My doctor asked me how many golf balls I had hit in my career. I'm lying there in bed calculating somewhere between four and five million golf balls I had hit to do that on my body. ↗
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. ↗
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. ↗
That's why we have practice rounds. We make the adjustments as we go around, try and find out how to play the golf course the best we can. No big deal, it's nothing to me, it's the same for me as it is to everybody and we're all trying to understand it. ↗
The game of golf doesn't come rushing back to you. Last week I made a couple of fundamental mistakes that I probably wouldn't have made in the heat of the battle back when I was in my heyday, and those things have got to come back. ↗
The players have competed on the level the last 25 or 30 years are always going to be the players that compete at a high level. These guys practice hard, they work on their game, they still hit the ball extremely well. ↗
When I turned 50, I said to myself, well, if this is what it's like turning 50, I can't wait to turn 60 because I still felt very, very mentally and physically good, outside my back surgery. ↗
