Interviews

An Interview With: DOUG TEWELL

MARTY PARKES:  It's my pleasure to welcome Mr. Doug Tewell to the interview area.  You've won twice already on the Senior Tour.  Your impressions of your game coming in here.

DOUG TEWELL:  Well, they seem to be pretty good.  I finished second last week, had a great chance on Sunday to win the golf tournament, didn't quite get it done.  It's always good to come in playing well.  I'd had a minor wrist injury a couple of weeks earlier, but everything feels good, and I feel well about the way I'm hitting the ball now.  I think, if the temperatures will drop to about 70 degrees, I'll be in good shape.

MARTY PARKES:  Your impressions of the golf course.

DOUG TEWELL:  Well, I've played here several times prior to this week, and I've always enjoyed this golf course.  I think it's very fair off the tee.  It's got some pretty demanding second shots.  You've got to pay attention to where you put the ball on the green.  It's got a lot of little shelves that you have to know where they are.  And hopefully, we've done a good job, between my caddy and I of charting everything, and paying a lot of attention.  There's going to be a lot of pins that you don't shoot at.  A lot of places where you want to be left or right of the hole.  So, it's a little bit more work involved, I think, this week than our normal events, which it should be.

Q.  I wonder if you could talk in general terms about the state of this Tour at this point?  Do you see it going in a better direction than perhaps when you first started out here, and also, if you could answer a question I've asked a couple other guys, would you like to see the age limit lowered a little bit?  When you were in your mid 40's, would you have preferred to come out here at that point?

DOUG TEWELL:  Well, five years ago I wanted the age limit lowered.  Now I want it raised to 52 (laughter.) When I came on the Tour, the Tour apparently looked like it had peaked out.  We started having some problems with sponsors.  But after I really examined it, the regular Tour is having problems.

Sports in general right now, companies -- and I don't want to always-- saying since 9-11, I think a lot of this started before 9-11, the economy is going through some tough times right now.  Companies are really having to look at their expenditures and as we're seeing with a lot of other companies, they've got to look at that bottom line.  And to put four or five million dollars in a golf tournament maybe is not the most proper thing to do.  But I think the Senior Tour, itself, last year we had pretty much a dip, and I think we're on our way back up now.  We have some marquee players that are playing better.  I think Fuzzy's win at the PGA was a big shot in the arm for the Tour.  I think it got the fans more aware of the Senior Tour again.  And I'm certainly promoting or they will get my vote for our own Tour commissioner.  Tim Finchem is doing a marvelous job, I think it's too big for him.  I think this Tour has grown far beyond what Tim's capabilities are of trying to cover every little base.  I think every player would tell you, we're all happy with Tim Finchem, we just now think it's time for us to have our deputy commissioner, someone that can pay attention to this Tour, be more involved with the sponsors.  We've always had to work harder out here, we've had to go to all the cocktail parties to make this Tour work better.  And it's just kind of the way this game of golf has evolved.

Pro golfers have always been involved much more in sort of the daily operations than in most sports.  But hopefully, we're on the way back up.  To lower the age, I just don't know if it's going to do us that much good.  I don't think Greg Norman wants to come out here right now.  I think he'd be the first to tell you, I don't want to go out there.  Maybe we need to do away with golf carts, that might help our image.  But we'd lose a lot of players.  I'm not sure this Tour should be that you can ride until you're 70 years old and play.  Maybe that hurts us.  Because I think if you go out and watch a good Senior Tour event, you see just as many great golf shots on the other Tour.  It may be with a 7-iron versus a 5-iron, or something like that.  But I think the quality of the golf is still just as good, it's that we've got the dad gum golf carts in the way, and people perceive that we're too old and slow.

Q.  On the subject of the commissioner, is that an open discussion you've been having with Finchem and does he seem to be leaning in that direction, can you tell?

DOUG TEWELL:  Well, I've had -- personally I've had two conversations with Tim Finchem on it.  His answer has been more to the fact that we're going to bring in some really top notch marketing people, the gentleman from Cadillac, his name escapes me right now, to try to shore up our image, but I don't see any image shoring up yet.  The sponsors I talked to, Tim is just spread too thin.  And we want to talk to the owner.  And Tim is just not available as much as he maybe could be if we had our own commissioner.  It would still be under the umbrella of Tim Finchem, he'd be orchestrating the whole organization, just like in baseball, and I think that's what we need.

You've heard all the rumors, you probably know as much as I do about the candidates.  And obviously Jim Colbert has been the name of a player that's been thrown out, and Terry London, who is the retired CEO of Gaylord Entertainment.  And also Peter Uebberoth was another name that flew around.  Those are the rumors.  I think we'll have a good meeting in Detroit with the Commissioner.  That's coming up in a couple of weeks, and we'll just kind of see where we're going to go.  This Tour probably needs to streamline down just a little bit, maybe 30, 32 events and hopefully, somehow come up with a little better television contract in the future that gives us more exposure and so on and so forth.

Q.  The Commissioner issue will come up with Detroit?

DOUG TEWELL:  The Commissioner is going to have a meeting in Detroit.

Q.  But the issue of --?

DOUG TEWELL:  That's supposed to be on the agenda.  We've asked for it to be.

Q.  You mentioned the TV contract, is the fact that essentially you guys are not on life most of the time, is that a problem, and you're also on what a lot of people would consider to be off --?

DOUG TEWELL:  It is a terrible problem.  I just spoke with a good friend of mine at home last night, a builder, and I said, "Well, did you see the tournament?"  He said, "I couldn't find it."  And I can't tell you how many people tell me that.  And CNBC has become a fairly well-known network, but people just don't seem to be able to find us on the weekends to watch us.  And when NBC's broadcasting the tournament, they're telling you, we're over now, turn to CNBC and watch the Senior Tour, because we usually will follow them.  But what's done is done.  We signed a four-year contract with them, and we've got to make it work somehow.  But we're there, you've got to find us on your local cable channel.

Q.  What else can you do, do you think, -- I'm sure you're not a marketing guru, but do you have any ideas, are there players that have other ideas of what the Tour can do to better market themselves and maybe grab a bigger viewing audience, more so than just, we can't find CNBC on the cable channel.  Is there a better way to promote it, so we can find it on the cable channels on the weekends?

DOUG TEWELL:  I don't know.  I've said all along we need to go to some major marketing company that's well-known for trying to develop and promote products and say what can we do?  Is it just simply showing up at cocktail parties and shaking hands with amateur golfers and saying thanks for supporting us and would you pay 5,000 to play next year, so we can raise the purse?  How do we go about that.  But I think the only way we do it is get back on network television somehow, where you can find us very quickly, and hopefully when we do get a Greg Norman or -- obviously it's marquee -- you've got to have the super stars.  And I've said all along, I came out here just as a good player.  I was a lineman, so to speak.  I started every game.  And I've won two majors and four tournaments out here, and I'm still a lineman, to tell you the truth.  I can't become a super star out here.  I don't want to say you guys won't let me, but it's the way we're promoted now.  It's like he's not really beaten Tom Watson or Hale Irwin, because they're not playing like they used to, and he's just playing pretty good.  It's hard to -- I've been thinking, what do I do?  Start wearing an orange hat?  You need this identity, and I can't quite figure out what it is.  I asked if I could wear shorts this week.  I said let's bring that controversy back up.  Actually I think you might be able to, I don't know.  But I think it's against club policy here.  I don't want to go against this club.  I love this Caves Valley club, it's a wonderful place.  But it's just so hard to get an identity now.  And I think Bruce Fleisher has talked about it and I can win six tournaments this year, and all I'm going to be is Doug Tewell won six tournaments.  But let's talk about Fuzzy Zoeller, Ben Crenshaw, Tom Watson.  But I don't have a problem with that.  It worried me for a year.  I got upset about it and finally I just said I'm going to quit worrying about what I can't control, and play the best golf I can.  Right now I'm just focusing, trying to win the U.S. Open.

Q.  You spoke that you've played this course a few times.  Just on my first glance, being here for the first time today and actually seeing it, aside from the website and other friends of mine who have played here before, do you think a course -- my impression of this is this is an absolutely magnificent facility.  There seems to be some historical background to it.  The course is beautiful.  The driving range is nicer than most public golf courses you go to.  What's your impression of the course, itself, Caves Valley?  Is this a course that deserves as much hype as Bethpage Black or as Augusta National, with its overall beauty, its strengths and weaknesses?

DOUG TEWELL:  I haven't played Bethpage.  I watched it on TV like everybody else.  I would say for $31 your values may be better at Bethpage than it might be here.  But this place certainly should be held up with the elite golf courses, because it's a beautiful facility.  It's got marvelous -- it's great everywhere.  The golf course is going to be a wonderful test.  And I think they've made it very fair.  I thought they might really bring the fairways in tighter than they have.  But they've kind of chosen to keep more length in the golf course than I think -- it's going to give guys a lot of trouble lengthwise.  But probably the biggest hurdle is going to be walking it for four straight days in this heat.  This is a fabulous facility.  And only time will tell as we play championships here, where it will take its place in history.  But it certainly has all the makings of one of the great golf courses of all time.

Q.  Do you think it's worthy of maybe a yearly event here, on the PGA TOUR or Senior Tour?

DOUG TEWELL: It would be wonderful.  I'd love to play here.  Maybe in October or September (laughter.)

Q.  I think you've pretty much touched on it, but do you ever look behind you to see who's coming up, in terms of looking at that marquee?

DOUG TEWELL:  I really, really haven't.  I'm just trying to beat these guys that are here right now.  But I know it's the marquee players that fuel this league.  And it's the same way on the other league.  And it's the same way in baseball, basketball.  You need those marquee players, and the rest of it is -- we have to do our best to make it a great show.  And that's really what it is.  We're in the entertainment business, and we're just trying to improve our product.  And hopefully come Sunday afternoon, I'm going to be involved in improving that product.  And I don't care who -- I hope it's Tom Watson or Hale Irwin or somebody, because that's the only way a guy like me with climb out of the pack, so to speak, and be noticed is to go head-to-head with the best players in the world and beat them.  And at some point if you do that over and over and over again you'll think, well, that guy -- really at this age has become better than the 21 years he played on the other Tour.  Like I say, I've wrestled with it, I've fought it, it's just the way the business is.  But I'm so happy right now at age 52, I don't think life could be any better.

Q.  Do you find that the way that the heat is, has it changed your game at all?  Is there a different way you come at a tournament like this, with the type of -- the weather that you're expecting for this week?

DOUG TEWELL:  Well, I think you find you've got to take a little extra time, you've got to think just another five or six seconds longer, because you are a little hot sometimes.  And sometimes you don't think quite as clear and you make quick decisions.  Pace yourself in the way you walk, just the way you go about your business.  I love the heat.  It's great when you've got lower back problems and little joint problems, because the hotter it is the looser you feel.  And I was out there just sweat pouring off of me on that range, and just the best looking 5-irons, so I really do like this hot weather.  It's only going to help me as far as the way my body feels.  And I'll be a little tired, a little fatigued, but that's all part of the game.

MARTY PARKES:  Thanks for coming in, visiting with us, good luck this week.

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