INGERSOLL-RAND SENIOR TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 3, 1999

Dave Eichelberger

DAVE EICHELBERGER: Well, ever since I've had my younger children here, I've kind of always tried to get home on Sunday night from wherever I'm playing and then fly out, depending on my Pro-Am time, if I'm early on Wednesday, then I come on Tuesday night. If I'm late on Wednesday, then I would come like Wednesday morning fly -- I live in Connecticut, fly out of La Guardia, and usually it's very easy to get anywhere from La Guardia. It's just a one-hop flight from just about anyplace in the East Coast. I can get to -- well, practically any place, all the places in Florida, like Atlanta, Charlotte, Birmingham. There's 20 or 25 stops I can get to nonstop from La Guardia there in the morning. And so this time, since I have the early time today, well, I made my plans to come in last night and was on the flight that left La Guardia at 7:00, change in Charlotte and got in here at 11:00. And everything was going fine until right when I -- about the time I arrived at the airport, which is about 5:45 is when this big storm hit. And it really was just heavy rain, gusty 40-mile-an-hour gust winds. It just came down hard. All of the sudden, all the planes that were coming in could not land. They had to divert. They were going to -- I don't know where all they went but they weren't coming to La Guardia. My plane that was supposed to leave at 7:00 was coming from Tampa. When I arrived instead of 7:00, they had pushed it back to 7:30, but I'm still going to make my connection because the flight doesn't leave until 10:15. And then they pushed it from 7:30 to 7:55, and I can still make my connection because that put us into Charlotte at like 9:00 or something like that. About 8:00, they said: "Flight has been diverted to Baltimore. We don't know when it's going to leave." All of the sudden now I'm in trouble. My first thought was to go rent a car and see if I could drive down here. I thought I'll never make it; I don't think I can stay awake to make the drive. So I'll call the limousine company that I use a lot of times to go to the airport and called up old Rudy there in Greenwich and said, "Do you guys ever go to places far off like, for instance, Myrtle Beach?" And he says, "Oh, my God, I think the furthest we've ever taken anybody is Washington." He said, "It's $1.30 a mile and you've got to pay both ways." Oh, man. But he says, "We'll take you to Myrtle Beach." And this is like at 8:00. "We can have a car there in to 20 minutes." "Okay. Send him on over." And then sure enough, at about 8:25, here came old -- new buddy, old Joe Campanella drives up there in a big old long black Cadillac stretch limousine and through threw my stuff in there and we were out on this highway at 8:30. Got out of New York pretty quick. Coming in, there was a traffic jam. A trailer had turned over on the George Washington Bridge which, of course, causes a big to-do. That was about 4:30, 5:00. But they had cleared all that and we were out of New York in good time and down that New Jersey Turnpike. We got stopped at the Delaware Bridge. And I got a map so I could figure out how to get here. Once you got off 95, then had to figure -- where to get started figuring out the mileage and the time, the mileage and the time. And we'd go another hundred miles and figure it out, and came out to 7:30 every time, if you figure 60 to 65 miles an hour, right on the dot. We turned off Interstate 95 at Interstate 40 at about 5:00, and it said Wilmington was 92 miles, and I looked on the map there, and it said 73 miles from Wilmington to Myrtle Beach. So, we had two and a half hours, and about 165 miles. And man, that's just about -- about 65 miles an hour or something like that. When we got to Wilmington, got to the other side of Wilmington and got onto Highway 17 there at about 6:15, between 6:15 and 6:30. And I said, Well, surely, it's not 73 miles all the way to the golf course because I know the golf course is all the way up here on the north side of town. Maybe it's about five or six miles closer. And just kept coming, kept coming, but now it was 55-mile-an-hour speed limit there, and he was reluctant to get -- to go over 70, really. He was afraid if he went over 70 that it was just going to be -- if police stop us at that point, we were dead because. He had -- we had already gotten a speeding ticket on the Beltway in Washington where he was going 72 in a 55 and that was about midnight. He says I can go 80 or 90 if you want me to, but if we get stopped now, you're dead. We're still close to making it. And I didn't really start to panic until about 7:20 and we were system out still out there on Highway 17. I couldn't really figure out how far we were at that point. Everything kept looking the same. All those stops and the restaurants and things like that along there, there was a stretch there of about 10, 15 miles of coming through all of that. And just all of the sudden, I see those little concrete entryway things there that said Dunes South. That was at 7:29 on the car clock. And we pulled in right there, turned into that entrance there right behind the 4th green right at 7:29, and I said "Man, just pull over right here," and he pulled over to the side of the road. And he popped the trunk and I grabbed my clubs and went down to the 5th tee around the time everybody was coming up with their carts, and discovered I started on No. 3, which I was thankful for that which was only about maybe 300 yards over to the third tee. Jumped into some guy's car cart that had brought Tommy Aaron's scorecard out. I was about 50 yards from the tee when the whistle blew. And here came my team with Andy North who was going to take my place, and we all got to the tee about the same time. I said, "Y'all go good head," glad of it. And I'll collect myself and go from there. Very lucky.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: First tee shot was fine. It was out there. It was just kind of -- it was cold and right into the wind. I hit a driver, 3-wood and was still about 30 yards short of the green on that 3rd hole. But no, that was about as close as I've ever come to missing the whole thing.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: I had three little naps for a total of about two hours.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: No. I didn't want to say anything to him and he just came up. Said, boy, y'all -- he was talking to Joe driver there and I was in the back and he never really even said thinking to me. Just asked for his driver's license, walked back to the car, came back with a ticket, and it was barely 10 minutes and we were on our way again. That was really not as bad as it could have been.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: It was on the Virginia side of the Beltway.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: We were right in the middle of a whole -- I was surprised there were as many cars on the road as there were had time of night. There were cars everywhere and were just kind of in the pack moving with everybody, and I guess he grabbed him because of the limo, I guess. There was a bunch of trucks and cars, and everybody all going the same thing speed.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: In a car? It's been a while. A few years. I've never done it just like that before. Never had to have any kind of a deadline where I had to do it like that. I've driven -- I've driven across the country before. But never under these kind of circumstances where I had a deadline.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: It was basically 700 miles, or 1400 miles at $1.30 a mile. About 1800-something, plus the gas, plus the tolls and all that.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: I gave him $500. I told him, If I won the tournament, I'll give him more.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: No. When he pulled up to the side of the road there, I just got my stuff and came running. I didn't have to jump the fence. That was good.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: I was planning on using today for a nice little practice and warm up and all that. Going to work out on the practice tee and use it for a practice round and what have you. But I think I'm going to go take a nap.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: Lord, no. We knew it was going to be close. We stopped twice -- had to stop twice for gas. That car drinks up the gasoline.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: Yeah.

DAVE EICHELBERGER: I didn't feel like eating anything. Joe got something both times. He had a hot dog the first time and got him a candy bar the second time.

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