Todd Hamilton - Part 2 (Playing in Asia)

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

You come close to the tour schools. You said you might have missed it by three or so. So you had to decide where am I going to play? There were a lot of options, I'm sure, in terms of circuits around the you know, second, third level circuits in the country. Uh I don't know what the web.com tour was back then. There was probably some option like that. You had options in Asia, Japan, perhaps South Africa. Who helped you try to figure out where you wanted to go play?

Todd Hamilton 0:42

Well, I was right out of college, I signed with International Management Group. Uh my first college golf coach for two and a half years left the University of Oklahoma and went to work for IMG in Cleveland. So when uh Grant Waite and myself, again, we were in the same class, when we got out of school, we signed with uh IMG and and they kind of gave us ideas on what to do, uh when the good tournaments to play were. Uh they were able to get us a couple invites to some of the PGA tour events. Uh so it was good being with them. Obviously, they're known around the world, which would help if you if you couldn't get anything in the U.S., maybe they could get you something in, I don't know, England, France, something.

Bruce Devlin 1:40

Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 1:42

Uh they once I started doing well, it was very good to have them. I don't I don't know how beneficial they were if you were if you weren't any good, you know, if you were just starting out. But once you made a name for yourself, I think they were they were very credible and and very good for the for the golfer. Uh you know, there were a lot of state opens that I played in. Uh, but I the tournaments I remember most were the Asian Tour, and they lasted for about three months. I think they ran from early February to the end of April. And uh we played all over the place in Asia. We played in Korea, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand. Uh I think I went to Pakistan one year. So I got to see a lot of cool places and uh spend some time with good friends playing golf around the world and uh saw a lot of different styles of golf courses, a lot of different condition golf courses. So it was a good way to toughen you up and make you want to do well to get on the European tour, the PGA tour, Australian tour, whatever it was. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 3:07

Let's just quickly recap again the professional career of Todd Hamilton. As Bruce mentioned at the top, 17 professional wins, uh including two on the PGA Tour, which we'll come to uh in a minute. Uh 11 wins on the Japan Japan Golf Tour. As he mentioned uh in our uh first part, uh 1992 Asia Golf Circuit Order of Merit winner, and joining the PGA Tour eventually in 2004, major championship winner with the 2004 Open Championship at Troon. Uh he he ended up being the rookie of the year in 2004. We're gonna be interesting talking about that, but he he he he got his start uh as he said uh in Asia, played 12 seasons on the Japanese tour. And what was interesting for Bruce and I is uh I think when you left that tour, you left as the second all-time leading non-Japanese money winner. David David Ishii uh uh perhaps was the was the first uh uh but making almost$6.2 million in 2014 dollars, uh that was real money. So some might say, why even leave Japan? You were rolling.

Todd Hamilton 4:22

Well, I stayed over there probably longer than I really needed to, but uh you know, I mentioned Brandt Job and Brian Watts earlier, they both played in Japan with me, and we had some really nice contracts. Some companies that were trying to get into that Japanese market, titles was one in particular. So uh it was it was good playing over there, it was a great opportunity. Uh, if you weren't playing the PGA tour, European tour, you probably weren't going to have a chance to make the kind of living or the kind of money that you could make in Japan. Now, once Tiger Woods got on the scene, I believe in '95, then all that went out the window because the the PGA Tour purses increased uh immensely. And uh we used to have a bunch of guys come over from the PGA Tour and European Tour, come over and play in Japan late in the year. They'd come and play for two or three weeks at the end of the year, probably some of our bigger events, prize money-wise, and uh they would come over, they they really had a blast. They and and we as Japanese tour players liked it because all of a sudden we got a nice uh players dining and and players lounge, and well, that's stuff that we never had uh when the other guys weren't there. Yeah, so it was nice to see those guys and and kind of pick their brains on what the PJ tour was like because I know Brant and uh Brian and I, we that was kind of our goal while we were playing there in Japan.

Mike Gonzalez 5:57

Yeah. You know, Bruce and I always enjoy hearing about uh guys getting or ladies getting their start on the tour that you know, that first year, I mean, typically they're in the United States, but they still don't know where they're going, they don't know where they're staying, they don't know where they're eating, they don't know the golf courses. Now you compound that by going to a foreign country and trying that out. True. Give our listeners a taste on what that felt like.

Todd Hamilton 6:22

I'll tell you, for me, what was really difficult. I came from a town of 1500, and when I when I played on the Asian tour, all these tournaments were being held at cities, 8 million people, 7 million people. You know, we're going to Seoul, South Korea, we're going to Taipei, Taiwan, Calcutta, India, New Delhi, India, uh Bangkok, Thailand, Tokyo, Japan, Jakarta, Indonesia. So all these places are humongous compared to what I was used to. And uh to be able to have guys playing the tour that you knew to pal around with made it much more easy to do, uh, much more easy to travel along. You know, you weren't the only guy that had to go find the coin laundry or a place that would do your laundry. You could go with two or three other guys, and you could find that place a lot quicker than by yourself. So having to do that on your own would have been very, very difficult. Being able to do it with three other people was much easier to do that way.

Mike Gonzalez 7:37

Who spoke your language?

Todd Hamilton 7:40

Exactly right, yeah. I was a good pointer though. I could point really good.

Mike Gonzalez 7:45

You're probably good with menus.

Todd Hamilton 7:48

I I actually was the guy in Japan. I I learned to read a little bit of it, not great, but like if I had to write our names as foreigners, I couldn't do it. But if I saw our names written as foreigners, there's a different type of writing that they use. If I saw our three names written as foreigners, I could read it. But I to physically write it, I would struggle to do it. I I knew it, but I didn't know it a hundred percent. I didn't know it great. I knew it enough to read it, probably about 75%. This certain type of writing. They have three different types of writing in Japan. There's hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji are the the symbols that stand for maybe one symbol stands for river, one symbol stands for mountain. Now I could memorize some of those and knew what they were, but I couldn't read it. Uh the katakana is what our names as foreigners would be written in. And I got pretty good at that, probably 75% reading that. So when we ever went out and they didn't have English on the menu, I could fake my way around what to order. So I was the two guy for that.

Mike Gonzalez 9:10

So uh another thing we've talked about a lot, uh, particularly in in uh the cases where it takes a while to find the winner's circle, is people just don't realize how difficult it is to win. And when you get your first one, you think, well, that's just gonna keep coming, it's easy. It's not, is it?

Todd Hamilton 9:29

No, it's not, and a lot of times it's not the other people beat you, you beat yourself. So you have that one extra person that you're fighting against, and that person is you. So uh sometimes we make it harder than it is, you know. We we we try to do too much, we've done it a certain way for our whole lives. All of a sudden we get in the heat of the battle and we try to hit a shot that we're not comfortable hitting. At least that's that's that was me.

Bruce Devlin 10:02

Yep.

Todd Hamilton 10:02

I I would try to do something that I I wasn't comfortable doing because the pros, that's how the pros did it. They could do all the shots, they could draw it, they could fade it. Well, I I don't draw the ball very good, but a lot of times I felt like I needed to do it, maybe to prove to myself I could do it, or that was the shot you were supposed to hit. Even though you couldn't do it very well, that was what you were supposed to do as a professional. Well, I've since learned, it took me a while to learn, but to play good golf, make it as boring as you can make it. There were my last year I played golf in Japan. I struggled for about the first four tournaments. I got a new driver and won that week with that driver. I hadn't won probably for three or four years prior to 2003. Got a new driver about the fifth tournament, practiced with it. I was not in the pro-am, practiced with it for two days straight, got to where I was comfortable, where my misses were, where my good shots went, and uh won the tournament that week. Well, it was like riding a bike. You knew how to do it, you just weren't doing it for a long, long time. Now you got that confidence back. I ended up winning three more events that year, and it was the funnest year of golf that I had. I went from not knowing how to play golf, at least that's what I felt like, to thinking I was going to win all the time. Now that didn't happen, but but I just I finally realized that if there was a par five that I knew I wasn't going to get to in two, I considered myself a good putter, good wedge player, I would hit two iron off the T, I would lay up to a good yardage, and from that good yardage, I I probably knew that I was going to have no more than 15 feet. And that was if I hit a bad third shot. But if I hit a driver, even with this new driver that I liked, if I hit a driver trying to reach it in two, didn't hit a good drive and got behind a couple trees, then I'm probably gonna make a six or I'm gonna struggle to make par. And I just learned to my last year in Japan in 03, just make golf as boring as you can make it. You know, hit the fairway, hit the green. If you don't hit it close, but you're on the green, two putt, get out of there. If you hit one close, try to take advantage of it. And there's there's a lot to be said for that.

Mike Gonzalez 12:46

Bruce Devlin uses that word in describing a fellow Aussie that won five open championships. Yeah, Mr.

Bruce Devlin 12:54

Peter Thompson. What word is that? Peter Thompson. Boring? Boring. Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 12:59

I had the privilege of setting by him in 2005. I was defending champ, and he was sitting at the head table to my left, and to my right was Tom Watson.

Bruce Devlin 13:12

Yeah, how about that?

Todd Hamilton 13:13

So there were two five-time winners. That was pretty cool.

Bruce Devlin 13:19

You were the meat in the sandwich, my boy. But you were there.

Todd Hamilton 13:24

Between the three of us, we had 11 wins.

Mike Gonzalez 13:26

Yeah, that's right. Bruce uh described Peter Thompson's game game that way, that uh nothing spectacular, just everything down the middle, everything on the green. Everything good. You know?

Todd Hamilton 13:40

Yeah. It's it's good to be great at something, whether it's putting, chipping, irons, driving, but it's great to be good at everything. You don't have to be great at everything, but it's great to be good at everything.

SPEAKER_04 13:58

Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 13:59

It's good to be great at certain things, but it's great to be good at everything.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Yeah, yeah.

Todd Hamilton 14:05

And I think that's I didn't get a chance to see him play it all, but that sounds like his game then.

Mike Gonzalez 14:11

That was his game. Well, let's go to win number one then. Uh it it was five years coming, a lot of grinding. You've told us a little bit about you what you went through, but you finally got it all lined up and won the 1992 Rolex Masters at Singapore Island Country Club by four over Jerry Norquist and Lee Porter. You have to have some memories of that first professional win.

Todd Hamilton 14:36

I do. There were there were two funny things about that. The last hole was a par five, I remember. I don't remember there being any scoreboards where you could tell how you stood. And I want to say that I heard I had a one-shot lead. Well, I think I ended up winning by four shots. So I I felt that I needed to make a birdie just in case. And I I don't remember if I made birdie or not, but I ended up winning by four shots. So what I heard was not correct, obviously. The other funny thing, and this this is really funny. So back then, the Asian tour, they paid you cash. Now, this is one tournament that was not part of the Asian tour, but we had a week off during that three-month stretch on the Asian tour that the guy that was in charge of the Asian tour got us into this tournament. But they paid you in cash. So I won I think it was$13,000 Singapore dollars. No, it was it was 20,$21,000 Singapore dollars. So I got paid after the tournament was over with all the scores were put up, I got paid in cash. It was only three bills. A$10,000 note, another$10,000 note, and a$1,000 note. So I had$21,000 Singapore dollars, but in three notes. And I think that was about$12,000 or$13,000 U.S. Yeah. I thought that was pretty funny. I remember taking a bunch of the golfers out for dinner. I was ecstatic, finally winning a professional tournament. So we went to a decent restaurant, and uh I remember drinking a bunch of champagne after the round in 85, 90 degree heat, not having eaten very much that day. So you can imagine what I was like during dinner. I think I laid on the floor the whole night, but I ended up treating a few guys and their girlfriends and our wives uh to dinner that night. I don't think I ate a bite that night. I felt so bad. But it was nice, it was nice to finally get that first victory, even though it was a tournament nobody probably ever had heard of.

Mike Gonzalez 17:05

Well, then you got 21,000 Singapore in cash in your pocket. And you're probably off to some other country the next week wondering what am I going to do with these?

Todd Hamilton 17:14

Yeah, I don't I don't remember where we went after that. Maybe Thailand or somewhere. Uh I held on to it for a while. It was so late once the tournament was over, all the banks were closed, and I didn't want to go to some little place on the street to do it. I wanted to go to a legitimate place. And to be honest, I think I just kept a hold of them until I got back to the U.S. and converted them.

Mike Gonzalez 17:41

Yeah. Well, Bruce, it didn't take long for validation to come. He went to Seoul South Korea and validated win number one on the Asian golf circuit.

Bruce Devlin 17:51

Yeah, and was able to win in a two-hole playoff with a pa.

Todd Hamilton 17:56

Lin Chi that was probably probably one of my better wins. Uh I had heard a lot of stories about cheating in that country from players. And uh I remember I don't think it was in the playoff, but it was the last hole of the tournament. Uh TC Chin had followed was following one of the Taiwan players, Taiwanese players, that was in the final group with me. And I believe there was a Korean guy in our group as well. The Korean guy had hit it way right off the T on 18, which you had no shot to the green, unless you could slice it about 50 yards, which was probably not going to happen. But when the guy got over there, his ball was far enough to the left that he all of a sudden had a shot. So TC TC Chen told the Korean Golf Association head honcho that was following. This was told by me. I didn't hear it, but this was told to me by somebody. He says, if you don't make sure that that ball gets back somewhere close to where it was, I'll make sure none of your golfers ever play outside of Korea again.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

Good for him. Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 19:23

So the guy didn't have a shot. I don't think he might have been one shot behind, and I think the Taiwanese guy and I were tied playing the playing the last hole. And that's who the playoff was with. So I don't think the Korean guy had a shot once the ball was put back where it was as close to the original position.

SPEAKER_04 19:48

Yeah, yeah.

Todd Hamilton 19:48

Yeah. So I I I don't know about you, Bruce, but if you've ever played in Korea, there's a lot of ups, a lot of downs. You can hit some drives over some hills, you can't see the ball from the T, and you can't see people over the hills maybe doing some funny business with your golf balls. So uh if if you were playing in one of the last groups, it was imperative to get one of your friends that either missed the cut and hung around or had finished early to come out and and be a fork addie for you because there were some strange things that would go on there.

Bruce Devlin 20:28

Not only in Korea. I remember I remember back in 1970, David Graham and I playing in the World Cup in Argentina, and the very first hole on the Sunday looked like we were going to win easily, but I hit my drive down right center of the fairway on a dog leg to the right. And when I got down there, I was right behind a little tree about eight inches in in diameter. I thought, you know, that's a rather strange spot after hitting it in the middle of the fairway. But so we had our we had we had our caddies running forward from there on. So yeah, it's it happens everywhere.

Todd Hamilton 21:12

It's hard. It's a shame. That's a veteran move.

Mike Gonzalez 21:16

Well, hats off to TC Chen. Of course, some of our listeners will remember uh TC Chen as figuring large in the 1985 U.S. Open that Andy North won at Oakland Hills. Uh uh played an outstanding open, had some tough luck with a chip around uh one of the greens, but uh uh that says a lot about a man's character to uh behave the way he behaved on that particular occasion.

Todd Hamilton 21:40

Yeah, he he and his brother TM Chen, they were very large figures in the game of golf in that part of the world.

Mike Gonzalez 21:47

Yes, they were. Yeah. Well, let's finish up 1992 because uh uh you had another win in you, the Merriman Open. Uh I'm not gonna be able to pronounce all these club names and names that you Beat necessarily, but uh it looks like you might have beaten one of the Ozaki brothers.

Todd Hamilton 22:05

Yes, Jumbo Ozaki. I remember playing great for the first three days. I I I want to say I was close to 16 under or something like that. Just felt like everything was good. My putter felt like I was like it was born, I was born with it in my hands, and was making everything, driving it in the fairway, and and the last day I didn't I didn't shoot very good. I think I shot one over, but luckily I was far enough ahead that that one over one over par didn't matter and ended up beating uh jumbo probably by a shot. Uh I don't I don't think we were paired together. I don't think we were paired together the last round, but uh jumbo was always good for a final round five, six, seven under par, especially when he needed it. Kind of like Tiger Woods, you know, you look up on the board and you you see Tiger Woods, he's four under through five, and he started six back or something. So that's kind of jumbo. If if he wasn't way ahead, he was always good for a real hot final round to either get close with a chance to win or to nip you by one or two shots. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 23:19

Well, that was your first uh win on the Japanese tour. You picked up another one the following year, Bruce, in 1993. He was at the ACOM.

Bruce Devlin 23:28

Yeah, the the uh that was a Stableford event, which is uh something that we used to see here in the United States on the PGA tour, but not not anymore. You beat a uh a guy by the name of Craig Warren, who happens to be uh an Aussie, beat him by two points.

Todd Hamilton 23:45

That's right. I do remember that, and it was Stableford, and by winning that tournament, I got uh a spot into the international tournament out in Colorado, Denver, Colorado, at Castle Pines. So it was uh it was pretty cool to be able to play in a PGA tour event. Although when I saw my pairing, I kind of laughed because I got paired with a kid named Doug Martin who was on my college golf team.

SPEAKER_04 24:17

I'll be darn.

Todd Hamilton 24:18

And I got paired with uh, I believe it was Bob May, who played at Oklahoma State, which was our big rival. So it was kind of funny, but it was it was a great experience. And you know, I was playing golf full-time in Japan at the time, and my parents they weren't able to obviously travel over there, but they did come out and watch in Colorado, and uh, you know, to get a taste of the tour and and the great condition courses, and uh, you know, it seemed like everything's given to the pros there on the tour events. It it was really cool. I didn't I don't think I fared very well, but well, uh it it was fun playing.

Mike Gonzalez 24:59

I'm sure you enjoyed the free milkshakes courtesy of Mr. Jack Vickers.

Todd Hamilton 25:04

I think I had one or two. Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 25:09

Well, 94 was a good year for you. Yeah. Um PGA philanthropy tournament that you won. Uh you won in a playoff again, July of uh 94, shot 10 under par and beat uh YG Mizagucchi. Do you does that name ring a bill? Yeah, yeah.

Todd Hamilton 25:32

Yes, I remember him, yes. Uh 94. I don't I remember taking a friend of mine over there to caddy for me for a month. And he was a school teacher. So summertime he had the time off. I said, why don't you come over? I'll pay for your way. Come over and uh caddy for me. He played golf, but he wasn't a big golfer, so I had to tell him, hey, this guy's hitting, we need to stop here, you can't stand there. One of those kind of guys. But after the four weeks, he kind of knew what was going on. I don't remember if it was that year. I won that same tournament later on in '96, I believe. That's right. It could have been that year. Uh that's true. Anyway, one of those wins, whatever one he caddied in, if it was 94 or 96, I don't remember, he was getting married, and for his uh trip uh after marriage, he was going to go to Disneyland, I think. But with the money that he got for cadding and the the extras for the win and the high finishes, uh, they took a nice nicer trip than Disneyland. So I was glad to help him out. We had a great time. Probably my best friend in high school, and uh I'm glad he was there to share it.

Mike Gonzalez 27:07

Yeah. Well, that's a great story. We your second win in '94 was at the PGA matchplay championship. And uh boy, pretty close match uh in the final, eight and seven.

Todd Hamilton 27:20

I love match play. It's uh it's very unique. Uh I don't think I would enjoy it all the time because many times the best golfer doesn't win. I'm not saying I'm the best golfer, but uh a lot of times the best golfer doesn't win. Same way with playing nine holes. If you play 72 holes, the best golfer is probably going to win. Uh but if you play nine holes, some guy gets hot. Uh the best golfer may not win. But match play is a very unique situation. Uh, it allows you to play maybe a little more aggressive than you normally would play. And uh I think match play epitomizes the game of golf. Just when you think you've got a guy beat, he chips in, he makes a long putt, you miss the putt that you had already banked on making, and you lose the hole. And that that hole that you lose could mean that you lose the match uh because of one crazy shot from a guy. So uh it's nerve-wracking, but I think it's the purest form of golf. Uh it's like 18. Um, a round or a round of 18 holes is like having 18 matches, in my opinion. Yeah. And you just try to win more matches than the other guy, or more holes than the other guy.

Mike Gonzalez 28:44

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your game now. You've got a few wins under your belt. How are you feeling about how your games developed up to this point? What are your thoughts about the future?

Todd Hamilton 28:57

Well, I felt pretty good. Uh I think that match play was the third one in Japan, if I remember. Uh I always felt I could do well. I was not as consistent of a golfer early on as I probably needed to be, uh, to be a consistent high place finisher, consistent winner. But when I did do things the right way, uh I usually played pretty well. Uh I was never a guy that got immersed in how my swing looked uh or the mechanics of it. I was more of a feel guy. And sometimes when I played good, I just uh attributed that to I my feel was off. I didn't feel good. The club didn't feel good in my hands. Uh I've learned that that's not a very good way to play golf, though, and you kind of need to have a little structure uh in your swing so when things don't feel right, you can still maneuver your way around the course. If that means hitting a three-wood instead of a driver, so be it. You may have to hit one or two more clubs into the green. Uh I've learned that bogey avoidance is very important. Obviously, you don't want to make higher than bogey, uh, but even bogey avoidance is very important nowadays. PARs PARs may not look good when guys are shooting seven, eight under, uh, but they look a lot better than making bogeys because of a silly three-putt or missing a green with a wedge and not getting your bunker shot up and down uh when you could have hit that wedge 20 feet and maybe made that putt for Birdie or made that easy par. So uh a friend of mine told me once, and he put it a very, very funny way, he said, if you make a bogey, assuming you play every hole in 15 minutes, we'll just put it at that. He said, if you make a bogey, it might only take you 15 minutes to get that stroke back. He says, but if you make a double bogey or higher, if you make a we'll say a double bogey, if you make a double bogey, it might take you an hour to get that two shots back. So if your round goes for four hours, you're already a quarter of your round trying to get that one hole back. And that made a lot of sense to me. So doubles and higher, obviously terrible for your golf. Bogies, you can always uh recover from bogies, but pars pars not a bad score. And I've been helping out with the local high school golf team in Norman, Oklahoma, and I tried to ingrain that into them. Par is not a bad score, but kids they don't think that way. You know, they're they're lining up that nine iron and they're trying to go right at the flag. And uh when 25 feet left of the pin is pretty good, and two pup make par help your teammates out.

Bruce Devlin 32:19

Yeah, yeah. So in 1995, you uh you took care of another Australian player, and I might also add at this point in time that that you were of your uh 11 wins on the Japanese tour, do you realize that you beat six different Australians to win? I didn't realize that. Well, I thought you might be interested in that, but in uh in 95 you won the Token Corporation Cup. You beat Peter Sr. by one stroke. Uh shot 200 and well, minus seven, 70, 71, 68, 72.

Todd Hamilton 33:03

That was my first tournament. I had always wanted a black ping B60 putter. Okay, I was putting with the silver one that I had traded a three-wood for. Uh, another guy traded a three-wood, he liked my three-wood that I had. I liked his B-60, so we just swapped. So at the time I was putting with the silver B60, I'd always wanted a black one. I love the color black. So when I was at home in the Dallas area, I went to a golf shop and just looking to see if they had any back then. They didn't have one, but they had a used beryllium copper ping B60. So I put three balls down on the little carpet they had and made three 10-footers like it was nothing. So I gave the guy$50 for that putter, which is what it what he wanted for it. And that was the first tournament that I used that putter in, that B-60 putter. And that putter is actually the putter that I ended up winning the open with. So from that tournament, you said it was in 95, I believe.

Bruce Devlin 34:15

95, yeah.

Todd Hamilton 34:16

From that tournament until through the British Open in 04, all those victories that you have listed there on your sheet were won with that putter that I spent$50 for. That's one of my top five top five purchases ever. Yes. Oh, yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 34:35

I want to hear about the other four now, too. Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 34:38

Well, one of one of them is a uh, it's actually an eight-foot large bean bag, but it's made up of two four feet wide bean bags. So there's two four feet wide bean bags together, but the cover is an eight-foot bean bag. They call it a love sack. It's just an oversized beanbag chair. So it's great if you, you know, if the couch is full and you're tired and you can't stretch out. We've got it sitting right next to the couch. You can just lay down on it. Actually, our dogs use it now, so you may not want to lay down on it.

Mike Gonzalez 35:20

I don't think I've ever seen one. I don't think I have. Well, let's go on to let's go on to 1996. You mentioned uh uh you'd won that PGA philanthropy tournament again. This was uh uh by two over Kazuhiro Takimi.

Todd Hamilton 35:39

I want to say that's the one where I had my friend Caddy. I think that was 90 96. Uh do you happen to have the scores down there by chance? The scores.

Bruce Devlin 35:50

69, 68. If the last round was 68, 69. Mr. Consistency.

Todd Hamilton 35:59

Actually, it might have been the uh one you finished with a 67. Okay, that was it, yes. Yeah, that was when I had my friend. But uh yeah, I think the philanthropy they considered that one of their major wins, as did they the uh match play tournament. So uh I didn't know that at the time, but looking back, it's it's nice to be recognized as a Japanese major winner.

Mike Gonzalez 36:26

Yeah, yeah, you get that was your sixth uh win on the Japanese tour, and then you go uh wait a couple years to win again. This was at the Gene Sarazen uh at the rope club by two over another Aussie.

Todd Hamilton 36:38

Another Aussie, yeah. Yeah.

Bruce Devlin 36:42

Beat nothing.

Todd Hamilton 36:43

I do remember that one.

unknown 36:44

Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 36:46

I was playing so poorly uh years prior to that, and even that year, and a friend of mine gave me a just a small tip, something that you shouldn't even have to think about. But he told me, he said, just just feel like when you grip the club with your right hand, I always had trouble with my drives, I'd miss them to the right. I think I got my right shoulder too high, over the top, face is open, could never keep from not hitting it to the right when I hit a bad one. So he told me, he says, just pretend when you're gripping the club, your left hand's on there, just take your right hand, feel like your right hand starts in your pocket, and then just kind of goes up on the grip. Relax that right elbow so people that stand behind you can see your left arm. When I was gripping it, my right hand got on top of the club, right shoulder was high. You couldn't, if you stood behind me, you could not see my left arm. That's the only thing I thought about the whole week. Now I didn't hit every shot perfectly, but I hit a lot of good shots that week. Putted and chipped well, which you have to do to win. And I forget how many under, but I I remember playing pretty well that week.

Mike Gonzalez 38:08

Well, 1871, 66, 68, 65. Yeah, only 18 under.

Todd Hamilton 38:15

Yeah, it was a really nice course. They they had at the end of each round at night, if you stayed on property, they had a little dinner set up so all the players would come down. It was a is a really unique setting and uh is a pretty cool course. The last hole had uh it had two distinct fairways. One was for the guy that wasn't too sure of his driving, it made the whole play a lot longer. The other one was the guy was for the guy that was sure of his driver or three wood. It made the whole play a lot shorter, but you had to be more precise if you went that direction. So uh the difference could have been 50 or 60 yards, just depending on what direction you went. Well, a good hole to have a two or three shot lead on.

Mike Gonzalez 39:12

Yeah, how about it? Yeah, how about it? 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.