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TRAVELERS CHAMPIONSHIPJune 18, 2008Jerry KellyCROMWELL, CONNECTICUT CHRIS REIMER: Welcome, Jerry. Thanks for spending a couple minutes with us. Why don't you get us started with your assessment on your year so far and your thoughts coming into this event. JERRY KELLY: You know, I've had some decent finishes, but I've been pretty disappointed with the year. I've started missing cuts the last few years, and you know, that's really not the way I play. I grind it out and just make the cuts rather than just missing them, and I think the swing's gotten a lot better. I'm a lot on my own weight with my swing a lot more now, so it should be better going forward from here. The whole issue of -- I pulled a hip flexor right before the Open. Couldn't load, couldn't transfer my weight. It's getting better. CHRIS REIMER: Okay. Questions. Q. Obviously there's a big deal about injuries on the Tour right now. How many percentage of players do you think play with injuries? You talk about your hip flexor. JERRY KELLY: 50. Q. And how do you cut it off and how do you decide to persevere? JERRY KELLY: If it will deteriorate. If it's something that -- if it's a small tear and it could tear more, something that's pulled or, you know, like bad tendonitis, which I get a lot. I've got some compressed vertebrae in my neck that every once in a while they just -- they screen the entire side and I can't turn to my right. There's a ton of different things that golfers go through in the sense it's a full-body repetitive motion with impact, and the ground is the impact, not the ball. And the torquing that we go through is not natural with the back and the knees and the hips and the shoulders. So you know, I don't know anybody out here who is not hurting in some way. There's always something going on. You can't take a medical because you hurt. You take a medical because you're injured. There's a big difference between being in pain, being hurt and being injured. An injury requires treatment. Being hurt it's something that every person over 40 lives with every single day. You know, it's part of getting old, and as things tighten up and deteriorate over time, you know, you're going to pull things more. You're going to have things tighten in different spots and get out of whack, and it's going to be painful, but it's not an injury. And you know, that's where the Tour's gotta take a look at the exemption situation and know that, you know, guys coming up -- you know, we've all played hurt all our careers basically. I mean I can't look back and see a six-month stretch where I wasn't hurt in some way. There's just no way. I can barely find a month's stretch. And it's part of the amount of training we do now, you know. And it may not be as much getting hurt playing golf, but lifting of the weights, the running. Like Tiger, Tiger did it while he was running, you know, and that's one of the main reasons why I train on the treadmill, because you know, it's better for your core on the right and it's better for everything to strengthen up. And you've always got that chance of doing something when you're on the road, where a treadmill is very consistent. Q. How about the fitness trainers that have been following the Tour for the last couple of years? JERRY KELLY: I've been following the Tour since I've been out here, 13 years. Yeah, I've always taken advantage of them. I don't take advantage of the physical therapy area of it as much as I do the training. You know, I like to do that. I like to do my own stretching, my own manipulation. That way I can go at the pace that I want to go at rather than someone pushing my body to an extreme. And you know, I kind of do it on my own a little bit more now. Q. (Inaudible). JERRY KELLY: You know, the hip has been weak. I made a change in my swing and I'm loading more into that hip rather than being on my back because my back was starting to hurt so bad when I was -- that's why I had to change my swing. There was no way I was going to be able to continue my career and certainly not in swinging with the swing that I had. I was too far from the inside getting caught. It was a painful condition to be in consistently. So we changed my swing, but it certainly does make a load on the left hip. And you know, it's chronic. It's inside there, and that's probably more of the tendonitis. They thought I had rheumatoid way back when, but they ruled that out, but the tendonitis and things that I've got in different areas of my body have been pretty painful. But I can recover. I can work those areas. This is something weird. Now -- I'm not even going to tell you how this one happened. JERRY KELLY: I feel for those outfielders in Houston going up on the back grass because the second I hit that pitcher's mound at full speed, so it just gave way and cranked, but I beat them. I was limping the last 50 yards, but I beat them. This was like Tuesday before the U.S. Open. It's always something. You know me. I cross-train with my kids' sports, you know. I stayed away from lacrosse that week and ended up getting hurt just running, you know. It was Tuesday, the week before the Open. I was at home. Q. Jerry, what's the worst injury that you've played with, I mean injury wise or hurt wise? We find out Tiger played with a torn ACL. JERRY KELLY: I've had a broken finger. I've had torn cartilage in my pinkie. I played not long after my surgery on my knee. Actually that was probably the worst one. The reason I had surgery on my knee is my bursa sac blew at the Memorial tournament my second year on Tour. My calf was bigger than my thigh, and by the end of that year I had no thigh muscle whatsoever. It was kind of gross. And I got my knee worked out. I was a second-year player. I wasn't going to stop, you know. And I had a tear in some cartilage, and it was all messed up in there and trying to push off of that all year, that's the only time in my career I finished over 100 on the PGA Tour, and that's -- from the Memorial on, I was playing with no right leg. And that's pretty much the worst. But three -- I don't know how many years ago, my AC joint, from all the hockey, banging up against the boards, my AC joint was bone-to-bone rubbing up against each other, and I tried everything to get it taken care of, but the week after the Tour Championship I was going to have surgery on my shoulder, but luckily after the Tour Championship Fred Funk brought out Jim Weathers, "the healer," "the big man." And we did seven sessions that week, and I went to have my preop appointment, and that was the first week in a long time that I played with no pain in my shoulder. I had trouble with my follow-through. So I went for the preop MRI. The next thing you know, he had created a space, so I didn't need to have the surgery. So I see him regularly. He's a shiatsu guy. Q. You heard about Tiger Woods yesterday. Any thoughts on looking back at the Open and would you do it any differently now? JERRY KELLY: I do. Yeah. I don't think he's as much of a wimp as we thought he was. (Laughs). No. You know, I know about playing after a knee surgery. Okay. And it is painful. You are going to tweak it at times. You know, I'm sure he was making sure that he was guarding it because if you happen to be on that foot and pivot, even to turn to talk to somebody or shake somebody's hand, that thing will tweak, so you can't imagine the down force that he has on his left knee coming into the ball. So I by no means brushed off what he was going through and said, "oh, he's putting on a show." You know, he's usually not one to put on a show about injury. If it was hurting him that bad, a lot of us were speculating, he's having surgery the week after the Open. That's kind of what we were saying to ourselves going, you know, this is not normal. And then when I heard his press conference, and heard him say, "this isn't the same thing," you know. You know, "do you know"... "yeah, I know what it is. It's not the same thing." So he was being very coy about the full extent of the injury. And you know, I don't like the comment he made about the NHL, but -- was it Milburn who -- yeah, Milburn. But Milburn's gotta know we got a pretty tough athlete in golf and there are a bunch of other tough athletes in golf who have played other sports and work real hard. NHL are anomalies, man. Those guys are the toughest individuals in the world, period. Maybe you can go over there and see Australia rules football and rugby, but the way we play hockey over here is brutal, tough. But Tiger shouldn't have said that about the NHL, but Milburn's gotta realize now, you know, this is a tough athlete, you know. He's the No. 1 athlete in the world, and you know, it's a lot more than just playing golf. He's a true athlete. He's a tough SOB, and I think they'll realize that. I mean broken tibia and torn ACL and win the U.S. Open and, "awe, it's okay. It's all right." Q. Do you find it even more remarkable that he did that? JERRY KELLY: Absolutely. There's no question about it. I mean we were still all left speechless on 18, you know. I think we knew the knee needed to be fixed for a while. You know, right after the Masters was a perfect time to get it cleaned up. People were saying, "oh, he's taking the headlines away from Immelman and whatnot." He wasn't trying to do that. He had to get it done. Now we realize he didn't even have what was needed done. He just tried to go around it to make it better and good enough to play the Open and see if he can keep playing. Obviously he couldn't. So now he's gotta go do the major deal. So it was nice of him for what he did for the PGA Tour and trying to work around what was really wrong, and trying to play out here, because any time he's out here helps us. So I mean he's going to do what he has to do for his body, but that's taking one for the team right there in really trying to play the U.S. Open where he could have shut it down after the Masters and got the whole thing done. Q. How is this going to affect the U. S. Ryder Cup team, would you say? JERRY KELLY: Number one, obviously he'll be missed. I mean the sponsors want him, the media wants him and the players really want him because when we win a tournament without Tiger in it, you beat the best of the field that week, but you haven't beaten the best. I want to play in all the tournaments Tiger plays in, give myself the best chance to win a tournament against the best. That's the measuring stick. So it's tough on the players. Some players are going to say, "all right, great," you know, "better chance for me." Some of the players are going to be like, "okay, let's start next year. Let's shut the whole thing down." (Laughs). You know, no. But you know, there's so many great players, and you hate to rest all those laurels and all that need on one player, because that's not really true either. But that's just the psyche of me in wanting to beat the best. But it doesn't make it any more easy to win a golf tournament or to win the Fed Ex Cup. You know, Ryder Cup, hey, pressure's off, man. Pressure's off on the Ryder Cup. Without Tiger, shoot, we're sure to lose; right? We got no problem. We got nothing to lose going in there. Tearing them up. (Laughs). No, it's -- the Ryder Cup is a team sport. I don't care what individuals are there. You could take -- you could throw darts at our tour and get it together playing as a team, put the right guys together and you can win. There's -- that team is not one player, and that's been shown all the way through. That team needs to be a team, needs to be a unit, and so cohesive that the captain can pick who he thinks should play together and not actually ask the players who they want to play with. But having a real team, it doesn't matter who you're playing with. Doesn't matter. Even when Paul put Tiger and Phil together, you know. I tell you what, you put those NHL guys on to the All-Star team, they all play well together. I mean it's like they've been playing together for years. Zetterberg is just as good as Zetterberg Pavlovsky. I don't know if all that many golfers really grasp how much you need to be a team. I mean I've been on one and it was a great team experience. It was fantastic, came together. You know, the way you talk at night, the way you eat together, I believe they really do come together as a team very well, but I think Azinger is going to put his mark on it with being a true team, where I don't think he's going to care who wants to play with who. He's going to bring that thing together as a team. Whatever pairings he makes are going to work, and I guarantee you he's going to have the tightest team in a long time, long time. Q. Talk about the facility here, and more generally, the fact that so many are playing. JERRY KELLY: I think it's going to help Travelers a lot. There's no question. It was the worst practice facility and gone to one of the best. And that makes a huge difference. You could not warm up correctly. You could not post-round correctly, and you could not work on your game during the week. There was nowhere to do any of that but on the golf course. So you know, it may speed up some practice rounds, which will make guys happy, you know, and you get guys hanging around the golf course a lot longer, which is great for the fans. There was no sense in hitting balls on the old one, so everybody would just take off and leave. So in a lot of ways, it's going to help the tournament get fields, but it's also going to bring more people in because they're going to be around the players more. CHRIS REIMER: Thanks, Larry. Good luck this week. End of FastScripts |
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