An Interview With:
BOB LEWIS, JR.

CRAIG SMITH: So what has the last several months been like, when you finally have gone from being named captain to actually getting down and doing the job.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: You're being kind saying last couple months. It's been about a year and a half now I've been at this pretty heavily. I probably have seen more Amateur golf tournaments over the last year and a half than most people have. I did just as much last year as I did this summer, really. Trying to learn the players the best I could. So it's been a very hectic schedule for me.

CRAIG SMITH: In a nutshell, are they a little bit better than when you were playing for the Amateur title or what's the difference? What are you seeing? Because you probably were not heavily involved in watching Amateur golf until your mission came up here.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Right. The game has changed so much that the players are hitting the ball so far now and even when they stretch the holes back they're just driving the ball so far. That's the biggest difference. The golf courses like Oakmont though when you have these type of greens, it does bring you back to reality. Because that's the one thing that nobody's figured out yet. There's some secret to putting here. And Oakmont wins the battle here. I'll guarantee you that. I don't care how far they're hitting it.

CRAIG SMITH: Let me ask you one more and then open it up: The spirit of the team, I know that one of the things you wanted to do was to have the Walker Cup be so meaningful to the players involved and representing their country; have you found that?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Absolutely. I've put a lot of time into getting to know the players. I wanted them to see me out at the tournaments. I just felt that it was that important. I think the Walker Cup, which to me has always been the greatest amateur event going, something that kind of happened, I don't know what it was, but I get a feeling that this group that they are really anxious to play this Walker Cup.

For several guys that did not turn pro, they decided to stay Amateur to play in the Walker Cup and the rest of the guys are a little bit aways from their career yet. So I get a very good feeling.

We have had two practice sessions so we had a chance to bond as a team and I can assure you that we will be well prepared and we will play as a team over at Ganton. There is no doubt about that.

Q. Can you talk about how the GB&I team. We understand it has spent a lot of time at Ganton probably maybe doing like you're doing, two or three practice sessions at the venue itself. It's a completely different venue probably than your team has played in the past. Does that concern you? How have you addressed that?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: You make a very good point and that is I think the hardest thing to overcome. They have actually played the golf course probably two or three times. They have tournaments there also. I don't know whether all their players played in the tournament. But the thing that concerns me the most is if we would get there and not get different weather conditions. I wouldn't want to arrive and have like perfect weather conditions for four practice days where the wind only blows one direction. That's the only thing that concerns me.

Our players, I played on four teams. I played twice over there. I didn't have any trouble adjusting. These players of today aren't going to have any trouble adjusting, as long as we get the opportunity to see the golf course in its different form. That's the only thing that really concerns me right now.

Q. Can you talk about the Oakmont golf course, how you think it played this week and your thoughts of it overall?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Boy, if there's a harder golf course out there, I just don't know what it is. Oakmont is -- what they have done here, I love what they have done to this golf course and I know there was some controversy over all the trees that were taken down. Several friends of mine are members here. But I think it just turned out fantastically well. I really do.

The course is playing fast and I think it's actually playing fair. I have seen these greens may be even harder and faster than they are this week. So it's just a very demanding course, especially around the greens. It's very difficult to get your iron shots close to the hole.

Just watching the match this morning out there, they were hitting some pretty good shots, but it's just difficult to get the ball close to the hole where you really have a birdie putt. So now have you these long lag putts that are very difficult at Oakmont. It takes a tremendous amount of touch to be able to play here.

CRAIG SMITH: What are you looking for when you have put in your opinion for values on players? What kind of a team do you want, team values, team skills?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: I think I'm very happy with what the USGA has done this year, because their focus from the very beginning when I was named captain was to try to pick the 10 best players. That's what they wanted to do. I think that's always been the general rule, but sometimes there's a balance, they want a balance of older, younger or that type of thing.

I think this time they just basically said whoever the best 10 players are, that's who we're going to put on the team, and I expect that will happen.

There's two players to be named later today, in fact, probably around 3:30. I expect that that's what they will do. They will try to pick the two best remaining players to put on this team. I think that gives you your best chance to win. It is my job then to try to pair them up and figure out a way to get the right players together in alternate shot and that type of thing. So that's where my challenge will come in when we get farther down the road.

Q. So as captain you're not concerned by the fact that most of your or most all of your players are young players that haven't had this kind of experiences in the past, a Jerry Courville or someone like that, that might bring that kind of age and experience to the team; it wouldn't bother you if they weren't picked in the last two?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: No, it wouldn't but I'll tell you, I would love to have had a couple -- we still might. Because I don't know who the next two will be yet. But I was hoping that some of these guys would play themselves on the team; a couple of them that have made a pretty good effort at it.

There is something to be said for experience; I would give you that. But in this day and age, the game is moving very quickly. And these young players are far advanced from where they were during my day. One of their best players as I understand it is a kid named Skelton who is 18 years old. Okay. And there you go. When is the last time that we put an 18-year-old on our team and look what he's doing this week at the Amateur here? Casey Wittenberg. So they are maturing a lot earlier now. There's no doubt about that.

CRAIG SMITH: Put your thoughts out there about bringing the Walker Cup back.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: I think anybody that really knows me, I was just a fierce competitor, match-play competitor. And I put every ounce of my energy over the last year and a half to figuring out a way to do this. That means from getting to know the players, to trying to -- I was at Ganton. I have just put a lot of time into this.

I feel like I'm fairly well organized. I think can I bring a few things to the table, some of my match-play experience and I think maybe we made a few mistakes in match play over the last couple of Walker Cups, just carelessness more than anything else. And I'm hoping that we can get focused as a team and try not to make some of those mistakes so that we can give ourselves a little better chance to win this time.

Q. The team at Ocean Forest, from what you understand afterwards, because you break down why we didn't do as well as we probably should have, it seemed like a lot of them were focused on other things than the Walker Cup when they were there. Turning pro, contracts, all those kind of things. How do you deal with that and also what is your philosophy in regards to a lot of these kids having not had this experience, we don't want to do things that maybe you wouldn't do. How do you interact with them in regards to, I don't want to go down as low as club selection but some of those aspects?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: I hope that one of the things, because of the fact that I've been out there so much we have had two practice sessions and they know me fairly well and they know what I stand for and what I believe in. I'm going to pretty much run the show. That's going to be the bottom line. We're going to play as a team, we're going to do everything as a team. We're not going to have some of the distractions that have popped up in the past. I think they understand that. They know where I'm coming from.

I've been honest with them and I just am trying to get them to understand the importance of this event and how much more fun it is to go to the closing ceremony as a team, as a winning team and the dinner that night and those type of things that I experienced four times as a winner and didn't -- and I talked to some other players and captains -- which I've talked to a lot, the last couple of captains , so I know very well and they are great guys and were good captains.

So I tried to get as much knowledge as I possibly could over the last couple of years. I'm still talking to people. Talking to Crenshaw. I mean, I have just got a lot in my mind and have done a lot of things over the last year and a half to prepare myself for this, hoping that I will then be able to make the right decisions at the right time. There's no guarantee on that. There's no perfect scenario. I'm just trying to give myself the best shot at putting the right people together and making the right decisions on the pairings and how we pair them up and how we go at it.

I'm hoping that the players, because of what we have been through over the last year and a half, and how well they know me, will play and will get excited and want to play for a team and forget about, I call it playing for the moment, and forgetting about your individual stats for a change. This isn't a question of how many points you get. This is a point of us getting 12-and-a-half points, because that's what it takes.

That half point, which I will be stressing hard over there, that half point is extremely important in Walker Cup play. You could get only a half point for the whole Walker Cup but it could be the final half point to get to us 12-and-a-half points. In my eyes that person would be the hero.

Q. You guys spent a couple days at Laurel Valley; how did that trip come about?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: That was just a great trip. Because at that stage we already had eight of the players. I would have loved to have had 10, but we had eight. So I had a chance there then to bond even more. I had a chance to play a lot of alternate shot and do a lot of different pairs and try to figure out maybe who gets together well and that type of thing. I think we accomplished a lot there and we had a great casual dinner there on Thursday night where we sat around and talked for a couple hours.

Trip Kuehne was on the team. He's an integral part of my team because he's been on a past Walker Cup team. He really, really doesn't want to go out on a losing side this time. He's very focused. I think the kids respect him because he's done a lot in golf. He's a little bit older, but yet he's only 31 and he plays their game. He hits it farther than they do, which is kind of unusual for a Mid Am player.

So I think it just went very well and I think that the guys would agree with me when I said it was important to the process I think.

Q. How did you end up at Laurel Valley?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Well, I kind of came up with the idea. I said the only way we could do something like this would be to find a way to get close to the site and Tom Usher is a good friend of mine and I called Tom and asked him if he could go to the club and I had talked to the USGA first to make sure that they would support it if we could pull it off.

Low and behold in about a two-week period we pulled this thing off. That's not easy to do logistically and everything. To make all that happen, for the club to -- and the club was gracious and they were going out of their way. It was a great experience. We got everybody there and then everybody just buzzed them over for their qualifying round at the Amateur. So it worked out really well; it really did.

CRAIG SMITH: Talk in general terms about the pairs; what's important to you? Long hitter with good putter, experience and youth together? How do you balance it?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Well, is this going international or is this staying in this room when I go --

CRAIG SMITH: Just in general terms.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: In general terms, I'm going to try to play probably like players together. I'm not going to get too tricky on the thing. I want guys that play similar games to play together. I'm going to be less concerned about friendships, although I will talk to the guys and get a feel on that. If I do feel that there's two guys that know each other really well and their games are also similar, well, then that's probably a pretty good paring. But I will go more for like games before I will go for good buddies.

Q. How do you offset the -- Peter McEvoy brought a lot of emotion to his team last time around. There will be probably similar emotion, as well as the fact that they will be playing there. How do you offset his four years as a Walker Cup captain? Basically he's got -- Gary Wilson is almost like a captain himself, will be a captain one day.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Now Peter is not the captain this year. Garth McGimpsey is. And I was going to say, I will tell you something, I think if you interviewed anybody over in England that knows me, they know where the emotion will be. Because I wear it on my sleeve as well as anybody, and I always have. When I play, to my detriment sometimes -- the modern player you know everything is low key, everybody, you stay the same. That wasn't me. I wore it on my sleeve. They know I'm that way. That's the way I am. I'll be very much surprised if these guys aren't really charged up. I'll be amazed if they're not.

CRAIG SMITH: In general terms again: Good players play, players who aren't playing so well sit?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: We're going to play as a team and I think that's part of how a team functions. I really believe in this. Several of my past Walker Cup guys would step up and say I'm not playing very well. You need to do that as a team. The captain needs to know that and the player needs to, for the benefit of the team, needs to let you know that. I think we're going to try to play -- I would love to play -- if everybody's playing well, that's a perfect scenario and that's normally not the case. So we'll try to play -- I would like to get everybody to play at least two matches.

The old theory was a couple guys play four, some of the guys play three. That will not be my theory. We're going to play to win as a team and I'm going to have the team help me make some of those decisions. If I don't like what they're saying or it's not going that way then I'll have to make the hard decisions myself. But I really believe that we'll have a pretty good team and I just get this feeling that they're going to have an understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. So I think a lot of this will sort itself out as we go forward.

CRAIG SMITH: Tell me a little bit about your schedule when you go over.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: We leave on the 29th out of New York. We're going to fly -- we're going to play, decided to go over and play a couple of the British Open courses so we're going to play Royal Birkdale on Saturday afternoon without any sleep. That will be fun. And then Sunday morning we'll play Royal Saint Annes and Lytham, is that right? And we'll take the bus up to Ganton. So we'll get to Ganton late Sunday afternoon. Then it will be a case of just maybe some relaxation or hitting. I'll probably go right out to the course and probably walk the course because I've been there, but I would like to have a little more information. So I'll probably go out there and walk around to get more information. Then you got the four and a half days of practice and that will just depend on, I've had different captains, some were pretty loose and you kept it loose and didn't practice that much. And I had a couple of others, Jimmy Gabrielson in '81 that had been on a losing Walker Cup team and we played 36 holes a day and just, he killed us. But he didn't want to lose and we won for him. So there's a balance there. I think it's a case of getting a fix on how the kids are playing and what's going on and if I think things are going pretty well I'll loosen it up a little bit. If I don't, then we'll keep playing until we get focused and get ready to go. Because bottom line is I want them loose, but you got to be playing well. And I am a believer that each player has to worry about his own game. So if somebody needs to hit balls or do something, then they need to go do that. I can't have so much control where I'm saying we're playing alternate shot this afternoon, everybody is playing alternate shot and that's it. If you got a guy that's not playing well and he needs to hit balls, you got to be able to get him to the range and work on his game. Because it's still an individual game when it gets down to the final analysis at the end.

CRAIG SMITH: I guess one more or last thing here, the commitment you've made to do this, it's not something that you have been able to walk away from business. I mean, you're trying to do two things at once here. Tell us just to have it down, what you do and how you're managing two things at once.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: You might throw my wife in there too, but I have a steel tubing company and I got a very good general manager. So I can delegate quite a bit of authority. So I got that balance between still running, I'm still president and CEO of my company. The steel industry hasn't exactly been the greatest of industries over the last couple years, so we have been fighting through it like everybody else. But I do have a good management team so I've been able to delegate quite a bit. But it is a difficult balance. But I had that same problem when I was playing all the time. Then I had young kids and so I always had that battle of trying to figure out a way to balance it all out. I did a fairly good job. This is a little more difficult because I've had to travel so much. I haven't had to, I just wanted to. So it's made it a little tougher, but I've really enjoyed every minute of it.

Q. What do you see as the biggest challenge for winning back the cup?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: The biggest challenge for winning back the cup I believe would be us getting a good fix on Ganton Golf Club. We have to learn Ganton Golf Club and we have to learn it fairly quickly. And the other thing you need to do is you need to putt well as a team. I'm going to teach and preach little ball until hell freezes over basically. Because we have got the big games, we have always had the big games, but you win by getting the ball in the hole. And that's what we're going to try to do. We're going to try to figure out a way to get that ball in the hole somehow. Get them to believe in that a little bit.

Q. Since you said that about Ganton and getting a fix on Ganton, would you like to see it basically questionable or bad weather, because in that case everybody would be more on an even playing field than if it was good weather that they're used to?

BOB LEWIS, JR.: That's exactly what I would like to see. I would like to see us get there and see the wind get up fairly quickly. I would like to see weather conditions just changing every single day. The tougher, the better. What I don't want to see is like a day like four days like today. Now that would be very difficult. Unless it stayed like that for the matches. But that doesn't normally happen. So I'm just hoping that we get -- now we'll be smart enough, I've talked to enough people, I have quite a bit of knowledge on Ganton. I've done some homework there too. We wouldn't be dead in the water, but it would hurt us a lot more if we don't get varying weather conditions over there.

CRAIG SMITH: Bob, thank you for your time.

BOB LEWIS, JR.: Thank you very much.

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