May 20, 2009
AN INTERVIEW WITH:
GREG NORMAN
KELLY ELBIN: Greg Norman, ladies and
gentlemen, World Golf Hall of Fame member, join
us at the 70th Senior PGA Championship at
Canterbury Golf Club. Greg tied for sixth in his
Senior PGA Championship debut last year at Oak
Hill Country Club. Greg, welcome back to the
Senior PGA Championship and welcome to
Canterbury. You played a couple times, thoughts
on the golf course, please.
GREG NORMAN:
Yes, second time
around it. Interesting golf course. Still haven't
decided how I'm going to play it, to tell you the
truth. I think there's some opportunities where you
can actually take an aggressive approach and hit
driver off some of these left-to-right holes and cut it
back into the hill.
But I would say all in all it's a very
conservative type of golf course. You got to know
the greens, you got to know where to put the ball
on the greens, extremely fast from back to front
and very slow from front to back. So knowing your
yardages and putting it in the right position on the
green is going to be crucial.
KELLY ELBIN:
You got two very
distinctive nines, the shorter front nine and much
longer back nine.
GREG NORMAN: Yeah, well they are
distinctive. I actually kind of like the front nine
better than the back nine. It's got a little bit of
character to it. But golf course has got a nice
balance and you got to be very careful playing
around here.
KELLY ELBIN: Open it up for questions,
please.
Q. When you say it's an interesting golf
course? Do you mean that in a good way or do
you mean that in a kind of you haven't figured
it out yet or what?
GREG NORMAN: Well, I haven't got it
figured out yet, but it's certainly interesting in the
fact that you got reverse cambers on some of the
doglegs. And you don't normally get that on
modern golf courses.
Normally we work with the terrain
differently. Here you can see they just put the
holes in the slope and the slope is where the slope
was. They didn't really move a lot of dirt to build
this golf course.
So you really have to shape your shot,
especially a tee shot. And if you really want to get
conservative then that means that you're putting
yourself a long way back into some of these
greens. And I would rather be in there trying to
spin the ball into the green than trying to hit a little
bit more of a club that will bounce forward. So
once you get past the hole here it's interesting. So
there's that word again.
(Laughter.)
Q. You talked about shaping shots and
everybody keeps talking about the equipment
the way it is today and that you really can't
move the ball like you want to. So is this kind
of counter intuitive, you have the equipment
that doesn't really need to do what you need to
do out here?
GREG NORMAN: Well you can tell this
golf course -- and actually I spoke to one of my
pro-am partners yesterday -- this golf course was
built how many years ago? You know, quite a
number. Almost a hundred years ago.
KELLY ELBIN: In the '20s.
GREG NORMAN: In the '20s. When the
fairways weren't cut as high and the greens weren't
cut as high and so you can have a lot of slope on
the fairways and the greens and you can get away
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with it.
Now days with the fairways, how it's cut
down, it's very difficult to lay up on a hole like 16, if
you hit it in the rough where do you lay it up, the
ball is going to run. The 17th at Olympic Golf Club,
you roll all the way back down in the rough of the.
So you really got to know the layup area.
That wasn't the way it was back in the '20s
and '30s. So being counter intuitive you can still
work the ball, but you can't really slice the ball as
much as we used to or hook the ball as much as
we used to. Now days to hook a ball 30 feet's a
pretty big hook. In the old days we could do it 90
feet. Really work it tremendously.
So, yeah, we can do it, but not to the way
the golf course is used to be built with the
capabilities of the golf balls in those days. Is that a
good answer to your question?
Q. Yes.
GREG NORMAN: Do you follow that?
Q. I'm fine with that.
GREG NORMAN: You got it?
(Laughter.)
Q. Can you talk about last year what
this tournament did for your year, what impact
it had on your game and just where your game
is right now?
GREG NORMAN: I would like to say it's
fairly solid. It's not great. But it's solid. I haven't
really spent a lot of time as much time leading up
to this tournament as I would like practicing. But
I'm not overly concerned, I'm not like sitting here,
oh, my gosh, I'm not playing very well. I'm playing
fairly solid golf.
Q. Last year?
GREG NORMAN: Last year?
KELLY ELBIN: Comments on your play
last year and what that might have done for your
season.
GREG NORMAN: A lot of similarities to
the rough. Oak Hill last year was probably deeper
and more thicker rough off the fairway so you really
couldn't miss the fairway. At least here you can
advance the ball forward. You can get it going
forward 180, 175 yards. Very similar, actually.
The greens were the same. Very speedy. A lot of
undulation, so I think from a tee shot standpoint I
think that Oak Hill is probably a little bit more
conducive to driving the ball than what this place
is.
Q. I was trying to ask you, being in
contention last year.
GREG NORMAN: Oh, being in contention.
Q. How did that get your game really
kind of, get you excited again?
GREG NORMAN: Any time you're in
contention you get excited about playing. Of
course when you get on that bike and start riding it
and feeling the energy of not only your play and
how good it feels and the energy of everything
going on around you, that's what we play for.
When you get it, it feels great. Even at this late
stage in your life.
Q. You're playing a little bit more, is it
because usually when you play you're in
contention?
GREG NORMAN:
Why am I playing
more? I still enjoy it. My schedule's lightened up
with the economic climate golf course design
business has slowed down dramatically. So that
gives me the opportunity to, I'm not traveling as
much, so therefore it gives me the opportunity to
put other things on my schedule.
Things are going to change starting next
year, we already see it, and in our design
business, we're getting a lot of activity looking
forward into 2010. So next year will be a totally
different year for me and I know that. Back on the
plane, flying a lot around the world, doing the
design work that's already in place.
So that will probably be, my playing
schedule next year will be probably the opposite of
what it's going to be this year. But it all has to do
with the economic environment in the business
world.
Q. Why is the design and all your
business interests, why is it a priority over
golf? Did you just lose some interest in golf?
GREG NORMAN: I enjoy it. When I go
away and build a golf course, I go away for a day.
If I go away to play a golf tournament I go away for
a week. So I can go away and do five golf course
design jobs in five different countries around the
world and come home and get a lot more work
done than being away for seven days. And I've
still got two days up my sleeve.
So it's all about travel and making sure you
put your priorities of life in the right perspective.
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And it's not that I don't want to play golf it's just that
I enjoy being at home more often. I travelled 40
weeks a year for 30 years of my life. I'm trying to
cut that back down to about 20 weeks a year for
the rest of my life. If can I do that then I got a lot of
spare time on my hands.
And believe me, it's a great feeling to be
able to stay home on a weekend. And I, in my
business, I do not work on the weekends. I do
Monday to Friday. If we go oversees it's always
leave on Monday and get home on Friday
afternoon if it's a five day trip. Because my guys
that work for me have families as well. And it's
really nice to be home.
Q. If you're at home are you just being
a 50 year old guy or are you still driving fast
cars too fast and diving with sharks and all that
kind of stuff?
GREG NORMAN: I still enjoy my hobbies
that I like to do, I go scuba diving and I like
spending time. I play tennis, or just do nothing.
Absolutely nothing is a not a bad thing to do
sometimes.
Q. At this stage of your life and career
of the various components of your game,
which is the first to come around once you get
a few practice rounds under your belt and
what's the last to come around most of the
time?
GREG NORMAN: Normally the last thing
to really come back into a hundred percent shape
is your short game. Because short game comes
on just absolute unconditional feel. You see the
shot, you hit the shot.
You can go out there and practice your
short game as much as you want, but when you
get under tournament conditions when that ball's
sitting down a little bit deeper in the love rough do
you have the conviction to go after it and hit a
great shot. You don't really practice those with the
same pressure when you're practicing on the
putting or chipping green or wherever you are just
relaxing in the afternoon.
So, but the more you play, the more you,
the more that shot comes back into your natural
repertoire. And sometimes it's shots out there that
you don't practice, but you pull them off because
you see them and it's all hand/eye coordination.
So that's the last thing that normally comes back.
but always considered one of the best drivers
of the golf ball. That was in the year of the
persimmon heads. Has it changed a lot now?
Do you think there's more guys who hit 70
percent plus in fairways hit because of
equipment or back in the day that was a heck
of a lot harder figure to reach?
GREG NORMAN: I think it's easier to hit
the golf ball straighter now days. And the ball goes
longer. No question. Is that -- that is technology.
No question about it.
I think a great barometer, just to get off
your question a little bit is, a great barometer is
when the V grooves come into play next year. And
I hope it does. There's rumors floating around
here this week that it may not even come into play.
But if the V grooves do come back into play, that
will be a great barometer to see how good these
players are with their touch and their feel and their
imagination. And understanding that that ball, it
looks like it's going to leap 40 yards extra off the
club face, how do you play that?
That's going to be great to watch on
television. Because that's, to me, is the art of
understanding the game of golf.
And
understanding the spin of the golf ball. Not just a
pure given fact if you hit it in the rough and I did it a
couple times today on these firm greens, I'm in the
rough, I know it's going to spin, I'm just going to
open that club face up a little bit more and the ball
comes down like an old dog lying by a fireplace. It
just drops on the green.
Now that's not going to happen next year.
So those are the type of things that actually help
the better players distance themself from the
average players. And I think that's why in my
generation you saw such great shot makers out
there, Trevino and like I said, Seve in a lot of ways,
he hit phenomenal shots.
So you got a combination where I was a
good driver, but I was also a good short game
player, so that was a lethal combination in a lot of
ways. I could be very aggressive off the tee,
aggressive second iron shot, because I wasn't
afraid of missing the green, I knew I would get it
up-and-down the majority of the time. So it really
allowed you to free up your game big time. And V
groove clubs are going to change that a lot next
year for a lot of players.
Q.
You said you liked the front nine
better?
Q. When you were younger in your 20s
and 30s you were obviously a great ball-striker,
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GREG NORMAN: What did I say?
Q. The front nine at this golf course,
you said you like a lot better, it has more
character.
Could you elaborate on that
because the back nine has the only two par-5s
on it and they're back to back.
GREG NORMAN:
Well par-5s don't
necessarily make the character of a golf course.
The front nine, the holes go a lot of different
directions. Your first hole you have to be careful,
you have to read the speed of the ball once it lands
on the fairway. Same with the third hole. You got
to cut it into the hill. Fourth hole you got to kind of
draw it down the hill. Fifth hole you got to cut it
down the hill. And sixth hole you got to think about
your tee shots all the time.
The back nine is not really the case. 10th
hole you go up there and hit a driver right at the
bunker. And the 12th hole you hit a hybrid just get
it on the fairway. And 13, you just got to hit it
straight, a straight driver.
So just those holes I mentioned, the
character is a lot different. So in my mind's eye I
think the front nine, even though it's shorter, it can
play a little bit more interestingly again that word,
for the way your mind sees it or the way your eye
sees it.
Q. Having had some time now to reflect
on Augusta, what are your thoughts on the
changes to the golf course they made the past
few years? Now that you've actually seen them
up close?
GREG NORMAN: Well I wrote a letter to
Billy Payne congratulating him on the way they set
up the golf course. They did a phenomenal job,
even though I only played two days, the two day
that I played, they were smart, they were very, very
sensitive to the conditions, and the golf course
played the way it should play.
And if you go back there -- sometimes
when we play on practice rounds we play off the
tips. All the time. Like today. You're one pace
from the back of the tee. When you get in
tournament play, things vary dramatically, it could
be 20, 30 yards on the tee shot. And Augusta
National did a great job with that. The golf course
played long, but it didn't play ridiculously long. The
golf course played, it was very playable for every
player. And that's the way you set up a golf
course.
There's some other golf courses that just
play brutally long and there's only a few players
that can really take advantage of it. So from my
point of view I thought it was great, very well done.
Q. Who is caddying for you? Is it your
son?
GREG NORMAN: Yeah, he is.
Q. Is Chris here?
GREG NORMAN:
She will come up
tomorrow.
KELLY ELBIN: Any sense yet on what a
winning score may be come Sunday evening?
GREG NORMAN: The lowest one.
(Laughter.)
KELLY ELBIN: Very good.
GREG NORMAN: I've got no history
around here, so it's pretty hard for me to make a
judgment on that. If it stays hot and firm, this golf
course is not going to get easier, it's just going to
get harder. So you guys help me. What's been
the winning score in the history? Over here? 276?
274? What has it been? I have no idea.
Q. Par's always been 72.
GREG NORMAN: Par's been 72 here?
Okay.
Q. 274?
GREG NORMAN:
here what did he shoot?
When Nicklaus won
Q. Par was 71 then.
GREG NORMAN: It's not going to be
something where players are going to go out there
and shoot four 65s, that's for sure.
KELLY ELBIN: Greg Norman, thank you
for your time, good luck.
GREG NORMAN: Thanks very much,
everybody.
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