Todd Hamilton - Part 3 (The 2004 Open Championship)

Mike Gonzalez 0:15

Well, let's come back to the U.S. Uh we're in 1999 now, and you'd mentioned earlier about playing a lot of state opens. Well, this happens to be the Oklahoma Open at Oak Tree Country Club, and you prevailed by one over Greg Gregory.

Todd Hamilton 0:33

I don't remember a lot about that tournament. I will say this, until 2004, that trophy was my coolest trophy I'd ever gotten. It was probably two and a half feet tall. It was a big, it looked like a big vase, but the mouth of the vase looked more like a big popcorn bowl. It was all crystal, said Oklahoma Open engraved on it, and I think it had the year 1999. That was my first first win where I got one of those crazy big checks that you see them pass out. So I asked them if I could have that uh fake big check. They said sure, no problem. I think the winner got 35,000, 36,000 bucks. Uh I do remember playing really, really well the last round. Uh I made seven straight threes during it. I think I shot 64, which was six under the last or six under par for the day. That course actually hosted the NCAA tournament uh in 1989, which the Oklahoma Sooners won. Oh, interesting. They co-ho I was out of school by two years. They co-hosted the tournament with Oklahoma State, and uh Oklahoma won by 15 to 20 shots. They really played played well that week. So that was the first national championship in golf, in men's golf for the University of Oklahoma, and it was on that course.

Mike Gonzalez 2:14

You know, you you you mentioned the your trophy that you remember, at least the best one until the Claire Jugg, but uh, you know, talking to the women that we've talked to and and looking back at their days playing in Japan, they always describe winning in Japan as being like Christmas.

Todd Hamilton 2:30

Yes, you you tended to get not just the cash, but you got a lot of cool things. Uh the the tournament you we talked about where I I won with that beryllium B copper or B60 copper uh putter, that was an area uh of Japan that was known for good beef, and I won a cow at that tournament. So I didn't know what to do with the cow, obviously, as a foreigner. Uh that was the same year 1995 when they had the big earthquake near Osaka. So I got the cow, I also got 50 pounds of meat. I got two real nice candy dishes. God knows how much those were worth. To me, they were you know$50,$60, but they could have been worth$2,000. Who knows? They were really intricate, real cool. Uh I'm sure my wife has got them stored away somewhere. Uh but we tried to give that cow during the earthquake, we because there were a lot of people that were homeless because their houses were demolished by the earthquake. So we tried to get somebody to take that cow, have it shipped up that direction to Osaka, take the cow, cut it up, cook it for the people, you know, for the meals. You could get a ton of meals out of that, but they didn't they couldn't do it, they didn't want the hassle of doing it. So I said, I don't know what I'm gonna do with the cow, you know. They said, We can give you the the cash value of it.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Thank you.

Todd Hamilton 4:21

I said, Well, I'll just do that because I can't, you know, I can't put this cow in my carry-on bag and get it home. So they said it's worth a million yen, which I'm doing quick calculations, and that was like 10,000 bucks. So I said, All right, I'll just take that, I guess. I felt bad because it I felt bad because it'd been a you know a nice gesture to do that for the people that had their houses demolished, but nobody wanted to do it, and we just couldn't get it done.

Mike Gonzalez 4:52

Yeah, cows are normally not considered fungible assets. No, no. Oh, let's go to uh 2003. And so we're going four years forward for your next win. So Bruce always likes to ask a question at this point.

unknown 5:09

Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 5:11

What happened? Is that it?

Bruce Devlin 5:14

Because we all uh we and we always uh we always precede that question by saying, well, you know, you gotta live too, but sometimes you live without wins, right?

Todd Hamilton 5:27

Yeah. It's funny. Offers think alike. I was thinking the same thing you did. Uh that was the year that I got that new driver that I mentioned. Uh I was I was at a stretch, and I think was it four or five years from the the win to the 2003 win, the win prior to that.

Mike Gonzalez 5:48

Yeah, well, if you go back to 98 back in Asia, the Gene Serres, and then going five years forward to the So I got to a point there where it was taking me two shots and sometimes three shots to get to where guys were driving their ball.

Todd Hamilton 6:06

That's how bad I was driving it. I was hitting it in the trees, I was hitting it in lips of bunkers, in water, taking drops. So it was taking me two shots at best sometimes to get to where guys were driving their ball. Well, you can't play golf like that. So uh there was a stretch in that, I'm sure, in that five years where I went over there for five weeks and missed every cut. And I either wanted to be killed or I wanted to kill somebody. Either way, it didn't matter to me. But I got that driver, I went into the I was using Taylor Maid, went into a guy, and I said, Baba, Baba San, what we called him. I said, I need a new driver. I cannot hit my driver straight at all. He says, Okay, Todd San, I'll build you a couple drivers. So he went in, worked on them, brought them out to me. Uh the first week I had it was about the fifth, fifth tournament of the year, and it was the Fuji Senke Classic. Is that the tournament in 03?

Mike Gonzalez 7:12

Uh no, that's the one. That's the one. Fujisankey Classic.

Todd Hamilton 7:16

I remember it was. So I was not in the Pro Am that week because I had played poorly for five years straight. So they didn't want me playing in any of their pro ams. So I got this driver. The driving range consisted of two golf holes on another course. One was a dog leg right to left, one was a dog leg left to right. So all I did for two days, the Tuesday and the Wednesday prior to the tournament, was go down and hit balls to see where my misses were with this new driver. And when I hit good ones, see what happened. And I got to the point where I could hit little cuts with it, which I loved, and I could even draw it on the right to left hole, practice hole, uh, which I didn't try to do much, but I wanted to be able to do it if I had to. And lo and behold, I played really, really well that week with a brand new driver. Obviously, putted good, which you need to do. Uh I forget the scores I shot, uh, but we played that that tournament was played on Korai Greens. Korai is in the Zoja family. If you've ever, I'm sure both of you guys have played golf on Zoja. Well, if you can imagine trying to putt on that type of grass, sometimes if you don't read the putt well and you don't hit it very well, you look like you've never played golf before.

Bruce Devlin 8:47

Uh very difficult.

Todd Hamilton 8:49

If you if you're downgrained it's great. Ball rolls really nice. If you're side grain with some break to it, it could look ugly. It could look like you've never touched a putter before, but but luckily I made made my share of putts that week, and uh that kind of propelled me the rest of the year, just having that new driver in my hands.

Mike Gonzalez 9:14

Yeah, that you know, you you wonder about the scores. You shot 17 under you won by five. So things were going right that week.

Todd Hamilton 9:22

Yeah, I did a lot of a lot of good things there. I I think I think one of the holes was a par five. I hit my drive out of bounds, teed up another one, hit it in the fairway, knocked it on, and made the putt. So things were definitely going my way.

Mike Gonzalez 9:40

Let me ask you this, because you picked up three more wins that year. You used the the term yourself, propelled you, uh coming out of that win with the new driver. Let's take the new driver out of the equation. What happens to Todd Hamilton?

Todd Hamilton 9:56

If I don't have that driver, well, hopefully I would find a way to use my driver uh a better way. Uh I don't think you can putt well enough or chip well enough if you can't drive the ball on the planet. So you've you've got to do something uh to figure out how to get the ball in the fairway. If that meant hitting two iron off the T or three would, I guess that would have had to have been it. But uh that it that's actually a good question. I may not be sitting here talking to you guys if I hadn't gotten that driver because for five years I didn't play very good at all.

Mike Gonzalez 10:41

Yeah.

Todd Hamilton 10:42

No wins, no wins in five years. I don't even think I I probably had a few good finishes, but it wasn't wasn't anything of any consistency. So big moment getting that club.

Mike Gonzalez 10:57

You ripped through the rest of 2003, you know, probably in uh uh what amounted to about a four or five month stretch there, where you pick up four wins. So not not just this uh Fujisanke classic, but uh you won the Diamond Cup, then you win the gateway to the open Mizuno Open, you win the Japan PGA matchplay championship, which uh probably was your second win there. So now mindset's maybe a little different. What what you know what maybe I need to go do so go somewhere else and and test my game again.

Todd Hamilton 11:30

Yeah, they had a deal. Uh I think if you were top three on their money list, you got straight to the finals of the PGA Tour school. And if I remember correctly, I was third on the money list that year by roughly 5,000 US dollars ahead of the fourth place guy. So if I chose to do it, which I ended up doing it, I could go straight to the finals, bypass first stage, second stage, go straight to the finals of the tour school, which I ended up doing. Back then, I think they took 35 spots. Uh now you you can only get to the uh well, they may have changed that actually, but I think you could only get to the Corn Ferry tour uh nowadays. Right. But I I ended up doing it. Uh it was in Orlando, Florida. Trying to think of the name of the course. Uh it'll pop into my head anyway. I went there, uh played really well. Uh I remember playing with Russ Cochran the last round. Uh I shot, I believe I shot uh 69 the last day, finished 16th, 17th, somewhere in there. So I was in the top half of the guys that uh advanced of the top 35 that advanced. Birdied the last hole, which I thought was important, it might get me a few extra stars. Uh and I was really relieved because I had tried it five straight years out of college, uh, along with eight going over and playing the Asian tour. Uh, and I did it three years when I was in Japan. So I think, or maybe two. This was either my eighth or ninth try that I that I did the tour school. So it was a relief to get through, and I always felt if you could get on the PJ Tour by going through the tour school, even though I didn't go through all three stages, I thought you were good enough to at least make a living on the PJ Tour, if not contend and win a tournament. Because that is very grueling. Six rounds of golf. You know, you're playing probably two, three practice rounds. So even for people that like to play golf, which I do, seven, eight, nine straight days of golf is a lot of golf. A lot. At that pressure and that level.

Mike Gonzalez 14:07

You kind of answered the question I was gonna ask you, which is in your life, are there many things that you've done that were any tougher than grinding through a tour school?

Todd Hamilton 14:18

I'm sure there is. Golf related, probably not. No. I mean, I I've made one of the greatest putts I ever made, and I tell this story a lot, was at uh one of the British opens, I had about a six-foot putt downhill left to right. The wind was blowing at my back about 40 miles an hour. So you can imagine how still I'm I am, which is not very still. I equate it to you standing at the urinal trying to hit the little uh fly that they've got printed on the little uh whatever you call it on the bottom, and you your buddy standing behind you shaking your shoulders, and you're trying to hit this fly. That's what I waited to. I don't know how I ever made it, but one of the greatest putts I've ever made.

Mike Gonzalez 15:12

I'm not sure if that was a Shanks urinal, but it might have been a Shanks urinal, too.

Todd Hamilton 15:18

Sometimes you get one of those little uh I don't know, I don't know what they call them, but it's a little piece of rubber and they've got a fly printed on there that you you're supposed to quote aim at, unquote.

Mike Gonzalez 15:31

I think some of those are right on the porcelain that I saw over there. But we digress. So, okay, so so you get through tour school, the end of 2003, you've come off several wins, your last four on the PGA uh tour in Japan, and uh your life's gonna change a little bit, isn't it?

Todd Hamilton 15:52

Yes, yeah, for sure. Uh obviously very confident with what I was doing. New driver, confident with that, was putting well. Uh the only the only unknown was all these new courses. I didn't know the courses at all. Yeah, uh, I I had I had a couple caddies my first two or three tournaments, really hadn't locked in. I I didn't have a friend like a lot of guys do now, where once they get on tour or they just grab their friend and they're with them for you know five to ten years. I didn't have that friend. Uh so I was kind of bouncing around the first three or four events with different caddies and finally settled on one guy. He'd been out there quite a bit. We had the same likes uh in golf and hockey and other sports. And uh his name was Ron Levin. He went by the nickname Bambi. He got the nickname because he started catting when he was 19 years old. So one of the other caddies gave him the nickname Bambi. He was kind of a young, young kid, and uh we hooked up. I'm gonna guess it was the third, maybe fourth event of the year. And uh we probably stayed together actually, not too long. Four years, I'm gonna say. I don't know the exact time frame, but uh we did well for that that short a time frame that we had. He had never been on a bag that had won on the PJ tour in all the years that he had caddied, and we're we're roughly the same age. So if he started at 19, I was 38 as a rookie, so I'm gonna say he was probably on tour for close to 19 years and had not been on a winning bag yet.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

Yeah, boy.

Todd Hamilton 17:48

And then later on that year, I'm gonna guess it was our third or fourth tournament, was the Honda Classic, which is probably the next one on your list.

Bruce Devlin 17:56

It is.

Todd Hamilton 17:57

Uh, that was when I got my first PGA tour win. And uh it was a great night. A friend flew in from back home that I played a lot of golf with growing up as a kid, surprised me, and uh got to see it all happen. It was it was pretty cool looking back.

Mike Gonzalez 18:19

Yeah, that was by one over Davis Love at the country club at Marisol down Florida. Uh I assume mentioning uh maybe a couple other starts before that, did you have a chance to play in California a little bit earlier in the year before you got to Florida?

Todd Hamilton 18:32

Yeah, I got in all the events, I believe. Uh started in Hawaii, didn't play very well. Uh played the courses that uh was back then it was the Bob Hope still, I believe. That was tough because as a rookie, you're trying to learn three different golf courses in not a lot of time. So uh it doesn't matter how good a golf you are, that's that's tough to do. Uh I think the the first real good showing I had was at Dural. Uh this is before it was a World Golf Championship event. It was uh just the old Dural. And uh tough. I think I finished 30 something, uh made 30,000 bucks, I don't know, something like that. And that got me high up in the re-rank, which allowed me to get in more events uh and uh led me to bigger and better things.

Mike Gonzalez 19:33

Yeah. So the the win at Honda, uh what was your reaction to that? Was it a surprise to you that that your game was ready to win at that level uh that quickly coming on the tour? Was it yeah, I I I knew I could play, I just had to put it together for four days. What was sort of your your feeling coming out of that?

Todd Hamilton 19:52

I think a little of both. You know, I I was riding high with confidence, uh, four wins in Japan within a year of that tournament. Uh the course I was playing at the time when I was at home was a Fozio course, as was the Mirasol course. So it it had a lot of the same looks to it that uh I was used to. Looking back, I liked the course when I first played it, obviously won on it, but but the more I played it, the more I didn't like certain aspects of it. So uh shouldn't probably shouldn't say that as I had success on it, but uh I enjoyed it that year. Uh it was a it was a course I think I shot 10 under, which nowadays that's not that great. Uh, you know, that's usually a score you see if you get bad weather for a couple days, or you know, it's a major event. You don't see guys shooting 10 under for a regular tour event, but it did get kind of windy there down in Florida, and and I think it was a new course. They'd played the other Marisol course the year before. Justin Leonard won. I think he shot 25 under. And then uh we played the next year and shot 10 under was a winning score. Although the 18th hole that Justin Leonard played was our 18th hole. They liked that as a better finishing hole than the actual finishing hole on the course that I won on. So it must have been a tougher golf course. 15 shots different, but uh it wasn't 15, by the way.

Bruce Devlin 21:36

It wasn't 15. What's that? By the way. It wasn't 15. 16. You were 12 under, sir. You shot 68.

Todd Hamilton 21:46

Oh, I thought I was 10.

Bruce Devlin 21:47

68, 66, 68, and uh 74 to finish, but still beat Davis Love by one.

Todd Hamilton 21:54

And that that's 70. The 74, I didn't play too bad either. I made three bogeys on the first. Silly bogeys. And then three putted a hole on the back nine. And uh I made two birdies on the last two holes. Uh made about a 10 to 12 footer on 17. And then I hit a shot into 18 that was I remember this very distinctly, four feet two inches, according to shot link. There you go. I remember that. So I had to make that putt to win. I'll tell you a crazy story about that week. I played in the Monday Pro Am. And uh the guys I played with said, last year we played with a guy named Ben Curtis in this same Monday Pro Am. Well, he went on to win the 2003 British Open. So I get paired with these guys in 2004. They said, Look, you know, we we expect you to win the British Open this year, because last year our guy, our pro won. I said, Well, I don't I don't know if I'll be able to help you out, but I'll try my best. So when I finished 18 and won the Honda, I threw my golf ball up into the top tier of the grandstands. So I go in uh and go to sign my card. Well, the guy that had caught my ball was one of the members of that Monday Pro Am in my group.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

Oh crazy.

Todd Hamilton 23:28

Came down before I went in to sign the card. He shows me the ball, he says, Here, you may want to keep this. And I looked up and recognized him. I said, Okay, I'll take it. Here, you can have my hat. So we did a little switch. So kind of ironic that he caught that ball and and that I actually did go on and win the open. So they played with two open winners in back-to-back years. That's amazing.

Mike Gonzalez 23:54

That's a pretty good juju there.

Todd Hamilton 23:57

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 23:58

That win at the Honda, uh, I assume maybe that's what got you into the open championship, although that wasn't your first one because you did see Ben Curtis win at Royal St. George's the previous year, did you not?

Todd Hamilton 24:10

Yes, I think the the one in 04 that I won was actually my fourth one. Uh I had won the Asian Order Merit in 92. They gave me a spot in the open that year. I think it was at Mirfield. Uh we had some tournaments in Japan. They had a stretch of five tournaments. And if you were the top five money winners in those five events, then you got a spot in the open. Uh I did that once. Yes.

Mike Gonzalez 24:46

Royal Lithum, yes.

Todd Hamilton 24:48

And then 2003 at St.

Mike Gonzalez 24:52

George's, yeah.

Todd Hamilton 24:53

I I I think it was for winning the uh there was a Mizuno tournament. I forget what the actual name of the tournament was in 03, but they gave a spot for the winner of that tournament. Yeah. And then I actually, by finishing third on the money list in Japan in 2003, that actually got me into the open in 04. That was one of the ways I got in. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that's the first way, but it was one of the ways.

Mike Gonzalez 25:23

So let's start with this question. Was there any debate at all about whether you were going to play in the open championship that summer?

Todd Hamilton 25:33

In 04? Oh no, no. Yes. All right. No, I won't I wanted to do to play there, although I wasn't playing very well uh going over there. I uh, you know, if they would have said, hey, you're gonna finish second or third or tenth even, you don't have to go over, I probably would have stayed home. I was playing that poorly. But uh no, it's very exciting. I love that type of golf. Got to be very creative, gotta be very lucky.

Mike Gonzalez 26:03

Uh had you played trunes before?

Todd Hamilton 26:06

I actually had in college. My golf team at Oklahoma went over there for about 10 days, and Trune was one of the courses that we got to play on. So I didn't remember many of the holes, but I did remember they had a little look kind of like uh a sail structure, like a mast of a ship outside the clubhouse. I did remember that, but the holes, I didn't remember many of those, no, yeah, other than the postage stamp, of course.

Mike Gonzalez 26:34

Oh, exactly. Well, we're talking about the 2004 Open Championship won by Todd Hamilton. Uh we're at Royal Trune uh near Prestwick uh in Ayrshire, and uh won that one in a playoff with Ernie Ells uh shooting uh uh 10 under 274. Uh your issues started with uh just the flight over, as I recall. You had a delayed flight, might have been the last guy to even check in.

Todd Hamilton 27:00

That's right. This was uh I think the following year is when the the John Deere Classic got their charter jet. So I had to fly from I played the John Deere that year in 2004. Uh so my flight from Moline, Illinois, to Chicago got canceled due to bad weather. So therefore I missed my flight overseas. So I had to get up and do the whole thing over again uh the next morning, which got me in basically a day later than I had originally planned to. Uh so I got to the course, I believe, Tuesday at I don't know, 11 o'clock or noon their time, and was very tired. Uh but I I forced myself to go out and not really practice as far as play. I mean, I took my clubs out there and hit shots, but I was more focused on getting good notes because I didn't I didn't feel very good about my golf game being being that tired. So I did make a make a point to take some good notes, where you could miss it, uh, clubs you could hit to not get into bunkers that were very penal, and uh I thought I did that. Uh and looking back, it was probably good that I wasn't so focused on my shots and more focused on uh mapping the course out.

Mike Gonzalez 28:34

Tell us about what your notes were in your book for number eleven.

Todd Hamilton 28:39

Number 11. Number 11 is a very, I'm sure you've played there. Number 11's a very scary T-shot. Uh, it's one you cannot see the fairway at all. Uh you've got a railroad track that runs to the right all the way down to the green. There's gorse bushes. That's the only thing you can see. And uh I believe there's a big hotel in the distance that you kind of pick a spot where you think the fairway is and try to have your ball go on that spot. So uh uh that was that was a hole. I don't I don't remember hitting driver on that hole. The good thing about playing over there is usually the ground's very firm. So if you're not comfortable hitting a longer club, you can hit less club, but you can get a lot of rollout on your ball, which makes for shorter clubs into the green. Uh I don't think I hit driver on that hole. I was carrying a hybrid at the time that I used as my three-wood. I was not a big fan of three woods. I liked how this hybrid set on the ground, and uh a friend of mine worked for a company SonarTech. He had this hybrid. Uh, I think he had made it up for me at Augusta that year in 2004. So I'd been carrying it for a number of months leading up to the open in 04. It was 17 degrees, bent down to 14 degrees, and uh I liked how it sit. The ball seemed to go off of it pretty good, and I used it a lot uh as kind of a backup driver when I wasn't driving the ball well, and uh when that ball landed, it it tumbled over there. So I remember hitting that club off that T a lot.

Mike Gonzalez 30:28

So you you show up on Tuesday afternoon, you force yourself to go out. You you already told us you you didn't come into truon with your A game. What happened?

Todd Hamilton 30:40

Well, uh I remember the first round on the final hole, I was one over par. I made about a 25-footer for Bertie to shoot even par. And for some reason, to say that you shot even par in a major, I know it's only one shot difference, and even par is not that great. But for me to say that I shot even par in a major, having played poorly for weeks leading up to that, and just the way I did it, making a a good size putt on the last hole, to me, that maybe not gave me a lot of confidence, but it it helped alleviate the bad that had been going on. And uh, you know, somebody comes up, what'd you shoot? Oh, I shot even, not over. Over was a bad word for me. And uh, I remember hitting balls that week. I found something in my swing, and that's all I thought about. Kind of like we talked about my friend giving the left arm. Yes. Well, I found something in my swing, and it's something so basic that you shouldn't even have to think about it. All I thought about was pointing my belt buckle at the ball, my zipper at the ball, my buttons on my pants at the ball. I have a tendency, I love to fade the golf ball. I have a tendency that that belt buckle, that zipper, that button gets pointed too far as a right-handed golfer pointed too far to the left, and I hit a lot of unsolid, kind of wipey swipe shots that have no penetration when it's into the wind. When there's no wind, they go very high and short. And it's always been a problem of mine. For some reason, that's all I thought about. Just point that belt buckle or zip or button at the ball. It seemed like I got a better turn. I didn't have a fake turn, I got a better turn, and when I came down, I felt like the the club was actually hitting against something. Like there almost like there was a little resistance in my body to sling that club forward rather than all of my body being open so much that at impact there was it felt like I was hitting a marshmallow because everything was so open and the ball just went nowhere. And I I actually dealt with it the first round. I didn't figure it out until after the first round, but I went over and hit some balls after the first round, and I don't know what made me think of it, but I I did that and started hitting the ball flush. Not every shot was perfect, but I started hitting a lot more shots flush and out of the middle of the club, getting the proper distance, getting better direction. Uh my misses, although still to the right, weren't as far to the right. And I don't mind that because I like to see the ball go that way to the right. But I I think there was a year they they keep such obscure stats like they do in Major League Baseball, the tour I'm talking about. I think one year I was the best in left rough tendency on the tour. Meaning I didn't hit it in the left rough very much. But I was one of the worst in right rough tendency because I would overfade or block, push, whatever you want to call it. So I don't I don't mind seeing the ball miss to the right. Uh I just don't like to see it miss way to the right weak shots. I like to I like to obviously like to feel like the the club is giving some hit to the ball. And uh by pointing my belt buckle at the ball, it seemed like that that face squared up a little bit easier. There was a little more hit, direction was better, and uh gave me that little confidence to actually hit some good shots and and play proper golf.

Mike Gonzalez 35:04

So you make one putt, you find your zipper, and you shoot 67 and you're T5.

Todd Hamilton 35:10

You never know what's gonna happen in this game. It's like I mentioned like riding a bike. I say it's it was kind of like finding$20 in the dryer. You knew you had a$20 bill somewhere in your pocket, you didn't know where it was, you did some laundry, dried your clothes, and all of a sudden there's a 20 on top of your clothes in the dryer. Golfers are crazy. A lot of times it doesn't take a lot uh for golfers or athletes in general to to get some confidence. And when they get that confidence, they get a you know, they get a taste of it, and uh it's like nothing bad's ever happened to them. Yeah, and that's kind of how I felt the last three rounds.

Mike Gonzalez 36:00

So 67 second round, 67 third round, which one was easier, which one was harder?

Todd Hamilton 36:09

I think one of those rounds was a bogey free round. I don't remember which one it was. Uh I think the second 67 uh I liked better because I was playing with Ernie Ells that round. I've I think I think I played with Jimenez the first two days and someone else. I I don't remember. I'd have to look back at it. But uh the second 67 on the third round, uh, I liked that because I was playing with Ernie Ells that round. And and we ended up playing the last round together and four playoff holes. So we played 40 holes uh together that week.

Mike Gonzalez 36:52

Yeah, so that had to help uh as you you know as you come to the conclusion of this, which we'll talk about in terms of a playoff. But here you are leading by one over Ernie Ells after that second 67. So you go into that Sunday with a a lead in the open championship, and you know, a week earlier, like you said, didn't have your A game while sitting down late. Um it is a crazy game. What was that Sunday morning like?

Todd Hamilton 37:22

I gotta tell you, I slept for about two and a half hours. Not because I was nervous, I was probably a little nervous, but that wasn't the main reason. The house that we rented for the week, and I had my wife, my mother was there helping with our kids, and our three kids were there, which were one and a half, four, and six years old. So the house that we rented, they had great TV. They had a cable TV. I stayed up just with the remote in my hand, flipping. I'm a flipper, I changed the channel on the radio, my wife hates it. I was just going back and forth trying to get as much stuff as I could get in my brain, and finally fell asleep late or early in the morning for about two and a half hours. I knew the golf was coming on early, so I woke up, put it on the channel, and watched to see what what kind of shots guys were hitting into certain holes and where the flags were, and uh just tried to soak it all in. I again I was probably a little nervous, but I I it wasn't where I couldn't fall asleep. I can fall asleep anywhere. Matter of fact, a lot of my flights to Japan, I would stay up early or stay up late at night, pack, eat food that I wasn't going to be able to eat in Japan, and I might sleep for two hours. And there were times where I had fallen asleep before the flight took off to Japan, and I would wake up maybe 30 minutes before we landed. And the stewardess would come around and ask me what kind of drugs I was on. So I I could sleep anywhere, and uh just I was just anxious to play. I thought I was playing well, and was just anxious uh to get going.

Mike Gonzalez 39:10

Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Good of the Game.

Intro Music 39:14

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