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I couldn't control Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson or Lee Trevino. The only person I could control was me. The only person I could prepare for events was me. And if I didn't play well, I didn't play well, and I wasn't going to compete.
Tiger is the greatest thing that's happened to the tour in a long time. He has brought incredible attention to golf at a time of year when football and the World Series always take precedence. Everything I've heard about him seems to be true.
I am a proud product of Irish golf and the Golfing Union of Ireland and am hugely honoured to have come from very rich Irish sporting roots I am also a proud Ulsterman who grew up in Northern Ireland. That is my background and always will be.
I love the outdoors and looking at snakes, squirrels, bugs - just going through the woods and being part of it. You can smell the different trees. And I listen. There's so much you can learn by listening, by sitting and watching things happen.
Some players like to change clubs around the green to hit high or low shots. I play all of my short-game shots with my 54-degree sand wedge and change my ball position to hit it higher or lower. I think it's easier to learn one club than four.
I was nervous starting off today. I was nervous because I felt like I was going to play good and shoot a good round. I was trying to calm myself down. This race is a long race. The eagle at two was helped, but I was trying not to be too eager.
How can I intimidate Tiger Woods? I mean, the guy's got 75 or whatever PGA Tour wins, 14 majors. He's been the biggest thing ever in our sport. How could some little 23-year-old from Northern Ireland with a few wins come up and intimidate him.
You still remember the bad rounds here, but they don't stay with you as long. The Champions Tour is great, it's competitive and it's a wonderful show, but it's not the real big league. The real big league is the PGA Tour, and we all know that.
When I'm swinging the club at my best, it's because I'm not thinking about mechanics at all. I feel like my body is loose. My arms are soft in front of me when I'm setting up, and my chest and shoulders feel as if they can move and turn easily.
So my game is solid. So that obviously makes me feel confident, that like anybody else in this field, you name them, I feel like I've got the ability to win the golf tournament just as much as they have, and that's the way I'm going to take it.
I go into the locker room and find a corner and just sit there. I try to achieve a peaceful state of nothingness that will carry over onto the golf course. If I can get that feeling of quiet and obliviousness within myself, I feel I can't lose.
Green synthetic practice mats are the worst thing for your golf game that I know of. You can hit six inches behind the ball and not even know it, because the ball still gets airborne. Practice nets are awful, too. Swing a weighted club instead.
I wanted to make a point of basing myself at home, being close to my family. I'll never be able to repay Mum and Dad for what they did, but at least they know they'll never have to work another day. I'll do whatever it takes to look after them.
No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par.
My main aim is getting set up so that when I do quit, I can step away and re-evaluate what I want to do in life. Do I want to get to 50 years old and come back? Or will I just want to go home and be fishing, hunting and working around the house?
I think most amateurs dread playing a 180-plus-yard par 3 even more than a hard par 4. Part of it is psychological: You think you should be getting a breather, distance-wise, and instead, you get hit with a long iron or hybrid shot over trouble.
I am a proud product of Irish golf and the Golfing Union of Ireland and am hugely honoured to have come from very rich Irish sporting roots... I am also a proud Ulsterman who grew up in Northern Ireland. That is my background and always will be.
I had such a tie with my eyes and my hands. I could look at a telephone pole 40 yards away, take out a 7-iron, and hit it 10 times in a row. I had something special. And somehow, I really understood the game, all without having a lot of guidance.
My main aim is getting set up so that when I do quit, I can step away and re-evaluate what I want to do in life. Do I want to get to 50 years old and come back? Or will I just want to go home and be fishing, hunting, and working around the house?
I played the British Open in 1937. It took a week to get there and a week to get home. I was the low American; finished fourth or fifth. And what it came down to was, I lost a good part of my summer, won $185, and spent $1,000 on boat fare alone.
I made my share of mistakes. People can look at that as what not to do, and if they choose to make fun of it, that's fine. I can't control that. All I know is that I can control myself. And at that point in my life, I wasn't even able to do that.
I think one of the big issues with, you know, people who have strong faith in addition to competing is that conflict between accepting things the way they are, and wanting to compete and get better, and at what point are you in the right balance.
Obviously it's my second senior event, and I'm tired obviously coming back from the British Open, from surgery, which was priority No. 1, did that successfully, and each week since the British Open I've felt in pretty good control of my golf game.
People in this room must have back problems, I'm sure some of us do, and it is really, really one of the worst pains and debilitating parts of your body that you can actually have because you really can't do anything in your life when you have it.
Mostly I built golf courses the way I played golf, which was left-to-right. But I learned very rapidly that people wanted to see more than just the way I played golf and that I had to balance up what I was doing, right-to-left, left-to-right, etc.
People don't understand that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never the biggest. I was never the fastest. I certainly was never the strongest. The only thing I had was my work ethic, and that's been what has gotten me this far.
I open the driving range and I close it. I thought you ought to know that I work hard. I like practising. I enjoy it. If I did not enjoy it I would not do it. What is the point of going back to the hotel, having a drink and talking a load of bull?
You're going to make mistakes. The key is to learn from them as fast as possible and make changes as soon as you can. That's not always easy to do because ego and pride get in the way, but you have to put all that aside and look at the big picture.
I owe a lot of people an apology. I hurt a lot of people. Not just my wife. My friends, my colleagues, the public, kids who looked up to me. There were a lot of people that thought I was a different person and my actions were not according to that.
I was sitting in Arizona when I received Dogs on Cape Cod. Seeing the joy these dogs had playing on the beaches and in the marsh grasses on the Cape carried me back to my family visits in Harwich. The dogs are so full of life, it just made me smile.
I played golf for 25 years before I made a hole-in-one of any kind. I was on the tour for years before it finally happened. Eventually I made 23, but boy, that first one was a long time coming. It was the price I paid for not shooting at every flag.
Chad was in the right spot. He got a little aggressive with the third shot there. He probably didn't want that putt he had there for the par. And you don't want to put it back there where Casey and Sergio did because you have 20 feet of break there.
You have to think of them as your peers. You can't really - when you're on the course and looking up to anybody, you're saying, 'Wow, that's so and so,' that's when you get into trouble. For instance, if you're paired with them, then what do you do?
I have started up the Jordan Spieth Family Foundation. My little sister has special needs, so I started out trying to help kids with special needs. We have moved on to military now and a third pillar in junior golf, trying to help grow it back home.
Race horses are like golfers, you're never sure how they're going to come out of the stalls. It's just - hopefully the horses come out of the race all right, just fit and ready to go again in the near future, but 3rd was good. It's paid for its hay.
The cast clubs were a big part of it, too. I found I wasn't getting that instant feedback I was used to with a forged blade. The sweet spot is a shade bigger, and when I didn't hit the ball dead center, I didn't know it, because it still felt great.
The Open is the one that we all want and strive for and to be able to hold this Claret Jug is an incredible feeling. To be three legs towards the career grand slam at the age of 25 is a pretty good achievement. It's not going to sink in for a while.
The way I pack is I look at how long I'll be gone and I pack day for day. If I'm going on a three-day fishing trip, I plot each day. I put most of that in a little bag. If I'm going from there to work on golf courses for a few days, I plot that trip.
I had a very well-respected writer ask me point blank to my face whether it actually mattered to me. Now, without wanting to reach out and just strangle him or send a few F-bombs his way, I just bit my tongue, told him he offended me and walked away.
Since turning professional at 18, I have travelled the world playing the game that I love and consider myself a global player. As the World No.1 right now, I wish to be a positive role model and a sportsperson that people respect, and enjoy watching.
It is technology. They all changed to a harder golf ball, so they gave up spinning on the greens. They all changed to longer drivers, bigger heads with hotter faces and lighter shafts. The problem is, the harder you hit it, the more control you lose.
Golf isn't just about hitting a lot of drivers. I grew up playing on my front lawn, chipping and putting into soup cans, out of the ivy and over rose bushes and hedges - the little Alcott Golf and Country Club. I just loved having a wedge in my hands.
If we had to play Augusta National in one hour, the best athlete would win the Masters. But as it is, they give us time to hang ourselves. Every swing is a 'thought shot'. So instead of the best athlete, you end up with the best thinker as the winner.
A lot of weekend players struggle with putting because they have too much tension in their hands and arms, both at address and during the stroke. Tension can turn a technically perfect motion into a herky-jerky mess, especially on those knee-knockers.
You wouldn't have had to call a penalty on me, I would've called I on myself'. 9. “I'm the sole judge of my standards”. 10. “I always outworked everybody. Work never bothered me like it bothers some people. You can outwork the best player in the world.
I was so dedicated to generating income to keep my family housed and clothed and schooled. That mattered to me. And playing good golf mattered to me. The rest of the things, like how my record stacked up against others, never made that much difference.
Tom Watson, Tom Watson blew, what, two PGA Championships and a U.S. Open. Did it destroy his life? No, it didn't destroy his life. He learned from it. He went on to win a lot of major championships and obviously became one of the world's great players.
When I fly in a helicopter, I insist there be two sets of controls, one for me in case something happens to the pilot. I'm no expert, but I know enough to at least get the thing on the ground. Nothing scares me like the thought of not being in control.
I thoroughly enjoy getting away from the game and going out fishing because it's so relaxing, so quiet and peaceful. I mean, there's no noise other than nature - and it's so different from what I do in a tournament situation that it just eases my mind.
When you get to the tee on a really long par 5, I know what you're feeling. You want to let the shaft out on the driver and try to bomb it down there. I get the same feeling. But a big tee shot is not always the best strategy, especially on a long hole.