THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 20, 2002

Deane Beman

Pete Dye

Jerry Pate

BOB COMBS: Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for being with us here this morning, to join our honored guests, to really celebrate and commemorate a landmark moment in golf and certainly in the development of this championship and this facility. You'll hear a great deal about it and then you'll hear some from our speakers and have a chance for questions. To start things off, I would like to bring up PGA TOUR Commissioner Finchem for his comments.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Thank you, Bob. Thanks for being with us today.

Jerry Pate and I were talking on the phone a few weeks ago, and Jerry comes back to the THE PLAYERS Championship every year and it is a delight to have him. We were reminiscing about the fact that it had been 20 years since the fateful moment when Jerry plunged these other two fellows into the lake. We thought it was worth commemorating that particular tournament that day, the first tournament on the golf course, Jerry Pate winning, all of that coming together.

It was special for so many reasons. It says so many things about the develop of Tournament Players Clubs, development of the THE PLAYERS Championship, the quality of Pete Dye's designing, Commissioner Beman's vision in terms of building those things, and it all came together in that moment and we wanted to reminisce.

So before further adieu, I would like to recognize the fact that we would like to thank Pete in particular for making the trip here, and in recognition of the fact that it's been 20 years, Pete was kind enough to wear the same shoes he was wearing on the day that he was pushed into the lake, which they are wearing pretty well, Pete. (Laughter.)

I thank Jerry and Deane for being here, as well. We are going to roll a short video, and then Bob will introduce each of those fellows to reminisce a little bit.

(Video played.)

BOB COMBS: We have our protagonists here, which will be entertaining to hear each of them about their thoughts on that day, their thoughts on the championship and the their thoughts on the tournament now. We'll begin with Commissioner Beman.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: I'm going to defer to Pete.

PETE DYE: It was really a thrill when Deane asked me to come up here, and we went around and around. Then he had this great idea about a Stadium Golf Course, and he actually spent a of couple extra dollars and flew us up to Canada and looked at Jack's golf course.

We had a friend of his by the name of Vernon Kelly, who at that time was on the other side of the fence. And Vernon brought me out to his property and found the only high spot in this property, and it was a little low -- and Deane would never want to refer to it. I heard you call it a swamp, and that would never have been published 20 years ago. Deane, it was just a little low. (Laughter)

Deane was the one that really wanted this golf course and this was his thought about the tournament and the spectators -- and I remember Deane saying try to have No. 1 be like No. 2, and 1 like 10 because you'll have players on both sides. So he gave it a tremendous amount of thought.

I don't think any of us really thought of the 17th hole. It just kind of arrived. We just dug it out trying to get the sand out and I think -- actually I think it was Alice came out and said why don't you make it an island hole. There's an island hole in Ponte Vedra on an old Donald Ross golf course. Only thing is we didn't make it as big of an island; it was a smaller island.

I remember originally I had the back end of the green slightly going away from you, and Deane almost had seven heart attacks about that. And finally, we rebuilt it about 11 times and finally got it back a little bit coming this way. So I still see a few balls jump in there every once in a while. It's been a great ride, and what they have done with the golf course today is unbelievable.

Originally, it was a pretty rustic, wouldn't you say, Jerry? Now, for the spectators, they have really done a wonderful job, and Fred Klauk what they have done over the years, and Bobby Alton, it's just absolutely marvelous and to come back here and see the people sitting on the mounds and not being chewed up by the tigers and ants, things like that. It's really wonderful.

JERRY PATE: You know, I think of something. Greatness takes people that have passion and love for the same idea, and I certainly have the passion and the love for the game and the success of the TOUR, and I have a love for design. In fact, my first involvement with Pete Dye was in 1974 at the World Amateur at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic. And to listen to Deane's dream, which without a doubt Tim Finchem has taken a great thing and made it better, but Deane certainly should get 100% of the credit for where the TOUR is today, in his vision and his ideas and his dreams to build golf to the next level, and to have a dream to come out here in the swamp.

Of course, my grandfather was one of the original members of San Jose in the 20's. He joined Ponte Vedra in the 30s, when it first opened and my dad grew up here in Jacksonville. I played the island green at probably age 8 at Ponte Vedra; so my family roots are in Jacksonville. My first tournament opportunity was when Brian had the Jacksonville Open and I was an amateur in college and was afforded the opportunity.

When it came time to play the Stadium Course, I felt like there were a lot of great vibes going, and Deane had invited my dad, who has since passed away. I had lost my grandfather in the fall. We came down my dad says, "You owe it to the TOUR." And I was a pretty good player in the fall of '81 on TOUR and he said, "You owe it to the TOUR to support the Commissioner. He's done a lot of great thing for you guys."

So we came down and replayed in the fall at the official opening. And as I recall, I played with Deane and he says, "If you've just listened to me, Pete created a lot of visual hazards out there that are not really as severe as it looks, and if you'll just follow my lead, I'm going to show you how to play this golf course. And, in fact," he said, "if you pay attention, you'll probably win this thing." And that's how much confidence he had in being able to teach me how to play the golf course that he and Pete had designed.

So I played on the opening day, still have the gold medal at home for the opening day round; I keep it as a precious memento. And I came back when the tournament was held in March, and the rest was history. It was the most diabolical golf course anyone had ever created. It was definitely set up to test the greatest place in the world, and it was a test.

And the conversations about the 17th as being the most ridiculously-hard par-3 ever built. Well, ironically we had a Pro-Am in those days, and I birdied it on Wednesday and I think birdied it on 3 of the four days. So out of five rounds in competition, I birdied it four or five times. So I knew it was my golf course, and I played that real well. So by the time Saturday's round came around, all the great players in the game that we knew of that day had missed the cut. You had Nicklaus and I think Palmer, Weiskopf, Trevino, Johnny Miller, David Graham, Crenshaw, Irwin, you name it. Go back and look, it was unbelievable, how many guys missed the cut.

And then the rumbling in the locker room, we had already come across the street from Sawgrass where the wind blew 900 miles an hour. And they still have the barber chair in the locker room today where Deane would let you sit there. He was a great leader, but he was one of us: "Okay, if you're going to have a bitch session, okay, sit in there, but don't take it out in media, in the public because we are all here as one group." So we would sit in that barber chair across the street and just raise hell about everything wrong with everything.

And the wind was blowing. Of course, we all had to play the same course. Now we are across the street and it was beautiful weather, and there was one problem: This little guy right over here had tested the nerves of everyone with his creation and no one could play the course. And I just happened to have a week and I was on a roll in my career where I was striking the ball well. I had a week where I think, Deane, I hit every shot just about perfect. The rest was history.

But it was such a tight atmosphere and a really trying time for the TOUR. We were leaping off and Deane's vision was to go off and go other directions. PGA TOUR Productions was not yet the reality of today, the Stadium Course, the fitness centers, you see, all the PGA TOUR marketing, all of the things that we've expanded as a TOUR, as an organization, on his ideas. He was in the infancy of a great creation, of building the net worth of the TOUR. And it was very controversial when the players originally at that first tournament, because they said we don't have any business out on the golf course; why are we out on the golf course.

This obviously became the greatest asset the TOUR had and the greatest marketing opportunity for our game, and it's their ideas and their vision. I was just happy and very humble just to be a speck on the wall and a spot in history that happened to just be lucky enough to have my game in order. But, you know, I made some provisions as I said to come down early. I listened to the Commissioner and I played the golf course the way he told me to play it, and lo and behold I won.

So he knew a little bit about the game, not only just running the TOUR, and I owe a lot of my success to Deane, especially winning here. But the unfortunate thing, as great as that was for me, in my career, at age 28, I had won eight times in two majors, with the Amateur; that was the end of my career, really. Within two months, I tore my shoulder up. It's a great memory. I had great friends and great relationships with Pete and Alice and Deane and Judy. And as I told Deane, the words of advice to Tim, "Deane, God is there and just don't mess it up. Just keep it going." Because he had a lot of great ideas.

Thank you, Commissioner.

BOB COMBS: Commissioner Beman?

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: Well, the concept, of course, here was to build -- even though it's THE PLAYERS championship, this was to build a golf course that was dedicated to the golf fan. I can remember the first tournament that I went to as Commissioner was the Phoenix Open. I had never been outside the ropes at a golf tournament, ever. And I walk a round of the Phoenix Open, I didn't want to bother anybody, but I'm not very tall. I'm looking through the back of everybody's head trying to figure out who is playing here.

So the concept of the Stadium Golf Course, that was -- jarred my memory, because back in the early 60s, the golf course designer, Pete, who you know, Eddie Alton, who has now passed away, Eddie Alton and I were working on a project in Maryland, and we came up with a concept of stadium golf in the early 60s. And I went to Joe Dey who was the executive director at the USGA at the time, and put a plan together for him. Here is what you guys out to do at the USGA. You ought to go around the country, five or six locations. You ought to build your own stadium golf courses to host your major championships and phone in the USGA a greens section to not only have the research at these universities, but have the actual conditions of playing conditions, maybe incorporate a Stadium Golf Course, as well, as your USGA greens section. And it was just a little too progressive for Joe, so nothing came of it.

But when I went out to the Phoenix Open and started watching my first golf tournament from the other side of the ropes and seeing, really, seeing the biggest seller at the stands was the periscope, so you could see over somebody's head. And so I had that idea in 1960, with the opportunity to build this championship, the challenge of how do we take this new tournament in the face of the history of the U.S. Open, the British Open, the popularity of the Masters tournament, the history of the PGA Championship, and how do we take our rightful place in the world of golf and build our own events to be able to enhance the value of what the players are playing for. That was a huge challenge.

I felt the best way to do that was with this particular Stadium Golf Course concept is go to one place with great volunteers and a good community and build a Stadium Golf Course. And it turned out to be a billion dollar idea. And I say a billion dollars, I don't know what the members are, but I would say that building this golf course here, was worth to the family of golf of professional golf, and I say "the family," because it's the PGA TOUR as an entity, the players themselves, and our tournament sponsors and their charities. Building this Stadium Golf Course has been worth up to now somewhere between $800 or $900 million and $1.2 billion. If you count the asset value of what the TOUR owns in their properties, the net income that has come of those facilities that have gone into the players' retirement plan, the ability of the individual tournaments to play their championships on TPCs paying no rent instead of paying upwards of $400,000 or $500,000 for the use of somebody else's golf course for a week, and then the ability of more fans to be able to come to those events with the right kind of facilities; that played right into the strategy of involving corporate entertaining at our golf tournaments. You add all of that up, and the net income to the charities, the net income to the players, and the existing solid assets that the TOUR now enjoys, is well over a billion dollars to date.

So from a financial standpoint, I think we have a success. But I think that probably more importantly, when Pete and I sat down and started strategizing on what kind of golf course we were going to have, Pete touched on it. I wanted -- most big tournaments still don't playoff of two tees, and we always play off of two tees. We are going to accommodate the full field and try to do it the most efficient way we can.

I wanted the 10th hole and the 1st hole to be very similar. I didn't want somebody who drew a 10th tee time, off at 7:30 in the morning or 7:00 in the morning to have to play a 470-yard hole and the guy going off the 1st to play a 395-yard hole; so I wanted it to be similar. So the 10th hole goes left-to-right and then the 1st hole goes right-to-left; so they are very similar holes to start off the day. And Pete and I carried that over the whole golf course. This is a balanced golf course. There is not any more left in this golf course than there is right.

And there isn't any more -- the balance is from a distance standpoint. You look at the people who have won this golf tournament; it doesn't favor a giant hitter. It doesn't favor a short hitter. You've had a whole range of people who have won this golf tournament. It does not favor one or the other. It has stood the test of time. This golf course doesn't need to be 7,700 yards long to be a challenge to the best player in the world.

JERRY PATE: Do you hear that Pete? Don't get any ideas.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: This is a unique facility and one that we all can be very proud of, and I know Pete put his heart and soul in this. It was a swamp -- I will say it was a swamp. We took a better part of a year to build a canal 360 degrees all the way around it to lower the water table so we could work in it.

But it was a challenge then. It certainly has played its role in the development of not only this tournament for the players, but it has influenced other tournaments and benefitted the entire TOUR, not just the players.

BOB COMBS: Thank you, Deane.

I think it's safe to say that the three gentlemen here are elite, but the events not only of that day and that tournament that year, but all of the developments since that have been unique.

I think their schedules permit them to take some time for questions from the floor.

Q. You called Deane's idea here "controversial". I think that was kind. What was your opinion back in '82 about the TOUR owning golf courses, and when did that evolve and change your mind?

JERRY PATE: When we went into this project, I was 26 years old, and when it.

Opened, I was 28 years old when I won. I'm almost 49 this year. I had the opportunity to be involved in a lot of projects since then, over 30 of my own right, and I will say this: As a golfer, and as an individual, independent contractor and as an artist as a golfer -- most golfers are artists because they have to create and do things creatively to get around the golf course because no two shots are alike.

Sometimes you have opinions of things that you really are not qualified to give an opinion on, and I think in that case, in that year there were a lot of unqualified, strong-opinionated golfers. Time tells a lot, history; it's easy to go back and look now. But there was no question it was a great idea.

I can never forget when Deane sent out the prospectus to the players, and it was his bit of propaganda that he had to send out to convince these players and all of these --.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: We call it information.

JERRY PATE: I call it propaganda. If you go back and look at what they said, they were going to ask what we wanted. We said we are going build a nice little simple golf course, low maintenance, don't worry about the money, it will take care of itself. We spent a lot of money and we generated tenfold and that was the genius that Deane was able to bring to the table as the Commissioner. He had vision and he could make it work.

We as players were very opinionated, as I said for all of those reasons that I stated. And we don't know anything about operating and running a Stadium Golf Course or a PGA TOUR, but the Commissioner did. I think when you look back and you see -- and I'll never forget when we got the prospectus, and I showed it to my dad. My dad was alive then and he ran a big business, a $300 million Coca-Cola business, so he had a lot of experience in people and business. I had no experience in politics or business or people; just my caddy and myself. And he said, "Son, this is a great idea. You need to support it. Commissioner is doing a great job. Let him run with it."

I was one of the up-and-coming stars, really, on TOUR as a young guy, 28 years old and had done what I had done in such a short time. When it came time to open the golf course, as I said, dad was invited to come over here and a business partner of mine actually sold , traded lumber, Charlie -- Scambia (ph) Lumber Company. They put all of the pilings in -- wish they had all burned down -- (Laughter).

But anyways, Pete learned later on in life to get tree lumber. When it rotted out, he would have to live with those timbers. But we came over here and I remember my dad saying, "You know, you've got to support it." So the word "controversial," I didn't say it was controversial, among the players, but the Jacksonville group of -- the people that were supportive of golf in Jacksonville, from the greater Jacksonville Golf Foundation and people from Deerwood and Ponte Vedra, Timocuana and all of the places all over town; the Commissioner had a great dream and the community supported it. This town had one of the greatest supports and volunteers and community of any tournament on TOUR, and that's probably one of the reasons Deane brought the TOUR headquarters here. And it was proven to be true. This became one of the greatest events in golf.

And immaturely, from my standpoint, I would say looking back, players complain about everything, and I don't want to get into that, because they are independent. I am driving a car, by the way, for today and yesterday, they loaned me while I'm here in town that had some other player's name on it that I don't want to name, but he didn't like the color.

So as a Commissioner, a Commissioner has to be all things to everybody. It's a thankless job and the Commissioner has to be almost -- and I don't want to use the word "genius" because I don't want to build up Deane's ego, but you have to be extremely smart to do what he did.

As a young, independent person, you think you know everything just because you can hit a golf ball, but as you get older, you find out you didn't know much.

Q. Do you have any orange balls left?

JERRY PATE: I was asked that today. I have about 20 used ones in the practice bag and I have one dozen left in my drawer that I saved. And my kids, I have a son who is a junior on the Alabama Golf Team, and he was going through trying to get my new Titleist Pro V1 ball in the same drawer where I have these balls. He saw these and he said, "Let me just take those."

I said, "No, you get killed if you take those." I have one dozen left, probably the only dozen left in history.

Q. Since Pete always exceeds his budgets anyway, what did this end up costing?

PETE DYE: Can't we keep this meeting kind of nice and not get into things like that (Laughter).

Q. What did it end up costing? What was your reaction to how 17 evolved?

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: First of all, let's talk about cost. We actually completed this golf course within the budget that we had. The financial transaction was we paid a dollar for all the property, and I got 50 local businessmen to put up $20,000 for a charter membership. It was a leap of faith for them, but they got a great membership. They got a 20-year membership, no dues, no cart fees, but they were the equity. We then got a savings and loan out of Daytona Beach to give us a $3.5 million non-recourse loan. And then we signed up 3,000 local golfers as associate members at $25 apiece to assure us of some local play, and we built it within the budget. It operated within budget from the beginning.

Now we've invested a huge amount of money since then, but the money that was invested since then was money created by people playing the golf course.

Q. How about 17, how it evolved?

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: You know, 17 was sort of a peninsula kind of hole. We didn't have enough sand to put out on the golf course for building fairways and things like that, and that was the best source of sand. We kept digging it. Pretty soon there wasn't anything left but this little old place to put the pin. That's about how it happened.

Right, Pete?

PETE DYE: Yeah.

Q. For Deane and Pete, please. Was there any second-guessing of yourselves immediately after the negative reaction to the players of the design of the golf course?

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: Well, first of all, the golf course changed when we opened in October of 1980 when we opened for play. We did not play in '81, when the first tournament was in '82. We made a lot of changes on the greens between the opening of 1980 and the tournament of 1982. So once you started playing this golf course, and Pete was in the -- I don't think Pete was real happy with the changes that I made, but I felt it was on the other side of fair; he mentioned the 17th hole. Clearly the back of the 17th hole went away. And we put two extra Scambia (ph) letterboards on the back of 17 and raised the back of that green so that all the balls didn't go off of 17.

A number of greens -- the greens here are fairly small in the first place, and Pete had a lot of areas where the greens green drained off, were fairly deep, and almost all of those were brought up as much as a foot or 18 inches.

JERRY PATE: After the first year.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: No, we did it again.

PETE DYE: We've done it five times. (Laughter).

JERRY PATE: It's getting easier every year.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: We did it again after the time we played in '82. But between '80 and '81, I remember on the eighth hole, there was a deep, deep hole right over the bunker on the right side and we brought that up 18 inches. On the right side of 1 -- well, almost every hole, and then when we played the tournament, it was substantially, I felt as a player, it was substantially on the other side of fair from the green standpoint when I first played it, when we started playing it.

Then in '81 when we changed it and then the tournament was played in '82, you've got to remember it's a brand new golf course and the greens very hard. You have bermudagrass out there; they are very hard, and it was still just on the other side of fair. So after the '82 tournament, we went in and modified them again.

And then, probably two or three years later than that, we changed the grass on the greens. When we did that we refloated everything and it became just a little bit -- it's gone through about five transitions to where it is today.

Q. Did you take this personally when guys are talking about, where is the windmills and elephants buried in the greens? This is your vision and your concept, and this is the reaction you got.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: Between windmills and Donkey-Kong and the hood of a Volkswagen, I have since played -- we won't mention any names here -- but I have since played a number of golf courses by those people who made those quotes, and I've played a lot more severe greens of those courses than these were.

JERRY PATE: Pete taught us all that.

But you know the thing that made it tough, Deane, as a player, was that the pressure was put on from the board to not spend a lot of money. So in fairness to that, Pete dug the sand out of the golf course, as I recall, and put the sand that they excavated -- in those days, if you were not just throwing money, you would use local site sand to build the greens. And for those people that didn't know much about Jacksonville, I said, yeah that this is really good sand for greens because in the summertime you just drive your car down the beach on the sand it works as real good base-paving for roads; or you can use it as putting greens, and it was sort of a joke because the greens were so hard because the fact is that we didn't really have the money at that time -- we had the money but the pressure was put on Deane and Pete.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: I was not allowed --.

JERRY PATE: He was not allowed to spend the money.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: The TOUR did not put a nickel into this golf course.

JERRY PATE: Since then, the greens have been shelled out. And then Bobby and Fred Klauk they came in and built USGA greens with certified sands that have been screened, and the scores are more acceptable. The scores went from 8-under at one time to 20-under. So the golf course has become much more benign.

PETE DYE: When you won the tournament, what would you guess the Stimpmeter reading was?

JERRY PATE: Probably 9 or 8. If you had them 10 or 11, the ball would run off into one of those holes.

PETE DYE: I mean 8 in 1981 would be really a fast green in 1981.

JERRY PATE: And they were ryegrass overseeded bermuda, which is a whole lot different from pen and bent and tiffeagle, which now you are looking like a carpet compared to a little less fair.

Q. I thought the event that put the whole tournament over the top was, of course, going in the water. Would you tell the actual story? Somebody had to have scouted out that area so you knew where to dive; you can't be diving into a foot of water.

PETE DYE: He had no idea. He came as close to being killed as anybody ever had.

JERRY PATE: You heard me on that video because I asked Alice on Friday; I knew I was going to win if I would make my pits. I was not missing a shot. One of these where I was in the zone and I felt every shot was just precision and I told Alice -- they here were when they built the course, but don't tell Pete, but how deep is the water off 18. He said it was probably waist deep or chest deep. I said, "Is there anything buried out there with any stumps?" Because she used to travel with Pete -- and actually she's the one that does all of the designs -- (laughter) -- Pete just takes her out. He said no, it was just a clean lake and they had just excavated with the scraper, the big pans and they said it's about waist or chest deep.

I said fine, that's all I needed to know. And of course, I told her on Saturday, "I guarantee you I'm going to win," and I was not confident as you can imagine (Laughter).

And you heard me coming up 18, I don't know if somebody was going to hole it or birdie last hole, but I had it that close from the hole and didn't know I was going to birdie and have a two-shot lead. I said, "Pete Dye will go in."

I had already planned that. And then I saw Judy up there and Judy is sweating bullets and Deane is nervous -- they really were under a lot of pressure. It was unfortunate because here is a great idea, the greatest idea the TOUR has had probably, and we as players were all unfairly criticizing this great moment in the PGA TOUR's history. As I said, you know I was 28 years old and, you know, maybe Jack Nicklaus was 28 years old or 38 years old or some of the older players, or Ben Crenshaw was 29 or 30. There was a lot of known players that were taking knots and I'm not saying Jack or Ben, Ben -- but as age goes and it was probably not fair. It really wasn't when you look at it today because what they have done has been just magnificent.

Q. Deane, in the meantime, next time you have propaganda to send out I think you ought to let Jerry handle it for you. He does a hell of a job for you. But Pete, Tiger Woods was in here this morning, and he said the first time he saw this course was. I think, '94 when he played it at the U.S. Amateur, and he said he couldn't see the second fairway from, like, the first fairway. And since that time so many things have been cleaned up that the course is just as hard, but it's made it more of a fun course, but just as hard. And I wonder your thoughts there, sir, if it hurt you to see some of these things moved out?

PETE DYE: No. Deane's concept, you know, the gallery -- and that's just helped the gallery. Now the TOUR has the money; they can do it themselves. When I was out here, the only thing I had was goats, and the goats were a little slow getting things cleaned up.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: We had goats out here cleaning up the rough.

PETE DYE: You all don't realize what a tough job I really had out here.

Q. For Jerry Pate, I wonder, since you're in the design business, I am told you could not build this golf course today because of environmental reasons, but if you could, what would it cost to build a courts like this?

JERRY PATE: To build this course today, if you could just start over with the lines and lumber going around that ditch -- when we played across the ditch, I would come over and Vernon Kelly would drive me on the mound in the truck and show me what was going on because I had a keen interest in design.

But it would probably cost today -- it wouldn't be that much more expensive. But with all of the things that they have added to it, probably 10, $15 million. Probably would be closer to 15, wouldn't you think?

PETE DYE: Sure.

JERRY PATE: By the time you figure the irrigation and areas they have cleaned up and grass and extra bridges for spectators.

But that's not a lot of money when you figure the golf courses -- Bighorn is $40 million or Steve Wynn's course in California is $40 million, the Quarry is $20 million, the Tradition is a preserve and $20 million in Palm Springs. I'm just building a golf course $13 or $14 million in the desert; so there are big numbers thrown in.

Again, I'm not trying to sound like I'm trying to oversell what they did, but it's incredible to look back 20 years what at vision they had. And Pete, obviously, had the most creative ideas in golf design. When I saw Casa de Campo in 1974, and I had grown up in a little town in Alabama, I went my God, and even Pensacola Country Club was built -- I saw this golf course in the Caribbean and I said this is the most unbelievable creation. And I had already played St. Andrews and Troon in Scotland and seen all of the diabolical holes there. And I thought this guy has got the greatest talent of anyone I've ever seen in golf design and he did.

Really, I grew up -- and my mom was an artist and designer, and I said I want to do that. I want to do like Pete Dye. I want to grow up and learn from Pete Dye because he's got great art and vision and skills.

You asked me about design, my philosophy really is to take Pete's idea and tone them down with some of Nicklaus's dollars and agronomics. If you can get the middle of that, you've got a pretty strong golf course.

Q. Pete, I know you had done a lot of wonderful golf courses before this one was finished, but did being thrown in the water after this golf course opened, did that like add to your notoriety? Did that change your career? Did people look at you differently because of this golf course versus how they had looked at you before?

PETE DYE: It didn't change my staff.

COMMISSIONER BEMAN: Hasn't changed his clothes.

PETE DYE: Matter of fact, best pair of pants Pete Davidson gave to me after I was thrown in the lake, and I still wear them at the home and I still wear them every once in awhile on Sunday. Still have them. They are a little suity for me; they have pleated fronts.

JERRY PATE: You know, suity.

BOB COMBS: Really, very special chance to share their memories. These guys collectively, with this philosophy put this tournament on the map with such an important moment in history here.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time out of your schedules to come. We appreciate it.

End of FastScripts....