruction from different people that have helped me along the way. Mr.Beman is one of my close friends and I've spent a lot of time picking his brain. Former commissioner of the tour. Great player in his own rite. I've spent a lot of time around tour players out at TPC Sawgrass. They've given me ‑‑ Freddie Funk has given me a lot of his time. There's a lot of guys out here that have given me time that they didn't have to. I was playing a practice round today and Ronnie black, he was going, no, you need to hit this chip shot like this, not like that. You know, so I mean guys just ‑‑ for whatever reason I have favor well a lot of people, and it's very, very ‑‑ I'm very gracious ‑‑ or grateful for it, you know. Q. Gerry, how have you prepared for this championship this week? GERRY JAMES: Bomb and gouge. I don't know. I mean really that's about it. Bomb and gouge. I knew I was going to have to gouge a lot of shots out of rough, because I'm not ‑‑ you know, when you're hitting the ball with 185‑mile‑an‑hour ball speed, the face angle, if it's just off a fraction, you could be 30 yards off line. I hit two drives today and I forgot who it was, I don't know if it was Ronnie Black or somebody else that said that I hit one probably 30 yards off into the gorse up there, and I said, all right, let me have another one. Hit another one, striped it right down the middle and that 490‑yard par‑4, I think I had like 130 or 40 in. And he said that was the two most extreme shots I've ever seen. That was the biggest correction I've ever seen. That's what he said. So it's just bomb and gouge. That's how I prepare. Q. I understand you play left‑handed as well? GERRY JAMES: I can hit it left‑handed. Yeah, I hit it left‑handed. I do all kinds of trick shots, hit it out of the air. Hit it through plywood, hit it through phone books. Q. And you've made a little money playing left‑handed, pretending to play left‑handed? GERRY JAMES: Yeah, I've done that. Well, I was ‑‑ how did you know that? You did some research. One time I was at a driving range and I was hitting left‑handed and I was just hitting it left‑handed, hitting it left‑handed, and hitting the ball to the net left‑handed. This guy goes, you're a real big guy. He says, I bet you I can outdrive you though. I said okay. I said what do you want to bet? He said 50 bucks. I said okay. So he hits it and it goes just barely goes over the net, so I turned around and I grabbed my right‑handed club and fly the net by about 70 yards and he goes that's not fair. Q. Given all that you've done, the very things, what has been the most satisfying? GERRY JAMES: Oh, the most satisfying ‑‑ most of you aren't going to understand this, but absolutely the most satisfying it's my relationship with Jesus Christ. That's the most satisfying thing because I just ‑‑ I have a peace that goes beyond understanding with that. And if you get that, you get it. If you don't, you don't. But that's really ‑‑ really what it is. And I do jail ministry now. I go into prisons, hard‑core prisons. Not just jails. I go into hard‑core, level 7 security prisons and spend four days and three evenings, 12, 16 hours a day with inmates that maybe haven't had a letter or a visitor in 20 years and talk to them about the Gospel. And yeah. That's satisfying. JOE GOODE: Gerry, your story is extraordinary and you're inspiring to an awful lot of people. We are pleased to have you in a USGA Championship and we wish you nothing but the best this week. GERRY JAMES: Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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