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WGC NEC INVITATIONAL

August 18, 2004

Jay Haas

AKRON, OHIO

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Congratulations on making the Ryder Cup team. Let's start with some opening comments about playing the Ryder Cup in a couple months.

JAY HAAS: I was just listening to the last few comments from Chris, and don't you just love that excitement there, and I think that's what we all feel. I know the first time I did it, I was excited, but I don't think I realized what an accomplishment it was, and I think the Ryder Cup has certainly changed since '83 was my first time. There's almost more people out here today than there was for the Matches there at PGA National. The interest wasn't there for the public but for the players. We all wanted to make that team and everything.

So once I got on that first team, it's kind of been a goal of mine since I've been out here to try to do that again and again. 1995 was a different animal than it had been in '83. The crowds were just incredible. Chris and I were on a plane coming down here and he was asking me about it, and I said, "Yeah, you won't believe it Tuesday morning when you walk out there for practice rounds. There's going to be 25,000 people there screaming your name and 'USA' and all that." His face was lit up, "Really, that's great."

It's just a thrill for me, and I've tried not to think so much about the age thing. I know that that's been a big issue all year since I said this was what I wanted to do or try to accomplish, that as a 50‑year‑old, isn't this great. Well, to me as a 30‑year‑old it's great and as a 40‑year‑old it's great. For me it's a great accomplishment for any of us to be on this team. I certainly didn't want to have to rely on being a pick, but I felt like I played pretty well, and there were so many worthy guys.

You talk about guys like Chris. I don't have a problem with inexperienced guys on the team, either. I think that's a little bit overrated. You have to perform when it's time to perform, and if a guy is in the Top 10 or Top 5 or Top 20 in Ryder Cup points, he's performed pretty darn good and he probably will perform well once the matches start.

Q. When you talk about the number of Ryder Cup rookies on any given team, if you go back and look at some of the veterans, all of you guys in one shape or another have some baggage from a Ryder Cup, some bad memories.

JAY HAAS: Sure.

Q. Is that maybe an advantage that these guys don't know how bad it can get?

JAY HAAS: I know in '83, Curtis and I, it was my sixth year, Curtis' fifth year, and I guess we didn't feel like rookies because we had been out a few years, but we were begging Jack to put us together. We said, please, let us play. We've played together all this time. We didn't know what to expect, we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if there was extra pressure because of your country and all that stuff. We just felt like we were a good team together and we wanted to play.

You know, there's the old theory that you put a veteran with a rookie and all that stuff. Yes and no, but yeah, I think if you don't have any sour memories from it, kind of like you get a new putter and you haven't missed any putts with that putter sometimes it's easier to putt, or you can get hot with it.

I just think experience is great if you use it to your advantage, but it doesn't guarantee good play by any means.

Q. Are you okay with this "Uncle Jay" role?

JAY HAAS: Sure, that sounds pretty good. Any role they want to put on me is wonderful. Go down the list, all great guys to be around. There are a few of them on the team at the Presidents Cup. We just had a ball down there. It was wonderful. I'm really, really looking forward to all the different personalities. I love Chris' enthusiasm, Chris DiMarco's enthusiasm, also. He was wonderful down there. He gave me a phone call and congratulated me on being a pick and everything. He's a competitor. I know he was disappointed with Castle Pines, the way that played out there at the end, but a pretty strong resolve to come back and play as well as he did at the PGA.

Q. You talk about it didn't matter if they were rookies are not, they have to perform, which is something we haven't done very well over the last couple Ryder Cups. What do you think you can do from your standpoint because you have that history from '83 on, to try to help that out, because Hal is really obviously driven to win. How can you help him communicate that to the rest of the guys because clearly a lot of the same people were on the last team and a lot of other teams that have lost.

JAY HAAS: That's a good question. Do you down‑play it, say just go play your game, just have fun? I don't know what attitude works. Certainly the same attitude doesn't work for everyone. Some guys are more fun‑loving like Chris. Fuzzy and Peter Jacobsen and people like that, they like to have fun. They like to talk, get excited about it, and some guys are much more serious. I don't know if there's a given formula that's the best.

I think personally, we all want to win so badly, and I think when you want to do something so badly, the pressure can build, and the disappointment is even greater when it doesn't happen, and I think that's what happened in '95 when I was on the team last. When we lost that it was unbelievable, the feeling that I had for quite a while after that, I won't say like a death in the family, but just the emotion that you spend during that week and then to not have to happen, not to come true, is kind of tough to deal with. It's kind of a double‑edged sword I guess you say when the media blows everything out of proportion, but if we didn't have the media building it up nobody would care and that type of thing, so that's the great thing about the Ryder Cup is all the people are so excited about it from just the casual fanÂ ‑‑ I've gotten so many Ryder Cup plugs in the last two months, you're going to be on that team, see you at Oakland Hills, just everyone shouting it out to me, and that's wonderful, but at the same time sometimes I'd just like to say, "just quiet down, let me focus on what I'm doing right here."

I guess I'm kind of rambling, but my point is that it's very important for the players, and I don't know quite how to approach some of the younger guys to stress the importance without putting the added pressure, and I think I can feel that out. Chris DiMarco had some experience in the Presidents Cup, and I think his eyes were opened, I think, at the intensity of it and what it meant.

When you're putting on a green and you see five or six of your teammates on the side of the green with a worried look on their face, that's kind of disconcerting, and when you do something great and you get the screaming and everybody cheering and the hair goes up on the back of your neck, it's something you don't experience week‑in and week‑out. It's just a different animal than we're used to.

Q. What was your gut feeling Sunday night? Do you honestly thinkÂ ‑‑ did you have a feeling one way or another, did you honestly think I made it or I didn't make it?

JAY HAAS: No, I felt like my chances were very good going in even if I had fallen out of the Top 10, but after shooting 5 over the last round, there was quite a few guys who I feel like wereÂ ‑‑ would be great picks. I mean, you look at Justin who's obviously playing very well right now and was one shot away from being on the team by himself. You go with that from 11 through 20, you could have picked two of the guys, just thrown a dart and picked a couple of them and it would have been a good add.

I didn't have a sense, and I guess I was disappointed, kind of had mixed emotions, obviously it was great when Hal called, but I didn't know if he was going to call to tell me I didn't make it if that was the case. So when the phone call came, I didn't really knowÂ ‑‑ it didn't say Hal Sutton. I didn't have his number, it just was an area code I didn't know, but I thought, "I'd better see if this is Hal," and it was. I don't know, relief, but I still had that knot in my stomach from the round on Sunday. I don't think I put any pressure on myself for the Ryder Cup. I really felt like I was playing well enough to contend for the tournament, and I look at 5‑under in the final round. To shoot 3‑under the last day would have been very good, but I was playing very well. That was kind of disappointing.

But I did not really have a sense of yes or no. I was prepared for a no. I just felt like there were some guys that were definitely equal.

Q. I don't mean to change the subject, I just wanted to ask a question about the NEC this week.

JAY HAAS: Sure.

Q. We have a case this week where Vijay if he just finishes ahead of Tiger, he's No.Â 1, Ernie could probably get there with a 1, 2 or 3 if he can get to it. Would you have thought this possible two or three years ago?

JAY HAAS: I guess I never really gave it much thought. Obviously Tiger was just head and shoulders above everybody there for quite a while, but as long as I've been out here, I've seen the ebb and flow of the great players and they play really well for a long time and then ease off and somebody else comes forward. Everybody is trying to knock the No.Â 1 off the perch there.

These guys are not bad players by any means, the guys who are trying to do that. You look at Vijay and Ernie in any era would be great champions and possible No.Â 1s and all that. To be honest, I didn't give it much thought, but I wouldn't have thought it impossible.

Q. Are you going to sense that it's Tiger doing this or Vijay and Ernie doing this?

JAY HAAS: I little bit of both probably. I thought what Tiger did in 2000 and maybe the year before and the year or two after is probably some of the greatest golf that's ever been played. You don't expect that to happen. I think we all got spoiled by it because it lasted for so long. You see guys win two or three tournaments in a five‑week span and you think this guy is playing the greatest golf ever, and that's all it lasts. But Tiger's seemed to last for two years, so we came to expect it every single time out.

Well, I think we're seeing that it just doesn't happen that way.

Now, you look at every great player, they've had their peaks and valleys. I would expect that Tiger is going back up, but I think the other guys have definitely elevated their game.

Q. Should there be any concerns from a fan standpoint that the younger U.S. players don't seem to be seizing on any of the stuff in I think Charles Howell was 24th or something on the points list. Tiger is the youngest player on the U.S. ryder Cup team. Should there be a concern that some of the younger guys aren't getting there, or is it just that hard to do it?

JAY HAAS: Well, I think it's that hard to do it. Do you change the point system? I don't know. It's kind of there for everyone to do. Nobody gave Chris Riley anything. I mean, there he is, black and white, he's the 10th guy on the team, he's in the points. Everybody else had the same opportunity he did, no matter what age.

I guess it would be nice if you could kind of say, "Well, in a month let's see who the best 10, 12 guys who are playing the best. Let's put them out there." You can't do that. This is the qualification and the way it works for both teams. You look at the European team starting in the early '80s that is that unbelievable nucleus of Faldo and Langer and Woosnam and Ballesteros and just five or six guys that were there every single year, and they kind of grew together, and it was an unbelievably talented and deep team. They were all in their 20s it seemed like and they grew with those five or six different teams that they were on, eight teams.

But I think it just shows you how deep the pool is here, but I don't know that you can say, "well, why aren't the younger players stepping up when it's in black and white?" There are points and you go get them.

My first team, I guess I was 29 that year. Curtis, I think, was 28. I guess we thought we were young players, and I think 23, 24, why aren't you doing it then. It's a tough league out here. There's a lot of learning, a big learning curve. Tiger was a little bit of a freak to be the best player in the world by far at such a young age.

Q. Do you think that our expectations should be from a fan standpoint, U.S. fan standpoint, that we should change what our expectations have been maybe for the last God knows how many Ryder Cups? Do you think that's an unfair expectation considering the field out there, how many good golfers there are all over the place?

JAY HAAS: I guess on paper, if you look at the World Rankings, is that a true sense, a true measure of what you can expect, and it surely hasn't been for the last half a dozen Ryder Cups. I think on paper the U.S. team has been on average ranked higher every single time. But it's such a short series, I thinkÂ ‑‑ I think you just have to go back the last 20 years and see how close the matches have been. You really can't sayÂ ‑‑ you can pick a favorite, you can say that the Americans are favorite or the Europeans are favorite when you're over there, but I think the players realize that it's so close to call. I certainly don't feel like we're clearly the better team. I think we're going to have to perform that week, and if we do, we'll win, and if we don't, we won't. It's as simple as that.

I don't think we can play so‑so and still win. Does that make sense?

Q. I just wanted you to expound on something you said on Monday about the difference in intensity between your first and second matches. Is it just an effect on you during the practice rounds or is there an impact even by the time you get into theÂ ‑‑

JAY HAAS: I think in all different facets of it, the media has become much more of an event. I don't know if the matches were live on television then. I think ABC did them and I think there was maybe an hour, hour and a half of coverage on Sunday afternoon, maybe an hour or Saturday. I could be wrong, but there weren't that many people out there. The players felt the intensity, I think, and that was the year whenÂ ‑‑ I mentioned some of those younger players on the European team were on that team. Tony Jacklin was the captain. That was either his first or second time doing it, and he insisted on traveling in first class in uniforms and everything, and I think in their minds they became the equal to the American team before even the matches started because of things like that. I think in their minds, the first time they felt like "We're going to win this. We can beat this team." It was close. Lanny hit it stiff at the last hole and ended up winning by a point.

For the players it was very intense, but for the media, the fans, you know, in the world scheme of things, it was just a blip. It was not any big deal.

Q. You weren't ready for what hit you at Oak Hill, were you?

JAY HAAS: No, I was not ready for that. I guess I kind ofÂ ‑‑ I mean, I had seen the War by the Shore and all these different things and how the fans were at the Belfry and what you could see on TV, but on Tuesday morning at 9:00 o'clock when we went out for the practice round and there were 25,000 people there, I was not prepared for that.

To answer Alex's question, maybe what I would convey to the younger players is to try to down‑play earlier in the week and to try to settle down and go through the same procedures that you go through at the NEC here at the Buick Open or wherever it might be because it's going to seem like Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Open or the PGA or Masters on Tuesday, and you can spend a lot of your emotion and energy on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and you're just spent by the time the matches come.

Q. I have a course question here. The 2nd hole has been traditionally the easiest hole on the course statistic‑wise and they've tried to toughen it up by making it longer and dropping the tee. I don't know if you've played todayÂ ‑‑

JAY HAAS: I did.

Q. Is it noticeably different?

JAY HAAS: I think it's noticeably different, a much different tee shot, a better tee shot. It used to be kind of awkward. You had to really turn it around, the longer hitters, to kind of go over the trees. For me, I had to kind of go around. I think in this day and age, you have to try to lengthen some of these par 5s to make them legitimate. Today was into the wind, uphill. I hit driver, 3‑wood pretty good and it was short of the green. The longer hitters can obviously still reach it, but it's not a no‑brainer anymore. The rough here, this course, is about as tough as I've seen a course in a long time.

Q. You can look back now and see your first Ryder Cup as being the year the Ryder Cup became the Ryder Cup, so to speak. Did you have any inkling of it then?

JAY HAAS: No. In '85, the European team won. 1987 they came over on American soil and really blitzed them, I guess, won by four, five, six points at Muirfield Village with Jack as the captain. We were going to take the cup back as our cup.

I don't know if you remember when whoever won the America's cup, the yacht race, it was, whoah, whoah, it was the America's Cup. It was a big deal. Who watched boat racing on TV untilÂ ‑‑ who won, the Australians or something? I think that's what happened to the Ryder Cup. It was like, "Hey, we've won that how many straight times and tied once," and I think until that happened, it was not as intense for the fans. In '83, '85, '87, that was the boost that it got in the public's eyes.

Q. Did you enjoy the hullabaloo at Oak Hill?

JAY HAAS: I think I enjoyed it, but I told my wife when I called her Sunday night, I'm like a dog that chased the car. I caught the car and now I'd better perform and be ready for this, for what's going to happen here. I think if you can play in a bubble and just the players and all that stuff and not hear all that stuff, then you mightÂ ‑‑ the guys might play better. But yeah, it's just something you have to deal with, though, and itÂ ‑‑ I won't say it's better or worse, it's just something that's out there, and hopefully that will be somethingÂ ‑‑ I'm glad we brought that up. That will be one of my speeches maybe to some of the younger guys is to get ready for what they're going to experience.

I tried to tell a few of them on The Presidents Cup team that that's different than this. It was special and we had a great time and there was a lot of pressure and everything, but it's going to be nothing like this.

Q. Doesn't the car usually win those battles?

JAY HAAS: Oh, yeah (laughter). Maybe I'll get a better analogy.

Q. Is the Presidents Cup the JV to the Ryder Cup, the varsity?

JAY HAAS: I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't disrespect The Presidents Cup like that. It certainly doesn't have the history that the Ryder Cup has, but it's just different. I think in one regard we play with those guys more, I think, the rest of the world, so to speak, Ernie and Vijay and Retief. It seems like we play with them more on the regular Tour than the European team. We don't see them as much so we don't know them as well. We know Bernhard very well, we know Lee Westwood and Darren Clarke and all that, but some of the newer guys that are on their team, I don't know them that well.

I think that was what happened maybe 20 years ago was a lot of an us‑versus‑them deal, and it's starting to change a little bit, but I think that's the difference between the Ryder Cup and The Presidents Cup, too.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Jay Haas, thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

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