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BOOZ ALLEN CLASSIC

June 24, 2004

Rich Beem

POTOMAC, MARYLAND

JOHN BUSH: 7 under par 64, nice start to the tournament. Let's hear your comments on the round, if we can.

RICH BEEM: Yeah, I mean, what could I say? I came back to a golf course that I love to play every year and got off to a really good start. Birdied the first couple of holes and hit it really close on 3, almost made that.

I think I birdied the holes that I felt like I should and I snuck a couple in there where normally I haven't had much success. Birdied 5 and 6. I got really lucky on 6, actually, I hit it just a little divot off the tee box and hit it pretty much right through the tree on my second shot. You've got to have good breaks like that to shoot 64.

I played solid all day. Made a lot of birdies. Didn't birdie 13 and bogeyed 18, but other than that, it was probably the most fun round of golf I'd had in a long time and can't wait to get back out here tomorrow.

JOHN BUSH: Take us through your birdies real quick.

RICH BEEM: Birdie on 1 from 12 feet just above the hole.

No. 2 from about four feet, pin high.

5, I hit it to about five feet and made that, just straight in put.

6, I 2 putted, like I said.

7, I hit it about 20, 25 feet pin high left and curled that one in.

9, I hit it about 12 feet and made that.

10, I hit it to about four feet just behind, straight in putt and made that.

14 was probably one of the all time greatest birdies I've had in the left hand bunker out of the tee box with a. 4 iron and I had about 85 yards and I put a lob wedge in my, back in my stance and stabbed it up about 25 feet and happened to roll that up. Cookie says to me, "Oh, boy, here we go." That's just what kind of a day it was. I played solid and I'm excited but I'm not I'm certainly not surprised. I've been playing well of late and I like the golf course, so, I don't know. That's it.

JOHN BUSH: And your bogey on 18?

RICH BEEM: I actually hit a perfect drive right down the middle I had 137 to the hole. We watched Joe Durant hit a little 9 iron in there really close and I thought we would hit wedge there, but the wind picked up just as a hit it. Hit a great chip up there to about three feet and hit a fairly poor put, playing inside just inside the hole and probably got a little quick with it, I don't know, but doesn't matter, it's over and done with and onto tomorrow.

Q. Rich when you're on the back nine looking at 8 under par, do thoughts start running through your head, thinking about the course record, or thinking how low can I go

do you start to tighten up?

RICH BEEM: Honestly I don't know what the course record was. There was a couple times I might have hit a lot of shots tighter than the first nine holes and that's kind of expected. But the places where I could have gotten into some pitfalls, I didn't, and I could have on 15, I dumped my second shot in the right hand bunker and made about a 6 or 7 footer there for par.

You know, 16, I was very cautious on my second shot. I know not to hit it up over the green and rolled it up there perfectly. On 17, my ball hits three or four paces over the water and there certainly could have been some places I could have fallen down but I didn't. 18, obviously it was a fluke, but just one of those things that sometimes happen. I wasn't really thinking about the course record. I didn't know what it was.

Q. What is it you like about this course?

RICH BEEM: You know, Jerry, I wish I could tell you. I guess it's just the simple fact I won here the first time I ever saw it. First tournament round I've ever played here, I shot 66. And, you know, I don't know, it's an exciting golf course for me because you can challenge it off the tee. You've got to be cautiously you can't just go out there and blast away because there are a few holes that will come up and bite you if you're not careful.

I don't know, I had so much success in past years that it's just fun for me to come back to. I can't put my finger on it.

I will tell you one thing. This course is in perfect shape. It's in the same exact conditions when I won here in '99. The rough is not overly thick but the greens are dynamite. They are just absolutely fantastic, I told the tournament director who was the old tournament director? Pete Cleeve (ph). I ran into Pete yesterday afternoon and he asked me how the golf course was. I said it's exactly like it was in '99. He said, "Well, hopefully we'll see you on Sunday." Got off to a good start, but I've got three tough days ahead of me and we'll see what happens.

Q. Maybe we make the mistake in the media that the elite players point towards the majors. Is there a part of you when you look at your schedule, you say, I can't wait to get back there because it will turn things around?

RICH BEEM: Absolutely. And I'm not looking this week to turn things around, but obviously I'm looking for a shot of confidence coming out of this week and I certainly got it today. But I've had a shot of confidence the last three or four weeks. Even though I missed the cut last week right on the number. I thought it was Top 70 and ties, but me being a dumb ass, found out it was top 60 and ties.

But nonetheless, you're right, I don't put my schedule around the majors. Majors to me are just another tournament. Obviously, it's got some significance to it but it's also, I'll be brutally honest, majors are somewhat of a pain in the as. They are so much harder to get around, the security is much tighter, they don't really know you. Regular TOUR events, you walk in and walk out and the security guys have been there years and years and it's pretty easy to do.

Majors are a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love playing in them, but also, it's just so much more difficult of a week. And this week is easy for me. It's just, I don't know what it is, it's just so easy that if there's really not many headaches and so all I do is just come out here and focus on golf and playing well. This is fun. It's a great week for me.

Q. I know you thought you were playing well going into last week. What's the year been like and how's your game been and what's improved recently?

RICH BEEM: I wish you could tell me where my game has been.

I was reading an article this morning on Sports Illustrated about David Duval last week and, I thought it was a great article because I think he summed up how I felt after I won the PGA. I just ran and ran and ran, and I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I really haven't taken much time off and I think that hurt me. I would get to a lot of events and not care about being there. I had so many other things going on in my life; child, buying a new house in Austin, Texas, you name it. Just trying to get through life and feeling like I had to go out and play, feeling like I had to do this because I didn't want to sit at home and watch everybody else gobble up all of this money we're playing for.

But at the same time, I really was not excited about being on the golf course and it showed. I didn't care about missing cuts. It really didn't it really didn't affect me. Yeah, I would get upset about it, but so what? My life is pretty good. I've got a little bit of rest. The move to Austin has helped. If I did miss a cut, I was able to go home for the weekend instead of feeling like I had to stay at the tournament site for another day or two before I go to the next tournament site.

So reading that about David really kind of made me it was almost like a relief, it was like, man, somebody else feels this way, too, not just me and I think that's what sometimes, you know, I think that's why Tiger played so well for so long because he only played 18 events but they were quality events. Me, it's more about quantity and I think that really caught up with me.

But I'm excited about playing now and I'm hoping to play well for the rest of the year. But, yeah, my season up to this point has been less than stellar as the stats will imply.

Q. Something else that David said last week that resonated with a lot of people is that once he finally did win that major and get out, he thought, you know, now what? What now? What do I do? "Is this it," I guess is the exact line.

RICH BEEM: You're exactly right. Is this it? I mean, is it? Everybody that I talk to, "Hey, Rich, do the dance." It's like, oh, why did I do that, but that's what people remember. They don't remember the victory here so much or me and Steve Lowery battling at The INTERNATIONAL. They remember the PGA. It's like, what do you do now? Do you sit and enjoy it, do you go away, do you keep playing, what do you do? For guys like me who, you know, are not of the purebred like the David Duvals and Ernie Els' and Mickelsons, those guys, I mean those guys, they have more talent in their left pinky than I do in my entire body, but I've got to work at it. It's easy for them. I think they can afford the luxuries of taking weeks off and things like that where I always felt like I had to go play.

You're right, I sit there and every once in awhile, I'll take the Wannamaker off the wall or my little niche that I've got it sitting in and I'll just sit there and look at it, like that's pretty cool. But you're right. What do you do after that? Do you keep grinding and go try and beat your head against the wall and win a bunch more or do you enjoy it? That is the one thing I didn't do, and probably David as well, is I didn't sit and enjoy it; take a couple of weeks off and take a month off. Just sit there and go, man, this is an unbelievably great accomplishment. I know you've got to go back to work, you really don't have to I guess, not if they give you all that money. (Laughter.)

Q. As well as you've played this course, I would not imagine you would be all that enthusiastic about anybody starting to mess with it, making some fairly serious renovations, I wonder if you could talk about that.

RICH BEEM: I've heard two schools of thought . I heard that they are going to come in next year and totally renovate the greens and whatnot but the head pro, who is a good friend of mine, we went to college together and he said "No, that's a rumor," and they are not planning on doing anything.

I know they are going to do the clubhouse because we have talked about it in PGA TOUR meeting but I haven't I don't know about the golf course. I mean, I probably should get out there and tie myself to a stake if they try and touch it with bulldozers, but I probably won't go to that extreme.

Yeah, if they change it, so be it. I don't think the golf course needs changing. Look at the winning scores, it hardly ever goes past what, 14 , 15 , 16 under maybe? When I won it was 10 under. I don't think it's a golf course that needs a whole lot of renovation to be honest with you.

Q. You talked, 14, 15, what scores

RICH BEEM: If the wind doesn't blow this afternoon, the scores are out there, they are there for the taking. The golf course is rather benign, but it just shows that I'm at 7, there's one other guy at 5 and a bunch of guys at 4. It's just a hard golf course. It's hard to make a ton of birdies. It was my day today and I'm hoping that I have another great day tomorrow and the weekend, but it's not a golf course where you can shoot 63 or 62 on easily. You have to have a really special day.

Q. Along the same vein, obviously when you won here in '99, you led pretty much, it was a wire to wire deal, does that also give you some comfort knowing that this is nothing new being here on Thursday?

RICH BEEM: That's what I told myself coming down the stretch. This is only Thursday, don't get worked up about this, you're playing well and enjoy it. Like I said, there's so much golf to be played still, I just I'm excited about my position but I'm not going to sit there and rest on my laurels. I have to go out there and work at it, for three more days and like I said, four years ago, hopefully when I see you here on Sunday drinking a beer, it will be worth all the effort, but it's still a long week but I'm looking forward to. It will be fun.

Q. You've finished second here and you were in contention last year and now you're the first day leader. What's it like to be part of a history of an event so that the fans, when they think of the history of the event they think of you?

RICH BEEM: You trying to make my head big or what? It's cool, it's nice to be on the golf course today and all of a sudden there's 10, 15 people on the first hole; and by the fifth hole there's 20 or 30; and by No. 10 there's 50 or 80; and by the time we got done there's a bunch of people out watching. Heck, yeah, it's fun. It's nice to be associated with an event, especially this one. Like I said, this place has a lot of meaning to me, you know, first time out, I see it, I win, pretty amazing stuff. I enjoy coming back, and what more can I say besides that?

Q. The cross handed grip, when did you go do that?

RICH BEEM: When I finally got tired of missing putts I went to that.

I went to it on the 14th hole of the Byron Nelson week. The first round I just missed a 5 footer and I just said to Billy, my caddie, I said, "You know what I'm done, I'm not going to go back to conventional." I'm so inconsistent, if I'm putting well, everything goes in, but if I'm a little bit off, I seem to miss everything. So I did. I went to cross handed.

And actually the following week, I got on this, I don't even want to call it a monitor, but it's not a camera, it's I don't know, this gentlemen out of South Africa by way of Germany invented it and it shows you the path of your stroke. He showed me conventional stroke versus cross handed, and cross handed stroke was infinitely better than the conventional. So, I stuck with it and I feel so much more comfortable standing over the ball now. I feel like I can make it, I feel like I can make every putt I look at. I know it's not going to happen, but it's a pretty good feeling being able to stand over the putt and feeling like, hey, this has a chance of going in, so hoping to get it close so you can 2 putt. That's a big difference.

JOHN BUSH: Nice start to the tournament. Good luck the rest of the week.

End of FastScripts.

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