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THE MCGLADREY CLASSICNovember 7, 2013Briny BairdSEA ISLAND, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: Briny Baird, thanks for joining us for a few minutes after a successful bogey‑free, 7‑under, 63 in round one of the McGladrey Classic. Making your third start of the '13‑'14 wraparound season and third start since I guess the middle of 2012. I guess the first question would be how are you feeling. The obvious answer would seem to be pretty good. BRINY BAIRD: I had both shoulders ‑‑ surgery on both shoulders. Both shoulders are no longer an issue. I do not feel pain in either shoulder. So it's a good feeling. Q. Just some comments about today's round. BRINY BAIRD: If there's such thing as an easy 63, today was. If I missed more than one green, I can't remember. I missed two? It must have been just on the fringe, not one of the ones that was way down. The one green that I actually chipped on, I chipped in. I hit a par‑5 in two. I hit it a couple of inches once, made a couple of 15‑footers. It just seemed like a real easy ‑‑ I hit it 30 feet several times today and had some really good two‑putts. So it was a very clean round. I had to make some 4 or 5‑footers. So like I said, it was an easy round. I kept the ball in play. I kept it in front of me. You hear a lot of players say after a day they didn't miss many fairways. When I did, I got a great break today. I hit it in the hazard and was able to play out of the hazard. That was the only time that I had a little oops and I got a tremendous break. If it does what it probably should do, I'm probably making double bogey. You get lucky and I took advantage also to be able to shoot 63. So it was a little bit of both. Q. Can you go over a little bit about the‑‑ first of all, they don't operate on both shoulder at that time same time, do they? BRINY BAIRD: Correct, no. Q. Where did that take place and was what was that ordeal like? BRINY BAIRD: I started feeling pain in 2012, the beginning of 2012. Played up until theByron. Played for three months with pain in my left shoulders. About two weeks after, the pain went to the right shoulder also. Then it just hurt going both directions. It hurt going back and it hurt going through. It became too much. I told my caddie who is still my caddie right now, he could see it in my face. I was getting aggravated. It wears on you. I told him I was done. I went home and found a doctor. The doctor gave me a cortisone shot in each shoulder, found minimal relief. Said does these ‑‑ I went and saw rehab specialists. I did rehab for about three months, all trying to avoid having surgery. I thought I could do extensive rehab to avoid ‑‑ after him telling me what he thought it was. He kind of looked at me like he wasn't entirely sure either way. He said it was possible, but I don't think he really believed it either. I did the work, felt great, wasn't touching a club. It didn't work, ended up having the surgery. He wanted two or three months between shoulders. I talked him into one month. That was probably the first mistake I made in a long lost list of mistakes that I made having both shoulders done. I came back three months earlier than I probably should have. That was mistake number two. I went and played a couple of web.coms down in South America in late February is when that was. Played the first event, played terrible but felt okay. Couldn't do this, and it sounds crazy to say, I literally couldn't do this. I couldn't wash my back. But swinging your club, you stay in here, and you are not doing this. And that was my logic behind going and playing. I was in, I guess, a hurry to get back to play. I'm not sure why, but I was. They ended up blowing up pretty good. They swelled up really good and everything locked up like this. It took four months to relieve that. Acupuncture, which I don't like needles. It was a long process, but it was not a complicated surgery. I never once questioned that I wouldn't play golf again. I knew I would. You don't ever really know how you're gonna play, but I was never worried. It was not like Tommy John surgery or anything like that. Q. (Inaudible)? BRINY BAIRD: Everybody has tears in there. There was some tears in there that they fixed. There was a scar that I don't exactly know what the scar was from, because I had four of the arthroscopic Band‑Aids. But they did butterfly me open for some reason. I'm not exactly sure. The main surgery with the AC joint. They took ten millimeters of bone out of the AC joint. And I ended up doing the same surgery on both sides. That was the main reason where the pain was coming from. The tears are ‑‑ he didn't seem to stress too much over the tears. He said he would clean up while he was in there. It was the ten millimeters. Q. When you were doing rehab, how long before you realized (inaudible)? BRINY BAIRD: I stuck to it. I was good. I stuck to it. I did it for two and a half months, maybe just shy of three months. Q. When did the light come on? BRINY BAIRD: Two and a half months. Scary. Even though I had a good doctor at the golf course that I belonged to who is not a practicing doctor told me that ‑‑ he didn't want to use the word "remedial", but he said it's a pretty easy surgery. As far as who to use, I didn't need to find the best doctor in the world to do this. That was what was going through my mind. Even with him saying that, you get nervous over little things. What if they mess up? What if you don't wake up from the anesthesia? There's a lot of things. It wasn't fun. The surgery itself, they put you in‑‑ everybody has through surgery. When they put you in that waiting room before they knock you out, it's like a meat locker. I mean, there's a whole bunch of rooms only divided by a curtain. You just basically wait until your number is called. They wheel you in there. I told the doctor ‑‑ my name is Michael Baird. Unless you follow golf, you probably never really heard of Briny Baird. But if you follow golf, there is a chance you've heard of Briny Baird. But in there, I'm just Michael Baird. I told the guy when I consulted with him several times that I do play golf for a living. If he follows golf, he still sees Michael Baird and he's probably like this guy is a mini tour player. Not that it would matter, but I remember looking up at him before we were wheeled in there. As I said, he took a look and said you're going to be fine. I said you do know what I do for a living, correct? He was like, yeah, you'll be fine. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something, removing the bone, maybe I wouldn't feel pain but am I going to lose mobility? It was scary. It's a lot of guys out here that have gone through stuff like that. I think it's scary because it's new. Q. Would you have felt better if he had called you Briny? BRINY BAIRD: Yes. I remember watching you play in 2010. Q. What was the recovery process? BRINY BAIRD: Not long enough. I probably had the surgery in October. One was in October and one was in November. I think they were exactly a month apart. Like I said, he wanted two to three months and I talked him into one month. That was a mistake because your body can only handle so much trauma before it becomes self‑defeating. I learned all this afterwards. It's hard to send all the stuffto repair ‑‑ it's hard enough to doone side. Anyway, if I had to guess I'd say I was hitting 50 yards shots maybe two and a half, three months later. Q. You have struggled to win a tournament, what keeps you going? BRINY BAIRD: It's just shoulders. That's it. Q. What keeps you going? You got to love this game an awful lot, I guess? BRINY BAIRD: What else am I going to do? Seriously. That's usually what people say. When you start get frustrated playing golf, which people find that hard to believe, other players kind of look at what else are you going to do? Are you going to retire? What are you doing to do? There's only so much fishing I can do, and I actually will get tired of fishing. So I mean, what else am I going to do? I love to compete. Where else am I going to release that? I always I'm not sure I love golf. I love to compete. May not show in my record that I haven't won, but I love to compete. Q. Your shoulder problem started to wear on you. (Inaudible) started to wear on you? BRINY BAIRD: No. Seems like it wears on other people more than it does me. I'm highly competitive. I don't think you can get to this level. Carl Paulson, same thing. He couldn't get to the level he was at, and I don't think he's ever won on tour. You can't get out here and get to the level of these players that are out here without wanting to win. It's not about wanting to win. You know, you get a bad break or you just‑‑ some guys have more (indiscernible) than others. They have more something than other people have. I can't tell you. I don't know. Do I feel like I've gotten unlucky? No. Do I feel like I could have won a couple of times of the five times I finished second? I know exactly the times that I finished second. None of it goes by. You guys don't know anything about me I don't know about myself. I do know how much I've made, and I do know I've won the most money ofanybody whose never won a Tour event. Does it wear on me? No. A little bit. I'll be honest, a little bit but probably not as much as it seems. I'd probably rather be the guy that's won the most money and not won than the guy who has won the least amount and won once. I would imagine. I can't say, but ask someone who's won once would they trade their win for six more million? I don't know. It's not a whole lot of money, but it's not all about trophies. None of us would be playing this game. When you hear that catch phrase thatdoes drive you a little nuts that we're only out here playing for trophies. I kind of cringe at that because that's not true. Otherwise we'd just be donating our money to charity and living in huts. So it's not entirely true. And not flying private planes everywhere. Q. Is this best you have played since your surgery? BRINY BAIRD: Without a doubt. It's only the ninth round I've played and it's lowest score, so yeah. Q. (Inaudible)? BRINY BAIRD: My mom is from England, so that makes her, you know... Q. (Inaudible)? BRINY BAIRD: No, it's Briny. People started calling me Mike and Mikey when I was three years old, and she liked Michael. After she realized it was going to stick and didn't like it as much, didn't want to change my name but saw Briny in a book "The Winds of War" when I was three. She turned to me at three years old and said what do you want to be called Michael of Briny? And I said Briny. She said all right, that's a good name. I've never gone by Michael. College was a nightmare because in the big classes they'll call you Michael and... FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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