Press Interview - Wednesday, 13 October.
General comments.
Price:
"My year has been – with the exception of perhaps the six weeks which included the US Open and the British Open ( I was in some kind of funk, I just wasn’t playing well – wasn’t very interested). But when I came back from a three week vacation, I have played really well since then. PGA I had a good opportunity to win there and then I played well in the World Series – I finished third three shots behind Tiger. Then I won in Japan. Last week I played pretty well, not much success though. But in general my year has been very solid. Unusual – I have an opportunity this year to make more money than I did in 1994 when I won six tournaments. I haven’t won one on the US circuit this year and yet I am only about $100,000 behind what I made in 1994. It is a strange feeling when you feel you have played solidly, but haven’t had the kind of stellar year you had in 1994, and yet you have made so much money, but I guess that is just the way the game is going right now.
They obviously went off the world ranking for the seeds which made me very happy, obviously. My first tie will be either Sergio or Retief and they both hit the ball much further than I do. I think they have a little bit of an advantage on this golf course. However, I have played it probably more times than those two, so hopefully a little bit of experience will factor into the equation.
I think we have got a lot of good players in form here. Certainly, when you look at Sergio and Carlos. Monty you don’t need to speak about. He has been playing great all year. Ernie is starting to play a little bit better. Last week he showed there is a bit of form coming back into his game. Carlos Franco has had an incredibly good year – he has played so well. Jose with the Masters. Craig Parry is playing well. Paul Lawrie – all these guys have played well. Notah Begay winning last week – I suppose he is the one in the best form right now. If the weather stays like this we are going to have a cracker of a week here. It is phenomenal."
Impressions of Sergio.
Price:
"I first played with him last year in Mexico. I went down in the Mexican Open in Mexico City. We played the first two rounds together. He has come a long way since then. He was still an amateur then. We were talking about when he was going to turn professional. He wanted to play at Augusta. That was an important thing for him. That was a good move. But he has matured very quickly in the last seven or eight months. He is going to have to make some refinements - I am not going to say corrections or adjustments - but some refinements to his swing, because I think he has a couple of flaws in there which leads him to hit some errant tee shots. But his short game right now is about as good as anyone’s I have ever seen. It is something about that Spanish blood I suppose. None of them seem to drive the ball very well, but they all chip and putt like…em.. like Seve. They are incredible round the greens and Sergio is no different to any of those guys. He has certainly injected a lot of enthusiasm into this Tour in this part of the world. It has been great for golf, and we need more like him. I think what he did at the Ryder Cup was phenomenal. The youth and enthusiasm that he brought to the Ryder Cup was infectious to all the European players. He is certainly going to be one of the top dogs in the next year or so."
How much will experience of this event and this course be important this week?
Price:
"The secret to playing this golf course has always been the par 5’s. Anyone who has played well here over the years has always played the par 5’s well. If you do have a bit of length off the tee it is certainly an advantage on this golf course. But also if there is a bit of firmness to the fairways, hitting your tee shots with the right shape increases your yardage off the tee, so you have to know the golf course to know that. Where experience really comes to the fore is when you play in really bad weather. That seems to be where you need to know the ball is not going as far as it was in normal warm conditions. But in the wind and rain when the ball is flying 30 yards shorter you are looking at parts of the fairway you haven’t even seen before – that you are normally way past. So when the bad weather comes that is when experience is a factor. Experience on any golf course is important, but this golf course is a very straightforward, honest golf course. There are no hidden traps. What you see is what you get. Think that is why it has been so popular over the years, especially for the average golf fan. The par 5’s are reachable and there is always the potential for eagles there. And finishing with two par 5’s we have seen some huge comebacks in the past and the par 5’s have contributed to that."
Did you come here expecting to play Thursday?
I wasn’t sure. I actually thought Lee Westwood was going to play this week, and if that had been the case then he would have bumped me out of the seedings. I don’t know why he is not here, but in the back of my mind I did expect to play Thursday (Not here because he thinks this event has lost its stature.) That is his opinion. I think 36 holes of match play is a wonderful contest. 18 holes I am not a big fan of – a lesser player always has the opportunity to birdie four or five of the first six holes and it is very difficult to make that kind of ground up in 18 holes, but in 36 holes you can, and I think ---- I wish that if you could do it that the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup could go to 36 hole matches. It is a much truer reflection of match play."
Is Sergio’s potential limited unless he makes refinements?
Price:
"You have to drive the ball well to win major championships. There is no doubt about it. You saw at Carnoustie this year where he had that horrific first round, and the rough was so high and he got severely penalised for missing the fairways – as all of us did – he missed a few more than the rest of us. So there are certain golf courses that he is going to struggle on, as Seve, and as Jose still does. If there is a weakness in their games it is in the driver, and to be a complete golfer you have to be able to win on many different types of golf courses. At his age, where he is now, if he does make those refinements, as Tiger has done – I mean Tiger has been refining his game over the last two years, and there is no-one to come even close to him – so if Sergio does that and looks it more in the long term, as a career move (refining his swing) then come four five six years he is going to be a real powerhouse in the game. There is a lot of raw talent there now. I just see this give me the golf club and the ball and I am going to smash it, find it and hit it. Very much the Seve type player in his early days. But that can only take you so far. If Sergio wants to win a US Open or a PGA on a course that requires really accurate driving then he is going to have to make some refinements. Haven’t spoken to him about it I don’t feel that I am in a position where I need to go over to him Tiger and I spoke a lot about his swing. I said to him, everything in golf is a balance. I said to him, if you are a straight hitter of the ball, invariably you are not going to be a long hitter of the ball. There are very few who hit the ball a long distance and are accurate off the tee. So there is a trade off there. As we have seen with Davis Love in the last six or seven years,he has become a much better short iron player because he has lot a bit of distance with his driver. It is all to do with hand speed. You want the hand speed with the driver and the long irons to hit the ball a long way, but you don’t want that hand speed when you have got a 130 yard 9 iron or pitching wedge. The classic example this year was at the US Open when Tiger birdied the hardest hole on the course, the 16th – which most of us couldn’t even reach with a 3 wood. He birdies that and then the next hole with an 8 iron he makes bogey, and that has been the problem he has been facing with his game. But he is getting better. He is learning to slow that hand speed down. Sergio’s hand speed is about as fast through the ball as I have even seen on anyone. He is very slightly built, and he generates terrific hand speed, and I think in time he will have to make a decision what am I going to do. Give up a little bit of hand speed to hit more fairways. But I would be more than happy to help him."
Could he enter a lean spell?
Price:
"I wouldn’t say a lean spell because his short game is so strong. It will carry him through a lot of indifferent golf from tee to green. But when he does run into trouble it is going to be with his long game not his short game. If I compare myself to say someone like Seve when we were both 21 he was streets ahead of me. I couldn’t hold a candle to Seve. But over the years I worked hard on what I felt were the right things to improve my consistency and increase my distance a little bit. And I think through that period, Seve practiced hard but I don’t think he paid attention to some of the fundamental flaws he had in his golf swing and when he got older in his late 30’s he really started struggling to get the ball on the fairway, and I think that was because of some of the flaws he had particularly in hi back swing. He has always had a tendency to take the club back very steep and very shut. When you are younger and you have a little more speed with your hands, and your body reacts a little better you can get away with it. Sergio needs to go out there and find someone , perhaps his father, and analyse his swing and say, each year, how am I going to get better. Just refine it each year. Just get a little better each year, and work towards a point to where you feel you want your swing to be, and if he does that I wouldn’t say it would take him very long at all, if he got in the right hands."
Could it limit time a great player?
Price:
"We have seen players with unusual .. and I wouldn’t want to say Sergio’s game is unusual. His swing is unusual. It is a little – I am trying to find the right word to describe it without you guys killing him – he lays the club off a little bit on the way down and he has got these extremely fast hands, and what that is prone to is fluctuations in ball striking. It is very hard to control that hand speed day in and day out. I would like to see him get a little more consistent with that and once he gets a little more consistent with that, maybe losing a little bit of yardage, who knows maybe he won’t lose any yardage, but I think the first thing that would happen is that he would lose a few yards, but he would hit more fairways. And when he hits more fairways he is going to hit more greens and he is going to have more birdie putts. And that is how he is going to get better. The more birdie putts you give Sergio the better he is going to play. I wouldn’t say that there is a risk involved in that because you can always go back to what you were doing. I am not asking him to change his swing. I am just asking him to refine it, perhaps shorten it a bit or whatever it takes to slow those hand s down a little bit."
Why the dip in form in the middle of the season?
Price:
"I have two of my kids at school now, and they have their holidays in June, July and August which is probably the worst time for them to have holidays for me, because it is right slap bang in the middle of my major season. I spent a lot of time with them when they went on holiday, just doing odds and ends and I don’t thin I practiced as hard as I should have, or as I normally do, and my game suffered, so it is a little bit of a dilemma I have now. Because every June comes along, and sure I could neglect my kids and practice all day. But I enjoy having time with them and taking them to things, so it is just another hurdle I have to face in my life. What am I going to do, neglect my kids or neglect my golf. That is what was hard because I just couldn’t practice as hard."
Where does this tournament rank for you?
Price:
"I first watched this tournament in about 1968 when it was the Picadilly. Cigarette companies used to have 16mm film and used to get movies and watched them at our club. So it was probably one of the first events I saw on the screen. Didn’t have satellite or tv that you have today. It was eight players and it just always appealed to me. I first came here in 1975 and I had watched the year before Arnold Palmer hitting a driver and 3 wood on to the green at the first. And in 1975 I played with Gerald Micklem in the middle of summer and I hit a drive and a wedge and I thought man, give me that Tour, I am ready if Arnold hits a drive and a 3 wood and here is Nick Price hitting a drive and a wedge, Arnold Palmer can’t be that good!!!!! But of course then you realise the different conditions. Then I watched Gary beating Tony Lema, probably one of the most famous match play games of all time. And then if you look at the history, and you look at the champions that are on the trophy, I kind of feel that my career wouldn’t be complete unless I won here. So as long as they keep inviting me back I am going to try to win this event. Even though got a bye, if you get through to the final you have to play 108 holes in three days, and that is pretty stout. I remember when Seve beat me in the final I played practice round, pro-am, and then my first three matches went to like the 34th and then Seve beat me on the 34th. At the end of that I had to take four days off. I was very, very tired, and if the weather is bad that makes it that much more grueling. Only the fittest survive."
Shorter hitter like Pavin has won?
Price:
"I am not short but I am not in top 30%. Some of these guys can really move the ball out. Sergio can hit it 25 yards past me. Ernie is just a little bit longer than I am. We had a really good match here. But if you do play someone who is hitting the ball longer you better make sure your short game really strong that day, because you are going to have to outplay him on the greens, unless he hits a couple of loose tee shots. Corey Pavin when he was playing well could beat anyone with that short game of his. I played so much golf with him, there was nobody that could get the ball up and down like he could, make birdies on par 4’s hitting drive and 3 woods. That was his game. It was a lot of fun. If I ever wanted my son to play golf I was going to send him to Corey for four months, because nobody that I ever saw got more out of their game than he did, what he was given. Everybody used to say that Gary Player was pretty good but he wasn’t in the same league as Corey. What happened to him? I think the courses got longer. Once they stretched the courses out some of them are so long for him. I also think he had a tough time after winning a major. When won a major there is this mentality that you now have to play what you believed how a major champion should play. A lot of guys won’t go through that gutting it out when they are not playing so well to turn it around, which they did so well before they won that major. You believe that you game has been elevated to a certain level and you can’t play any worse than that. It is a very hard thing to deal with. After I won the PGA in 1992 I felt like that in a couple of tournaments. Then I tripped it. This game is still going to deal you some severe difficulties. It is not going to be plane sailing just because you won a major championship, and I think that is what he had to deal with a little bit, and of course with someone who doesn’t hit the ball as well as others, I think that was difficult for him. He is starting to play better now."
