ESPN golf analysts Andy North, Curtis Strange and Paul Azinger participated in a media conference call today to discuss next week’s 114th U.S. Open at North Carolina’s Pinehurst No. 1. ESPN’s multiplatform coverage begins with live SportsCenter reports from Pinehurst on Tuesday, June 10, and will include eight hours per day of first and second-round play on ESPN and WatchESPN on Thursday and Friday, June 12-13, extensive coverage on ESPN.com and a special U.S. Open tribute on ESPN Classic. Full coverage details HERE.
A transcript of the conference call follows:
Q. Curtis Strange was the last guy to win the U.S. Open in back‑to‑back years in 1988 and 1989, so this is 25 years since that happened, that’s kind of a neat little anniversary, Curtis. What are your thoughts on that?
CURTIS STRANGE: Well, I’m not like the Miami Dolphins. I don’t root against anybody every year. But I think the longer it goes, the more fortunate I think I was because of those who haven’t done it. You know, the greats of the game, the true greats of the game, and then obviously Tiger Woods in the early 2000s, we certainly thought he would do everything that’s ever been known to man and any record there ever was was going to be broken.
But the farther it goes, you know, the more proud I get of it. I get I was very, very fortunate I was in the right place at the right time. It’s exciting. It’s nice to talk about it every year.
Q. You said you’re not like the Dolphins, so the legend is they pop champagne whenever the last undefeated team ‑‑
CURTIS STRANGE: Well, I wasn’t going to get into the alcohol part of it, but I do think there was a few cocktails had when New England got beat for their first defeat in the Super Bowl here some years ago and other teams like that. So no, I’d be the first one to call Justin Rose if that happened this year.
Q. This is mostly for Paul. I’m curious about the first time you met Mickelson, what you thought of him, what you thought about the recent developments with the FBI and how much you think he can either block that out or somehow use that to his advantage at Pinehurst?
PAUL AZINGER: Yeah, I think I don’t really remember the first time I ever met Mickelson ‑‑ actually, you know what, I do remember. It was actually at a golf clinic. I think Curtis was there, a bunch of guys were there, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson. He was doing a clinic, and we were all doing a clinic together, and I remember watching Mickelson hit a ball over a spectator from the gallery. He took that full swing and did that trick shot, and I do remember that after he did it and executed it, everybody’s jaw dropped and all the bigwigs kind of circled around Phil after the clinic was over, and I remember Arnold and Jack there and Trevino saying, son, you’re crazy, you’re going to get the TOUR sued, don’t ever do that again. And Mickelson said, you don’t understand, I can’t screw it up. Right then and there I knew he was going to be a heck of a player.
I don’t think Phil Mickelson has a malicious bone in his body. I know he doesn’t. He’s in tough spot now, I suppose. I know Billy Walters personally, and I know he’s a professional gambler, and I think the feds have been after Billy Walters for a long time. I don’t know what the relationships there are, but I don’t think that Phil has ever done anything with any kind of intent. But it’s just an opinion. I don’t know what’s going on or the depth of what’s going on.
I like Phil Mickelson. I trust Phil Mickelson. I believe anything and everything Phil Mickelson says as far as that goes at this point. I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb in that regard.
As far as the U.S. Open, if you look at Mickelson’s career, when the focus has ever really truly been on Phil, he’s always struggled. When he’s trying to win the U.S. Open or when he’s trying to become No. 1 in the world or whatever it is, it’s always been difficult for him. So when he’s spotlighted, it seems to never go completely like he wants or like it’s expected. When he kind of slips in under the radar, things are always better.
I personally don’t think it’s good for him at any level.
ANDY NORTH: I agree with Paul in that I believe that ‑‑ Phil tells us he didn’t do that, I would believe that’s probably the case. We have so many players when they have a lot of stuff swirling around them that use that four or five hours on the golf course as a sanctuary, and you can focus sometimes even better, which sounds crazy, but it’s your place where no one can get to you. The phone can’t ring, no one can ask you questions about whatever it is, and you get out there and find your little space, and sometimes that’s creates a situation where a guy can play exceptionally well. We’ll see how it all works out, and the fact that Phil is playing this week in Memphis is probably doing some good.
PAUL AZINGER: Can I just add something about Mickelson? Phil, as smart as he is, he can be pretty naïve, too, about things, in worldly things. So you know, I’ll just add that.
CURTIS STRANGE: I talked to my brother who’s in the business, financial, about it the other day. It was really interesting to hear how somebody can get sucked up basically as a bystander. Yeah, you get a tip and you buy some stock and you do this and you do that and you have no idea what’s going on. That’s enough said about that.
But I think two things about Phil Mickelson: I don’t see him being as big a story as we all anticipated leading up to this U.S. Open for his fourth leg of the Slam because he just hasn’t been playing very well, and is that part of the reason he’s not playing well? Who knows. But I really don’t think that you can do well in the U.S. Open when you have to be hitting on all cylinders both mentally and physically because it is our toughest test, and Pinehurst is going to give them everything they want in a tough test.
I just don’t see ‑‑ I don’t know if he’s going to struggle. He could certainly contend, but I don’t see him being ‑‑ hitting on all cylinders well enough to win. That’s because he hasn’t been playing well, and this is on top of him. I don’t care if he’s innocent, and I really believe he probably is, but it’s still weighing on top of you, and it’s in the press and you see it every day. It’s not good timing for Phil Mickelson.
Q. Let’s just shift it to the golf course and Pinehurst. It’s not a typical U.S. Open course but neither was Merion last year. What do you think the premium is going to be on next week?
CURTIS STRANGE: Let me jump in here because I played it last week, and it was fantastic to start with. The tees, the routing of the fairways are all the same as they’ve always been, and the greens were just impeccable. They were quite firm, and as we know, they’re smallish in size anyway, and with the upside‑down bowl shapes of these perched greens they play so much smaller than they are, so they’re going to have to be so right on and so exact with some of these longer shots.
But what really caught our attention was that I anticipated sand and wiregrass outside of the fairways. It is that and much more. It is what they want to call undergrowth. I call it weeds. It is everything that you have seen in your worst kept lawn you’ve ever seen in your life. It is dandelions growing up 12 to 15 inches, it’s low‑growing weeds, and in some cases it’s actually difficult to find the golf ball.
So what I’m saying is it actually looks a little different than I anticipated. It’s still going to be penal. It’s a different type of rough and a different type of penalty, but it’s still going to be penal and still going to be playing tough if you miss the fairway. The fairways are a little bit wider than normal U.S. Open standards, but they’re going to be firm and they slope. So they’re going to still be tough to hit. I think it’s going to be a hell of a test, and I think it’s going to look fantastic on television, just the natural beauty of the place.
Now, I’m biased so you can put that in there, but it’s going to be difficult. If the weather stays the way it’s been up here in North Carolina, which is dry and beautiful, if it stays firm, it’s going to be everything ‑‑ it’s going to be as tough a challenge as we’ve seen in the last couple years.
ANDY NORTH: I’d like to jump in on that. The fact that this is so unusual than any other Open that we’ll ever play because of the greens and the green complexes, I always felt like when Pinehurst was firm, it was as difficult a golf course as you could ever play because you just can’t keep your ball where you want it to end up. You can hit perfectly‑hit iron shots into the greens, and the ball can ricochet 15, 20 yards off the greens, and because of that, in most Opens you’ll see guys hit 50, 52 greens, 54 greens maybe to lead in greens hit in regulation. It could be 10 less than that at Pinehurst because the ball just keeps running off the edges. And then as we saw back the last time we were there, guys are trying to figure out how to get the ball up those slopes chipping it, pitching it, putting it, however, and if you aren’t careful the ball comes right back to your feet.
To me the golf course is very straightforward from tee to green, but once you try to get to the green, that’s when it becomes very, very difficult. It’s just so hard to put the ball on the green where you have good birdie putts.
CURTIS STRANGE: Andy, it’s not so straightforward off the tees because of this different look and the different tallness of the grasses in the waste areas. It’s sometimes a little more difficult to pick out your lines because these fairways do kind of meander around a little bit. It’s really going to be kind of cool. They’ve got 10 new tees in on 10 holes. It can play right at 7,500 yards long, and they just put a new tee on the 6th hole, the par‑3.
Get this, guys: One of the toughest greens you ever want to have on a par‑3 to try to hit. They just put a new tee in three weeks ago. I don’t know what that says about it, but it’s going to play 250. Now, have some of that, guys.
But anyway, they’ve made it plenty tough and put in new tees.
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PAUL AZINGER: Remember, this is where John Daly famously swatted the ball. I think it was at the TOUR Championship, it might have been at a major, he swatted the ball as it was rolling down the hill. You have to add that I think this is going to be one of the most pressure‑packed Opens for the individual players. First of all, the player with the best attitude generally comes out on top in these tournaments. You have to somehow get to a point in your mind where nothing is bothering you, that all the bad breaks that these guys have alluded to, Andy and Curtis, just can’t get under your skin. That’s kind of what the U.S. Open has always tried to do, but this epitomizes it.
I think you can almost ‑‑ confidence is huge, but you can almost throw it out the window mentally confidence‑wise because these guys are going to be in situations that sometimes they’re out of their control. You can control so much in golf, and controlling the controllables are what you try to do, but you can never control the bounce of the ball. That’s what they’re going to have to deal with here, so it’s going to take just an epic mindset in order to pull this week off, and it’s a nervous week to sleep on the lead. So maybe the leaders are the guys that really take it on the chin the following day.
Q. Back to your original point, Paul, it will play differently than it did then the last two Opens when Payne and Michael Campbell won?
PAUL AZINGER: It was soft when Payne won, and when Michael Campbell won, it was very difficult. I think arguably it’s the best inland golf course in the world. Pine Valley probably, those are probably one and two the best inland golf courses on earth. It’s certainly way more difficult than Pine Valley is.
Q. With all the focus on Phil and sort of what his legacy might be and how an Open win would change that, I’m curious, Paul and all of you, if you can offer maybe, would you put him in your top 10 of all time? If not, would an Open win change your view of that? I’m curious sort of how you view where he fits in the top players of all time.
PAUL AZINGER: I think it would be difficult not to put him in the top 10 players of all time.
Q. If he won?
PAUL AZINGER: I don’t even know if he has to win. If you start rattling off names, you’ve got to go so far into ‑‑ modern day is one thing, and then you’ve got to go back into a whole ‘nother era. If you look at his wins and his record, I just think, and especially ‑‑ I don’t know, the fact that he’s left‑handed and all that, I just think he was behind the 8‑ball and now he’s dealing with this ‑‑ he’s got this psoriatic arthritis issue and he’s still winning and still playing through all that. I feel like he’s going to have to rank up there, yeah.
CURTIS STRANGE: Yeah, I think that if he won this ‑‑ I agree with Paul. I’d have to look at the list as far as top 10. He’s certainly right around there. But he truly is a great player, and we overuse the word great way too much, but he really is a great player. He has won 40 some times on TOUR in the modern era. It’s incredible, and his major record. If he did this, he’d become the seventh man to win ‑‑ would it be seven or six? He’d be the sixth man to do something all‑time. You know, that’s top six. That would be pretty incredible stuff.
PAUL AZINGER: He’s a lock if he wins this.
CURTIS STRANGE: Oh, he’s a lock. He may go in the top six or seven of all time. But when you start naming off the other five players, you’re in pretty elite company, and I think it speaks volumes.
ANDY NORTH: Well, I just think you start putting lists together, it’s always very difficult because how do you compare Phil or a Bobby Jones? Those are always difficult. But he obviously has had an incredible career. To get the Grand Slam would be monstrous for him, and even with all the stuff swirling around, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he pulls it off this week.
Q. This is for Curtis and Andy. Given the relationship you guys have as two‑time U.S. Open champions with this tournament, any particular thoughts on a lot is made about this is NBC’s last U.S. Open but it’s also ESPN’s last U.S. Open for the Thursday‑Friday coverage, and ESPN has been doing this for 33 years. Given that, do you guys have any particular thoughts about this tournament and what it means to the network you’re working for?
ANDY NORTH: You know, we were all very disappointed that it ended up where it ended up. We’ve been very proud of what we’ve been able to do, and it’s going to be very important that we go out with a great Open, and we’re going to do our best to give the people the best shows that we can give them, and I think that’s how we’re focusing on this as much as we can.
CURTIS STRANGE: Yeah, I just think it’s going to be bittersweet. We work hard at this. I think people don’t realize the hours that go into preparing for this championship, and not just us; we’re the face of the network, but it’s the people behind the scenes that have been working 14‑, 15‑hour days for the last couple weeks getting ready. The guys that work 15‑, 16‑hour days during the week. So yeah, it’s a great loss, and we’re disappointed, but that’s the nature of the beast.
Andy and I will still be involved somehow, if nothing just as a fan after this. Because the U.S. Open is a big part of our lives, always will be. Always has been, always will be, and you know, I’ll certainly watch. I wish FOX well, and it’s been great for me to come back. After I retired from ABC and to get back, Mike McQuade, our boss, gave me the opportunity to get back into TV with the U.S. Open. I believe it was at Bethpage like five or six years ago. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it since then, to be part of our national championship. It’s been great fun for me.
Q. I wanted to ask you about Bill Haas, a guy that’s obviously won a FedExCup Championship and been one of the more consistent guys on TOUR over the last few years and just kind of how his game shapes up. He hasn’t had a ton of success in majors, first‑round leader in the Masters this year, but how do you see his game shaping up as far as Pinehurst goes and trying to win the U.S. Open?
CURTIS STRANGE: Yeah, I’ve seen him since he’s been in diapers. He’s become a hell of a player. He’s always had an enormous amount of talent, has to me arguably the perfect body to play this game, 6’1″, maybe almost 6’2″, lanky, just flexibility, big arc, length. Been a bit, maybe a bit of an underachiever in majors because of his talent. Why, we don’t know, but he’s in the prime of his career. He’s 31, I believe.
I just think the world of his game. As I said at the Masters when we were all ‑‑ one afternoon, I said, I’m biased for Bill Haas. I root for him. But I think I almost go the other way. I’m too critical because I want him to do so well, and at times I feel like I’m a distant uncle.
I think he has all the ability to do that. I think the one thing Bill Haas has to do is to believe in himself. He has to trust his instincts because he has incredible instincts, and he has to believe in himself that he can do this under the toughest conditions. Sometimes that’s a tough thing to do, but it’s all through experience, and he’s had plenty of experience now. He’s won tournaments, he’s won the FedExCup, and I expect great things out of him.
It all rides on him, though, but I just think it’s about time, and it wouldn’t surprise me to have him pop up around; put it that way.
ANDY NORTH: I’ll jump in. I think Bill has an enormous amount of ability, as Curtis was saying. The one thing I’ve always felt is he’s been very, very hard on himself, extremely hard on himself, and I think you get to major championships you start trying a little bit too hard, and if you’re hard on yourself at the same time, that’s not a good ending usually. He changed caddies, his brother caddied for him for the last few years, he now has Scott Gneiser on his bag for worked for David Toms for a lot of years. Scott worked for me a million years ago, and he’s a guy that maybe can help take a little bit of that pressure off of Bill, and if he does that, the sky’s the limit for him.
Q. My question is for Curtis, and it relates to Phil. As you know, putting a lot of effort into winning one tournament is really a big deal. I’m just curious, Phil has embraced this and talked a lot about trying to get the fourth leg of the career Grand Slam. He’s not shied away from talking about it and winning the U.S. Open finally. You kind of went through that when you were trying to win a third straight. I’m just wondering about the dangers in that, how hard that actually is, if it’s almost too much pressure.
CURTIS STRANGE: Well, it’s not easy, but that’s that we’re trained to do, to focus and to prepare. You know, there’s no getting around it. I admire the fact that he’s a stand‑up guy always, and he’s taking the questions. He talks about it. There’s no other option to be honest with you, because it’s a story, and it’s a big story. Embrace it.
I can’t go around and ‑‑ he can’t go around and hide from the fact that if he wins, he’s going to be one of six people all‑time in golf to win all four. So embrace it, don’t overdo, don’t overthink it, let it happen, let it come to you, and then you’ve got to let the chips fall.
The one thing, the negative, more so than ‑‑ I know all this investigation is another story altogether, but he hasn’t played very well, for whatever reason, and I really think you have to play well. I don’t care if you’re the great Phil Mickelson or whoever. I really think your current form has a large part to do with how you finish in a U.S. Open.
You don’t go to the U.S. Open and find your game. This is a different animal than Augusta National. I just think that ‑‑ that’s not saying that he can’t work hard last week and this week and find something, but I certainly wished he would have been ‑‑ it would have been more positive if he would have been playing well the last couple months.
PAUL AZINGER: If you remember correctly, I’ll just remind you of this, when Mickelson had not won a major, I remember him saying it’s not whether I’ll win a major or not ‑‑ remember, he had a lot of failures, a lot of close calls. He said, it’s not whether I win a major, it’s how many am I going to win, and this is before he won one.
I think the fact that he’s taking it head on just fits his personality. Embracing it is one of those things that he does.
Q. What do you think his held him back in the six runner‑ups? He does not have great final rounds at the U.S. Open, but of course shooting a low round at the U.S. Open is not that easy. Is there anything that you can recall that stands out that has sort of kept him from getting over the line?
CURTIS STRANGE: Well, you know, he’s not the straightest driver of the ball, okay. Enough said about ‑‑ and so maybe that is it. You know, he’s got the ability mentally. There’s been times he hasn’t thought through the situation. Winged Foot, 18th hole, and maybe another one or two, but he has the ability. I just think sometimes ‑‑ maybe Sunday afternoon there is pressure, you don’t drive it in the fairway quite enough. We did see that at Winged Foot. You know, who knows. I mean, it’s a tough tournament to win.
It is striking to me that he’s been the runner‑up six times, though. My goodness, are you kidding? That means he can play U.S. Open golf, he just hasn’t won.
PAUL AZINGER: He’s been a little unlucky. Some guys have gone in there and clipped him. Winged Foot, he never should have even been in contention at Winged Foot as bad as he hit it there. He just survived that week with the greatest short game of all time and just blew up at the very end. But you’ve got to be lucky. You’ve got to hope that the weeks that you’re there that somebody is not a little hotter than you. As Curtis said, it’s just not easy.
Q. I don’t want to disrupt the flow too badly, but I’m working on a story looking back at Merion and last year’s Open, and I just wondered what you liked about it, what you didn’t like about it, and do you think Merion will ever get another U.S. Open?
ANDY NORTH: I thought what the committees and the neighborhoods and the entire event was able to do there shocked me. I didn’t think there was a chance they were going to be able to pull off the event as well as they did. It took a total community effort, and I thought it was marvelous what they did.
And then on top of that to overcome some of the horrible weather we had and the mud and just the mess of getting the players around, they had to practice at another area and shuttle back and forth, and in rain delays that’s not easy to do. It was all organized and handled exceptionally well.
Merion is a wonderful golf course, and just because it’s a little bit shorter doesn’t mean it’s not a good test. We get so caught up with they have to be 7,500 yards long or whatever, which they can do this year. If the golf course tests the player, wedge shots should be difficult, 8‑iron shots should be difficult. It doesn’t always have to be just bombing away, and I think Merion showed that last year. They had a great combination of long holes, a great combination of short holes, and it was difficult for the players to handle it.
But I think that’s the secret of a true U.S. Open setup is that it’s tough enough that even short holes can be very dangerous.
CURTIS STRANGE: But Andy, and we talked about it a lot during the week, Merion was going to hold its own anyway. I didn’t like the way they moved some fairways around and some of the hole locations to protect the golf course, but I don’t think it needed protected. To me if 6‑under par would have been shot, that would have been fantastic. Merion is not the longest golf course. But when you start changing the integrity of a hole by moving fairways, not a couple steps but eight or 12 yards one way or the other, my point is, Merion, I hated to see that on Merion and the members and the whole community because Merion would have held its own anyway, and I think what they got was even par, which is ‑‑ I don’t know if they care about it or not, but I wish we’d have seen Merion the way we have always seen Merion and not kind of manipulated a little bit. But congratulations. The community was fantastic. The people, it was really well done. Sorry, I couldn’t let that go. I’m sorry. That’s me.
Q. I’m just wondering, all three of you guys as professionals, as athletes, when you have made a huge gap in a significant round, we talked about Phil obviously, for example, at Winged Foot, but that was the final round. I’m actually more looking for how you come back from maybe just a horrible mistake you’ve made on a Friday round on a Saturday round to get back to Sunday and try to put that out of your mind. You’ve got a whole 24 hours to think about what you’ve done and whatnot. Could you give me a little perspective on that?
PAUL AZINGER: I’ve had some poor starts that I’ve been able to recover from and get in contention and even win. But you know, in golf the hardest thing about golf is how long it takes to play a golf tournament, and you have to have the ability ‑‑ the weeks you win, I know the weeks Curtis and Andy and I played well were the weeks that for whatever reason nothing really bothered us or less bothered us, and we were able to overcome disasters, I think, and it depends on the disaster. Sometimes there’s no way to recover from it, and you just take your medicine and you move to the next week.
It’s the old cliché of one shot at a time in golf. I remember the old story about Hogan making triple bogey on the first hole or something, and he said to the kid caddying for him, well, son, it’s a good thing that there’s 17 more holes, and he went on to shoot 65. That’s just the unfortunate thing about golf is it just take forever, and you have to have the ability to just roll with the punches.
ANDY NORTH: The fact that it does take four days to do it, you have time to recover. If you play a poor Friday, you get a chance to go back and sit down and figure out what you need to do, and maybe you can find something on the range the next morning that can help turn it around. It’s so much the fact that you have to stay positive, you have to stay in the grinding mode to figure out a way to get better. We’ve all had weeks where you play poorly early and you stumble around and you figure something out, and you get yourself right back into it by the end of the week, but it’s that mental toughness, that patience that we talk about all the time. If you can do that in big tournaments, and the Open being the ultimate test for that. You can play the first five or six holes 3‑ or 4‑ or 5‑over par, and if you just kind of keep hanging in there and hanging in there and hanging in there and all of a sudden you get to Sunday and maybe you’re still 3‑ or 4‑over par and you still have a chance with a good round on Sunday. It’s just the belief in yourself to keep putting one foot in front of the other one and keep grinding away.
CURTIS STRANGE: Also, when you look at this game that we play, there’s only one winner every week out of 156 or so, and it’s all part of those little battles you have to win every round. I mean, every round has those two or three times that you have to fight through that wall, and if you do and you get that ‑‑ get it up‑and‑down from nowhere or you salvage bogey when you could have made double or whatever it might be, you know, it kind of gives you a boost and keeps you going. Every round is different. We don’t survive those battles every round. I mean, there’s times I’m making a Friday night flight out of dodge Thursday afternoon. You don’t do it every time, but when you get into the U.S. Open we talk about what it takes to win, and I think that’s what you’re talking about. You really have to win those little battles because if you don’t, you’re just not going to survive. You might finish 25th, you might finish 30th, and if that’s the best you can do that week, then so be it. But we are talking about trying to win the national championship, and it’s never easy. Nobody is going to go around here next week or any week for that matter and play perfect golf, and it’s never easy.
Q. Paul and Andy, is there a chance maybe a 50 year old, I think there’s three of them in the field, do you think one of them has a chance of winning it with it being kind of an old‑school type of course? What’s your thoughts on that?
ANDY NORTH: Well, I’m surrounded by a bunch of old guys this week. I think that the fact that if they’re going to go back and play it at 7,500 yards, that really hurts the older player. But on the other side of the story at Pinehurst, it takes so much knowledge and understanding of all the unique types of situations you get yourself into, that getting the ball up and in around the greens, missing it on the proper sides of those greens are so important.
But what really hurts the older player, assuming he’s not anywhere near as long as the younger guys, if he’s going into, for example, the second green with a 4‑iron and the other guys are going in there with a 7‑iron, it’s going to be a lot easier to hit that 7‑iron on that very difficult green than it is a 4‑iron.
PAUL AZINGER: Yeah, you’ve got to realize, too, that the older players, these guys that are qualified are still sharp physically and mentally. They’ve hit thousands and thousands of more chips and pitches around the greens and seen more than the younger guys. So as Andy said, if the golf course doesn’t overpower them they can get themselves in contention with a chance to win. Nerves aren’t an issue for the over 50s that have qualified for this event. These guys are phenomenal players, and they deal with pressure every week.
CURTIS STRANGE: They’re phenomenal players, but they don’t have a chance in hell of winning next week, okay?
Q. Curtis, what did you think of Jay being named the Presidents Cup captain?
CURTIS STRANGE: Well, he deserved it. I talked to him yesterday, and I said you’ve made more cuts on the PGA TOUR than anybody else in history, you’ve played damned near 1,000 events, you’ve supported this TOUR for 40 years now. You have been on the board four or five times on both Tours. If there’s anybody that deserves to be Presidents Cup captain who’s supported this organization that has been our life for so many years, you deserve it. And I think it’s fantastic.
Q. In two or three years we’ve seen Matt Kuchar become one of the more consistent players on TOUR, still looking for his first major. It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been 17 years since he won that Amateur. I just wanted to get your thoughts on kind of his evolution as a player and maybe what took him so long to get to this point.
PAUL AZINGER: Well, Matt Kuchar actually changed the fingerprints of his golf swing. He changed the very thing that was unique to him, and that’s really hard to do. It’s almost unheard of. When guys are making giant swing changes, I guess Tiger always looks a little different, but most of these guys make these swing changes and they don’t look any different to us, but in their mind they’re completely different, and your degrees and inches and splitting hairs, but Matt Kuchar looks remarkably different than what he looked like when he won the Amateur. He almost swings his hands under his armpits.
I think it’s magnificent that he’s been able to go to another level. As a professional that’s really hard to reinvent yourself, but confidence is a big factor, and he has that kind of a patient mindset that I talked about or alluded to earlier that this golf course will, I think, reward that guy, and so maybe Kuchar will be one of those guys that gets himself up there. He certainly deserves it. He’s a hard worker and would be a popular win.
ANDY NORTH: This is going to be an unusual year. I think if you start looking at players, is there a dominant player who is playing better than anybody else right now coming in here? I don’t think so. You know, there’s no Tiger Woods. I think this is as open an Open as we’ve ever had, and a guy like Matt Kuchar has to be one of the favorites because, as Paul was saying, he has great patience. He doesn’t seem to get excited. He’s a good, solid ball striker. He has a great understanding of himself, which I think has grown immensely the last three or four years.
In this year where I don’t think there’s any clear favorites, he’s one of the guys that I think a lot of people will pick.
PAUL AZINGER: Let me just add about Kuchar, too. It’s not always what you accomplish in life that matters, sometimes it’s what you overcome. And when you look at Kuchar, and many people don’t understand the significance and the extent of the allergies that he deals with day in and day out and what he can and cannot eat, Matt Kuchar is a survivor and a grinder. It’s kind of becoming a blue collar ‑‑ he’s not a journeyman. A journeyman is described differently, but he’s becoming more of that blue collar kind of hard worker. He’s not the United States Amateur champion when you think of these silver spoon in their mouth kind of guys. Matt Kuchar is not that guy, and I think he was mistakenly assumed to be that guy. He’s not that guy anymore. He’s a grown man who’s overcome a lot.
CURTIS STRANGE: I agree with that. I like him next week. I think he’ll do well.
Q. This is specifically for Paul Azinger because of the second half of the question. Paul, with this historic week and the first time the men and the women have played an Open at the same venue on back‑to‑back weeks, I was wondering what you think the women might be able to learn watching the men the first week. And the important second half is Jessica Korda after she won two weeks ago credited you with helping her with her short game, so I was wondering what you helped her with.
PAUL AZINGER: Well, I think all of us learn through observation. Some people are visual learners, some people learn audibly. I feel that visually to watch the way the golf course plays I think will probably be intimidating for these women as they prepare for the event.
But observation is a great way to learn, and I think they’ll learn a lot about how the golf course plays and what to expect from difficulty factor.
Jessica when I first started to work with her was putting from 30 feet, 40 feet off the green if she could. She really couldn’t pitch the ball in the air. Her bunker game wasn’t sharp at all. I just worked with her on what I felt were age‑old fundamentals, that just technique on how to pitch the ball in the air and how to use the bounce and get rid of that leading edge. The leading edge is fatal when you’re trying to get the ball in the air, and I got her to understand that. There were just simple changes like weight distribution and aim and maybe a little bit of ball position and hand position, but my goal for her was to take that complicated sort of brain freeze thinking and just eliminate that and make it just so simple for her. She is a mega‑talent. I think she’s as gifted an athlete as is on that Tour. She’s got that perfect body like Curtis alluded to with Bill Haas, and she’s just a physical genius. I feel like she caught on quickly the three or four days that I spent with her, different weeks, by the way, usually only an hour, hour and a half. You don’t have to sit there and do it all day. She caught on quickly because she’s so physically smart, and I’m glad she gave me credit. I told her I didn’t want anybody to know we were doing this, but she begged me, and we worked on her putting, which was the last thing we worked on.
I just want her to embrace her natural idiosyncrasies and just make sure the time was fundamentals were for real. I think the goal is to take that which is complicated and make it simple. That’s what I did for her, and she did the rest. She dealt with the pressure. She’s the superstar. I think the sky’s the limit for Jessica.
Q. Curtis, you mentioned earlier a new tee on the 6th hole, and that kind of got me thinking about the golf course and trying to run it up to that green, and also your comments on firm and fast, and I’m just wondering two things about this Open if you think we will be able to see anybody landing the ball short and running it, or do these greens preclude that? And then the other thing I’m curious about, you were talking about the width. Do you think there’s a chance we will actually see players play the sides of fairways to get better angles, or with today’s equipment do guys probably not think that way anymore?
CURTIS STRANGE: I don’t think they think that way anymore. I think at the Open your main priority is to put it in the fairway. As we did mention earlier, too, not a lot of fairways at Pinehurst, most of them are relatively flat, but you do have some fairways that slope a little bit, for instance, 4 and 5, 8. But firm and fast is going to be fantastic. I don’t think they’ll run it up. 5 looks like to me it’s going to be a wonderful par‑5. The disappointing thing to me is that the 5th hole was one of the great par‑4s in America, so it works both ways.
I used to play No. 5, the par‑4, to the front edge and let it bounce up, back when you had a long iron in there back in college in the North‑South and World Open days. You could bounce it up some of the holes, but I really don’t think it’s going to be that firm to be quite honest with you. You go to No. 2, which is such a tough green to keep it on, but it’s so unpredictable to try to bounce it into that hole, as well. I’d rather take my chances trying to land it on the front six paces on the green because it does have that false front.
I think you’ll see typical high shots in here. These guys hit it so high and long now. I don’t envy the ones in the field, some of the qualifiers or maybe the lesser length players, gifted length players, because it’s going to be very tough. It’s going to be really tough.
I’ll tell you the one other thing that I never really favored. When we used to play Pinehurst back in the day before Diamond Head bought it, when you miss one of those greens, the fringe was high enough to where if it bounded hard it would go to the bottom. If it rolled off the green it would maybe go down halfway of the slope and then it might catch before that. So my point is the grass is high enough so you didn’t putt it all the time because it wasn’t uniform enough, so you had the option to chip, pitch, bump‑and‑run, that type of stuff. It was a little bit gnarly.
But with everything is perfect now, when they cut everything off these slopes so tight, I think we’re going to see a lot of putts back up the slope because as we all know, your worst putt is a whole lot better than your worst chip and you can control it. That’s the one part ‑‑ this isn’t the USGA or Pinehurst, this is just the evolution of golf course maintenance, but everybody that’s going to putt up these slopes most of the time, and it take away some of the creativity that Pinehurst used to dig out of you, you know, which is some of the beauty of Pinehurst. But everything changes, sometimes not for the best. But I think we are going to see a lot of that, and that kind of correlates to your run‑off, you miss greens and you’re going to run it up the sides, as well.
Q. Paul, I know you don’t need a return to Pinehurst to think about Payne Stewart, but I’m just wondering, what do you remember most about that moment in ’99, and I’m just wondering if you could talk in general what kind of impact Payne had on the game in general at that point.
PAUL AZINGER: I played practice rounds with Payne that week, and he looked like he was just in a different place mentally. I knew he had finished runner‑up at Olympic Club the year before, I believe, and he just ‑‑ I thought I was being out‑prepared by him that way. I remember that feeling. It was an uncomfortable uneasy feeling for me. He just went to another place mentally. He was surrounded by people ‑‑ he had kind of an entourage that week, and it just seemed like something special was going to happen. I don’t know how else to describe it.
You know, you can’t make predictions. Believe it or not, Payne had already won two majors leading into that event, and I still think that he wasn’t really respected by at least the media. He had the Avis reputation and nickname, and he won the U.S. Open in a playoff, but Mike Reid kind of lost the PGA. When he made that putt on 18, I was watching it from my room and thinking, there’s no way he’s going to reach, and when that thing reached and went in, I just couldn’t believe it, and immediately, immediately he earned the respect that one major should have gotten him, certainly two. But it actually took three. And he became revered and he became almost iconic.
Now all of a sudden the whole knickers look wasn’t a gimmick and Payne Stewart cemented his place in history. And of course the way he left the game was so tragic, but Feherty asked me, I don’t know, when I did the show with him, he asked me how do I want to be remembered, and I’ve given that some thought, but my answer to him was that I didn’t really care how I was remembered because I couldn’t control that, I just wanted to live my life so one day I’d be missed. Payne Stewart did that, I guess, especially towards the end. He wasn’t the most popular player amongst the players at times. He could cross the line when he was joking with you, but I think in the end, everybody really respected Payne, and he’s certainly missed by multiple millions that love the sport and the people that knew him personally.
Q. For all of you, it is the national championship, and if you remove Tiger from the equation, really no African American of note has really done much. Does that surprise you? We’re going back 30 years, Calvin Peete, Jim Thorpe, and really the Tiger effect hasn’t played out. Just your thoughts on that whole topic?
PAUL AZINGER: Well, I’ll say this about golf: The game itself doesn’t discriminate. If you shoot scores, you compete and you’re competitive. Whether there are clubs around the country that discriminate or are so exclusive that you can’t get in, that’s another thing. I am surprised, but you know, the whole idea of this First Tee program was to bring inner city kids to golf and those that are less fortunate maybe and even minorities, and it’s still a little early yet to say that the Tiger effect hasn’t come to fruition yet.
But as far as golf itself, if you shoot numbers, you’re in. It doesn’t matter how old you are or the color of your skin, and that’s the great thing about golf.
CURTIS STRANGE: Paul, I agree with you. I think the Tiger effect has not hit the pro ranks quite yet. There’s a lot of talented young African Americans in college playing golf and on the mini‑Tours I suspect. You know, I go back to how did a lot of us get in the game. Many of the Tour players of today, many of the senior players, many of the players that just play amateur golf, they got into the game through the caddie ranks, and I really think that’s the entrance for a lot of kids, and that doesn’t exist anymore.
So now you have to have parents. Now you have to ‑‑ it’s a tougher entrance now, and I think it’s gone. The entry level for the kids is gone in a lot of respects.
You talk to Pete Brown in the day, Charlie Sifford, that’s how they all got involved, and that’s how we all got involved.
ANDY NORTH: If you go back into ‑‑ Curtis brought up Calvin Peete. In the ’80s you could argue that Calvin was as good a player as we had for a stretch in the ’80s, and for him not to win a U.S. Open or not be really in contention to win one surprised me because he drove the ball so unbelievably straight. I mean, if you can go and put your ball 250 yards in the middle of every fairway at a U.S. Open you’ve got a darned good chance to win, and he pretty much did that.
We all would have liked to have been able to drive the ball like that, but the fact that he really never got himself into the middle of it surprises me a bit.
Q. I’d like to talk to you a little bit about the emotions of winning a major and whether you think this particular tournament is even a little bit more emotional for a lot of people because of its tie to Father’s Day.
CURTIS STRANGE: You can’t put it into words. You can’t put it into words the feeling of ‑‑ from the time you leave that last green, you get through your obligations with the press and the committees and then you go back to your hotel room with your wife and you sit there and you stare at each other. You might eat something, and you kind of don’t know what to say. That’s the way I was. I think we sat there and giggled with each other. I don’t know. But it’s hard to put into words. It’s such a climb to the mountaintop and finally got there, the dog who caught the car, now what the hell does he do. It’s such a feeling of elation and emotion, and those of us who have had a chance to do it are very, very fortunate. That’s all I can say.
ANDY NORTH: I think the fact that it’s our national championship makes it more emotional. I think the fact that it’s Father’s Day, I was lucky enough that my dad was at my second one. I was a father both times. You pick up the phone and you call your kids afterwards, and they say something about, hey, dad, this is really cool, happy Father’s Day or something, and usually that’s at the point that I just ‑‑ that’s when you lose it somewhat.
But I think the one thing that’s so hard to explain to people is that there’s such a sense of relief when it’s finally over. It’s been such hard work for those four days, just to get through it, that there’s probably not anywhere near as much joy as people think, at least not for a few days, and then finally a few days later when things sort of calm down a little bit you get a chance to really enjoy the fact that you accomplished something very special.
PAUL AZINGER: I would agree with Andy on the relief part. The feeling of relief ‑‑ if you think about what golf is, it’s a four‑day march with about six minutes of actual motion, and that’s all under the guys of the golf swing is about a second and a half. If you shoot 70 every day, you’re hovering around six minutes of motion, of actual motion. The rest of it is emotion and thinking and strategy and what’s coming next and don’t get ahead of yourself and then you sleep on it, and it’s hours and hours on end, and then when it’s over, it is just this huge amount of relief. It does take a few days. It’s a lot of pressure. It’s what everybody who works and practices at this level wants to accomplish. And it is a great achievement when it happens.
As Curtis said, it’s difficult. You can’t really put it into words. You can only kind of describe the experience as it unfolds, and for me it was just relief, as Andy said. It was just relief.
CURTIS STRANGE: Let me add one other thing that Andy hit on. We all lose it eventually during that time afterwards. At some time you sit down and you lose it because it’s so emotional. 25 years in the working, you know, you work your ass off for 20, 25 years start off as a kid or as a caddie as we just talked about, and then you win your national championship. That’s the lifelong goal, isn’t it?
Q. Talk about Jordan Spieth, the ease with which he handles himself in public. Is it easy to see why the media is enamored with him?
PAUL AZINGER: I’m a huge Jordan Spieth fan. He swings as much like Curtis Strange as anybody I can think of ever. That certainly bodes well. Except he seems to have just a little more of an even keel than Curtis. (laughter)
I feel like he is exactly the role model type player that this Tour needs. He’s a mega‑talent, and I hope he remains injury‑free and unjaded. I just really, really like watching him. He’s replaced for me what Retief Goosen used to be in his demeanor and the way he goes about things, and now that Retief is kind of moving into his later years of his career. I love to watch Adam Scott and Retief. Now for me it’s still Adam Scott, and I love to watch Jordan Spieth. I’m a huge Jordan Spieth fan.
Q. Is his ball‑striking good enough to win at Pinehurst?
PAUL AZINGER: Absolutely. Are you kidding me? He hits it like Curtis.
CURTIS STRANGE: You know, he’s just very, very mature and very consistent. Normally you learn how to play this game when you get on TOUR. You learn how to do it day in and day out, and you become consistent. You learn the little tricks of the trade, and he has it at such a young age. I think the Masters, even though he didn’t win, he learned such a great deal from it, I think he could very well win this week because he’s consistent.
ANDY NORTH: One thing over this year, I’ve gone out and spent some time with the younger guys and gotten to feel like I know Jordan reasonably well, and I think the thing that has impressed me so much about him, all the things that both Paul and Curtis have mentioned, but the thing that I think will drive him right over the top is he loves the big stage. He thrives on it, and you can’t say that about many players in their ‑‑ he’s 20 years old. You look at some of his best rounds of golf he’s played in the last two years have been with Phil. It’s been with Tiger. He seems to love that, and I thought he responded exceptionally well at the Masters after he made mistakes, after he struggled a little bit, that he was able to hang in there and still do what he needed to do. He’s got a great future, and this is a golf course, because it’s going to be so difficult, it’s so easy to make bogeys, that if you can just keep going along and be confident and figure how to make some putts, and he’s an exceptional putter, he’s got a chance.
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