U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 6, 1999

Ron Ferguson

RON FERGUSON: I am going to start with my biggest success, which is being here right now. I qualified at Greenleaf a couple of three weeks ago. They had three spots there 90 players for three shots. I shot 70, 2- under par and got the third spot. I have tried probably eight or nine PGA SENIOR TOUR events, and the closest I have come to grabbing one of those spots was in Naples this year, and I shot 73. I teed off early, very windy, cold day, very cold for Naples, Florida. I shot 73 on a tough golf course, tough conditions, and I hung around and hung around and hung around, and this wind started laying down and the weather started getting a lot nicer, so 72, to make a long story short. I missed that one. Other than the PGA and USGA events, I would like to add that I have tried over the years probably five or six U.S. Amateur events and five or six U.S. Open events and have never qualified. Very thrilled to be here. I have never been treated so well in all my life. Just for playing golf, it is amazing how these people treat you. I have got a Caddie waiting on me at the airport, you know. I got a locker right next Raymond Floyd and Bruce Fleisher, and four dozen Titleists in my locker. It is just -- I have signed autographs. Payroll day, I would sign a lot of autographs, or I would sign for payrolls for the guys that work for me. But guys are asking for my autograph -- kids, women -- and it is just a thrill to be here to play this golf course. Very tough golf course. The greens are something like I have never seen before. But I am glad to be here. The mini-tour stuff, I have probably, like he said, played in 150 mini-tour events, and met a lot of nice people that have gone on to play in the PGA Senior stuff, and some of them are even here. Probably won 18, 20 mini-tour events. They are usually one- or two-day events. They really can't prepare you for what you are going to see right here on this USGA golf course. Before I turned pro, I played a lot of amateur golf, as a police officer, as a police lieutenant, police Olympics. Played in our state Amateur several times; played in local invitational tournaments around Orlando, Florida. A lot of pick-up skin games with my buddies. And so I have been involved with golf most of my life. I have played in high school, in junior college in Florida, Palatka, Florida, my hometown. I guess about four, five years ago, I thought that I would take this game serious and tried to qualify for the Senior PGA and some of these USGA tournaments and started working on my game. Would arrange my schedule with work where I could practice and play and be off on the weekends so I could play in some of these tournaments. I have had some success. Went back to my hometown and won the Florida Azalea Amateur Tournament two years in a row. I think it was '95 and '96. Played in a couple three national amateur events. This summer I retired from the Police Department, and then I turned pro and -- in October of 1996. Won my first event. It was a plus-40 Tour event, and it was at Greenleaf. And I shot, I think it was even par, 1-over par and won 11-under my first event. So I thought professional golf was pretty easy. Which it has not turned out to be.

RON FERGUSON: Oh, I haven't figured it up lately. If I, to put a ballpark figure on, I would say I have won $30,000. I have probably spent $30,000 in entry fees and travel expenses.

RON FERGUSON: Since I turned pro, there was Dennis McNamara for McNamara Pontiac in Orlando sponsored me the first year. We had a deal. I met him at as a member guest at Orlando Country Club and we became friends. And he offered to help me when I turned pro. We struck a deal: He would give me $1,000 a month for the first year. He has done that. So that deal has played out, and he fulfilled his obligation. And it is my turn to fulfill mine.

RON FERGUSON: You want to hear about the shootouts?

RON FERGUSON: I went to Florida State and majored in criminology and graduated in 1971. I had got hired by the Orlando Police Department in April of '71 and Disney opened in October of '71. So you know how Orlando has grown since then. I spent three years in patrol as a patrol officer like everyone does. And then I made detective, and I was assigned to the Crimes Against Persons Section. My specialty was robberies. But if you worked evening shift, which you did once every other month or so or weekends, you would catch anything that happened, like homicides or rapes or obscene phone calls, you know. Anything that would happen to the person, that is what you would be assigned to. So your expertise would be in crimes against persons. I had came into work one morning about 8:30 and the Lieutenant grabbed me. He said: "We have just had a murder overnight. And a 64-year-old man got killed, bound and gagged. We have a suspect, we have gone to get a search warrant. We want you to go out to his the crime scene, make sure that nobody contaminates the crime scene to make sure that he doesn't come back. If -- we think he is out-of-town, we think he is on to us, but we would like you to go there and guard the crime scene. Here's a picture of him. If he comes back, arrest him." So I am out there and I am sitting there for a couple hours talking to a phone man who is digging a hole in the yard looking for trouble in the line, and a man walks by the fence. He comes in the gate. I look at the picture, and looks like him. I said: Well this has got to be him. I said --. Do you want to hear this whole story or -- the whole story, detail?

RON FERGUSON: So I approached him. He knew who I was. I was pretty street-smart. I was dressed in a suit coat and tie, middle of March in the morning, and I approached him, told him who I was. I asked him who he was. He said he was James Henry. I said: Mr. Henry, you are under arrest. He says: Well, what for? And I said: You are under arrest for the murder of Mr. Reily (phonetic) who lives right here. You live right behind the place. You are a suspect. You are going to have to come with me. So, long story short, we started a conversation. And most of the conversation was he was yelling and shouting saying that he hadn't done anything and he wasn't going to go anywhere with me and that. So I put him on the car. Procedure was to put the people on the car and pat him down and handcuff him and take him to jail. Well, I had him on the car he turned and he elbowed me and we started fighting and I had him on the ground at one point I was reaching for my handcuffs and my handcuffs were somewhere on the ground. I lost them. In the process of trying to handcuff Mr. Henry he got up and I got up and he tackled me. We went on front seat of the car. And he is hitting me in the face and gauging my eyes, he reached down. My gun was just right there and he grabs my gun and we are out of the car and he pointed the gun at me. He says, you are going to drive me. I had a partner; when we first got out of the academy we used to give each other scenarios: What would you do if; what would you do if. One of the questions was what would you do if you had your gun taken away from you and someone wanted to drive. So it was pretty convenient, we already knew what we were going to do. We were never going to get behind the wheel and drive somebody at gun point. Since I had already been beat up by him, I decided best thing for me to do was to run. So I ran around the back of the car. I really expected to get shot before I got to the back of the car. But I think I had surprised him. I ran and there was a four-foot chain linked fence in the yard I jumped over the fence and he shot at me once. I got on the other side of the fence. And he shot and it hit me in the side, came out my side and my coat flew open and first thing I thought I had been shot but it didn't hurt. So I ran and I looked back and he had jumped the fence and as I looked turned and looked, he shot at me again and missed. Then we are running down the street. He caught up with me. Hit me in the head with the gun. Knocked me down. Hit me in the head with the gun again. The gun went off. He had his finger on the trigger when he hit my head with the gun. Now, I am down like you and he is up over me and he has got the gun pointed and I rolled out of the way, turned and he hit me in -- the bullet hit me in the chest and that one did hurt. And it was very loud and I could feel the percussion from the gun shot. And he kept clicking. The gun was out of bullets. He kept clicking. I got up and he hit me in the head with the gun a few more times. And then I ran to apartment complex and he ran the other way. He got in my car and took off. So the -- Something humorous here I'd like to add it, nothing to do with golf. Two guys that were first on the scene that I had trained while I was in patrol, I had always taught them that when we have to give anybody first aid, you never let on how bad hurt they are, or you know, just -- they are okay, you give them first aid with your tone of voice, your face, facial expression or your words; you never let on how bad they are hurt. And these two cops they came up to me and they go, oh! Oh, my God! And I was coughing up blood and I know I had stuff all over my head where I had been hit with this gun. But I got to the hospital. I stayed conscious. I fought very hard to stay conscious because I thought if I stay conscious, got to the emergency room, I would be okay. So I was. They fixed me up. I was out of the hospital in about a week and a half. Another week and a half I was back on-the-job. You want to hear this other story?

RON FERGUSON: Mr. Henry was later apprehended that day. He got in my car. I did get to the telephone. On the phone I told him what had happened to me; who had done it; where we were. And that he was in my car and he was taken off somewhere. So the police did spot him that morning and chased him. They chased him in my car. It was a fast little Oldsmobile. He wrecked it. He jumped out of the car; was on foot and they ended up cornering him in the washing machine -- behind the washing machine in an apartment complex.

RON FERGUSON: He went to court. He was convicted for killing the man that he was suspected of killing. He was convicted of attempting to kill me and he got the death penalty for killing Mr. Reily. He was executed, I believe it was in 1985, in the electric chair. You want to hear about the other one?

RON FERGUSON: Quite an experience. 1977 it was Labor Day -- I am sorry, Memorial day, and I was working a shift by myself. An informant came to me; she was a prostitute and she said that a guy had just gotten out of jail for robbery and he had found a gun; he wanted someone to drive him. He asked her to drive him to do a robbery of the gas station which was on West Colonial Drive in Orlando. So I called my supervisor. He said, fine, get you a partner, get a uniformed patrol officer and go out and stake the place out. So we did. We had a good little location, staked out there. And we sat there for about three hours and we already had a plan made up of what we were going to do. My partner was looking at the other side of the trailer where we were. He says, here he comes, here he comes, he has got a gun and mask and when he was saying that I saw the prostitute driving in the parking lot in a car. So we took our positions and he was in the office. I was behind the telephone pole and my partner was in some bushes. He had a uniform on. I could look through the window; I could see the attendant being robbed. I could see the guy robbing him at gun point. He came out of the gas station and he came right toward me. He had his gun in his hand. He had a bunch of cartons of cigarettes here. He had money wadded up in his hand. He took his gun and as he was coming toward me, he was pulling his mask up with the gun and my partner from this side hollered: Halt, police. And as he hollered, halt, police. The bad guy turned like this and shot at him. And I had already made the decision to shoot when he was pointing at my partner. I shot him with a shotgun hit him with 9 pellets in the chest here. And if anybody has ever talked to you about adrenaline and things going in slow motion or you have experienced it, you are -- you know what I am talking about. I could hear the pellets from that shot gun blast hit him in the chest. I could see the look on his face with the mask pulled like that. I could hear the air coming out of his lungs. So he dropped and he was dead right there. And to be very honest with you, that was a lot harder to get over than having been shot myself. For a couple of weeks I was a big hero around the police station, you know, way to go; you got even with him, and you know, good work, all this. And then I started not feeling well with my stomach. I couldn't eat; I would throw up if I did eat. Losing weight, lost down to like 135, 140 pounds. Ended up going into the hospital; contemplated suicide and finally just -- I just survived, I guess, pulled out of it. And that was in 1977. I could still, as you realize, picture that in my mind of him, me shooting him.

RON FERGUSON: 1974. That was in March of 1974. Other one was in 1977 also.

RON FERGUSON: My wildest dreams would be -- I read that book -- was it Miracle on the 17th Green? That would be my wildest dream and it is about a man who has separated from his wife. He qualifies for the U.S. Senior Open. He practiced in the trap for four years. Lee Trevino comes by and says, you know, you should have the trap shot by now. He goes and makes the cut and he ends up winning the tournament and his wife and he reconcile on the 17th green. I think they are playing Pebble Beach in this book. That would be my wildest dream.

RON FERGUSON: Realistic goals are to make the cut and top 25 so I could get invited back next year.

RON FERGUSON: Yes. The Oakley Brothers are here, played many mini-tour events with them. Fred Hooter and some of the PGA qualifiers. Walter Hall, I have played with him. There is probably a couple more that I am overlooking.

RON FERGUSON: Oh, sure. Friday before I came down here three of my good cop buddies, you know, they are as excited as I am. They really are. One of them wrote me a little note. He is not into, you know, sending flowers, things like that, but he wrote me a note and said that he was proud of me for being here and that no matter how tough the stress and the pressure got that I have already been through more stress and pressure than everybody else ever put together. So just relax and play my game is what his advice was.

RON FERGUSON: Well, I am not as long as Tom McGinnis or as Fred Hooter, but I guess I am about average. I don't know. If I am trying to keep it in play, I am lucky if it goes 250. If I am really trying to hit it, might go 280, 285.

RON FERGUSON: My driver and my chipping and my determination and the will to make this cut and make the top 25.

RON FERGUSON: Yes.

RON FERGUSON: I probably have not broken 80 yet. If we had played out I probably wouldn't have broken 80. I am glad we are not keeping score. I would get discouraged. The greens are very tough. I can't figure them out. I think I have got a flat putt and it would roll, roll, roll. I think one is uphill and I would leave it ten feet short. It is just getting used to them.

RON FERGUSON: No, I played worse today than I played yesterday.

RON FERGUSON: (laughter).

RON FERGUSON: I would like to think not, but I know mine is pretty strong. I know that I want to play the best that I can and when I say I haven't broken 80 in these practice rounds, that doesn't bother me. I am ready to play tomorrow. I wish tomorrow were Thursday, you know. I am ready to go play. My game is not going to change; it is not going to get any better. I want the bell to ring. I want to go.