By Mike Berardino
Chronicle Staff
Copyright 1996 The Augusta Chronicle

On the 1995 Masters: I had the simplest thoughts that week - really simple thoughts. I was playing my favorite tournament and I was playing by instinct, trying to remember every shred of evidence that Harvey (Penick) imparted to me, as well as my father. I was just having fun playing the golf course. And it being my favorite tournament and favorite place helped. Had it been anywhere else, I might not have played in the first place. Had it not been there I might not have been able to shift any sort of focus at all. But it seemed all right that it was there, or at least all right enough that it was such I could try to play. ... To get around Augusta National for four days with just five bogeys is very hard to believe. I can't explain that.

On the walk up No. 18 on Sunday: The emotional state. Anything can happen. The thing that's great about that hole is you can play it precisely and make a birdie. And you can slip and make an easy six. I was just so intent on getting the ball in play.

I started walking down the hill and then I started walking back up and I starting thinking, God, this is going to happen. This will actually happen. I was really starting to get overwhelmed there. I wasn't really in a very good emotional state on the second one.

On fate: I believed in fate before (the 1995 Masters). I unequivocally think it decides championships. There are a lot of different ways of winning championships, but in a major championship, I keep alluding to things that happen out of the ordinary, and they do usually happen there at Augusta National. There are things that you can't really explain or put your finger on.

On control: There's never been a golfer ever that has played 72 holes and can really honestly say they were in total control of what they were doing. There's just no way. Golf's just not that way. All you can try to do is use your best instincts and trust in yourself and not allow it to happen but have all the conviction that what you're doing and the decision you've made is right and play it for all it's worth.

On experience: Bobby Jones always said he learned more from losing championships than he did from winning championships, and I think he was right about that.

On how his game differs from 20 years ago: I feel I'm a more patient player. I know there's a lot of things that I can and can't do anymore. I don't hit the ball as far as I used to. In that aspect, that tends to take away a game of total abandonment. There's just so many chances you can take when you don't hit the ball as far as you once did.

Patience spills over to a lot of things. It means that you might be a better practitioner in the form of club choice, playing different shots under different situations, learning not to press, whether that be mentally or physically. But knowing that patience will save you strokes and believing it . . . (laughs). Any young player must learn that. Sometimes it happens early in people's careers. Sometimes it's late. But I still think I have enough skills to get around. This is probably a really trite observation, but you've just got to learn to play your own game, whatever that is.
On the design of Augusta National: I believe in its philosophy. I think the philosophy still escapes people. A lot of people still just miss it as being just a putting course. I suppose that's a fair assumption for someone, but there's so much more to it than that.

It doesn't matter who of any generation says it, but if you sit down with Bob Jones' thoughts and Dr. MacKenzie's thoughts, what they were thinking about before they built it, it might come to them. It was a different piece of architecture tried at that time. It is a difficult thing to combine - truly - golf for every class of player and make it a very fascinating test for everybody. One of their thoughts is you can only do that by undulating greens and have them flexible enough for all sorts of play. You could make it play hard or make it play easier.

True, you can hit the ball a lot of different places, but still the chances for bringing off a shot, whatever that might be, is something you don't see any other time of the year. That's what makes it unique. In that instance, it's a very daring golf course. It's a course that rewards intelligent play. And it's a course that rewards bold play.

On Augusta National's greens: Everyone has known the strength of the golf course is in the contours of the greens. Some people can handle them and some people haven't. I can count myself on both ends of that quarrel (laughs). I will say this, the true Jones was a beautiful player in every aspect. But when the golf course began and they had the first few tournaments, it was the putting that went first and he said it was the one thing he couldn't handle - or not as well as he used to. There's always the notion that whoever builds the golf course, it mimics their game. It's not entirely true in this case.

On tradition: Golf has been probably the most tradition-minded sport. I think that it's important to the continuity of the game. It's strange that anyone who has ever picked up golf, the very first day learns a little something that's sort of traditional in nature. You come away with the fact that there is some sense of etiquette involved. It's not a particularly noise game at all. You feel like you're a little privileged to play it. It has a code of ethics a lot of other sports don't have, I'll just say.

That has been carefully handed down from generation to generation. There have been a lot of golfers through the generations who have fiercely protected that. I just simply out of respect for those who have come before me, not that I have one iota to do about it, but I have just really enjoyed studying the history of it, to find out what and how some of these things have happened.

On golf personalities: (Former PGA commissioner) Deane Beman made a very interesting speech when he retired and he made a great point. Why is it golf has always had incredible personalities that carried the game? And he just remarked how lucky that some of these individuals have been. More importantly, these people, apart from their golf game, their character and their personalities have been strong enough to influence a lot of people. As long as we have people like that, the game will be fine.

This game can take quite a lot of criticism. It's the enduring qualities that give the game its timelessness. I just think it's important to try to continue that fight. I'm attracted to a lot of different things, but I'm attracted to people who want to continue that fight.

On poor sportsmanship: It is very much a fight. There's no question you can see those things trickling into the game. But it's always going to be the nature of the game that's going to keep everything on an even keel. Golf has an incredible way of tempering any sort of imbalance. And if someone doesn't know that, they will find out in a hurry. (laughs)

There's no question that we're in the Me generation and we have some excessive personalities. But we haven't seen that much in golf. Golfers are proud of that. I think golfers are very aware of the pitfalls. It has the best way of humanizing it.

On The World of Golf, the book that sparked his interest in golf history at age 13: I couldn't have cut my teeth on a better book. It had a little bit about everything. It had tradition, it had personalities, and only the way that Charlie (Price) could do. What a great writer. But he had customs, architecture, everything. About players who didn't have saintly personalities either. A great piece of work. I would say out of that book right there, he historically depicted something I was interested in right off the bat. I was lucky.

On career path: I've never been very consistent. I can play very well or very mediocre (laughs). I wish to heck I won more consistently but I haven't been able to come up with a way.

On preparing for the Masters: The conditions are so different. People always say you want to have your game in good shape for Augusta. Well, you'd love to. But the conditions are so different. There's not a course in the world where you could practice that resembles it. There's nothing. You're in Florida, you're probably trying to play wind golf and keep the ball down. Then you get to Augusta and you're trying to hit the ball up.

I've always found that funny, all these questions while we're on tour. `How do you feel going into Augusta?' Well, I'll let you know when I get there.

On his bird-watching hobby: It fits in nicely with me. I travel a lot. The golf course is a fantastic place to watch birds. There's every conceivable bird on golf courses. They're in their natural setting. We're traveling different places, so there's a lot of different species. It's just something I've enjoyed learning a little bit more about since I was really young.

People still send me bird books, little field guides. They're great to have. La Costa (Calif.) is a great place to watch birds. There's all kinds of hawks and osprey and an amazing amount of ducks. Lot of woodpeckers, too. I've always liked birds of prey. Hawks and eagles, I've always been fascinated by. They're somewhat at the top of the food chain, and about their eyesight and how they hunt.

On Augusta National's birds: For many years there was this great horned owl that lived right off the sixth tee box in this pine tree to the right, just before you get to all the people. It's nest was way up there about 50 feet up in the air probably. And the caddies called him Mr. Roberts. Great big horned owl. He's been gone a few years. (laughs)

(Masters caddy) Carl (Jackson) said the day that Mr. Roberts died, the owl left.

On competitive fire: When I get the chance, I don't feel any differently. It's just competition, and my love for it. You're just trying to prove to yourself that you can do it again or whatever. I don't know what it is. I really enjoy that feeling of excitedness and keenness. When you're involved in the hunt of a golf tournament, it's a wonderful golf tournament.

I do get into a trance. Sometimes it's the most interesting thing. You try to look inside yourself and you're trying to play each hole or each stroke in the realm of putting together a round of golf. Putting aside all the other things that go along with playing golf or a tournament or what it means if you win is the most interesting part. Sometimes you can totally forget those things. Other times you allow those other little thoughts to get in. To me it means you cannot concentrate well.

Sometimes you have really good concentration powers and other times you just don't have it. No matter what you try to do and how you try to put your mind at ease or how you try to train your mind on how you've done it before, it just won't happen. It's very strange.

The competition in being involved, yeah, it's every bit as much competitive fire that I always had.

On Augusta's ghosts: When I had not won before, you've got to conquer all those fears. Because it's the tournament that every golfer looks at every year and it's the same place, same spot and every golfer before them had tried those shots. We've seen every conceivable combination of shots. You've got to combat that any way you know how. Gosh, Arnold Palmer double-bogeyed the last hole in 1961 trying to avoid that bunker. All kinds of stuff.