THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us at the 2026 Chubb Classic here in Naples, Florida. We have Bernhard Langer, who's a five-time Chubb Classic champion here. Bernhard, you're looking to achieve your sixth victory here at Chubb, which is the most in a single event that you've won. What is your approach as you come into this week?
BERNHARD LANGER: Well, it's similar to every week, but I do have good recollections of playing at Tiburón, especially in Naples. I've won on this course twice. I've won the tournament five times, I should say. So I love the golf course. I live two hours east of here in Boca, so the grasses are very similar where I practice.
But kind of a home game, next to the Boca event, and I feel very comfortable around here. It's an easy drive across. I stay with friends. Everything is very comfortable and wonderful.
The tournament does a great job in running the event, the way they treat us here. The weather is usually quite nice this time of the year. The golf course presents itself in generally great condition.
It's a win-win-win situation coming here this time of the year to Naples, and I seem to feel this very strong. Everybody loves it and enjoys it.
Q. Winning twice here at Tiburón, what's the biggest adjustment you've made to just stay competitive here?
BERNHARD LANGER: Throughout my career?
Q. Just here at this course.
BERNHARD LANGER: Just here? Well, you look at the golf course and what it demands. I think this one, I call it, it's not just a bomber's paradise like some courses are, just for the big hitters.
This one, there's a few very tight holes you've got to keep the ball straight and narrow and in play because it can easily run into a water hazard or trees or some other trouble. You need to be more precise, not necessarily just long. That suits my game.
I think that's why I've done fairly well on this golf course over the years.
That's the great part about traveling the country, playing 26, 27 different venues. You go different places. Some are more open and some are narrow. Some demand this, some demand that, on different grasses, as well. We might have a little bit of the upper hand on the guys living on the West Coast. They don't play Bermudagrass that much, and we do, the ones who live here in Florida.
Q. How many years have you been doing this now as a pro?
BERNHARD LANGER: As a pro? I joined the tour when I was 18, so 52nd year now on tour.
Q. Is there motivation when you go into a new season?
BERNHARD LANGER: It's still there, maybe slightly different. Now I'm a father of four and a grandfather of four, and I've been married 42 years, so there's other things in life. There's other priorities. When I was 18, it was all golf. It was like 100 percent golf. That's changed.
Golf is still played full-time and still a big part of my life. I may play about 25 events a year nowadays, something like that. So that's still half the year. It's a big commitment. I still train when I'm home.
But at my stage, it's more trying to stay healthy, trying to stay somewhat fit. That's the biggest challenge. I've been losing a bit of distance, and these young guys coming out, they're all gaining distance. They're all so much longer. My challenge is to keep up with them length-wise.
I think I'm pretty good in the other departments, short game and straightness and the way I think and the way I can handle pressure, but I can't make up for my drive being 40 yards shorter than some guys out there. That's the big challenge for me.
Q. To follow up on that, just in terms of conditioning, just staying in shape and staying ready to play, do you have anything specific that you do?
BERNHARD LANGER: Well, I do a lot more stretching these days than I did when I was in my 20s. When you're young, you just work out a bit and you think you're invincible and you go. Nothing hurts; you just feel great. Those days are over.
Now the body is stiffer. There's more aches and pains. You just need to listen to your body and take care. I need longer periods to rest and spend more time stretching and doing light workouts and maybe less hitting balls and an hour or two less out here, maybe more recovering.
Q. I saw you the last two days practicing with Tour Edge and talking with the team. A lot of talk about technical innovation, technology. Can you share a little bit with us the key, for example, to hitting it straight with the Tour Edge driver or something like that?
BERNHARD LANGER: Yeah, sure. Well, straight is a lot of technique, but you need the appropriate equipment that fits you, so the right lie angle, loft angle and all that, and nowadays we have these little computers that tell us how high it goes, how far it goes, how much back spin, how much side spin. Very helpful. In the old days if I had a new driver, it took me days, weeks to get used to it or to even know if it's good or not. Now I can hit three balls and say, this is pretty good, this is rubbish, I don't even want to try this anymore, it's no good. That's the advantage of having these launch monitors telling you right away.
But with Tour Edge, I've been working with them for years, and we're always trying to continue to improve equipment, whether it's the irons or the driver or the 3-woods, the hybrids, anything, trying to make tiny adjustments maybe here or there, a thicker top edge or a thinner top line or a little more bounce, a little less bounce, maybe different grooves, different weight decisions, things like that. Then we can tell on the computer, on the launch monitor, whether it works or not. Same with shafts.
There's a zillion different shafts now. When I was young, there were like five shafts. Now you literally have 5,000. So what's best for me? You can't test 5,000 shafts. It would take too long. We're just taking a wild guess at some of the things and then see if it works or not. Those are just a few small details.
Q. What is the latest innovation?
BERNHARD LANGER: The latest? I'm not sure what the latest is. Maybe the mini-driver that's come out. It's good for some people. Not for me. I don't need another strong 3-wood or something like that. I need some other club, maybe a gap wedge or something like that in my game. So it's different for everybody.
But for a long hitter that hits the driver 350 and the 3-wood maybe 280 or something, they might need another club to close that gap. But everybody is different.
Difficult for me to say what works for somebody else. I just try and take care of my own game.
Q. Are you happy with the putting?
BERNHARD LANGER: Yeah, I'm pretty happy with everything right now. But we're always trying to find the next edge, to find another percent here, a different shaft that might go higher or spinning more or something, or testing golf balls. There's always some new equipment coming out, and you want to test it and see if it's better or not.
Q. Five-time winner here at this tournament, two of them here. Going for win No. 6 and eclipsing Hale Irwin's five, does that sit in the back of your mind as you prepare for this week, or is it a regular --
BERNHARD LANGER: I didn't even know, so that's not really on my mind. My mind is fully focused on shaking off the rust from the winter season. I played in Hawai'i; I played pretty good. But then I went skiing for seven days, so no golf.
I came home, and it was really cold, and then I got sick. You can still hear it. Laid in bed for three or four days. I haven't played much golf the last two weeks, two and a half weeks. I've been working really hard the last two days, even though I'm not 100 percent, just trying to shake the rust off.
I need to focus on my own game and just not worry about titles or records or whatever. I'm going to try and hit every shot as good as I can and hopefully be in contention come Sunday afternoon.
Q. With the PGA TOUR Champions domestic schedule starting here and then going over to Boca, you mentioned at the top, does that help you on the comfort level because you're very familiar with the grass and the terrain and the conditions here?
BERNHARD LANGER: Yeah, many years I had a really good start. I played well here, obviously winning five times, and then I played well in Boca. But this year I'm not playing in Boca. My youngest son is getting married the same weekend, so I'm going to miss that tournament.
I'd like to do well when I tee it up because I'm missing a few tournaments. I'm probably not going to Morocco, either, so there's going to be a couple misses here and there. I'm not playing a total full schedule; I never have. But it's going to be similar this year.
Just try to do the best I can every time I tee it up.
Q. This tournament will turn 40 next year. There's a lot of tournaments on the PGA TOUR Champions that have just this longevity. Do you as a player, continuing your career on the PGA TOUR Champions, to have tournaments like this and sponsors like this and others across the tour, what does it mean to you guys to be able to continue your professional career 50 and beyond?
BERNHARD LANGER: Well, I think it's a wonderful anniversary. It shows that 40 years, having a tournament here and the same sponsor over a very long time, it means it's working for both sides. It's working for the sponsor and the guests, and it's working for the players. We love to have those kind of sponsors because you want to count on continuity and longevity.
I don't think anybody sponsors a tournament for one or two years. It usually takes it two or three years just to get your name out and your brand out. You've got to change all the smallish use that may arise the first year or two, and you get better and better, and the community learns and knows that the tournament is here that time of the year, and they will support it more and more. That's what longevity does.
Most important is really that the local charities benefit dramatically from events like these. It's amazing how much money golf raises, golf tournaments raise for local charities. All the wonderful volunteers we have help us out to raise a lot of dollars.
Q. I talked to Terry this morning; he's been with you for 20 years, which is some anniversary, too. How important has he been to you as a caddie and also as a really close friend, as well?
BERNHARD LANGER: Yeah, obviously you'd rather have a good caddie than a bad one. Bad ones don't last very long. When I first met him, I said -- I didn't even know he was available. I said, do you know anybody. He caddied, is a Christian, is on time and is a hard worker. Doesn't want to go home at 5:00 in the afternoon when I'm trying to hit balls until 7:00 or so. He thought about five seconds, and he said, how about me? I said, okay, I didn't know you were available.
So we said, yeah, let's try it for a few weeks and see if we get along, and yeah, here we are 20 years later, setting several records out here. It's been a great relationship. He's a wonderful friend, very reliable, maybe the hardest working caddie out here. I don't need to tell him to work hard; it comes by himself.
Q. I know you've had many special moments, but is there one really special moment that stands out?
BERNHARD LANGER: Well, I would think some of the bigger events, the majors, I'm sure the Senior British meant a lot to him as it did to me. He actually didn't caddie for me when I won the Senior Open with my son against Couples in Seattle, which is the hometown of Couples, so it felt like a Ryder Cup match playing against him. Nobody was cheering for me, they were all rooting for Couples.
But if you asked him, I would say maybe one of our latest victories, the Senior Open up at the Century, which was our record win, I think, at the time and maybe our biggest tournament out here. At 64, winning a major, at 65, whatever I was at the time, is pretty amazing. But you need to ask him what stands out to him the most.
We've had many wonderful victories. The six Schwab Cups obviously mean a great deal. It could have been seven or eight if it hadn't been for COVID and one other issue. But I'm not complaining; we're happy.
Q. Tiger Woods turned 50 and he may be competing with you this year. Do you see yourself trying to beat him?
BERNHARD LANGER: I try to beat everybody. It doesn't matter who comes out here. The goal is to win. If you want to win, you need to beat him. So yes, that would be the goal.
But my goal is not to play against Tiger Woods; my goal is to play against the golf course and myself, shoot the lowest score, and then see if anybody can match that. If Tiger Woods is better, so be it.
I'm sure we're going to have some good matches. I hope he comes out. I hope he's healthy enough. Nobody knows. He won't let us know until a few weeks before. Usually that's how he works.
But it would be a thrill to play against him again. We had a great time about a year and a half ago when we played the PNC championship together on Sunday when he played with Charlie, his son, and I had Jason, my son, and we spent a Sunday together. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed each other's company.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports