Could be. Also, my mother worked for Nordstrom [the department store] and my dad was never afraid to dress in his own way. So, yeah, I figure if I'm out there I might as well try to look good.
Do you surf?
No.
You look like you should.
Yeah, I guess I do have that look about me. I am a huge admirer of surfers, though. They don't look to make money — they just love to surf. They live from day to day and wave to wave.
Do you think the Tour is too staid?
I think the Tour's extremely conservative, maybe because the other sports are in so much trouble in the eyes of the media. Basketball's got its problems, the NFL's got its problems, baseball's got its problems. So the Tour is going to be as conservative as it can and not step outside its bubble.
How would you jazz it up?
I think when they got Justin Timberlake involved in the Vegas tournament, that was a good partnership. It's shocking to me how many people want to play golf. My agency represents several basketball players and a couple of them are obsessed with the game. The Tour could work with the NBA or other leagues and combine the two and have some fun with that. But I can't fault Finchem for trying to give the Tour a good image; we all want to keep it that way.
When did you realize you had world-beating talent?
I could swing it well [as a kid], but I wasn't any great prodigy. Playing in Southern California there were a lot of great players, and I wasn't as good as most of them. When I moved to Texas, for some reason my game just got better. I always dreamed of playing on Tour, but I don't think I was ever like Tiger where I had posters of Nicklaus on the wall that drove me. I wanted to play but I didn't have that crazy drive.
But your dad did. He was hard on you, right?
At times. It always came out of a good place, but he just wasn't the best communicator. He sees that now. He'd say things like, "How did you hit that shot right there?" Most of the time he was a positive influence — he was always right there to help me out — but sometimes it was a little negative. He was just a parent trying to do everything he could when he didn't need to.
Mentally, you have had your struggles on the golf course. Is that a result of your father always demanding perfection?
No, that's just me. That's been one of my weaknesses: trying to be perfect. And then I realized golf has nothing to do with perfection. It has to do with getting the ball in the hole in the quickest time possible. I haven't seen anyone play perfect yet, and I don't think I ever will.
You've said a turning point for you was the 36-hole U.S. Open qualifier in Dallas last June, when you shot 73-63. What happened?
Sometimes you play these U.S. Open qualifiers and it feels you're playing just because you're supposed to play them. But last year I really wanted to play well. I played the course two days beforehand and I just really wanted to make it. And that kind of made it worse. I played [the first round] expecting bad things to happen, and my psych guy [Neale Smith, who was caddying for Mahan]] said this is no way to play golf.
What did he say exactly?
He didn't say a whole lot, actually. It was very simple: "What you are doing is so bad, so negative, so stupid. You're way better than this. You're going to have to change if you want to be a better player." So after good shots, he made me pump my fist and say, "Good shot." I said it out loud. He wanted to make sure I knew that what I was doing was good, that I wasn't the complete idiot that I thought I was.
Too bad you didn't get that pep talk three years earlier.
I probably wasn't ready to hear it then. Every time you struggle, you need to understand why you're struggling, and most of the time when you're struggling, it's not as bad as it seems. That's how I feel right now. Am I struggling? Maybe, but I know what I need to do. I'm not worried.
Were you surprised that it took you 122 starts to win on Tour?
Well, it's different on Tour. The faults you got away with in college are magnified. It took a while to get over that. But it's hard to win out here. Look at the guys who win on Tour: [Jim] Furyk's won, what, 13 times? Seems like he should have won 30 times. Charles Howell has won twice — that seems like an anomaly. Sergio hadn't won in three years [before the Players]. What Tiger does is pretty magical. Five, six wins per year is not normal.
Tell me about Monique.
Oh, man.
