THE HONDA CLASSIC

March 13, 1999

Harrison Frazar

HARRISON FRAZAR: Let me think for a second. Do I really need to use this? Okay. We gotta go back. No. 1, hit a driver and sand wedge to about eight feet, made that one. No. 2, hit driver, sand wedge to about 12 feet, made that one. No. 4, I hit driver, then hit a 3-iron, pin high on the green and 2-putted.

HARRISON FRAZAR: I was probably 30 feet. No. 6, I drove in the left bunker underneath the lip and just had to chip it back out on to the fairway and hit an 8-iron on the green about 25 feet and 2-putted. No. 7, hit a 3-wood and then hit an 8-iron to about eight feet, made that one. No. 8, I hit a 3-iron way right to the green, the pitch shot came up short, then chipped it up to about 16, made that for bogey. Then No. 9, hit driver and a 3-wood right in front of the green, chipped it up to about 6 feet past the hole and made that one. No. 11, hit 9-iron about 12 feet. No. 13, I hit driver on the green and 2-putted from about 40 feet, I guess. And No. 16, I hit driver, 3-wood just short of the hole chipped up to about four feet and made that one. That's it.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Yeah, it's windy. The way the golf course is set up, you go out on a finger, then you come back in. As you're going out on both sides the wind is actually blowing in a direction that's making those holes play fairly easy. There's a couple of spots that you can't get in because the pins are in the front, but for the most part it is easy to hit the fairways, the pins are pretty accessible. When you turn them back around, of course when you get the longer holes, they got the pins in some tougher places, when you turn it back into the winds that's playing tough. No. 6 is 470 yards and it is playing into a 30-mile-an-hour wind.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Number 15, I mean it's 248 yards and for 240, I can't remember exactly where it is, you know, Bob friend, guy I had to. I played with hit a driver, it is a long hole. It's playing tough.

HARRISON FRAZAR: I'm very happy with my score today. I feel like I stole one a little bit. You know, got a couple of good breaks. I knew it was going to play really tough and I knew if I could keep my patience and play well I could make some ground on the field. I saw the wind today and was really happy to see it.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Yeah, well, No. 6, I drove in the left bunker and it went up underneath the lip and just had to take an 8-iron and blast it out. I mean I just had to chip it out of the fairway and I still had 140 something yards left to the hole. It's a long sucker.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Not really, I'm very comfortable in the wind, I grew up in west Texas. The golf course sets up very well for me. When I saw the wind blowing in the direction it was blowing, I just felt comfortable with it. I felt like I could take advantage of some of the places, you know, get it on -- make some birdies relatively easily, you know, the first couple of days the way the wind was blowing it wasn't quite as easy for me. Some guys may say this wind is harder for them, but with the way I play and my shot pattern, I thought this wind was -- sets up pretty well for me.

HARRISON FRAZAR: I think so, definitely. I don't know what's going on with Eric but apparently he is playing some pretty good golf. But I -- is he at 13?

HARRISON FRAZAR: He is at 13. I wouldn't be real surprised if the lead is much lower than 14 or 15-under par after today. I don't think there are going to be too many guys that get it to more than 10-under. So if the wind blows again tomorrow, what it does is it just provides some room for a guy like me to go out and shoot a 65 or 66 and jump into contention. It's really hard to play well when the conditions are tough because you feel like you're holding on, but when you're kind of coming from behind or coming from the back of the field trying to chase them, then you don't seem to mind the conditions as much.

ALLISON FRAZAR: I retired.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Yeah, she's --

ALLISON FRAZAR: I had to quit.

HARRISON FRAZAR: She wanted to quit teaching from the day she ever started, so...

ALLISON FRAZAR: Don't tell all my secrets.

HARRISON FRAZAR: No, she liked teaching. In fact she wasn't going to be here this week but I talked her into staying, so I'm glad she's here.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Absolutely. That's why I have held onto her for so many years.

HARRISON FRAZAR: The highs and lows?

HARRISON FRAZAR: Starting the year I missed -- gosh, I can't remember exactly, five out of six or six out of seven cuts and I was on one of the lowest points of my professional career, short, but professional career. Started to play well and then played well at Nelson Colonial Memorial, and I was absolutely on a high. It lasted for a couple of months, started playing again, played bad again, went back down the roller coaster again. Just kind of really fought and struggled the last half of the year, got myself into some decent contention a couple of times but didn't respond very well. Because I didn't feel like I was really on top of things, but, you know, started out this year pretty rough, the first part of the year, had some issues I had to deal with, once again I thought I was on the bottom, since Phoenix played well, kind of steadily fighting back, trying to gain a little more control right now, I feel like I'm pretty well on top of it.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Yeah, no, I think it's normal. I mean everybody is going to go through those and everybody is going to struggle with them, but I think because of my immaturity or because of my lack of experience I think they affected me a little more than they probably should have. But I don't think what I went through is out of the normal or out of the ordinary.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Yeah, it's better than sitting in front of a -- or sitting behind a desk, I guess, wearing a suit to work everyday, you know, getting to come out here and play golf and being outside, you know, walk through -- take a six or seven mile walk each day through a beautiful park, you know, sometimes it's not quite that nice, but it should be.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Yeah, I worked for a while in commercial real estate. I loved the company I was with but you can't beat this.

HARRISON FRAZAR: The decision to quit real estate or quit golf?

HARRISON FRAZAR: I'm trying to think. When I played college golf, you know, I was frustrated with the game because I wasn't seeing the results that I wanted to see, so I went to work thinking, you know, maybe I could excel at this. After I worked for about 10 or 11 months I -- we started a golf venture to do some golf course design and development, I started to play a little bit more, you know, during the week. I was probably playing twice a month, maybe three times a month and the more that I played, the more I started to be around it, the more I began to realize that I really missed it and I really enjoy the competition and enjoy the ability to come -- make my own decisions, call my own shots, things like that. And that was more the reason. It's more out of just a desire to do what I knew that I loved to do instead of doing what I thought that maybe was the right thing to do. When I decided to play professional, I didn't know it was going to turn out like this. I mean I thought it was going to be a three or four-year deal, you know, if I made it, great, if not I'll go back to work, just give it a shot. It's expensive. We didn't have the money to do it, you know, traveling 35 weeks out of the year away from my family, just away from my wife and my parents, you know, it just wasn't very appealing, but now that things are working out it's a lot better.

HARRISON FRAZAR: The beginning of this year my expectations were extremely high, but what I'm beginning to realize about myself is I don't play very well putting the expectation levels on myself. This week -- the last couple of weeks getting a little bit better, but it looks like every time I do something that's pretty good I kind of get knocked down after that because I'm expecting myself to do more. So this week I told myself to go out and play the game and see what happens, let the talent take care of itself and not have any expectation levels to make a certain score on a hole or shoot a certain number for nine holes, you know, what have you. But I expect myself to play well. I expect myself to act right. I expect myself to act like a gentleman and a professional, that's about it.

HARRISON FRAZAR: Well, I did. I think I stole one because there's a lot of times when the pins were in some positions that are not very accessible and, you know, it just so happened that I got it down there in the middle of the fairway and had a perfect club, or had a perfect shot for the way I like to hit it. I was able to hit a good shot in there 15 feet from the hole and make the putt where a lot of guys that maybe play a little differently had to play a more conservative shot, things like that. I think there were just some really good situations that were set up for me pretty well today.