I left home at 17, traveled. I got married when I was 21. That's a young age. As it turned out, things were fine, then not so fine, and then it was a blunder. That happens all the time.
I will say I love competing, and I was in a great era of playing with young Phil Mickelson and older Greg Norman and Nick Price. I don't know if YA Title could throw the ball these days, but you can play golf for a long, long time.
I'm pretty much a self-taught player. My swing hasn't changed a whole lot, I don't think. But I watch a lot of people.
I caddied for a guy who was a very good player, and he gave me a set of clubs, just a starter set: 5-iron, 7-iron, 9-iron, putter and driver. I just loved it. How I developed my swing was to just grab a club and start banging balls.
I used to break a lot of clubs. I probably was a little different than your average junior player. I did have a lot longer hair and a lot more brown hair. But my demeanor, you know, really from maybe my second, third year on Tour, has gotten a lot more even keel.
I'm a lot older than I was when I was 30, which is kind of hard to believe.
Really in all my years on Tour, in the U.S. Open I probably played great golf in two of them, out of maybe 20, so it's a lot of work.
I can say I won a Senior British Open at Turnberry. I think that's the best thing about it, the whole week, was playing this course. It's a challenging, very tough course, under extreme weather. But you know, it's nice to win any event.
I'm not very good in the rain. I don't wear a golf glove.
My mom was so people-friendly. She was incredible. She'd go to the mall, and she'd talk to everyone. Give people a kiss on the cheek. I think if I wasn't pushed around a lot, I'd be great with people. Maybe I still can be.
My goal has always been to play golf, and play it well. In the end, that's what I am, a golfer. If my back lets me, I'm going to play my favorite places. If I hurt myself, that'll probably be it for a while.
I could go away five or six weeks in a row and never touch a club. I would just look at them and say, 'I just don't want to; it's not that important.' And it wasn't that important. Golf - I don't want to answer loosely - I pay a lot of attention to it, but I don't ever really think about it.
Golf is supposed to be fun, but I don't think anything is fun if you're not doing it reasonably well.
Golf is a game to me. Other players work extremely hard all year long. I work hard before Augusta. I know I get good results when I practice, but it also wears me out. It literally wore me out even when I was in my 20s.
I think people like players they can relate to. It seems as if people think they know me. I just think I'm an ordinary Joe who plays golf very, very well.
