Interviews

An Interview With: JIM THORPE

MARTY PARKES:   It's my pleasure to welcome Mr. Jim Thorpe.  This is your third Senior Open, you have one top-10 finish in the year 2000, you have a win on the Senior PGA TOUR this year.  Maybe you can talk about how you feel your chances are this week.

JIM THORPE:  When I played this golf course quite a bit, it's probably only two or three guys in the field that have played this course more than I have.  It's a beautiful venue.  It's the type of golf course, we don't know exactly yet where the pin placements are going to be, but the fairways are generous off the tee, they give you more room to drive the ball.  I played 9 holes yesterday the greens were very, very soft.  So, I decided to not play the back 9, because I don't think that's the conditions we're going to play the golf course in.  I think the greens are going to get nice and firm.  I think the fairways will speed up a little bit, the fairways are not running right now.

This is a different U.S. Open course than the ones I played my first three years on the Senior Tour.  It's a great golf course, but it doesn't have that bite yet that the USGA normally puts into their golf courses.  So, I'm going to play the back 9 sometime this evening, probably 1:30 or 2:00 o'clock, and see what the back nine is playing like.  They haven't double cut the greens yet and got them up to speed.  But with the slopes in the green, with the undulation, I don't think they can get them running more than 12, 12 and a half on the stimpmeter.  Everything on the green pulls toward Righteoustown Road, that's south of here, they seem to be going quick in that direction, everything else, a little north or west, the greens are running pretty slow.  We came over last year after the Baltimore Classic, and did an outing on Monday, and the golf course hasn't really changed that much.  One of the par-5s, I think it's No. 7, we could run the second shot on the green by bringing it in from the right side of the fairway.  I noticed they moved that corner of the fairway in probably 12 or 15 yards.  So, the most of us will be landing up there, and even yesterday, I hit a 4-wood off the tee, to make sure I didn't go for the green, to leave myself back far enough to play a decent third shot.  We have a lot of guys playing well coming in here.  Bruce Fleisher comes to mind.  Bruce has been struggling a little bit this year, but the last two or three tournaments, his game is starting to show sparks, and he's the defending champion for the U.S. Open.  Hale Irwin always plays well.  Tom Watson you never can count out.  Jay Sigel is starting to play beautifully.  You have a lot of guys coming in here that are playing very, very well, so we don't know -- I think we'll be able to tell by late Wednesday, maybe can come a little closer to predicting something.

Right now, we can't predict anything, because I think that we only -- the golf course, the fairways are not running, so you can drive the ball off center and keep it on the fairways.  And the greens are holding very, very well.  I don't want to get fooled, I know USGA golf courses don't play that way.

Q.  You referred to Baltimore last week as your second home.  Can you talk about what it's been like spending the pass two weeks here in Baltimore?

JIM THORPE:  My two daughters costed me, man.  I spent more money -- I thought I was in Atlantic City or something last year.  I love Baltimore, it's a beautiful area.  It's good to see a bunch of old friends, some of them still here, and some of them are gone.  Matter of fact, I drove over into the city, a golf course I used to play, Clifton Park, Mount Pleasant, Pine Ridge, I had a peak at some of the old courses I used to play.  You park for a minute and think about the things you used to do, remember when you were younger, and I decided to drive away, because I remembered a couple of guys that -- a guy named Nick Gardener that took me under his belt and taught me a lot about the game of golf, especially when I was hustling golf in this particular area, there were some games he let me play, and some games he wanted me to play.

You think about them, these things, and I don't like to get too caught up, so I just kind of drive away.  I drove over to another golf course, and I say, "Hey, I remember this golf course."  I went on the fairway, and looked, the golf course had changed a little bit.  I don't think some of the golf courses are as good as they used to be, and some are better.  I enjoy this area.  Probably, if I ever move out of Florida, I'll probably move back in this area.  If I could buy one of these big old houses on the hill as we drive in, it would be a perfect place to live.

Q.  While you're talking about Baltimore and this area, I believe you went to Morgan State for a while.  Can you talk about your time at Morgan State, did you enjoy it, did you get involved and any golf programs at Morgan State or in the area while you were here?

JIM THORPE:  Actually Morgan -- I met with someone last week, the president of Morgan, and they actually were starting a golf program.  And in those days, 68, 69, 70, we spent our time playing pinochle.  Go to class, are you kidding me?  I never knew my teachers names.  We played pinochle.  We waited for a football game.  But it was fun.

Morgan has changed quite a bit.  The university has really grown.  They just put $20  million into their football program and they're looking to do a golf program.  Actually, I think they just came to some type of agreement with the city of Baltimore, Mount Pleasant Golf Course is going to be the home golf course for the school.  And right now, I'm in charge with a bunch of guys that were there in school, we're  going to come back and do a golf tournament and raise some money.  And hopefully, we'll get involved with the golf program.  The coach is not there anymore, they have a lot of young people there that have taken over the program.  But the program and school is doing very, very well, and it's expanding.  It went from a little school to a huge university.  And so, a lot of kids outside of state will look at coming into Morgan university.

Q.  Since you brought up Morgan State and golf, could you give us your opinions now, approximately five years after Tiger has come on the scene, where the situation is with black America in golf?

JIM THORPE:  Actually -- that's a good question.  Tiger has done a lot.  I think he's brought in a lot of different classes of people into the game of golf.  From the African American standpoint, even with the First Tee program and many, many programs we have around the country, I don't see that many more players that are coming on to the Nike Tour, PGA TOUR, LPGA, that sort of stuff.  I think the one program that we do not have any longer, is the caddy program.  The caddy program back when I was a kid growing up, I go out and caddy and play and earn 12 or 15 dollars per day, and also learn the game of golf.  Today even with all the programs, I don't see golfers coming from the programs.  I don't see anyone getting involved in the game of golf from the players standpoint -- from a players standpoint and the administration side.  I don't see anyone coming.  I think the PGA -- you probably know this better than I do -- I think the PGA have about 700 employees, and you probably get -- I don't know if you get 12 or 15 blacks.

So, I think we need these programs to keep kids off the street and out of trouble and all that sort of stuff.  But even the First Tee program, when we come in and talk to the kids and try to tutor with the game of golf, where do the kids go from there?  Are the parents going to follow up?  Do we have somebody to follow up and even -- when I came on the Tour back in 1975, there were more African American players than today, I think there was 10 or 12 guys.  And today we have Tiger Woods?  So Tiger has done a lot, but has he opened any doors?  I can't answer those questions, I don't know, I don't see that.

Even on the Senior Tour you have a lot of guys, you catch a guy like Clyde Hewitt or some other guy that qualifies for an event.  But I don't see African Americans coming, and I don't know the reason why, because we've done everything we possibly can do to open doors.  And I think one of the things that we have to do is find some type of golf courses -- I live in a country club, so my kids jump on the golf cart and go right over, but for the average city kids, and half the city kids we're talking about, it's very, very -- I don't know where it's going, but until we build a venue, some type of venue some place where we can send our kids during the summertime and during the off-season with school, to have these kids learn the game of golf and understand it from both sides, the business side and the playing side, I think you're going to continue to see the same old trend that we have going.  Every other 8, nine years.  After me there was Tiger, and I'm 53, Tiger is 26, so there was a big gap there.

And the question that comes up all the time, and I don't know -- how much input basketball, football and baseball, because the guys are signing major contracts.  And it doesn't cost that much money to go out and play basketball and football with a bunch of guys.  But to play golf it costs a lot of money.  The golf courses today are in business to make money.  I can't think of any golf course that has a caddy program.  Matter of fact I think this golf course here has a caddy program.  I take that back.  So we can bring back the caddy program.  It's a good way to learn.  Caddy, it sounds like it's a terrible thing to do.  But my caddy -- the last few years he's made 400 thousand dollars.  That's not bad.  I know, because I write the checks for him.  And my brothers, like growing up, we had to help mom and dad out many ways, going after school, caddying on Saturday, Sunday morning, before church, after church, we helped out many, many ways.

If we can develop some type of program where the parents can see that they can learn something about golf, and he's going to come home with 20 bucks.  That's better than running around a shopping center or around the streets with buddies making trouble.  We just need to sit down at the big roundtable and try to figure out a way to make it work.  The programs are wonderful programs, but they're not working.  I don't see no players coming.  You're into golf a lot closer from a business standpoint than I am, and I don't see African American players coming.  Then, this area here where I grew up in, you go to Langston and East Potomac Park, and Clifton Park, but basically a golf course like Langston, I haven't played a lot of golf there, but I have been there, there's too much stuff that goes on at a golf course like that.  I'm probably going to get smacked around by saying this, but the guys are hustling, which I did, and it was the wrong thing to do.  Somebody is probably dealing drugs from the parking lot, a bunch of gambling going on, and I don't want my kid involved in that.  30 years ago, I had no choice, I was dead broke, and had no choice.  We have to find the right golf courses, and facilities for these kids, and I think parents will definitely get involved.  And I said Langston, because Langston is probably the only golf course I know in the district of Washington, D.C., that would be a lower income golf course, where we could do some type of program.  But we need to clean up the parking lot, cleanup the drugs and hustling and run a solid program.  I'm not going to put my money up for a program if I don't think it's going to work.

So, it's like last week at Baltimore we did a little thing for the first tee, and the tournament gave the first tee program 50 thousand dollars.  Show me where this money is going.  Show me what you're doing with this money.  You're not going to keep spending your hard earned dollars if you don't see something.  And at this point, and it's a shame to see this, because I'm into golf, but at this point I don't see anything happening right now.  We need to find other venues, and we need people that are going to stick to the rules and regulations.  If you're not going to stick to the rules and regulations, the programs won't work.

Q.  Do you think maybe we haven't given enough time to produce players, at least, maybe the first tee initiative will work, but it won't show fruit until it's 10 or 15 years old?

JIM THORPE:  Bill Dickey, out of Phoenix, Arizona, and others have been in golf program for years.  These people have worked so closely with kids. They had a lot of promise for golf.  I don't know anybody by name, but I can still remember faces and stuff, guys that I felt like really had a chance.

And for some reason they never -- we haven't had an African American lady play in the LPGA since Renee Powell.  We've got more African American people in sports today than ever before.  We have women basketball, softball, but no one touching golf.  Why?  Is it because they can't afford to?  Is it because they don't have the right venues to go to work and play?  Is it because they're not being taught the right things?  I can't figure out the answer.

And I was talking to my daughter this week, I said I was planning on playing golf for a long time, until I couldn't play anymore.  But because I do get around the press and my buddies and we talk about why we don't have this, that and the other, I don't think no one person has ever worked on it hard enough to actually hit the nail on the head.  We can do a hundred thousand First Tee programs, but if the kids don't have some type of venue to go play, where the parents are comfortable and parents will get involved in dropping their kids off and picking their kids up and have fun in those programs, it's not going to work.  And it's a shame.  I don't think it's a waste of time, no, but I have a 13 year old daughter that plays pretty good.  The only time she goes to the golf course is when I say, "Let's go play golf."  And she says, "Oh, dad."  I say, "Get in the cart, let's go."  And that's what's going to happen.

And basically, I think what has happened, my program at Buffalo, New York, we had a set of twins, African American twins, beautiful golfers, beautiful golf swing, hit the golf ball very nicely, but they'd rather hang out in the shopping centers.  And they say, "Mom, I don't want to go to the golf course, I've got to get my nails done, my feet have to be done."  It's stupid.

So, basically one of the things that I've seen, and just one of the things I've seen, kids seem to be raising the parents, versus the parents raising the kids.  I just tell my daughter, and I just tell her, raise my glasses and make my eyes look crazy, and she knows to get her butt on the golf cart and go.  She's going to be pissed off for a few minutes, but once she's there, she's fine.  And once we get there, and we stay there, and I say, "It's time to go," and she says, "No, dad, I'm having fun."

Basically, kids need to be pushed a little bit.  And I think we can get more and more.  And I've got 7 grandkids.  My oldest grandson is 13 years old, from my college mistakes -- but they want to get involved in golf.  And I said good, I'll get you golf clubs, I'll try to set you up, I'm going to find somebody is that will give these guys lessons.  And they're between 6 and 13 years old.  And -- which I think is the perfect time.  But just like I told their mothers, I'm not going to waste my time if you don't do your part.  I'm not going to be there, you have to take them to the golf course, driving range, set them up with golf lessons, and just have somebody call me, send me a bill, I'll give you a credit card number.  But if you play your part, I'll do mine as a grandparent.  We could have a thousand programs, but if we don't push our programs and push our kids, they're not going to work.

There's just too much money in basketball.  My oldest grandson, the only thing he sees is the basketball player from Philadelphia, Allen Iverson, that's the only thing he can see, he's got the basketball in the house, and it's hard to take that away and say, here's a golf club.  What am I going to do with this?  Beat somebody up on the street with?  They have no idea.  I was talking to Lee, I said we need to build a facility, some type of resort like Pinehurst or something like that nature, 36 holes of golf, tennis courts and Olympic-sized swimming pools, and try to find a venue where a parent can afford to send their child for 6, 8 weeks during the school breaks and summer, and those that can't afford to send their kids there, we set up some type of program through the schools where if their grade level, B+ or whatever the number may be, that we will find a sponsor for these kids to come and learn golf, swimming, tennis, because we're still lacking in those areas.

And I think we have enough retired school teachers, enough retired business people, and we have enough young people that have graduated from college today that don't have anything to do that would be more than willing to run these programs for probably a minimum fee.  But until we do that, until we find a place that we can send our kids where they can get professional help, not just John Doe, but get is someone that knows the game inside and out and who knows the administration side of the game, then we'll see a major change.  But right now, you've got to just hold the dog by the tail.

Q.  To follow up on this, I worked at a golf club in the DC area and a lot of African Americans played there, worked there, but none of the golf process or the people who owned the place were African American.  Do you see yourself and a lot of black golfers getting into owning clubs, and also Morgan State, the new program you talked of, do you see them reaching out to the community and black young people who are interested in golf?

JIM THORPE:  It's just not necessarily blacks, African Americans.  There are many, many cultures of people that can't afford to pay the prices that we have today in different golf courses.  When I leave here on Monday, I'm stopping at a place just before I get to -- I think it's Hendersonville, North Carolina, there's a black lady there that has about 900 acres of land, and I'm looking to purchase about 400 acres of it.  It was passed down from parent to parent to parent, and I made her a little offer at 1500 an acre, I don't know what it's worth, but if I could pick up like 400 acres of that particular land, then I could see myself building something of that nature.  I don't think it would be the first black owned and built golf course that we have in the country, but it would be something where the program I just talked about, that we can do that.

I think I know enough people and have enough friends, and know enough athletes that would put up enough money that we could do something of this nature and no one would be hurting from their individual pocket.  I personally think every school in the country should have a golf program.  Golf teaches kids a lot about themselves, discipline, sportsmanship, there are many, many things you can learn from just basically being around golf course.

To play on a professional level, you have to work your butt off.  You have to do 24/7 every day, eat, sleep and drink it.  And Tiger Woods is a living example.  I don't think my game has ever been as good as Tiger, because we came out of two different eras.  But there's a young man that wants to be the best.  He doesn't need the money.  He doesn't care about making a check, he just wants to win.  It's just something that we've never heard of before.  When we started we just wanted to make a cut and a decent check to take care of some bills back home.  I can't compare it.

But I will say that the guys like Sam Snead, God bless him, he's dead and gone, Hogan, Byron Nelson, all of those guys that came along before we came along, they kind of set the stage for us.  It doesn't make a difference if you're black or white.  Of course blacks struggled with golf.  Golf was a rich white man's game.  As soon as Charlie came along, he broke the barrier, so basically we're just passing the torch.  And I think after -- I think golf spectators today don't look at golfers as being black or white.  I think they look at me as a player, Tiger as a player, and I think they understand the game.  This is a new millennium, we're not living in the days of the 1940s.  Even though my dad was a greenskeeper for 47 years, some of the stuff he told me I won't repeat.  Because to me it was stupid.  And I don't think you should allow me to stoop that low.

If you wanted to call me a bunch of names, you don't have to do it.  We don't have to retaliate.  Call people what you want to, but if you touch me that's a different story.  But call me what you want to.  Names don't hurt you.  I love Charlie to death, but somebody has to do that.  And listen, I played the game for a long time.  I've never had one incident.  I've never been called any names, which I was bigger than Charlie, and meaner than Charlie deep down, and I didn't mind breaking a club on somebody.  It doesn't bother me, I had four other brothers, I had to fight.  But if you stoop to that level, they continue to do that, they find a weakness, just give them the finger or something, and keep going.  People are stupid to fuss and argue.  Even now -- we'll be on the golf course playing some place and guys will drive by, hey niggers, niggers, niggers, and I'll wave to them.  I don't care about that word.  But there are people that do, people that do.  Don't get me wrong.  But I'm one of those guys where stuff like that doesn't bother me.  I just want to live a nice, happy life, raise my family, my girls, my grandkids, and let bygones be bygones.

But I know it wasn't easy for Charlie and Lee.  But on the other hand, it wasn't easy for Jackie Robinson and all the rest of them.  It wasn't easy for Sam Snead and those guys, I don't know.  But I'm not going to bring 1945 into 2002.  Those days are behind us.  If we allow, those days will repeat themselves, we just have to strive forward to see that they don't.

And I think one of ways to do this is to constantly try like hell to introduce kids to people that don't care about those things.  I've never found a bad guy in golf.  There are people you meet that you might not like, but I've never really found a bad guy.  I played the PGA TOUR for 21 years or whatever, and I've met all the guys, talked to all the guys.  You might not like them, but you don't fight and call each other names.  So you can learn a lot from these guys.  You can learn a lot about yourself.  So we take all those things into stride and just kind of be your own person and do your own thing and don't put yourself in that situation, life can be pretty simple.

Q.  I don't want to belabor this, but it's so interesting, your observations.  I've thought for some time the solution for the problem was the high schools, maybe grade schools, have golf programs, because after all, you played football and you came up through a school program.  That's how you learned to play football.  Is that correct, could the secondary schools, could they relieve this problem if they had golf programs?

JIM THORPE:  Oh, yeah, I think you could definitely -- most definitely you could eliminate some of the problems with the golf programs, because football players, we're rough.  We walk around campus, and especially you get your letters on your back, we don't care  about nothing.  And I think the football program, we probably had more problems with the football program than any other program in school.  So I think that if we can -- golf is a lot easier game.  You don't have to be a bully to play golf.  I mean you can be a nerd and play golf, where basically you couldn't be a nerd and play football.

So I think that if we can introduce these programs, and we can find the funding for those programs, and these programs are not cheap.  Someone has to run the program, they need venues to play.  If we can somehow get Congress to fund these programs, like the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or whatever, and get the right people in there to run these programs and run a tight ship, let those kids know I'm the boss.  You either do it my way or you're out of here.  And believe me, I think every school would be much better.

Q.  Can you talk about the conditions here in terms of the heat and the hillyness of the course, the length of the course.  Is it going to eliminate a great number of players, and basically is it going to be the most fit and also most skilled players, a combination there of who will succeed this week?

JIM THORPE:  Yeah, there's no doubt the heat -- I think the heat is going to play a major role, here.  The golf course is very hilly, probably the toughest we walked this year.  We walked at Firestone for the PGA Championship a couple of weeks ago, but it was nothing like this.  A lot of holes are set down in the valley, and the heat seems to lay there on you.  Yesterday we played 9 holes, and by the time we finished the third hole we were wet from head to toe.

Yes, the heat will play a major role.  I think the guys that aren't in the best condition, but guys like Tom Kite that works out all the time, he's in great shape, I don't know about Watson, Watson just doesn't play that much anymore, but, yeah, I think the guys in great condition -- heat doesn't bother me.

I kind of like the heat.  I don't really care for the up and down the hills, but the guys that are in better condition, it's no doubt are the guys you have to beat this week.  And the fairness of the golf course, since I played here last year, I only played nine holes yesterday, and I seen that one change on the front nine.  The back nine I'll play sometime this evening, I don't think -- it's the type of golf course I don't feel they needed to do a lot to.

It's the type of golf course that will probably give up more birdies than any other golf course we play, the fairways are a fraction wider, the greens seem to be receiving shots.  And I think the golf course will give up birdies.  I don't think this golf course will play near as tough as the one we played last year.  And I could be dead wrong, too.  It could play twice as hard.  From what I seen yesterday, I don't think the golf course -- let's call it U.S. Open toughness, as we speak, at this point.  I think probably starting tomorrow evening sometime they'll double cut the greens, put a roll on them, get them up to about 13 on the stimpmeter, and I think you'll see a different type of Open course.

I think the one thing that would be tough here, I noticed around the green on the front 9 yesterday, around the greens, three or four yards off the green, the rough is probably thick, four or five inches thick, and that could play a major role, if the greens get firm.  I played the front nine yesterday, and hit a wood off the 4th -- I think it's a par-3, hit a wood there, hit a wood for a second shot on the next two holes.  And I don't know whether 6 wood, 7-wood, 5-woods, whatever they might be, but that's playing the golf course is playing a pretty good length.

I personally feel the back 9 is much tougher than the front.  If you hit 3-woods on the front nine, on the back 9 he'd be in the latter woods.  10, you can make birdie if you can, if you don't get stupid off the tee.  11 is a pretty decent hole.  12, the par-3.  13, the par-5.  Once you leave the par-5, 13, you have to hit the ball very, very well.  Even though 13 is a short hole down the hill, you have to place the ball very well there.  I believe the greens are will get firmer -- I think they'll firm up, where we won't play 14 as a backstop and let the spin hit it back, we'll have to hit it nice and high to feather it in, before you can play.

15, 16, 17, 18 are probably the four best holes I've ever finished on.  If you can play 15, 16, 17, 18 even par for the week, you're going to have a chance at winning the golf tournament.  17 is playing about 490, based on what one of guys was telling me, 490 is hard for an old man.  We're not Tiger.  Tiger can handle that.

But it's a beautiful golf course.  The one thing that we will be able to do is find some shade.  We can walk to the edges of the wood and find some shade.  We'll drink plenty of water.  I just drive to Atlantic City, I've always got an out.

Q.  You had a great deal of success on the Senior Tour as opposed to the regular Tour.  You had some success there, but nothing like this.  What's been the difference?

JIM THORPE:  You know, I think we learn as we get older.  I probably never matured until I was 45 or 50 years old.  I've always smelled the roses.  I've done everything I probably wanted to do.  I never prepared.  But when I was -- when I left the regular Tour about 46 or 47 years old, I kind of prepared myself for the Senior Tour.  I got myself in good shape, worked on my golf game.  I didn't care to go to the horse track, or casinos, but I didn't go there and stay all night and all day, two or three days at a time.  I went in and visited for two or three hours and left.  I stopped smoking, even though you see me with a cigar in my mouth, but that's to relieve tension or whatever, and prepared myself better for this career than I did the first time.  The first time, I'm not going to say I was robbed, but I did enjoy myself.  This time around the wife seemed to have a better hold on me.  When I was younger, she couldn't hold me, but now -- this time I just prepared myself better.  And plus I had enough common sense to know this was the last time around.

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