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GINN SUR MER CLASSIC AT TESORO

October 24, 2007

Errie Ball

PORT ST. LUCIE, FLORIDA

GREG BALL: Looking at this giant clubhouse and how the TOUR is with television screens on each hole, updates for the fans. Has it amazed you how much golf has changed and how it is now in this era?
ERRIE BALL: No question about it. It's a different game today, although we had some pretty good-sized clubhouses in our time, like Medina Country Club in Chicago, but there's more of them now.
I was amazed -- I didn't know this place was here until I read it in the papers the other day. Jerry brought me out, and I said, Where the hell are we going? All of a sudden here it is. Beautiful, and I'm very impressed.

Q. Can you elaborate on your impressions of this, not only the course but also the clubhouse and what you see when you're driving in?
ERRIE BALL: My impressions, I thought I was (indiscernible) coming in. I was very impressed. I said, My God. They've got a wonderful place to play, a wonderful clubhouse. And do they have rooms here for them here in the clubhouse?
GREG BALL: No.
ERRIE BALL: Okay. So it's amazing how the golf game has progressed and the courses they play, wonderful facilities that they have today for them all over the country, starting in L.A. all the way around to here.
GREG BALL: I know you spent some time out on the range with the Fathauer twins. Talk about that experience you had with them and your perceptions and what they could do in the future.
ERRIE BALL: I'm a little deaf, so...
GREG BALL: Your experiences with the twins, talk about how that was for you, and do you see them having a future?
ERRIE BALL: I think they got a good future. They both have great swings, and looks like one swing, both the same on each person. The only difference I could see is one had his right hand a little bit more under the shaft than the other, but that's a very small thing.
But I changed it. I think they got a great future and they'll go a long way and they're very nice. I enjoyed talking to them and being with them.
GREG BALL: I overheard in the media center you gave some instruction to the Strange brothers as well; is that true?
ERRIE BALL: I don't remember that.
GREG BALL: Okay. I think we're good. Thank you very much.

Q. You've played with some of the -- basically all -- played with or been associated with a lot of the game's greatest players for the last 80 years. Talk a little bit about -- actually, the question I think that I want to ask is: In your opinion, who is the greatest player you have ever played with or been around?
ERRIE BALL: Well, in my very early days, Bobby Jones; after him Sam Snead; and after Snead Ben Hogan, which I played with; and then Jimmy Demerit. Byron Nelson, played quite a bit with him. I was fortunate enough to -- I never won any of the big tournaments but I won the regional tournaments.
I played well enough to be paired with some of the big names. And nowadays -- I always had two professional jobs. One in Chicago and one in Tucson, Arizona, and then it became Chicago and Florida.
I think a club professional today doesn't have much chance against the touring pros. It was getting that way when Ben Hogan was coming into his prime. You had to be one or the other. You had to concentrate on either being a tournament player or a club professional, and a club professional has a lot work to do now. Has to wear too many hats, I think.

Q. What made Jones better than anybody else?
ERRIE BALL: Well, Bobby was a very brilliant lawyer and a very nice man, and I got know to him an awful lot. In fact, he's the one of the reasons that I came into this country from England. I was playing in the British Open the year that he was making his Grand Slam, and my uncle, who at the time was the head professional at Eastlake in Atlanta, he asked me about coming over to be an assistant with him.
During the British Open I met Bob because Bob was a member of Eastlake at that time, and I asked him what my chances would be. He encouraged me to come over, so he was very good to me. I admired him because he was not only a great golfer but a wonderful man.

Q. You talked a little bit about equipment changes and changes in the courses now. If you were to take the equipment from when you played and put it in the hands of some of the greats of the game now, how do you think it would compare? Are these guys as good as the guys you played with in your time, or does it have a lot to do with the improved equipment?
ERRIE BALL: I think the players today are very skillful, and, I mean they've got everything going for them, like equipment, the ball particularly. But I think they could adjust to the equipment that we played with.
Now, they probably wouldn't hit the ball as far because the ball is, I think, the biggest difference of all. If they were to play with the equipment and the ball we played with, they would have adjusted all right, I think.
They've got very good golf swings. I admire them. I kind of get a little jealous.

Q. What do you think, I mean, the game of golf in America really started becoming popular with Bobby Jones, and it's obviously boomed since then. What do you think the biggest influence on the growth of the game of golf in America has been?
ERRIE BALL: I think Bobby Jones really was the first one to get it started in America. Then you had Walter Hagen. He was a big influence on golf. Then it really got great when television got into the act, like you fellows. It was all either radio or nothing at all.
But that's what's made the game, I think, television, radio.

Q. You think that's what popularized it?
ERRIE BALL: Well, it's made every sport really, hasn't it? Yeah. And the money today is unbelievable. I think I played in Phoenix and I finished 19th and my check was $33.

Q. What year was that?
ERRIE BALL: In about the 50s, 60s. Early 60s, yeah.

Q. When you were playing in those days and making those checks, did you ever dream that the guys would be leaving -- first place this year leaves with $810,000. Did you ever dream that would happen?
ERRIE BALL: No, never did. I think when TV got into the act everything just zoomed. I wish I had been around. I probably wouldn't have kept my club jobs.

Q. So playing with all of the greats of the game that a lot of us just, you know, only get to read about, do you have any stories about playing with any of those guys? What's it like playing with Hagen?
ERRIE BALL: I didn't get to play with Hagen. Played quite a bit with Tommy Bolt; he's quite a character. Threw his clubs all over the place. But he was a great player. Great player.

Q. Thank you very much, Errie, it's a pleasure.
ERRIE BALL: My pleasure.

End of FastScripts

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