ENERGIZER SENIOR TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 7, 1996

Hale Irwin

HALE IRWIN: Yeah, it was a very solid round. Pretty good golf course out there today. The fact that we had Jim and John and myself in the same group I think certainly brought a lot of attention and -- I welcome that. I need that kind of focus. I needed that kind of situation which kind of gets myself all of square one and get to playing better. That is exactly what happened. I did play extremely well today, a lot of very solid shots, a lot of good opportunities, one of my better iron games in a while. I have not been hitting my irons particularly well. But it came around very nicely today knowing full well that neither John nor Jim were going to have a bad round, by any means. We are seeing some great golf out there today. The scoring; it is a beautiful day, but, nevertheless, it is very good scoring. And then we got old sneaky Bob out there. Bob Charles, he is phenomenal. So all and all, I think a very good day. I played well. I played very solidly. Couple of putts here and there might have gone. But, at the same time, I did make some good ones, so I am very pleased with the start and very pleased with the position. And the thing I didn't want to do is what I accomplished was I didn't go out and give anything back. And that, I think, with the weather moving in - the forecast seems to indicate there will be plenty of opportunities for that, so good start and good finish.

HALE IRWIN: 5, Number 5 -- let's see, 208 yards. I hit a 2-iron to within about seven feet, making that for a birdie. Number 7, I hit - let us see - 7, I hit an 8-iron, again about similar distance, about 7 feet, 6 or 7 feet. Making that for birdie. Number 8, third shot, a wedge from 83 yards, sandwedge to within about five feet from the hole making that for a birdie.

HALE IRWIN: You don't want to hit about the saves along the way.

HALE IRWIN: I made a good save at 120. I had hit what I thought was a good second shot. Hit just a bit short of the flat area rolled back down off the green. I pitched it past about six feet. Made that for a par.

Then I made a good birdie at 14, hitting a 6-iron, three feet from the hole. Where are we?

HALE IRWIN: 18, I had excellent 5-iron, I don't know - what was that - maybe 20 feet, making that for a birdie.

HALE IRWIN: A couple, but you aren't interested. I can tell when you are not interested. We have heard it all year, haven't we? I did make a couple of nice short putts on the backside for some pars, some sort of shaky first putts from some distances that were a little tricky, but I had a couple of lies on 16. And 17 - what was that - 15 and 16 where I had to play from old divots, so I kind of got a little unfortunate there, but, you know, those things happen. I played well, kept it together and I don't want to sit here and say it was sort of boring. I mean, we are all kind of bored, but it was a very solid round - not a lot of spectacular holes-in-one, knocking it in for eagles, that kind of stuff. It was just a very well-played round, the kind of round that I wanted to play.

HALE IRWIN: Well, I putted well. There were a couple of shaky ones, but, again, these greens are not the easiest to putt. They do have some slope in them. They do have some breaks that are hard to pick up, so I didn't feel like I putted badly even -- I hit the balls as well as I did. I had a number of opportunities. I hit some good putts that didn't go in. I considered it a good putting round, not the kind of round that, you know, I will put down on my top 10 forever, but it was a very solid round.

HALE IRWIN: That is probably the biggest area I have found in my transition from the over-there to the over-here is the management, slash, focus of my game. But when I do that, I play very effectively. But it is allowing some of the things that are happening away from the Tour and away from golf to kind of bleed themselves in and take a bit of that attention away. This is an important week. It seems to have been elevated in importance by others, and it is important. I don't want to downplay it at all. It is a good week and it is a great week and there is a lot at stake out there, and I think, as much as anything, there is the pride factor; you want to go out and do the right thing and hopefully win, and I will go out on a winning note.

HALE IRWIN: Sure, I look forward to playing with the best players all the time. I mean, that is where I want to play. And if I can play with the best, whomever they are, then that will help me out - absolutely.

HALE IRWIN: I just -- I played the first hole extremely well. Great drive, good 4-iron, and good putt, just played very solidly, second hole was a little loose; put it in the left-hand bunker - forgot to mention that, Dave - and made it from about four feet for a par, but from that point on, it was just very solid. I kept hitting them close right over the flag; kept hitting them right at it, and it was just sort of -- it wasn't one shot. It wasn't one save. It wasn't one putt. It was just a very well played solidly hit round.

HALE IRWIN: Well, it wasn't one of my conversations with Jim, no. Jim you better play well today because. (LAUGHTER). No, it was not. It was a round that I felt like not necessarily with the same words or the same emphasis that you have, but it was one that I thought you never know what is going to happen with the weather coming in. It would be nice to get off with that good start, yes and who knows what the weather is going to do other than it sounds like a nasty weekend.

HALE IRWIN: Absolutely. As the wind blows, so will be the scores. It is just that kind of golf course here. We saw that last year when it got so cold and miserable: It can be a very, very difficult, very demanding golf course when that wind switches around and comes at us; makes holes like 11 and 12 and 13 become very difficult and we will just have to kind of see what happens.

HALE IRWIN: There has to be some limit, yeah. There is only so much that you can do and I try to be available for the ones I need to be and really focus on the ones I want to be and leave time for out here because when it is all said and done, what do we enjoy the most and do the best, it is right here unless you have made the choice as Tom has for instance, to focus more on his design work and I haven't made that selection yet. Maybe down the line, but I do want to allow time to do some of the other things that are fun and important to me, Sally and I are building a house in Phoenix and that is great fun. She is doing all the work.

HALE IRWIN: Yeah. I get the hard part to pay for it.

HALE IRWIN: Well, Jerry, I think if you just kind of look back on -- just take this year and the tournaments that we hold out there as the tournaments to play for, the Majors and maybe some of the others, I feel like I have played those pretty well. Those are the tournaments that get me ready, that get me going and you know, with one of the Majors won and one blown, three seconds in the Majors, I just think there is only so many tournaments I think that I personally can really get up for. I don't think -- I don't want to nor do I try to get up for every tournament every week. That is just impossible. So I try to be somewhat selective. Maybe I have been too selective this year, but again, I mentioned that we have got some other things that my wife and I are doing and that is important to me.

HALE IRWIN: It certainly might indicate that.

HALE IRWIN: Yeah, 17 I bogeyed, but played pretty well, yeah. It is just -- for me, it just really comes down to getting myself thinking about what I am doing, if I am thinking, well, I feel like the golf game will fall if I am a little indifferent about my thinking or a little out of place with it, I will play that way.

HALE IRWIN: I don't know. I don't know I think it is just --

HALE IRWIN: That is right. If I knew what I was doing, I wouldn't do it. I think it is just getting myself more in step with the matters at hand; doing the things that I can't control and not worrying too much about the things that I can't control -- like I can't control how John or Jim are playing. I can't control what the weather is going to be. I can only control what affects me and the right now. I have always had the philosophy of the most important shot is the shot I am about ready to play. The one I just played is history and the one after this is in the future and that sounds a little dry and a little boring but that is exactly the way it is and that is the way I deal with it.

HALE IRWIN: No. This has kind of built its way out of proportion, you guys. There is absolutely no animosity, absolutely, in what you guys have been writing and reading. Jim and I are friends. We have been friends for a long time. I admire the way he has played this year. It has been fantastic. I don't care who it is or where it is when you win five tournaments and when you win the money he is and coming back this year showing that last year was no fluke, I think the guy is a heck of a player. We get along fine. Only thing that we have between us he went to Kansas State and I went to Colorado. That is where it is staged.

HALE IRWIN: I think there is a part of you that says, hey, you know I can still do it over there. Every time I go over there we mention this -- mentioned this the other day. It is like putting your toe in a cold tub of water; get your fanny spanked, so you come over here where the water is warm and the people are a little nicer. Those guys on the regular Tour are younger, play with a great deal of intensity and they can really play and that part of it I enjoy being around that. Can I compete over there? I don't know. I am not doing it. Do I miss it? Absolutely. Could I play it? Maybe. Do I want to go over there, well, I am not that dumb. Do I want to go over there and play against Lehman and Mickelson that hit it 9 miles and 1-putt everything? I kind of like it over here where they hit it 8 miles and 1-putt everything.

HALE IRWIN: Probably not. And I say that not in any disrespect just because it is just not the same environment. It is a little more relaxed over here. The intensity level is just not as great. The competitive level is still there, absolutely, but you don't have as much of it. There is not that all encompassing air here that there is on the regular Tour so if you get into that other one and you come over here this seems like a cake walk and you can -- indeed your game could fall because of that. In fact, Nicklaus once told me that he found that his game fell when he didn't play with the younger players because it hasn't got anything to do with just -- just sort of the attitudes and the environment, it just sort of relaxes you a little bit and by relaxing sometimes your game relaxes, so I think it is good. I think it is good to go over there occasionally just to see where you need to try to get with your game and you force yourself on and I have seen over the last five or six months the degree of difficulty on our golf course improving, but you don't see anything in the scoring that would indicate that the scoring has been worse. These guys are playing to that. So I think as sort of like the soap opera "As the World Turns," as the course set up goes, as the competition goes, so will your game.

HALE IRWIN: Thank you very much.