Jeff Sluman - Part 4 (Tour Wins and the Champions Tour)

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle. Then it started to put it in the middle of the day.

Bruce Devlin 0:15

Bruce, where did he win that next tournament? 1999 Sony opened. Yeah. Because you you won by two shots, right? And there was uh five guys tied for second. Do you remember that?

Jeff Sluman 0:37

I know I'm I know Maggart was one of them. Yeah. Davis? I couldn't tell you the other guys. Maybe Davis, I think.

Bruce Devlin 0:46

Chris Perry and Tommy Tolls. Okay. Tommy Tolls Tolls. Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 0:54

Um it was a it was the first year after a renovation. Uh Rick Smith, I think, came in and uh did some work on it, did a really nice job. And they changed the par to 70. Pretty sure. I think you're right. I think 13's a 13 was a four, and I believe they made nine a four. So um and it was windy, it was hot, and it was dry. And they had a they had enough rough that you were catching those, you know, you know those conditions, Bruce. You catch that jumper, it gets in that kind of little dry Bermuda, and you can't keep it in the fairways because every fairway at Wiley kind of has a little turn to it. Um, squeezing it in those fairways was really, really challenging, especially in crosswinds, you know. And so um controlling the ball was almost, I'm not gonna say almost impossible, but it was really a challenging week. That's why the scores were not as low as as they are. It was mostly condition-based. Um, but I did birdie, I think eight and nine and seventeen and eighteen on the weekend, seven of those eight holes. So that was I I always finished strong that week. Um and it was just kind of one of those things. I was standing with a friend of mine and and his wife, and he had a house up on the hill overlooking the golf course. And I've never said this. This is uh didn't you know it was like a magical week. I was in good shape, doing a lot of running after the round, and physically, you know, felt it as good as I've felt at that point. And uh he had this lady, and she was kind of mystical. Now I'm not always into that, but she was kind of mystical and came over to the house and early in the weekend she gave we had a massage, you know. I like massage, it kind of relaxes you when you're working out. And her name was Leslene, and she was friends of Eric and Mandy's, and there was this aura around her. I'm I never really talked about it that much because it's kind of strange, but she just said, you know, you're gonna have a great week, and you know, I I I sense this in you, you da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I went out and I was never more relaxed on a golf course before or since. And what we talked about earlier, sometimes you get it done, and then sometimes you don't, and when you get it done, you think it's easy. This just it was the the best I'd ever felt. Just went out and I just played golf. And you know, that wasn't my nature. I was I was hard on myself and and uh not always the most confident guy. Uh but this week it was just it was just there. It was and I never I never had it since, honestly. Like that. That feeling, that vibe that I knew it was just gonna be good. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 4:27

Um the she caddy?

Jeff Sluman 4:32

No, I I never saw her after that. Okay. We uh I think she went to another island and and and that, but uh, because I always would stay with my my friends Eric and Mandy, and they said, you know, Leslie, we haven't seen her in a long time. She she moved. So anyways.

Mike Gonzalez 4:50

Kind of strange. What a great place to start a any year would be uh in Hawaii, huh? Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 4:56

I think that was the only time, Bruce, that was number one on the money list, because I played the week before the Mercedes Tournament of Champions and played well. And whoever won Mercedes went home. So I I should have I should have taped that to the to the wall.

Mike Gonzalez 5:10

On the top of the money list. Well, in uh in uh July of 2001, you got kind of a home victory. Uh uh you were an IBM country in Endicott, New York, playing in the BC Open, and uh you won that one in a playoff with Paul Gao.

Jeff Sluman 5:31

My only playoff win.

Mike Gonzalez 5:33

We're gonna come to that. Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 5:35

Yeah. I I think uh I I know Crenshaw's never won one.

Mike Gonzalez 5:40

That's right. That's right.

Jeff Sluman 5:41

He was Ofer. He was Ofer, and I was Ofer until that. Uh, and that actually for me was also worldwide because I lost a few in other spots and champions tours, but um yeah, it was uh it was a great week. Uh I had a feeling I was gonna play well. I was uh it was a great week of weather, which rarely happens in in uh Endicott. But it was in the middle of the summer and the golf course was in good shape, and I felt confident and played a good first round. I don't know if you got the scores there. I don't know what I shot. 68 or 67 or something like that.

Bruce Devlin 6:18

68, 65, 66 is what you shot. You yeah. Five, six, seven, and eight.

Jeff Sluman 6:26

Yeah, I I start out the second day on the first hole, and there's it's a hole that you can mess up. There's a pond down there, and you gotta hit it through this little shoot and and everything. And I make seven starting the round, I've start with a triple bogey. So now I'm one under for the tournament, and I look up and I think I see Brett Quigley 14-15 under. Holy snooks. And I said, I still think I'm gonna win this thing. It wasn't quite the feeling of Hawaii, but I said, I it's game on. I I know, I know I'm flushing it this week. And I climbed back in and just kept going. But it's hard to win a tournament making a triple. It really is.

Mike Gonzalez 7:22

It is, yeah, shooting 22 under with a triple.

Jeff Sluman 7:25

Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 7:26

So I have a question for that. That's pretty good. Relative to your fire relative to your by the way, your world record for playoffs was two wins and ten losses in playoffs.

Jeff Sluman 7:45

Two wins? Where did I win? What was the other win?

Bruce Devlin 7:49

Uh I don't have it at my fingertips right now, but you did win. You won two playoffs.

Mike Gonzalez 7:56

He's giving you he's giving you credit for the Franklin Templeton shootout. That's right. That's what it was. With Hank Keaney. We played off, huh?

unknown 8:07

Okay.

Mike Gonzalez 8:08

We played off against uh Campbell and Mike Keel and Faxen and McCarran, and you won with a birdie on the second hole. I'm sure it's just such a vivid memory. It just comes right back to you, huh?

Jeff Sluman 8:21

I think that format that day was a scramble or something like that. I don't even remember that, frankly.

Mike Gonzalez 8:27

Well, I mean, you know, hey, hey, it's a win taken.

Jeff Sluman 8:30

Hey, any any W, I'm taken. There you go.

Bruce Devlin 8:33

So you could have been a 28 tournament winner. You know that. I had a I had a lot of chances, I can tell you that. We do keep, we do keep a record of uh playoff victories and over the ladies and the gentlemen. What do you think the winning percentage is for all of the great players like yourself?

Mike Gonzalez 8:58

No, this is just from our guests, which we're only doing major winners and world golf Hall of Fame members. What do you think?

Bruce Devlin 9:06

Well, I know don't use your own.

Jeff Sluman 9:08

I know Ben and I are really yeah, we're really dragging the uh the average down, but I'd say the average down, I'd say 40% win.

Bruce Devlin 9:20

Gee, you know, he's you're the only one best guess we've had said on to 50. Tell him what it is, Mike.

Mike Gonzalez 9:30

Well, I think it's about 42 or 43 percent now, and so I think if you s if you calculate multiplayer, you know, more than two people, it probably works out to a 50-50 proposition. Yeah, you know, anyhow. Uh Kathy Whitworth, Kathy Whitworth, 8 and 20. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

Jeff Sluman 9:54

You know, but most of the time I got them done real quick. So that was a good one.

Bruce Devlin 9:58

Yeah. Lose it quick, right?

Jeff Sluman 10:01

Yeah, lose it quick, you know, get in and and uh tip the locker room attendant and get the heck out of town.

Mike Gonzalez 10:09

Yeah, why prolong the agony? Well, let's uh let's talk about uh one more win, and that was your second one we talked about earlier, uh just mentioning that uh you won the 2002 GMO as well, also at Brown Deer. This was by four over Steve Lowry and Lumpy, Tim Heron.

Jeff Sluman 10:26

My man Lumpy. Love that man. He's he's so much fun to be around. Yeah, I I I think I played with Chris Perry the last day, if I'm not mistaken, and played well, obviously. Um it's it's funny because uh that was the week I had my buddy caddy informed. Um couldn't find a caddy. I asked Jay Haas if Bill Haas, who was 15 at the time, could come and he said no. And uh asked a few other caddies and they said no. They already had a bag. So my best friend who's godfather to my daughter, um, I said, You want a caddy? He's like, Sure, sure, love to. So, anyways, we went out there and you know, he didn't know anything about caddying, but he's very smart man and you know, had seen enough golf. And Bob Lowe, who was caddying for uh Joe Duran at the time, kind of took him under the wing, and we actually played with Joe, I think, the first two days. And Rick, my caddy, he was a nervous wreck. Um he was afraid he was gonna do something to, you know, cause me to play poorly or something like that. And anyways, he was just hoping to make the cut, and I'm sitting there thinking, well, I'm playing pretty good, you know. So we jump out there and push comes to shove. We're in the last group, I think, on Sunday. And on Saturday, we got up on I think it was 15. It's par five. There's a creek that runs through, and I hit it, and it just went through the fairway, but it was it didn't go in the water. So now Sunday comes around, and I got a pretty big lead, I think, at the time. And I never asked him, because he he didn't really know anything about golf or caddying. Yeah. Um, I asked him, uh, what do you think I should hit here? Drivers. No, no, no, no. You know, he jumps right in there and I start laughing because of course I'm not gonna hit a driver. I almost hit in the water the day before. But uh it was it was so funny. He was so nervous that he made me calm. If that makes any sense. Yeah, that's good. You know, and uh, and then he said, I'm not taking any money. This was an all-time treat for me, so I bought him a bottle of 1982 patruse. Oh, yeah, not a bad bottle of wine.

Bruce Devlin 13:01

Oh, yeah.

Jeff Sluman 13:02

So um he liked that. So, anyways, that was uh it was a great week to spend with him, and and uh and then literally Billy Andrade at the time said, Hey Rick, do you want do you want kind of jokingly, but half jokingly, he said, You want to come to Canada and caddy for me? And Rick's like, no, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna go out, you know, winning every tournament I ever caddy for. Damn if Billy didn't win in Canada the next week. That would have been that would have been really something. Yeah, how about it? How about it?

Mike Gonzalez 13:37

But uh Well that that second win at the GMO, you're you're on or about age 45, right, at the time. Yeah. And uh, you know, anytime you walk off the green with the victory, you're probably still thinking, I got another one in me, I got another one in me. Um the following year, you see Stadler winning the BC Open uh two weeks after winning on the Champions Tour, so you're probably thinking to yourself, hey, I can I can do this for a while. Just take us from age 45 to age 50, because you must have been thinking about champions tour. Did you play your way all the way through to the champions tour, or did you back off a couple years? Did you? Okay.

Jeff Sluman 14:16

I played all the way through. Um that's the only way I knew how to prepare for it. And actually played very well and uh made the I think I still made tour championship. I mean, I was I was still playing well and really kind of maybe late in my 49th year, I wasn't playing as well as I had hoped, but that was it. I I played really well the whole time until I was 49 years old and nine months, something like that. Um and still, like I said, I almost really almost won the US Open in my 49th year. So yeah, I wanted to keep playing, uh I wanted to just step onto that tour and basically wave goodbye. I played a few more events, uh, the first when I was 51 and 52, and and that was it. Yeah. I certainly the the phrase I turned my back on the tour, I don't mean it in that regard because it was the greatest experience of my life. But I turned my back and said, I'm a champions tour player, now I'm gonna support this tour. Uh I remember Jack saying one time, if you try and play both tours, you're gonna probably play poorly on both and be unhappy. So just make your decision and go forward, and that's what I did.

Mike Gonzalez 15:45

Yeah, you know, we've talked to several guys who uh had the mindset, I think, in their late 40s that uh I'm gonna turn 50, I'm gonna go on that champions tour, I'm gonna kick butt, take names for a while. And most of them got there and realized, man, these guys can still play. Yeah, a little different. Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 16:01

Yeah. I mean, you're a golfer. Bruce knows that you're a golfer, you're a competitor. This is we're, you know, we're molded now. We're, you know, we're a baked piece of clay. We're not changing, and and we're you are who you are, and um, you know, you want to compete. I I think that's that's one of the beauties of the champions tour, is I set it at 40, the Graham Marsh. I says, I I'm not playing that champions tour. I'm gonna be so done with golf because I gave so much of it. I I mean, I invested all my time, my energy, and 700 tournaments I played.

Bruce Devlin 16:39

Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 16:40

And then you get closer to it. I mean, Jack said it. A lot of guys said it. You know, I remember Jack saying at 45, I'm not gonna play, and at 46, well, it looks fun, you know, but I'm not gonna play with 48. You know, maybe I'll play a few majors, well, you know, blah, blah, blah. And you are who you are. We're a golfer. We like to compete. Yeah. And I and I think you you you're never gonna get that out of a golfer that played at a high level for a long time. They still want, they want to, you know, see what they got.

Mike Gonzalez 17:12

Well, who who to thunk it after the the health issues you related to us at a young age, uh, that after all that you would become uh golf's Cal Ripkin, uh, the Iron Man, uh, participating, as you mentioned, in over 700 tour events. I think you played probably 300 or so in the champions tour. So over a thousand tour starts. You played at one point. Is this right? A hundred in a row? It is correct. And how in the world do you do that?

Jeff Sluman 17:45

Uh enter every week.

Mike Gonzalez 17:48

Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 17:49

Get on the plane. Holy shit. Um, you know, it's not that hard. I mean, we we would only play 26 events a year. I mean, tell me a job that requires you to only show up 26 times a year and you got 26 other weeks off. You can't do that. You know, it's it's not it's not a big ask. At least that's the way I viewed it. So I played about a I I think it was 100, and then they started announcing it on the first T.

Bruce Devlin 18:21

Yeah, yeah. This is Jeff.

Jeff Sluman 18:23

Everybody, oh my god, you know, 99, 100, whatever. And then I it was uh the tournament in San Antonio was the week before our Charles Schwab Cup final, and I took it off. I was besieged from the tour staff, from the officials, from players. What's wrong? Where are you? What's going on? I said, nothing. I just got tired of hearing I played 100 in a row, so I'm not gonna play this week. That was the only reason I didn't play.

Mike Gonzalez 18:52

Isn't that funny? Well, you you've had some success on the champions tour uh winning six times. Um take us through today. I mean, what uh how much are you playing?

Jeff Sluman 19:02

And and uh uh I'm not playing that much, and uh certainly not a full schedule. I've ratcheted it back. Um I don't anticipate playing a whole lot of golf in my future on the champions tour. It's getting close, getting close to be the time. Um the 50-year-olds are coming out now. Yeah, 50, 52, 53, and they're hitting it 50, 40 yards, 30 yards by you. Yeah. Um and compete. You know, the the only undefeated guy in the world is Father Time. He's untied and undefeated. Yeah. And uh, you know, it's you gotta look in the mirror. I can honestly say I haven't had that much fun the last couple of years, last two or three, four years. Uh I played with a high standard for 40 years and haven't played that well lately. And it's it's just not a lot of fun. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, a lot of fun. You love the guys. I still love the process, I love practicing, like the pro ams. Uh we all like the locker room, right, Bruce? I mean, that's one of the things that in any sport they talk about. That's the thing you miss as much as anything. You miss the competition, you miss the guys. Um, but you know, uh when I go out, I'm just all of a sudden I'm just not gonna show. I'm just not gonna play. I'm not gonna make some announcement that I'm done and stuff like that. I'm just not gonna play.

Mike Gonzalez 20:40

You won't be there. Yeah, what's gonna occupy your time?

Jeff Sluman 20:43

Well, that's that's a good question. I mean, I I like television. I've done some television uh with CBS and ESPN for the PGA and PGA Tour Live. Um like to do that, but those jobs are very difficult to come by, as we all know. Um I'd like to stay in some sort of golf. I mean, I I I'm still thirsting for knowledge with the golf swing and all the nuances of of golf. I mean, you're you're never gonna get to the bottom of it. I mean, from chipping to pitching to putting to, you know, uh your mental game. I'd like to be able to pass that on, but I don't know if I'm would be a great teacher. I think I probably would be. You know, get get some all-around juniors, you know, and and try and, you know, guide them, teach them a little bit. Um, you know, I got that from the Harmons. I mean, that's usually keep it simple. That's to me the biggest thing.

Mike Gonzalez 21:52

Yeah.

Jeff Sluman 21:52

Um there's there's assorted things I'd like to do, but um I guess it's up for me to. Try and find it. My phone's been silenced, so nobody's calling me now to hire a 67-year-old ex-golfer. So maybe I'll I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but um, you know, it's it's been a uh heck of a ride, I can tell you that.

Mike Gonzalez 22:18

Well, I'm sure if Bruce hasn't asked you this when you talked before, he he certainly wants to know a little bit about how you got into collecting wine.

Jeff Sluman 22:28

It's uh well, not a long story, but we never really drank wine. I didn't growing up or anything like that, but uh it was, and I I might have had when I was below the drinking age, I might have had a couple of glasses of really bad red wine that uh uh my body didn't really like, and so I was like, red wine, no, I'll drink a beer. I wasn't ever into the the alcohol or anything, but I would drink a beer. So one day, Billy Andre and I were in we were in Providence, and he we went to the Capitol Grill. And so we're each having a steak, and he says, Hey, what do you say? What do you say? Get a bottle of red wine with us. I don't like red wine. He says, No, no, really, it accentuates the steak, and it's done right. I said, You gotta have it. I don't like gotta have it. I said, All right, all right. I said, I don't know anything about wine. So he says, Well, this is good wine, and he got a bottle of Farniente, which was a really nice California cabernet. Yes, yes, it is. So they come and they open it up and put it down. I'm having some steak, I don't know what it was, a ribeye or a strip steak. It was magnificent. So I said, Oh, this is not the wine I I probably shouldn't have had when I was 14 or 15. I snuck a glass or so. This was definitely not the red wine that my body remembered. So, you know, it it became one of those things that occupied off hours on tour. Go to different wine stores. I read voraciously about wine and mostly California wine, what to look for. The the and California back then, probably '91, '92, was really going through a boom time, right? I mean, all these wineries were popping up, and great vintners were coming in because Napa was growing terrific grapes. And uh, so it was it was an exciting time, and you know, prices were fantastic. You could Behringer Private Reserve for$35 and Joseph Phelps Insignia for$60. I mean, once I tasted those, I said, oh my God. I mean, how can you how can you not buy cases and cases? Which I did buy cases and cases. So that's how it started.

Mike Gonzalez 24:55

Yeah, you had a pretty nice uh uh wine uh area in your home when you lived in the Chicago area. I assume you got a similar setup to where you're at now?

Jeff Sluman 25:05

Uh yeah, uh you know, I I got as far as close to 3,000 bottles, which probably too. Yeah, I think that's a lot of wine.

Bruce Devlin 25:14

Yes, it is.

Jeff Sluman 25:15

So I paired it back now, and you know, we've we've probably got about 400 bottles, which is still a lot of wine.

Bruce Devlin 25:23

You know, does your wife like wine? Linda white drinks. She does. She does. She likes it. She likes red wine. Good.

Jeff Sluman 25:30

Yeah. And and that's important because, you know, if you're the only one drinking it, then I'm not going to open it, right? Yeah. And what's the sense of having good wine if you're never going to drink it?

Bruce Devlin 25:42

And it's always better when you're sharing it with someone.

Jeff Sluman 25:45

Yeah. I mean, wine is to be shared with friends. Yeah. And you know, and while you're eating and having having a good time. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 25:54

Uh also Formula One fan. Uh you've uh I'm I'm sure because we've talked uh you followed the Bulls and the Bears and the Cubs uh during your days in Chicago. I I I'd go along with most of that, except I'm a Cardinal fan. So uh other than that, I'm okay with the other teams.

Jeff Sluman 26:13

Yeah, uh big sports fan, obviously. And then moving to Chicago when when I married my wife Linda was great. A number of reasons it was great. Uh, you know, most people don't like Chicago Hare Airport, but if you live there, it's fantastic. You're in the middle of the country, you could always get home nonstop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can go anywhere. And uh, but if you were connecting through there, yeah, it could be a disaster any time of year. Um, but the sports teams were were great. I got to know Jay Hilgenberg at the time when the Bears were dub bears.

Bruce Devlin 26:49

Dub Bears. And uh dub bears.

Jeff Sluman 26:51

Uh he was their all-pro center. Um I knew Michael, played a little golf with him, and then fell into uh when you couldn't get these seats. Um I kind of met the right guys, and uh we we had a nice day of golf uh somewhere down in Georgia, and and uh these tickets rolled in. And it was for the second, as it turned out, the second three-peat of the Bulls when Rodman came in. And uh we walked, or my wife and I we walked down there and we're in the United Center and first game, you know, we're looking, we're looking, we're looking, and down we go, down we go, down we go, and we're on the in the second row on the aisle, two seats on the visitors on the uh foul line. I mean, unbelievable seats. Yeah, so we went to literally every game, and it was kind of funny because everybody in that area knew everybody, right? So we sit down and everybody's kind of looking looking over. Who's this guy? Yeah, guys, who are you? I said, uh, Jeff and my wife Linda. He said, How'd you get these tickets? Because you know, you couldn't get them. And I said, Uh by US mail.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

That's all I was gonna give them. There you go. There you go.

Jeff Sluman 28:16

Perfect. But uh yeah, it was it was brilliant to watch them for all those years.

Mike Gonzalez 28:22

You you were there during the golden era of the Bulls, and I guess what you appreciate sitting down that low is how athletic these big guys are. Oh my god.

Jeff Sluman 28:29

How fast they run and the effort that they put in, and uh I I can't imagine how their bodies feel after a 82-game year, or yeah, 82 games in a year, and then you gotta win 16 games to win it, so there's probably another 25 games. Yeah, when you really looked at the Bulls back then, they won three a year off, won three more. So in those seven seasons, they might have almost played nine seasons worth of basketball. Yeah, that takes a big toll on your body. Yeah, yeah, it sure does.

Mike Gonzalez 29:02

Well, listen, before we let you go, uh uh Bruce and I always like to ask our guests three closing questions. And uh being the older guy in our TUSM, I always uh give the T to uh to Bruce. I give him the honor.

Jeff Sluman 29:20

T it up, Bruce. Let's go.

Mike Gonzalez 29:21

You ready, buddy?

Bruce Devlin 29:23

Okay.

Jeff Sluman 29:24

I'm ready.

Bruce Devlin 29:27

If you knew now, you'd have to start what you knew now.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Yeah, I was about to foul it up.

Jeff Sluman 29:38

Yeah, I was gonna say I knew what I know now, I already know.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

Okay, back on the tee, Bruce Devlin from Australia.

Bruce Devlin 29:47

So if you were to start your career again, right? And when you started you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

Jeff Sluman 30:00

Oh, that's an easy question for me. I was always yeah, I was always um by tour standards a poor chipper and pitcher of the ball. Everybody thought I was great, but by tour standards, no. And that probably cost me five to ten tournaments in my career, for sure. Um when my father passed away 10, 12 years ago, I went, obviously, we were there, and a gentleman came up and he gave me this article from 1989. And I just obviously had won the PGA the year prior, and you know, it was a retrospective of what I'd done to that point. And in the article, they said, What do you need to work on? And I said, I need to work on chipping and pitching, and I was never able to really become better than most, and that would have been so um important to my career as far as you know, because everybody misses Greens, Bruce. You cannot out hit the guys, no, you can't, you're not gonna play perfect golf, you're certainly not gonna play perfect golf on Sunday. And I didn't chip and pitch the ball well. And golf pros, tour players are, I think, a unique breed. There's a lot of them that if they're bad in one area, they don't practice it. They they it's kind of I'm a really good hitter of the ball, and they'll they'll go out and put on a dazzling performance on the range for the people that are watching and go and hit two or three chips and and run to the T. Or if they're a bad putter, they just hit a few putts and because they don't they're not comfortable and they they you know, I would have stuck my nose in there and learned how to be better than most around the greens.

Mike Gonzalez 32:02

Perfect answer. Fair enough. All right, next question We're gonna give you one career mulligan, one shot to do over in your career. Where would it be?

Jeff Sluman 32:14

13th hole, first round, 1992, US Open Pebble Beach. I'm in the bunker.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

That didn't take long.

Jeff Sluman 32:26

No, I'm in the bunker. That's assuming everything else happens as it did. I'm in the bunker, and my caddy Tony Navarro says at 13 at Pebble, just like I said, US Open. He said, You gotta keep this under the hole, remember? I said, Yeah, yeah, well, I got greedy and the pin was on the back, and I hit it over the green, make double, lose by two. That was a huge error. Now, physical errors are gonna happen. You're gonna hit a bad shot. And you know, that's just part of the game. That was a bad one mentally. And you get a great caddy like Tony, and he reminds you, and you just say, you know what? I'm not gonna pay attention. You don't say it to him, but you say it to yourself. He doesn't know what I know. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna squeeze it back there. I'm gonna take this one on. Bad, bad, bad myself.

Bruce Devlin 33:25

All right, last question. All right, Bruce. Last question. How would Jeff Sloan like to be remembered?

Jeff Sluman 33:39

Um I'd like to be remembered as a I guess a guy that really got the most out of his ability and treated people fairly and uh nicely. And you know, just was one of those guys that you'd want to be around. Um I mean I know I tell a good story and good joke, and uh I I think I and I think I'll be remembered that way. Perfect. Um I I think that's that's important and and that's as far as golf, but and on a bigger picture, I just would like to be remembered as a great father and a great husband, you know. That's really more important than any of the other stuff. Probably is.

Bruce Devlin 34:38

It's been great having you, Jeff. Uh we appreciate your time. Thanks, guys. And you and your great stories, by the way, too. They were terrific. Thank you.

Jeff Sluman 34:47

Yeah, you're welcome. Uh, this has been a real treat for me to kind of have a retrospective on on my life. I never really think about that that much, you know, and and it brought up a lot of great times, and and you know, I could go on and on and on, as I'm sure almost every one of your guests could. But uh overall, um so happy that you asked me to do this. And if there's anything else I can ever do, don't hesitate to call.

Mike Gonzalez 35:16

That's it's been a been a privilege for us to uh add your story to uh so many other golf greats on for the good of the game. We're all always hopeful that in 50, 100 years, uh kids are going to be listening to these stories because uh Bruce and I were able to uh come to agreement with the USGA to archive these stories in perpetuity.

Jeff Sluman 35:37

Well, that's great, you know, and uh USGA, everybody loves this game of golf and uh PG Tour, PGA of America. I mean, uh first T, there's so many great programs out there now and organizations that uh I think golf uh is in great hands and it's in great shape. Um I think the professional game will very soon come to an agreement, and uh it's it's it's like a rocket ship going to the moon. Nobody's gonna be able to stop this.

Mike Gonzalez 36:07

It went straight down. Well, great being with you. Thanks. Thanks, guys. Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Good of the Game. And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, and tell your friends until we tee it up again for the good of the game. So long, everybody.

Intro Music 36:36

It went smack down a fair way.