THE MODERATOR: All right. Let's get started with this portion of the interview.
Mr. Nicklaus, thanks again for joining us, tournament host, founder of the tournament. Great to see you again. It's always a fun session. Congratulations on the award winners. Amazing time for you guys.
And, Aneel, thanks for your sponsorship once again.
I guess a lot of the talk so far has been the changes to the 16th hole, so maybe we'll just have you comment on that to start with a little bit.
JACK NICKLAUS: Okay. Well, we made two changes on the golf course. We added a little bit of yardage on the front of the 17 tee. We added 5 yards to a 503-yard hole, forward. So if you have the wind in your face, you only got to play it 495 or 498. Not big change.
The 16th hole, I think you may even probably have heard me say this, but I went back and looked at Shot Link after the tournament. I kept saying, these guys are only playing an 8- or 9-iron to this green. Come on, guys. They got to be able to keep the ball on the green. I went back at Shot Link, and Shot Link said they hit the green 35 percent on Saturday and 28 percent on Sunday, and I'm sitting there and saying, Well, you know, maybe it's not shame on them, maybe it's shame on me.
So I set about trying to figure out what would be the best way to change that hole without ruining it, and I came up with -- we came up with moving the tees about 30 yards right. Since that no longer was our maintenance area, we could move tees over into that area. It gave us a little bit more of a downwind hole, not so much across the water, but more down the water. I said, well, you know, that front bunker, a lot of balls could be brought in from there or we can give -- I can give 'em the front part of the green.
So basically, I've given the players the short of the green and the front part of the green, but I left the last two thirds of the green similar to what it was before or very -- I didn't change it at all. So what that means is that now you can go ahead and play a shot and you get the ball into the front part of the green fairly easily, you can probably get it there where you're going to maybe have a 20-, 30-foot putt for birdie, and that's okay. I think a lot of fellows would have been quite happy last year to walk off there with three.
But if you want to challenge the hole and challenge a pin position back left or back right or middle left, you're going to probably have to get the ball a little further into the green, and you can leave it short of the pin, take the long putt, that's fine, or you can challenge it. So I wanted to not give the hole away, but I also wanted to make it so that there really was a bailout.
THE MODERATOR: All right. Terrific.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is your time to ask questions, so if you have any, please raise your hand, and we'll get you a microphone and fire away.
Q. Where does winning here in 1977 rank in your list of some of your favorite things, what it meant to you, what it means to you?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, '77 was a year that -- it was second year of the tournament. I spent most of my time on the golf course picking up papers and cigarette butts and throwing things. I think it was Angelo that was caddieing for me. He ended up with pockets all full, and about every four holes he would have to go dump his pockets out because I kept filling 'em up again. I was more interested in how the tournament was going, the cleanliness of the golf course, how the players enjoyed it, how we were taking care of the players, making sure that everything was what it should be.
To do that and all the things I was doing and then winning the golf tournament with it, it was probably one of the best feats I've ever had in the game of golf. I rank it probably as high as -- I guess the only thing I think is higher is GT's hole-in-one at Augusta in the Par-3. You know what I'm talking about.
Because, you know, it's tough to play and be part of running something. I don't run it anymore. I mean, you know, Dan Sullivan and his crew and everybody, and Jackie is now chairman of the tournament. I just sit back and sort of -- I'm sort of the figurehead out here doing press conferences and they're hoping I don't say something bad.
Q. A follow-up was: A lot of big names, yourself included, have won this tournament, Tiger, Watson. Is this a tournament outside the majors that really guys need to win to really fill out that résumé?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I think it's a pretty good tournament to win to fill out a résumé. I don't think there's any question about that. We've had a lot of guys that won here their first time and went on to win majors, and a lot of guys that have played the game for a long time and then finally won here, and guys like Watson who won late in his career here as well as winning early in his career.
Tiger won all through his career. Tiger won five times here. I mean, a tournament's résumé is not too bad if they have Tiger winning it five times. I think that probably answers your question right there.
Q. Ohio State being in the championship this past week and the NCAA --
JACK NICKLAUS: Ohio State what?
Q. Being in the championship in the NCAAs this past week and you coming back here this week and you got to host the team down at your house, I believe, in February or March, what does it mean to you to see the program doing so well right now and have you been able to kind of follow what they're doing?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I'm pleased to see the program, and Coach Moseley's done a nice job with it and the golf course -- they got a good golf course to play on, practice on. They've got a good golf course, you know, to develop a golf game. I think a lot of fellows sort of shy away at times from coming north, and I always said -- I always looked at college golf one way. I says, you either went all the way north or all the way south. In between felt like -- it felt like the middle belt. A lot of times they said, well, the weather's halfway good enough. We're going to stay there. But the guys north figure out that, hey, it's not good enough, they need to go south. And of course, the guys south are already south.
So I never felt any real big disadvantage about coming up here to school. I mean, Ohio State's a great school, Columbus is a great town. They have got a lot of really good golf courses in Columbus, Ohio, to play golf at. It's a great place to come and be part of. Obviously I had, you know, offers from a lot of schools to play golf elsewhere, and I wanted to go to Ohio State because I loved Ohio State. I wanted to be an Ohio State student. I loved going to the football games and basketball games, being part of the fraternity life and the school life and the things that went on. That's what I wanted to do. So that was just as important to me as playing on the golf team.
But today, I think the guys will concentrate a little bit more on their golf as it relates to what it used to be. I don't even remember what your question was, but it was something about Ohio State.
Did I answer you? Okay.
Q. A year ago this time it looked like the tournament was going to move a week later, we didn't know for sure, now it has. What do you make of the change to the week before the U.S. Open, the smaller field, obviously a limited cut, and do you expect to have any conversations about that going forward?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I'll answer your last question first. That discussion is in process, okay? So, you know, we would prefer the other week; however, we are here this week because the TOUR asked us to help 'em out. They said they had a thing they wanted to do and that the players had asked for and that would we help it out, and we said yes, that we would do that this week. But we said we would review it after this tournament and we'll figure out how we're going to settle the schedule after that, and I said that discussion is under way.
Q. What negative do you see to it?
JACK NICKLAUS: To what?
Q. To being a week later, if there is any. What do you not like about it?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I mean, let's put it this way. When I played, I would rarely play a week before any major championship. So I'm asked to put on -- be part of putting on a golf tournament in a week that I would never play. That, to me, is the essential part from my standpoint.
From a sponsor's standpoint, you know, Memorial Day has been what our name is and we were around Memorial Day. I mean, yesterday was normally a very big day gallery-wise for us because it was Memorial Day, and we had maybe a thousand people here yesterday. From the sponsor's standpoint, I think that they get into -- they get into board meetings and kids' graduations and so forth, so that's maybe not as advantageous, but that won't make any difference.
We're going to have a good tournament this week either way, in spite of all the different things. And, you know, as I say, we did that as a favor and the TOUR asked us to do that, and we said yes. So we've always been a supporter of the TOUR. We support what we think is -- we want to try to continue to support what is best for the TOUR, but we also want to support what's best for the Memorial Tournament. So that is to be determined.
Q. There's been a lot of discussion about problems in professional golf --
JACK NICKLAUS: I'm sorry?
Q. There's a lot of discussion about problems in professional golf. My question to you would be is, do you see problems in professional golf and what are they?
JACK NICKLAUS: You're asking me? You're out there every day. I mean, I live in Florida now. I'm not part of the problems of professional golf (laughing).
Q. But you see 'em.
JACK NICKLAUS: Yeah, from afar. You know, I've tried to stay out of what's going on with the TOUR and LIV, that's what you're asking about --
Q. No, not necessarily.
JACK NICKLAUS: Not necessarily? Well, what else are you asking about? Because I don't see any other problems.
Q. Well, I mean, is that what you see as a problem, just that?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I think that's been a problem. I think they're working on that too. I mean, I think that's in pretty good hands and I think that -- a couple months ago I called Jay about it. I said, Jay, I'm worried a little bit about what's going on. I says, don't tell me because I have a tendency to -- Alex will ask me a question about it, and I'll have to lie to him and I don't want to do that. I said, are you doing all right or are you not? And he said, we're doing fine. I said, that's all I need to know.
So as far as I know, the TOUR's doing fine and their problems are going to get worked out. How it how it is, I don't know.
Q. The reason why I say it's not necessarily LIV and the PGA TOUR is because there's discussions about slow play, there's discussions about TV ratings. Those aren't LIV-PGA TOUR-related. There's something more to it than that.
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I think TV ratings have been pretty good lately, haven't they? The last three months TV ratings have gone up, they've been up pretty good, from the report that I got.
I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the day-to-day of the TOUR anymore. I'm 84 years old. I haven't played the TOUR in -- when is the last time I played -- even played a TOUR tournament? It was 2005, and really, the TOUR, probably 2000. So I'm a few years removed and I don't think that I'm in the middle of that. I'm trying to be in the middle of the Memorial Tournament and be involved in that. I think that there are a lot smarter people and a lot better people that are better versed on what's going on than I as it relates to the problems of the game of golf. I think that it's in good hands and I trust them to solve those problems because I love the game of golf, I love to see the game of golf flourish and grow as we've all seen it grow for a long time.
Q. Kind of on that note, how critical do you think it is for the game to get everybody back together again?
JACK NICKLAUS: You know, that's a question I don't know how to answer. You look at it in two ways, you can look at it two ways. One is that we'll have a very successful tournament here and a lot of PGA TOUR tournaments will have very successful tournaments and have great fields and great players. I think the LIV tournaments have had -- you know, have some good players and they have -- and they compete at the major championships.
You know, I don't know whether that's -- I don't know whether that's imperative that that happen. I think it would be better if they all played together more often. I do think that. But, you know, that's above my pay grade, I think, to really answer that a hundred percent because I don't know all the ramifications of it.
Q. Whether it was you and Arnold or Lee or Tom, how often did you guys play the same tournaments each year, ballpark?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I played about 15 to 18 tournaments a year. I played, I mean, I played -- obviously I played the four majors. I played tournaments that I enjoyed playing, which were probably another five or six tournaments. Then I took another three or four tournaments I sort of rotated 'em around. So, when Arnold and Gary and I were playing, or Trevino or Watson as you were talking about, I think, I don't think it was very often that we did play all the same event. I mean, but I think they would all play in the Memorial Tournament (smiling), and they did. But in all the tournaments, I think guys have different places they like to play. I always tried to play in tournaments that I thought or golf courses that would lend themselves best to my talents. I was never a good guy at shooting 63 every day. That was never my -- I didn't enjoy that, it became a total putting contest. I think I've told this story in here before about it, I mean, Hartford has always put on a nice tournament. They have a different golf course now, but they used to play at Wethersfield and everybody kept saying to me, Jack, why don't you play at Wethersfield? And I said, Well, the scores are too low, and I'm just not a guy that shoots a lot of low scores. And he says, Well you haven't played it. I said, Okay, I'll come next year and play. So I went to Wethersfield and played and I shot 68 the first round and I think I was in 17th place. And I shot 67 the second round and I was in 25th place. And I shot 67 the third round and I was in 35th place. And I shot 67 the last round and I finished 42nd. Now you know why I didn't play Wethersfield. And there were a lot of tournaments like that I just never, I never really liked to have to shoot low scores. I liked courses where you had to grind out what, you know, a score. I liked to have to work at it. I just didn't like putting contests. Wethersfield is a nice golf course, nothing wrong with Wethersfield, but that was just my mode. I mean, I liked to go the west coast, I liked to play Riviera, I liked to play at Pebble Beach, I liked to play at Doral, I liked to play at Bay Hill, we always had the PLAYERS championship, the Masters, I, generally speaking, maybe played Colonial, and of course then we come up we later years got into Muirfield, and you got - and the Canadian Open was always, it was always at, you know, Glen Abbey a lot, because that was my golf course I did. Those are all challenging golf courses. I like to be challenged. That was my fun. The fun to me is being challenged and playing, and I think a lot of guys feel that way, they like to be challenged, they like to play the best golf courses, they like to play the golf courses that the other guys want to be challenged at.
Q. What did you think last year, if you watched, when a couple guys shot 62 at the U.S. Open 10 minutes apart in the first round. Do you remember that at all?
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't even remember who shot it.
Q. Xander and, was it Rickie?
JACK NICKLAUS: At L.A. Country Club?
Q. Yeah.
JACK NICKLAUS: I probably didn't watch it.
Q. That's probably a good thing?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, you know, I played L.A. Country Club, and I am not and I have not seen what they redid it, I played it in 1954, the USGA Juniors, I was 14 years old. And my memory of L.A. Country Club was that was Byron Nelson giving a clinic. And they had just replaced the irrigation system and the caddie that was shagging the balls for Byron would start walking backwards and he never took a step off the irrigation system all the way back. That's what I remember about L.A. Country Club. I got beaten in the second round I think Hugh Royer Jr. beat me in there. And the, you know, I don't remember much about the golf course. I know it's changed dramatically. Guys have gotten pretty good. I used to like the course setups the way the USGA did, where you had 25-yard fairways or whatever you had, and you had, you know, three, four inches of rough, and then you had high rough. But, by gosh, there was no mistake, you either hit it in the fairway or you hit it -- or you struggled. I liked that. I like greens just like this (indicating) where you got to send the ball up in the air and bring it down like as they say, a butterfly with sore feet, you know, you got to be able to play that way. That's what I enjoyed. But you know why I enjoyed it? Because I could do it. But that's right. And when you could do something that somebody else couldn't do, then you enjoy competing on that type of a situation. That's competition. That's what it's all about anyway.
Q. Along those same lines, you designed and built this golf course to be a challenge, to challenge these guys fairly. That said, does it surprise you a little bit -- let me throw some names out -- Rory, Phil, Trevino, Spieth, have not won here. Is that a little surprising to you?
JACK NICKLAUS: They still have time.
Q. Well, some of 'em.
JACK NICKLAUS: Yeah, I mean, Phil would have if he kept coming. He kept coming, he said, I'll come back. I said, Phil, you're resume's not going to be complete until you win at Muirfield and he said, I know it and I want to win here. Guys like to win here. Rory plays well here, Jordan plays pretty well here. Who was the other one you mentioned?
Q. Trevino.
JACK NICKLAUS: Trevino? Lee's not going to play again. But Trevino was, it was like Trevino, I always had the argument with Trevino at Augusta, he said, I can't play this golf course. I can't play it. He says, You got to hit the ball up in the air too much. I says, Trevino, you can play any golf course. With your talent -- and he had tremendous talent, still has tremendous amount of talent -- he could play any golf course. He couldn't convince himself that he could play it. I think he had, I think he finished fifth at Augusta is the best he finished, but you know, what a player. I mean, he was terrific. I don't think Lee played that much here. We were pretty much in the latter part of our career before Lee played. So, you know, there's some guys that aren't going to win, but you gave me a very small short list.
Q. I was going to --
JACK NICKLAUS: There's a lot of pretty good players that won here.
Q. That's my point, I think, that some, you know, big names. You, Tiger, won here, and yet Rory didn't, Phil didn't. Is there an explanation for that or is that just golf?
JACK NICKLAUS: Oh, they will win, it's just golf. I remember Rory hasn't won at Augusta either. Do I think he will? Absolutely I think he will. He's too good not to. Do I think he'll win here? Yeah, he should. Certainly good enough. But I thought I was good enough to win in Canada and I finished second seven times there, never won there. Barbara kept sending me back, she says, I'm going to send you back until you do it right. Never could do it right.
Q. Jack, as I'm sure you know, last summer, Tiger joined the PGA TOUR policy board and, first, I'm just sort of curious if you were surprised, if you're glad that he's getting involved, and also does it relate in any way to what you did, what you were involved in back in the late '60s when the TOUR split and formed a new entity?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well we, that was '68. I was 28 years old. Arnold was 38. And Arnold and I and Gardner Dickinson who was Chairman of the Board were the three that really broke away from the PGA of America. We didn't have anything against the PGA of America, except that we wanted to run our own business. Tiger coming on to the board, Tiger had a lot of experience, he's been around long enough, he's not going to play a whole lot more. He can still contribute. I think it's great that he wants to contribute and be part of it. I think it's great that the guys want him to contribute. So I'm delighted to see him on the board. He'll make a great contribution.
Q. You were talking about U.S. Open setups. You've talked in the past about Pinehurst No. 2 and your impressions of it. How did that influence you as a designer, because I think you've said it's among your favorites from a design standpoint.
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I think from a design standpoint I always loved No. 2. It's a tree-lined golf course without a tree in play. It's the epitome of repelling golf. Donald Ross liked repelling golf, that's quite obvious, because everything there, if you miss it, it, off it goes. I love Pinehurst. I think what -- the pictures I've seen of it lately look better. I think it looked terrible the last time they played there because they just started planting that rough and it was all big clumpy, ugly plants. Basically it looks to me like they got it back down into the wire grasses and the things, you would know far better than I.
Q. (No Microphone.)
JACK NICKLAUS: Yeah, I would think that's what, that was what should have been there to start with. But I thought that what they did from the irrigation system was they only put a centerline irrigation system in. However far it went out is as far as the fairway went out. And as the fairways got thin, then the ball moved off into the rough. And that was, that was the beauty of Pinehurst was that the ball, if you didn't hit the fairway, the ball would sort of trickle out and keep on going to the rough, and then you had the wire grass and the sand to contend with.
I won the North & South there in 1959. We had 36-hole semi-final and a 36-hole final. I played Gene Andrews in the semi-finals or, no, I played, I back up, I played Andrews in the finals, I played Bob Cochran in the semi-finals. I shot, I think I shot 81-82, something like that to beat Cochran 1-up. Then I think I shot like 83-84 to beat Andrews 1- or 2-up, whatever it was. But one of my, my point of it was that it was spring time. The golf course was hard as a rock. The ball would get away from you and you got unbelievably bad lies everywhere. It was just a very -- you couldn't recover from any place. But that was Pinehurst. That's what it was. By some of the things they have done, they tried to restore getting the ball out into the rough, getting the ball out into the wire grasses, this kind of stuff, they didn't change the greens, because of course we had the old poa trivialis probably back then on top of, I don't even, I don't think they even had Bermuda underneath it, if they did, it was probably common. And it was not in very good condition, but the golf course is nicely conditioned now, it's, I love Pinehurst, I think it's, I think it's a wonderful track. It was the home of Donald Ross for me. If I want to remember Donald Ross that's what I would say when I go look at Donald Ross.
Q. This is just on my mind, but you've played a lot of golf in your career. How in the world can you remember losing to Hugh Royer at age 14 at the U.S. Junior?
JACK NICKLAUS: I didn't want to tell you, I think it was 5 & 3. (Laughing).
Q. That's all I had.
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't remember whether that was right or not, but, you know, who cares. But, you know, if I throw out a number you say, Man, what a memory. Whether it's truth or not, who knows. (Smiling).
THE MODERATOR: Well that's, a great way to wrap it up, Mr. Nicklaus. Thanks for your time and once again.
JACK NICKLAUS: Does everybody got what they need?
Q. A really quick question. I know you'll be wearing yellow on Sunday. How does it feel to have surpassed your fundraising goal of 100 million dollars for your yellow campaign, your Play Yellow campaign this year?
JACK NICKLAUS: How do I feel about it?
Q. Yeah, how special is that especially for something that's --
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, let's go back so everybody understands what we're doing. Play Yellow was started by a young man that, who is a son of our minister, Barbara's minister when she grew up. And he was, he could, he contracted Ewing sarcoma when he was like 9 or 10 years old, and his mother asked Barbara if I would call him. So I called him and talked to him and developed a relationship. And I talked to him quite frequently. Nobody knew much about what we were doing. But, anyway, one day I called him after a tournament I had won and I said, he says -- Craig, Craig said to me, he says, Jack, Jack he says, do you know why you won today? And I says, Why is that, Craig? He says, I wore my lucky yellow shirt. So that's where it started. So I won that tournament, we didn't really say much about it. He passed away at the age 13, 1971.
1986 at the Masters -- and I wore yellow quite often then on Sunday for him -- and I was rummaging through my suitcase in 1986 and I found this yellow shirt. And I said, What do you think, Barbara? And she says, Craig would love it. Go for it. So I wore a yellow shirt on Sunday in '86, and then I won and ended up having to tell the story. And then the story came out. And then to progress on further, we started doing some yellow, Play Yellow things, which were ribbons and things that we had at several of the tournaments. Then children's Miracle Network came to Barbara and me and said that we would like to raise a hundred million dollars over the next five years through the game of golf. He says, How can we do that? And I says, Well, the best place to do that is to start with the PGA TOUR. So we sat down with Jay and Jay and his people and we said, Look, this is -- they said this is what they want to do. There was 180 Children's Miracle Network hospitals, the money would be raised in each community that it was raised in, so there's a tournaments that the Children's Miracle Network hospital, and the money would stay in that community as it does here in Columbus, Ohio or as it did in Miami at the Nicklaus Children's Hospital where both Children's Miracle Network hospital, Nationwide here. So we started on this program and we passed, after about three and a half years, we passed about 130 million. And so I don't know what level we're at now, we're 130 million plus, I think we're probably in the, by now, by the fourth year of our campaign, are we not? Am I correct? We are in the fourth year of the campaign. So we've done very well. We'll not stop here. We'll continue to raise money. And this one little boy's, it's a legacy, I feel that shirt lives on.
THE MODERATOR: Terrific answer. I think we have another question lined up on the other side of the room.
Q. I'm actually not a golfer, and I don't really know much about the game, but I do know your name and maybe a few others. But I just, after all these years that you've been playing the game, what would you say is your favorite part of the game of golf?
JACK NICKLAUS: My favorite part of the game?
Q. Yeah.
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, the game of golf isn't, isn't a part, there are many parts of the game. From playing the game -- people often ask me, what's my favorite shot that I play, and I said, It's the one I'm playing right now. That's always been -- if you don't have -- if that's not your favorite shot when you're playing it, then you better work on it until it becomes your favorite shot. The, you know, I mean, I love, I love what the game of golf does for people. I mean, these young men here growing up in the game of golf, they're going to come out and represent their area. They have grown up around adults, they have learned how to handle, handle, they learned how to handle adults. They have learned how to grow up and learn -- and they have learned the courtesies of the game. There's a lot of things within the game of golf that are so good. First Tee has been fantastic. First Tee has taught the lessons of life to so many kids. I think it's unbelievable what they have done. We see the golf courses that are being done, the communities that are having tournaments, no different than the Memorial Tournament or Valhalla, when I went to Valhalla the first time, Dwight Gahm, the gentleman who did the golf course, he said, Jack, some day I want to have the PGA Championship here. That's my goal. Well, he's had what, five of 'em? He's done pretty well.
Q. I heard you say earlier you like the challenge of it.
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, yeah, that's all part of it. I mean, there's a challenge to everything you do in life. And if you don't like, if you don't like challenges, go someplace else, because golf's got a bunch of 'em. And that's good. I mean, all from, what these, what they're trying to get me to help explain about what's going on in the game, a lot of 'em I don't understand and I don't think that I'm, that I should be involved to be part of those things now, I'm well past that.
The Memorial Tournament, the golf course here, the people that we're dealing with, things that we're doing, I'm well versed on that. But I don't think that, I don't think that I'm in a position to be versed on the other part. I'm not in the middle of it any more. So, but, I mean, I love the game of golf, it's given me the opportunity -- you know, I wouldn't be sitting here if I had missed about 10, five foot putts. I wouldn't be sitting here. Nothing, none of this would have ever happened. So I was blessed to be able to do that. I was blessed to be able to take what I did and what I learned and put it to better use.
Q. Last year your award winner was Ludvig Aberg. He's had quite a year. And I was wondering what you thought about his last 12 months?
JACK NICKLAUS: What I think about it? Pretty good. I love watching him play on television, I haven't seen him play in person. What a player. He just came right out and showed the world who he was. And I'm very happy for him, first time I met him was here yesterday. But he's one of our award winners and one we're very proud of.
THE MODERATOR: Jack, did he ask you any questions, like these young men did here, that were really excellent questions?
JACK NICKLAUS: Did he ask me any? No, no, he didn't, not yet. I hope he does some day. Maybe I can help him.
THE MODERATOR: All right, well we appreciate your time. Thank you again.
JACK NICKLAUS: Thank you all very much. I hope y'all have a good week.
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