DORAL-RYDER OPEN

March 2, 2000

Bruce Lietzke

BRUCE LIETZKE: Just a real friendly day in Miami, one that we don't get to see and this is my 26th year. I think I have only missed maybe two Dorals in my 26 years and I can only think of a very few days when we had this calm of a wind for the entire day. There had been days when mornings have been like this and then heavy wind in the afternoon. I was expecting those winds to pick up today because I have seen that happen over all the years. But the wind did change directions a little bit but there was just never enough velocity to it that it affected the ball very much. Direction was iffy sometimes but again not much velocity to it and it stayed that way the entire day and gave us a chance to shoot low in the afternoon when normally the afternoon scores here go up one or two shots. I usually try to prepare myself for that when I play here or any time in Florida that usually those afternoon rounds are higher and I don't think they were. I guess my afternoon's score was the same as some of the morning rounds. Very happy that the wind didn't pick up and it gave us a chance, everybody because I have been seeing red scoreboards all afternoon. It gave us chances to hit the ball close and putting was easier when the wind doesn't blow here everything becomes easier. And you have got a golf course that is designed now to be very playable under these conditions and I don't say that it is easy, but it is playable under these conditions and it will still be playable when the wind blows 20 or at 25 miles an hour which I am pretty certain it will by the time this week is over. Again those are things I expect when I come to Miami. If you don't like playing in the wind then you don't come to this tournament. I expect there to be wind and I expect this golf course to be a pretty fair test when the wind does below.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Absolutely. I have been thinking about that for my last nine holes out there how nice it is going to be, hopefully. I don't know what the forecast is but again those are things that I expect. I expect the mornings to be pretty calm. I don't know what the forecast, is but I started thinking about tomorrow's round midway through today's round thinking that if I can maintain this and then get my morning tee time, it could be a lot of fun. But every time I think about that-- looked up on the scoreboard I'd see other guys that were 5-, 6-under par, I am not the only one thinking that way. But under these conditions and this golf course and how well it is in condition right now you better be thinking about shooting low scores. Again when the wind blows, you have to back off those low scores and know that 69, 70 becomes a real good round on this golf course when those winds blow.

BRUCE LIETZKE: No, I got away from that a long time ago. It is too boring to play one shot at a time. I like to have several things going through my mind.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I am over-practiced. This is my third tournament in a row. I am about to pass out from exhaustion. I have to immediately go home and take seven weeks off. That is only way I can -- I won't be able to recover until I get these seven weeks vacation out of my way. And I have actually hit the ball -- I hit the ball pretty well at Los Angeles and I hit the ball well at Tucson and I didn't putt good either one of those tournaments. That was really the difference today. I hit the ball again good today and I made some putts but that kind of capsulizes my whole career is it revolves usually around the putter and the weeks that I putt good, I am up on the leaderboard or near the leaderboard and the weeks that I don't have the putter going is the weeks that I fall back and I had fallen back the last couple of weeks because the putter hadn't worked and today it did and yet I still left, I missed 8-footer on 18 and missed two 5-footers for birdies on the golf course and still shot 7-under. So I made my share of putts today, but didn't make everything.

BRUCE LIETZKE: Sure.

BRUCE LIETZKE: No, because I was here the year Greg shot 26, 24, we had pretty calm conditions. I remember that week, and unfortunately the reaction was that the golf course was too easy and really all it was very calm weather and at the time Greg Norman was the best player in the world and the best player in the world is supposed to shoot low under these kind of conditions. You just saw great players out there today shooting low. What did happen last with the changes was that when those normal March winds start blowing, the golf courses became unplayable for a couple of years because of the penalties involved in driving and all the extra sand out there, so no, it is not an easy golf course -- when the winds blow when these normal March winds blow, Doral will play just like it has the last 25 or 26 years, in my eyes anyway. It will be a fair but tough golf course when the winds blow and when they don't the guys are going to shoot low just like we did today and just like Greg did a few years ago. I think the management here would tell you that their reaction to Greg's shooting so low was not the right thing to do because they have spent three or four years bringing it right back to where the golf course was five years ago. I have always pretty

much -- over the years I have said that this was my favorite Florida golf course because it was such a playable, fair golf course when the winds blow here. For some reason today we just didn't have those winds.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I am playing a little bit of casual golf now because I am the golf coach of my son's high school team and they will drag me out on the golf course for nine holes at a time, maybe nine holes every two weeks or something like that. But pretty much for my whole career and before my son started playing golf, I never touched the golf clubs during any break, two weeks or seven weeks or I took five months off one year in 1983 and didn't touch a golf club for those five months. So it has changed a little bit in that I do go out with my son now. I have got a 16-year-old son that plays on the high school team and I am the coach of the team, so occasionally they will ask me to come out and play nine holes with them and that -- I am happy to do that, but I don't work on my game and I am just out playing social golf, not working on any aspect of my game. It pretty much adds up to about nine holes every two weeks which that is not practice anyway.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I don't get paid to coach.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I do not. I don't teach them. I sure don't. I'd probably ruin all of them if they followed my example and they have asked me that. I have told them at their age I was playing golf everyday and practicing and playing and I do try to teach them strategy on the golf course but I don't teach any mechanics at all.

BRUCE LIETZKE: No, because it is -- I am the freak, they aren't. They are following human nature traits that everybody seems to have in that they want to improve their golf swings and I am just kind of a freak of nature in that I don't want my swing to improve at all. I want my swing to be exactly like it was yesterday and I want it to be exactly like it was 25 years ago and that is all I strive for. But that is weird, nobody does that. Everybody wants to improve and for some guys it works and for some guys it hasn't worked. I took my route and hoped to maintain the same swing for my whole career and play the same shot my whole career and that has worked for me but I don't preach that to any of the guys that are out here and if they are out there working on a new swing, then they are welcomed to it. But those are the penalties they pay for trying either a new set of golf clubs, radical driver that is 47 inches, you have got to find a swing to go along with some new radical club and if you are trying a new golf move, you have got to go out and beat thousands of balls to work that into your swing and I don't hate practicing, I am just not a good practicer. I grew up on a golf course that had no driving range so I went straight to the golf course. If I had a half a day to do something, I didn't have an option of going to beat range balls. My option was to go play four holes or nine holes or however many-most cases it was all day long, but I didn't have a choice of hitting a few range balls then playing golf. It was straight to the golf course so I just never got to learn to practice correctly and I am only good for about 30 minutes if on the practice tee each morning and then my attention span is gone. I am bored because I am not working on anything. I am just warming up golf muscles; I am not trying some new magazine article move and I am not watching the golf channel to pick up what the newest teacher is teaching. I am just warming up those same golf muscles that I used yesterday and in 20, 30 minutes I am pretty bored and you can get in trouble when you are bored on the practice tee and you are goofing off, it can lead to some bad swing habits so I just -- and anybody on the Tour will tell you, you can get in just as much trouble on the practice tee -- if you are not a good practicer or working on the wrong thing, that practice tee can be a killer; long list of pros that would attest to that.

BRUCE LIETZKE: In general I think it bothers some of the players that that is being written and you know, they take it as a slap on their ability that, you know, "hey, I am here too," but in my personal case, it doesn't bother me a bit. I like to sneak in and sneak out-of-town as quietly as I possibly can and if the attention is on somebody else, that is when I am the happiest, so -- I don't think it would have even bothered me when I was playing the Tour full-time. Again you have different personalities and there are some players, probably a dozen, that it doesn't bother a bit, but I think overall and through the years hearing a few players, and before Tiger Woods it was Jack Nicklaus, if Jack wasn't in your field then, boy, you just didn't have much of a tournament, so Tiger didn't start it and through the years I can remember hearing guys in the locker room saying, I beat Jack last week and things like that, so certainly it hurts some of the feelings of some of the players. You better learn to put up with it pretty quick because it has been written that way before Jack. It was probably Ben Hogan and before Ben Hogan the Byron Nelsons and everything. The stars of the game, and I believe that every sport needs those stars. And I think it hurts some feelings and for some guys it motivates them to go out and to show them that there are some other good players here. Could be a real motivating point for a lot of players, but for me it puts the focus somewhere else and that is exactly where I have always liked it.

last --

BRUCE LIETZKE: Thanks for recognizing that. By the way I am very proud to be here three weeks, very proud.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I am going to do nine. Seven weeks off; then three in Texas, Houston, Dallas, Colonial. Then I am going to play two in the fall, Reno and Vegas, and that is it. So it will be nine for the year.

BRUCE LIETZKE: That is hard to do. I am going to play the SENIOR TOUR - I have got about a little more than a year, but I also have two high school kids. I have got a sophomore in high school and an eighth grader right now and they will still be my No. 1 priority and I am going to have to figure out -- I am going to have to figure out what I am going to do. The tournaments are shorter on the SENIOR TOUR. They are three-day tournaments, the first year there is two day Pro-Ams; then after that, possibly one day Pro-Ams. I am not sure how many tournaments I will play and still feel like I am home enough to be with the kids through their high school years. And I can say pretty assuredly that once they are in college I will probably play the SENIOR TOUR full-time which would be 20 events, up to 25, I think, once they are gone and becoming human beings and self reliant and don't need me around the house. I still love to play golf. I still love to travel. When my family can travel with me I wouldn't mind being on the road 20 weeks out of the year. The first couple of years I am going to -- I am not sure how many weeks I will play. I have already found out that you have to play 12. I have already checked that to keep your membership. That hadn't changed; has it?

BRUCE LIETZKE: In fact, I'd like it to go down a little bit. But I will play at least that many for the first couple of years until they get in college.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I have a collection of cars that I work on. I built a couple of extra garages onto the house that I live. I am working on a 1926 Ford Roadster Hotrod that I built from scratch, with a bare chassis and put everything on the car and I am about two or three months from finishing that. Then I will find another project to work on. But during the day, kids are in school; I am working on my cars. Then as soon as school is out and my high school team is going to a golf course, then I go spend the afternoons with the high school team. But the days are spent working in my garage.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I don't do much fishing anymore. Dallas doesn't have Lakes real close and fishing is an all-day deal. My fishing reputation came when I lived in Oklahoma and I lived on a lake and my bass boat sat right on the lake, I could fish for an hour or all day. In Dallas, fishing, it is an all-day deal to get to a lake and I don't like to be gone all day, so I fish very infrequently now and the cars -- my garage keeps me at home, near the kids, and so I do a lot more of the garage work now and a lot less fishing.

BRUCE LIETZKE: I do. I haven't done very good. Today has been a good day so far so probably should head right out there because -- I ought to go by a couple of lottery tickets too because it was a very good day.

BRUCE LIETZKE: It may end on Fridays now. I forgot to look in the thing. Used to go through Sunday and some of the guys complained that if they missed the cut they didn't have a chance to win and I think they cut it is Tuesday through Friday, I think, so I need to get out there either today or I play early tomorrow and maybe tomorrow afternoon and I have never won that, that would be like winning a major tournament and this is our chance because Phil Blackmar is not playing this week. That has been our -- he has won the fishing contest here many, many times. In fact, I usually just follow him around like a puppy. I figure out wherever Blackmar goes that is where the fish are. He is not playing, so I am on my own. I am going to have to find the fish on my own. But it is a great spot. Great Lakes all over the place out there and it is a great way to relax after a round of golf.

BRUCE LIETZKE: No.

BRUCE LIETZKE: No. No.