No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 260: Billy Andrade

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Billy Andrade joins to chat about transitioning out of golf, into media, and back into golf on the Champions Tour, staying at Larry David's house, the dramatic first meeting he had with Joe Pesci, and a ton more. We thoroughly enjoyed this run of conversations with some of the most interesting guys on the PGA Tour Champions, and look forward to doing many more of these in the future.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yeah! That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Welcome back to the No-Lang Up Podcast. This is the third Champions Tour podcast in a row. We knocked out all three of these when we were out at the Charles Schwab Championship. Shout out to Stuart Moore from the PGA Tour, from the Champions Tour.

Help set us up with these guys, new exactly who we needed to talk to. And one of these guys was Billy Andrade. Very familiar name for those of you that have followed golf for a long time. Very lengthy career playing golf. Took a few years off. Kind of in his late 40s, did some media work and came back and has had a lot of success out on the PGA tour champions. Great got to talk to, great perspective on a ton of different things in the game, a lot of celebrity run-ins he's had. So really great stories from Billy, a little different energy level than probably the Goidos and Sutherland one, but a great mix of guys between them, him Monti and those other guys. It was a great, great week out there. Before we do launch it here for

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yourself to stock up for the coming year or go ahead and knock out the gift for the Golfour on your list this season. CallawayGolf.com for more information. Take advantage of it while it lasts because the new year is going to turn here and the software is going to go away. So CallawayGolf.com for more information and here's our interview with Billy Andrade. Ladies and gentlemen, The new year is going to turn here and the software is going to go away. So, cowboygolf.com for more information. And here's our interview with Billy Andrade. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No-Lang at Podcasts here at the Charles Schwab Championship here on the PGA Tour Champions.

Sally here, joined by Neil and Tron and we have Billy Andrade here. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you today? I'm doing great. How are you guys? We're doing great. We get to talk golf with you guys is the best. You guys I'm doing great. How you guys? We're doing great. We get to talk golf with you guys as best.

You guys got all the stories. You guys don't have the filter. You don't have the first thing I want to ask is, what did the MLB sponsorship come from? How did that start? So, logo is enormous. Yeah. So, back in the day of the tour championship having a program, which they don't really have one anymore, they always needed a few extra guys to play because Taggart would win 8 and VJ would win 6

and you would need a few extra players. So I played for a few years in the Wednesday program, got paired with Bob Bowman who launched MLB.com and with my affiliation with EMC, which is now Dell Technologies, they were doing some cross promotion, doing some work with MLB.com, with EMC. Bob went out to the Pebble Beach Imvitational as an invite from EMC, which was the sponsor of the tournament. And we had dinner, and he just looked at me and just said, I was getting ready to turn 50 and said, how much for your hat? And I threw him a number and he said, all right,

done, three-year deal. And then I was- I messed up, throw him a big enough number. I guess I did. How did you feel in the exact moment he said yes? It was pretty cool. I was excited because coming out on the Champions Tour, you don't have, like my agent said to me, one of the manufacturers

is giving you an offer to head to toe, which is hat, shoe, ball, glove, clubs, bag, and it was 30 grand. And it was like, in 1988, when I signed my first deal with Tidalist it was it was a little more than that Yeah, so I said you know what? Thanks, but what I'm gonna do is just just see if I can do this on my own So I got a hat deal. I got a bag deal I got sponsored deal because that company like pro-amp relationships mainly. Yeah, you know, it's just You know, you're you're your own brand, right?

You're working for yourself here. You're an independent contractor and you want to do some nice thing. So, you know, the hat deal with NLB came up that way. And how did you see the equipment money, like dry up just over the years? Is that something that people can kind of sense come in? Because that's basically the story from all the way up on the PGA tour these days. Right. I can't really answer to the young guys what they're getting, but obviously that whole landscape

changed. You know, when I first started in 88, nobody was really getting paid a lot to use equipment. And then it got, then it changed. I remember Duval coming out of college, getting a big tidalist deal. Davis Love got a big deal there for, with tidalists there for, I don't know, a long time. Now that's changing again, so it's going back the other way.

So if you can get four or five different companies to represent you and you can add all that up, then it adds up pretty well to have that on the side. Now go out and play and see how well you can do. And I'm with companies that are great. Skechers is great, CVS, health is great, MLB is great, worldwide technologies is my bag sponsor, they're fantastic. That's a lot of free ads we're giving.

So we're giving them a piece of it here. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, Well, I tried to tap into Faxon's data base of stories about you. He didn't give me too much stuff, but he wanted me to ask, because you have to ask him about the first time he met Joe Pesci. Oh, yeah, sure. That's a good one. That was back in 1991. I won back-to-back. I had a great year. I got invited to the Shark Shootout out at Sherwood. It was pretty cool for me. It was my fourth year on tour, and I got paired. My partner was Curtis Strange, who went to Wake Forest, and I idolized as a kid growing up and to play with him was the quote, dream come true kind of thing.

We had a great week, and on Sunday, my wife and I were at the hotel. We played early because West Coast, we had to be done by three o'clock. So we teed off early. We were done at one. And we were taking a red eye. We're going to go back to my buddy's house and have spaghetti dinner.

And he was coming to the hotel. And the red light in the room on the phone, because we had no cell phones back in. The red light was blinking so I had a message and the message was from my friend that hey I'm coming to pick you up which I knew and I'm bringing Joe Pesci with me. I'm like well that's kind of hot. This is right when good fellow is just hit and there Pesci was pretty hot, home alone

was coming out too. Well as I said. Yeah. It was hairy coming out too. Well, it was a set. It was hairy. I mean, yeah. So. Smash just spent this time. That was a seminal roll.

So I got to go to the bathroom before we leave. And we packed up, getting ready to leave the hotel. And so I'm in the bathroom, and my buddy shows up. And says, hey, you ready to go? No, I'm in the bathroom. I'll be right out. And then the door, it's kicked in. There's Joe Pesci standing there, smoking a cigar. He kicked your door in the bathroom. I'll be right out and then the door, it's kicked in, there's Joe Pesci,

standing there smoking a cigar. He kicked your door in? Yeah, and said, let's go. We gotta get going. I'm like, I'm sitting on the john here, I'm going to the bathroom. So it was my intro to him. And then I got in his car and we were driving over

to my buddy's house and down the road. And he said, hey, do you mind if I, that was when you had phones in the cars. Yeah. You mind if I call one of my buddies back in Jersey, he won't believe that I got you in the car with me. So we called this buddy, talk to him, JR, talk to him for a while, and then I kind of looked at him and said, can I call one of my friends? You know, just, they won't believe I'm in the car with you. So that's kind of how it started. And then we became very close and played at Pebble Beach a few times and he's come to Rhode Island and played in our charity event that Fax and I had for years. So how did your buddy

link up with Pes? Well, there are members at Lakeside Golf Club over in Burbank near Universal Studios. It's a great course. So they've played that day. Yeah, Pes, he's a member course and any time they were playing. Yeah, they just, Pesci was a member there and he would always tell me, Hey, Pesci's out here. So I said, well, I'd love to play golf with him eventually. So that connection started with him bringing him out to Sherwood to watch the tournament. It just happened. They showed up a little late. Are you like Faxon?

Do you know every celebrity ever? Pretty much. What's his deal? He knows like absolutely everyone. Brad. Yeah. Yeah. Just through golf, you get to meet all these folks and some guys you connect with and some guys you don't. Kingpin. Kingpin was a fairly brothers production

and my caddy Ziggy grew up with the fairly brothers and he's Ziggy used to caddy for Dr. Fairly all the time at Kirkbrig Country Club in Lincoln, Rhode Island. And so they're all from Cumberland. So I get to meet a new Bobby and Peter through Ziggy and then through Cam Neely as well because Cam, I was with Cam after a LA open when the Bruins came in town to play the Kings. I was in the room at Peter's condo down in Santa Monica where Seabass had to do his, you

know, he had to do his, to see if he was good enough to do this role. So, you know, for a Portland Makers? So yeah, so on to the kitchen. Yeah, right here, Salt Shaker, the whole bit. I was part of that process of him getting that role with Bobby, with Peter and Bobby for, for Dumb and Dumber. And it started there and our relationship started there

and then they started playing in our charity event. And, you know, my brother Jack's been in six of the fairly brothers movies. I've been into my mother's been in one. So it's the cool thing about the fairies is they put all their friends in all their movies. So when you go to a premiere in Rhode Island, every scene, somebody in the crowd is going, there he is.

Look at this. Hey, there's Joey. So you're going to watch your brother's best role? I think his best role, we used to play in checkers with Lenny Clark and me, myself and Irene, and then the girl was breastfeeding the baby, and they all had to go run over to look outside to see this little, you know, this girl's, you know, Tatas breastfeeding the kid, and then Jim Caries' character changes in the supermarket and he comes back and he rides the car into the barber shop, I guess, is what

where they were playing checkers and so I would think my brother, Jack, that that was his best his best role there in that movie. And you were you were recently hanging out with Larry David, was that right? Yeah, so Larry and I have friends through the Fairleys. They all live on Martha's Vineyard in the summer, and I've been over there, played golf with them over there, and Larry, so Larry and I have been friends for a long, long time. So I just called and said, I'm coming out, love to get together, maybe play around a golf, like last Wednesday I wasn't in the program, so maybe we can play on Wednesday, then the fires hit, and he was not going to be in town. I was flying in a Monday to have dinner

Monday night. I just was flying actually flying in and my phone blew up and Larry emailed me and said that because of the fires there he's home and we can do dinner so I just left the you know I got my courtesy car and drove up to Santa Monica and had dinner with them and ended up going to his house first and we watched the end of the Nick game and then went out and had sushi. So I had to play with it. So let me take a photo and we took a photo and I said, I saw my life coach, my sports psychologist, all these young kids have their team. So I figured who better than to be my life coach today at 55 years old than Larry

So I walk in the I walk in the door and the first thing he says is you flew with shorts on And I'm like, yeah, he goes really is that weird is it weird? He goes you didn't see the curb I did on that and I guess is a curb Enthusiasm he gets on an airplane and the guy sitting next to him is got hairy legs and it really spooked him out. So, I never thought of that. I have hairy legs and I fly in shorts all the time. Yeah, me too. I don't really have hairy legs, but I didn't think

it was that big deal, but Larry thought it was. So, give me a sense, Larry David, on camera versus off camera. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, And he just got divorced, so he was staying in the condo on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica where all the famous people go after they get divorced. So I walked in one day and he- There was a lot of quote- air quotes being thrown around as you say that. And I walked in one day and he was getting a massage from this woman and he was, he was she was hurting him and he was just yelling and screaming the whole time.

And it was just hilarious. And then we went, I took Bill Koss and I went to dinner with him. This is a very, very funny story. So I just emailed him and said, hey, I'm coming in for the LA Open after Pebble Beach. You know, you get any room at the end. And he says, yeah, you can stay. But you have to leave on Thursday because I got other people coming in. So I get their Sunday

He's got a girlfriend that came over and they're watching the Grammys and I went to bed. I was tired I just flew in from Pebble now it's Wednesday and we're going to dinner and I got Bill Haas and and it was actually the table next to us was the Gretzkis with Dustin Johnson in the 16-year-old Polina. That's when they met that night and they ended up hooking up and getting together, right? So that was the first time they met. How about that? They were next door at the next table over.

But anyway, so we're walking in and it's the first round it's Thursday and I got to check out and I got to get a hotel room because Larry's got people coming in and he had his buddy Nick Stevens with him who's he's an agent and did some stuff with the Seinfeld stuff so as we're walking in I've asked Larry three times like you know when do I need to leave you know check out like I'm playing late do I check out in the morning or can I come back after one of these one of these other folks coming in and he said, no you're good. I said, okay, you know, I asked him again.

He said, no, no you're good, you're good. So I don't know what that means. So we're walking into his restaurant and I say to Nick, I go, Nick, what's the deal? I've asked him three times. He says he's got people coming in. I don't know when I'm need to leave and he says I'm good. He goes, he said you're good. He goes, let me, you made the cut. I mean when you mean I made the cut he goes see it's a Jewish thing no Jew

Would commit to someone for a whole week if they don't really know him that well Okay, so you commit for half a week and then you know if I'm a pain in the Yeah, if I'm a pain in the ass and he can just say, well, I got people coming in, he had nobody coming in. Yeah, that's brilliant. So, you know what, it's absolutely brilliant. So if you, you know, if you're, you know, we have a summer place in Rhode Island and, you know, if we don't really know the folks coming in, say, hey, well, we can only go like three

or four days and then, if there, can we come up for a few days in the summer? Sure, yeah, no problem. No problem. But it was really funny. So I made the cut so I was there the whole week. So I didn't get kicked out. Do you like going out to LA? I love it.

I love LA. Do you feel like you're done with it after a week? Or do you want to stay? No, no, I'm just like, all right, cool. I'm good. I want to turn this off now. No, I'm good. I'm good with it.

Yeah, no, it's a good for a week. It's good to see all the famous people. I enjoy where I live and I enjoy Georgia and I enjoy Rhode Island. And it's always fun to go to LA because you know, you're always playing good golf courses and it's a good vibe, but it's nice to go back home. What's your favorite course of the bunch out there? You know, the whole Pebble Beach area is fantastic. You know, Riviera now is just unbelievable. I mean, when

we played there back in the day, from, you know, 88 was my rookie year. The course was always in terrible shape. I equated to like a, this beautiful old whore that has just been run down and rung wet. Like she's so tired and she's just well past her peak, well past her prime. And that's what Riviera was just this great golf course, just awesome, but it was always in terrible shape, especially when we got there in February. And it was just so sad because at that time,

they had a couple thousand members. Every Monday they would have two programs, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. So the golf course never could rest. It could never get in good shape. And that's totally changed now. They only have like 300 members. I think you could play a US Open there any week of the year. It's like Pebble Beach.

Pebble Beach, when I first on the tour in the late 80s it was owned by the Japanese I think owned it and until Peter Euberoth and Arnold Palmer and and Clint Eastwood and that group bought it. Now they've restored it in Pebble Beach. You can go there any given day any given week and it's an unbelievable shape. It's fantastic. And that's the way Riviera was. It was just never in good shape and now it is and it's really cool to play. So those courses are great. I love going over to Bel Air and seeing some friends there.

Mac Davis, the old singer from, what was that movie? North Dallas 40. Mac is a legend up there at Bel Air. So when I come in town I usually get around in with him and it's funny like like I feel like everything I think about LA a lot of it is through curb enthusiasm right where the owner of the golf course in curb enthusiasm the Japanese guy he's got the swan and all that like

that's kind of how I think I don't know who owns Riviera now, but that's kind of how I think of Riviera. Or like you talking about the guy or you're getting divorced, like I just think of Cheryl on the show. Right. Who you're talking about. Right, it's, when you're with the guy,

you're in an episode. And that year that I stayed with them, they were filming. And I played in the pro-AM in the morning and in the afternoon I went down and it was near LAX and he ended up putting me in one of the episodes. So I was a doctor. And only two people called and said, hey I saw you on Caribbean Ecclesiastes. One was John Houston who has not called me since and that was 15 years ago, 10 years ago.

And Jerry Hoss, my old college roommate, golf coach at Wake Forest, he called me too. That was it. So I had two people that noticed that I was a doctor and I'm curing me, and things he has. Maybe it was a privilege medical conversation. Yeah. It felt weird comment on that. For folks that don't watch PGA Tour Champions on a week-to-week basis, talk to us about what the differences are and the courses you guys play. I mean, is it just T's move forward?

What's the difference in your mind? I think that, well, course setup on the PGA Tour changed as I got older. And the change was like 6.6 and 6. So like the first few days, they would have 6 hard pins, 6 medium pins and 6 kind of easy pins. And then towards the end of my career it seemed like first round every pin was hard. 18 hard pins every single day, every single week. So the golf course is changed in that respect. Out here you're setting up a course for a 50 year old and you're setting up a course for you may have a guy who's 70 that's playing in it

So there's a couple holes where if there's force carry you can't go all the way back Where you know you can't have some guys in the field it can't carry water or can't carry a hazard So they have to move the tease up on a few holes. So I think the biggest difference is that On the PGA tour you have two or three or four par fours that are over 500 yards and out here we don't have that. We're a little short in that. We'll have maybe one ballbuster par four on each nine that you have to pay attention to where on the regular tour seems like a lot of par fours or ballbuster holes.

What was your view of the champions tour? While you're in, let's say you're in your prime on the PGA tour, what was your view of the champions tour and how is that view differ from actually having experienced it for several years now? That's a great question because when you're on the PGA tour, you're in that bubble, didn't really watch much of it. I watched more of it when I was younger,

when I was not on the tour, and the Champions Tour was first started. And remember going out to Newport Country Club, I had the golf digest pro-an and watching the, you know, Sam's Need played there. Anel Palmer was there. All these, you know, the guys that started the Champions Tour. I remember going out and watching them play. But once I got on the PGA Tour, I didn't really, you know, kind of out of mind, you're not really paying attention to it. You see a little bit of it, but not much. And then coming out, I didn't know how I was gonna be,

how the guys were gonna accept me, because it's been a long time since I've seen a lot of these guys when I turned 50. And it was, I was blown away on the camaraderie. I was blown away about, you know, everybody embracing me and, you know, giving me a hug saying, you know, this is, you're gonna have a great time out here. This is a great tour.

It's a lot more relaxed. It's fun. As I say, are you having a good time out here? Oh my gosh, it's ridiculous. It's just, you know, I did TV when I was 46, 7 and 8. I quit and at 49 I started practicing to get ready for 50. And my goal was mentally that I'm going to enjoy this. I played the tour for 25 years.

You don't really realize how much of a grind it is and how much pressure there is. I mean, you get pressure to survive, pressure to keep your card. Now you build a family, now you have bills to pay. All those things kind of go with it and you're riding this ride. At the end of my career, I wasn't playing very good and it was a good break for me. My wife was going back to seminary.

She's now a Presbyterian minister. My kids were in middle school and high school, so I was home more. And I did this TV thing, and I enjoyed working for the golf channel. I was out on the, I was, I was a roving, on-course reporter commentator, and I enjoyed being out there and watching. I learned a lot because, you know, as a player, you think every player is making every putt, and then you go out and you're following either woods or mickle sin or you know whoever the hottest player is that week and you realize they don't make everything and they do chip well they all chip it pretty close and you

know they have the stress level isn't that hard for the great players you know they chip it close and you know they don't they don't have to make five footers every single hold the safe shots and stuff and so I I learned a lot in those three years, but my goal was to come out on the Champions Tour and have fun and not care a whole lot and just enjoy the process. If I have a bad day, it's no big deal. And with that mindset, I've played great.

I've really embraced this tour and I've enjoyed it. You know, the guys that we're pricks on the railing tour are less prickly on the chain. It's an example. Not really, but you know who they are. The edge is not like the PGA tour. I didn't realize how much pressure the tour was until I got away from it to see how much pressure there is on surviving and you know if you missed three, four cuts in a row how you dealing with that and then having to try to get it back and get it back you

always get that pressure in the frontal lobe here of grinding to survive and if you did it as long as I did it, you understand what I'm talking about. What was the toughest part about getting into TV? I would say that the hardest thing is that on the playing golf, which is the only thing I've known my whole life, and that's my job, you know every day where you stand. You know that when you leave the course, if you shot 75, you're a 75 shooter and I got to get better and I got to go practice and work on my game to get better. When you shoot 65, you leave the golf course and you feel pretty good about yourself

and you can't wait to get up the next day and build on that 65 and try to win a golf tournament. When you do TV, you have a few friends that may call you and say, hey, you did a nice job today, but you really don't, you don't know where you stand. So TV breeds insecurity and I've always been very secure in my life and my, and what I do and you like me great if you don't, that's fine too. But when you do TV, you, you really don't have any clue. I didn't get a whole lot of phone calls from the golf channel saying you did a really good job. I did have a couple calls when I was the analyst that I was slumping in the chair too much. And I had to sit up more.

That was like the only tip I got. So when I first started with the golf channel, I was a whole announcer. And then I did some analyst work on a few tournaments and then I was an on-course commentator. So I did all the different roles that you can do and I did it with different producers. So I had some golf channel people, then I had Lance Barrow with CBS and I had Tommy Roy with NBC and they all do it differently. So you have to try to figure out how you can maneuver all this.

And it takes time. It takes time to be with a group that, that's why NBC is so good because they've been doing it forever. And CBS does it a different way, but they're very, very good at it too, because they do it forever. And then when you could discuss that, if you'd like. And then when you see Fox and they first start off doing the US Open when they got that contract

They were terrible. They were awful because they've never done it before not not with the crew now with those same people So they've gotten better over the years, but that was the hardest part. I think is just No one went to talk went to not talk went to you know take it to commercial Those things are you just did it on the fly. There was nobody, you didn't go to class to figure out how to do this, you just did it. And if you were good at it, then I guess at the end of the year, they resigned you. It's Tommy Roy in your ear the whole time?

At times, yes, and at times, land spare, it was in your ear too. But you need that. You need direction, especially being an on-course commentator. I'm not looking at a video screen, so you have to kind of, in your brain, figure out, okay, how you do it. Now Tommy Roy doesn't do tape shots, where CBS does a tape shot, so I can already see you hit your putt and you missed it low, or you left it short, and I could say, you know, this

putts really slow. Well I just saw them. So on course commentator would CBS and with the golf channel you do tape shots and they'll come to you and they'll say what kind of puts you got here and then you've already seen it. Where Tommy Roy and NBC doesn't do that. They don't do tape shots. The tape shots are done by the guys up in the up and that have that hole. So in that respect, it was easier for me being out there because then I could just go up to the next hole. I didn't have to wait and kind of recreate this putt. And in your ear they'll say like a tape shot, then you know, he's over it, he's over it, he's getting ready to put it.

And now you're talking while he's doing this. And you're not looking at that. That's crazy. That's trippy. What was it like to kind of transitioning into your mid 40s? Like, the state of your game, was it a swallowing pride feeling of like going into media? Like, what did you think that you think you were done with golf when you made that transition? Were you just counting down to Champions Tour? What's that time period between 45 and 49 and 364 days like? Yeah, at first it was a relief to, okay, I'm gonna do something different.

I'm gonna try something different. I'm gonna learn a new craft. That was kinda cool. It was a relief mentally to know that, okay, I'm not gonna have to grind to survive on the PGA tour. I'm giving that part up, so it was kind of a relief there. And then just learning this new three, I did it for three years. My first year, I did 12 tournaments, the second year, I did nine tournaments, and the

third year, I did eight tournaments. And Jack Graham that hired me said, you're the only person I've ever hired that wants less tournaments than more tournaments. Most guys want to keep doing it and doing more and get into it. And I was, I knew what I was going to do. I just needed a break from the game. I think that taking that break,

I think that's helped me tremendously on the Champions Tour. Because I didn't want to come. I didn't want to do that transition from the me tremendously on the Champions Tour. Because I didn't want to come. I didn't want to do that transition from the regular tour to the Champions Tour playing lousy golf. Right. Because then you can't turn that switch on and go, okay, I'm going to start playing great again. So I think taking that break really mentally really helped me.

And when I came out at 50, I was fired up and I was ready to go. And I played well right away. What changed in your game between the time when you were done with the PGA Tour and starting the championship tour? It couldn't just be easier setups. Couldn't have changed. No, no, I think it's just pressure of playing Lausie and playing Lausie again and then just going home and your kids are going to miss the cut again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you know, how do you, it's tough, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's just a grind. And then to come out, uh, at 50 and start playing well, it's, um, it's like a new lease on

life. So it's, it's late clean. Yeah, yeah. It's not there. It's not there. It's not there. Well, why, why are you doing, uh, TV? Did you have, did you feel like, God, I just want to play right now.

Like did you have that urge? Are you so focused on the analysis and stuff? I feel like it'd be hard being a competitor to then switch over to behind the camera and just wanting to hit the shot, wanting to be back in the action. Yeah, there are times that I would say sure, but no, I knew that it was that I knew my role that I wasn't playing well and this would be a good a good break for me. I enjoyed the break. I still played a little bit, played a couple tournaments a year just to have that sensation but I didn't play that well. And then when I turned 49, I did get in a few tournaments,

and the Sanderson Farms was opposite the British Open, and went down there, and I was even par through 27 holes and finished, I think, 18 under, and finished fifth in Woody Austin one. So it like that that that's when the light went off like okay I I still think I got some game here, you know because this is pretty cool to do that And I had my my son came and cared for me. He was nice cool. So that was really cool, too Going back to let's like into your PGA tour career What was what was your I guess coming out into the into the tour kind? Like, when you go out there, first-ish time around there.

Who were the guys you looked up to? Who were the guys that became some of your early friends? And what was your early experience like on the tour? So, I played a few tournaments as an amateur on the PGA tour. The Western Open invited me because the year before, Scott Burr-Planck won as an amateur. So, in 87, I played there Scott Burr plank won as an amateur. So in 87 I played there. I played the Masters as an amateur.

So I played the Bank of Boston, which at Pleasant Valley is an amateur. So I felt like I was good enough to, you know, I wasn't in total law. But when I first came out, my first year, I struggled. I finished 100 and I think 34th on the money list.

I didn't keep my card by I think $9,000. I had to go back to Q-School. And then the summer of 89, I played with Fred Couples in Paul Azinger in the last group at Westchester. And I beat him both and finished fifth. And that's when my career took off. So it took a year and a half of playing the tour where I think I am good enough but the results haven't really showed yet and then once I finished fifth at Westchester

my career took off and who helped me. Fax was a huge help out of the gate. He made sure I had great practice rounds. If it was Tom Kite, my rookie year, I went up to Tom Watson and introduced myself at the first tournament and said, hey, I'm a new guy out here. I love playing practice round with you. I said next week, Phoenix, ball in the air at 8.30.

So I played a lot of practice rounds with Watson and Andy North. And doing that took the all Away edge off of yeah, like so so then then you're starting to play practice rounds with all these great players The one the one thing that just blew me away was was how short everybody was like I thought Ben Crenshaw was like six two You know when watching him on TV and then you meet him and he's like shorter than me so everybody was a little shorter than all the studs that I watched as a kid growing up.

But when I first came out, it was making sure that I played great practice rounds with great players. So facts really helped me there. Jay Haas was a huge help for me being a Wake Forest guy and taking care of me and just making sure I was. I remember him saying to me that we're playing for, this was 1988, we're playing for a lot of money out here. If it's first class versus coach on a long flight and it's $300 more, you're in the

major leagues. Treat yourself like you're a major league or not a minor league. And if a hotel that's close to the course is more expensive than a hotel that's 40, 40 minutes away, stay at the hotel close to the course. And treat yourself as a, you're in the big leagues. And that really helps. So there was, and Peter Jacobson was another guy that just, I remember playing the Western Open and coming in, I shot 77, whatever, and Peter walked by and said, how'd you play, hey Billy, what's up? Hey Peter, what's wrong?

You look down and say, well I just shot 77. He goes, it's over. The round's over, man. There's nothing you can do about it now. Just get ready for tomorrow. And like those little things from guys that I respected and looked up to are things that I, to this day, I still remember that were, you know, big keys for me and my success early on. On that money front where you were just discussing there, did it, I mean, seeing what happened in golf, basically, in the late,

late 90s and into the early 2000s, how much the money exploded, going back to the, the earliest 90s when the peak in prime of your career, did it feel like a ton of money even at that time, even with what's to come down the pipe? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I'm in, in, in 91, I won two weeks in a row and I won 180. They were million dollar tournaments. And I just remember Tom Kite saying, you're so lucky that you came up when you came up. Because now we're playing for million dollar tournaments. You get 180,000 for the win.

When he came up, if you want to tournament, it was 30 grand, 40 grand to win. So he just said, you're just one lucky son of a gun. And then I would I would say the same I said the same thing to Justin Leonard. He came out right at the right time. He came out in 96 97 right when the right when the person is just doubled. And so I told him he was lucky son of a gun. Well what was he came out at that right time? Yeah. What's that kind of like what we could without the ball that's happening. What are you guys saying to each other? Can you believe all this might,

because was everybody kind of freaking out during that time period of inflation? I don't remember that. I just, you know, because you're in it. But I do remember, you know, thinking that, I just won $360,000 in two weeks on the tour. I mean, how cool is this? And, you know, it, it, it, it, it, I never played for the money. It's not a money thing for me. I played because I love the tour. I mean, how cool is this? I never played for the money. It's not a money thing

for me. I played because I love the competition. I love doing what I was doing. And it just so happened that it just started going higher and higher and higher. And it's amazing what these guys are playing for today. And I think it's fantastic. When you won your second event in a row there, like you'd never won before, where you were you running on fumes at the beginning of that second week and kind of came in with low expectations, like, hey, everything is gravy now after I won Kemper. Well, I won Kemper, then I go to a Woodmont golf club on the day after and

qualified for the US Open. And then I go to Westchester and I bump into J House before the first, or I think I shut 68 in the first round. He goes, how'd you play? And I went, I shut 300. I don't know how the heck I did it. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept or whatever. He goes, well, you know, the best time to win your second

tournament is right after your first one. And he won, when I was in college, he won back-to-back weeks on the tour in the early 80s. So I remembered that because I was in school and I was roommates with his brother. So I was like, yeah, you know what? Best time to win your second. He was selling his bander.

That's awesome. And then so it was some crazy number. It was 21 under at the camper, broke the record, slew and I shot that, beat him in a playoff. Shot 10 under at Woodmont to be the low medalist for that. And then I go to the next day, it was an outing. I had to do at Quaker Ridge. I shot 65.

And then I go to Westchester and I shoot 11 under and then I go to the US open First round. I think I was 500 after 10 leading the tournament and then we had Storms team Hazel team storms came in people Good hit by lightning and stuff and it was crazy crazy day, and I that's when I hit the wall I hit the wall it was over that I was say if you type in Billy Andre on YouTube, the first result that comes up is Billy Andre disaster, US Open.

Yeah. And it's the Hazel-Tethered shot. It's the whole Hazel team. Right, yeah, I hit my third shot, I think, over the green in between these routes of this tree and I just, I couldn't get it out of there. I just started whipping it, I think. But yeah, I had a pretty big meltdown there,

but I didn't care. You need to fix the Google searches is what I was getting at. Oh, okay, good thing. Question, go back to what you said earlier about playing practice rounds with Watson and some of these older guys. What's, is it just the off factor going away

or are they playing a practice round a specific way that really helped you as a young guy Yeah, what do those look like? I'm just I'm a sponge. Yeah, so I'm a sponge and I'm just trying to learn and if you're playing with the Grates of the game it doesn't matter what sport you play in or what you're doing if you're hanging out with with the Grates and you're hanging out with the Savants the best of the best I Just think as a sponge you're just gonna get better by osmosis.

It's just gonna happen. And that's what happened to me. I just, I learned, observed. And that's what I would tell any kid today. Kids that come out of college today and they play practice rounds with their buddies that they went to college with. You're not gonna get better.

You'd be okay, but I think you need to play with the great players. So what happened with Watson is I played, or five practice rounds with him, and then I got paired with him in the final round of the Honda Classic. And that was my rookie year. This was two months later, and there was no all playing with him. I didn't, I already, I know him, didn't have, there wasn't nerves, but not nerves because I... Not because of him

He's not gonna change my attitude And I think that that's That's it you just you know when you're around greatness and you ask questions and you watch and you observe and you see how they do their business And then you pick what what you want to take out of. And little things that Watson did that made me think, okay, I need to do this more, me to chip more, maybe over here, work on this part of my game. Are you guys playing a match? You like to, some of the guys seem like they like to gamble

when they play? Yeah, no, there was no, there was no gamble in going on with, in those days, it was just, just me just learning how to do how to go about how they you know Hey, this is one of the greatest players of all time. I'm just I'm just a sponge watching them He's doing something right now. Sure. I know you were really really good at golf I mean you're a JGA like Rolex player a year you're all American college like you've kind of checked all the boxes at every step along the way. When did it kind of dawn on you?

Well, probably 16. I played the Insurance Youth Classic, which was a very, very big national junior tournament and it was at Yale University at a place where I played a few tournaments in one. So I liked the course, loved the place and Tracy Phillips was the number one junior golfer in the world at that time. And he had a two-shot lead going the last round. And I was paired with him in the last group. I beat him. Shot 68 and 1. And I went from a nobody that, from Rhode Island to golf digested, a ranking at the end of

the year. They had their annual golf digest. And you would get, you know, you would look in there and you would have the top amateurs, top 10, top 10 junior boys, top 10 junior girls. And I went to fifth from winning that one tournament. And then the next year I won the insurance youth classic again, I won by I think nine or ten shots. Is that it yet again?

No, it was in Augusta Country Club in Augusta, Georgia. And then two weeks later, I won the PGA Junior, so I became the number one junior golfer in the country by golf digest. So I think that was the start of, I'm pretty good, I think I can get a college scholarship. And were they beaten down your door? Yeah, I was the ultimate free agent. Because everybody knew I was leaving Rhode Island. So it was very overwhelming.

And it wanted to go to Brown? Well, Yale. How about Yale? Dave Patterson was a coach at Yale University at the time. He pulled me aside and said, you're too good for New England. You got to go south. If you want to be, if this is your dream, so Wake Forest was one of the schools that came calling and Arnold Palmer and Arnold Palmer Scholarship was huge and Jerry

House was there that week at the time. He was a year old in the main. He said, you can be my roommate. Everything kind of fit right in. It was a small school. I was from a small state. I went to a small prep school, so it just went down for a visit and it was like, yeah, I can definitely go to this place. The other schools I was looking at were all bigger schools, Texas, Oklahoma State, all these other big schools that were great golf programs, but they were huge. I think that if I did go to a bigger school, I don't know if I'd be here today. I probably would have flounded and got distracted

where at Wake Forest, classroom size was small. Everybody knows everybody, you can't hide. And I think that was a good great fit for me. Did you have a relationship at all with Mr. Palmer? Great relationship. Oh yeah, it was... That happened immediately in college just because the Wake Forest connection

or when did that start? Well, he came to Wake Forest, the Schwab Cup at that time was called a vanage championship and it was at Tanglewood outside of Winston-Salem And he came by the the new Arnold Palmer dorm that just opened up to check it out and then meet the team and then meet his new guy Which was me and he pulled me aside and you know just wanted to Shook my hand and just say that you know this is a great opportunity for you and all that you know, just wanted to shook my hand and just say that, you know, this is a great opportunity for you and all that, you know, so it started there and then my rookie year on the tour, you know, I immediately got an exemption at Bay Hill

and I got, I played 25 Bay Hills in a row and a couple times there, especially late in my career when I needed another exemption, I always got one. And then he came up to Rhode Island played in our CVS health charity classic a few times with me. We used to have a standard game at Bay Hill on Tuesday and go play the back nine just the two of us. We did that for years.

So I had a great relationship with him and like a lot of players have had or had. So it was tremendous, yeah. I don't know how that guy had time for all the things that he did, but I saw this on the scratch video you did a couple of years ago. Can you tell the story of the accidental phone calls that may have been directed towards Mr. Palmer? Yeah, no, it got really comical there for a while.

I'm not tech savvy. And back in those days, the phones, everyone had a blackberry. Blackberry was the big phone. And even today, if I go to my contacts, AP is the first one in my contact list. So for some reason, I kept butt dialing like the first person in the contact list, which was him.

And, you know, I could hear him, you know. Billy? Billy? Goddamn it. You did it again. You did it again. One time I was hanging up a jacket and I did a thing up in Boston and I was hanging a jacket up in the closet at the hotel and I heard his voice in the closet.

God damn it, Billy, you did it again. Yeah, so I did it for about a year, and didn't know how to control it. So it took a life of its own. I'll say that. Yeah, and he, I think he enjoyed it after a while, because he brought it up to, you know, in a few publications.

Who were your, I guess, that may have been the answer to the question right there, but guys that you really looked up to, or guys that, you know, you were most starstruck by when you came out on the PGA tour? Jack Nicholas, his son was at Carolina when I was at Wake. So I've been around the necklaces and I stayed at their house, during a winter break in the middle of my college career. So coming out, painstead was, I was his whipping boy. He just constantly just gave me crap all the time. About what?

Like he treated me like we were on a, you know, we were on a, you know like we were on the same team and I was the rookie and he was the veteran and I had to, he just constantly just bust in my chops. You got to get better. I was looking at the money list one time. He was behind me and he was number one in the money list and I was 130 if on the money list. He's like, hey, rookie, call me rookie all the time. He was four years of hell with pain, but I think the one that made me the most nervous was Ray Floyd. He just had that swagger and had that walk and had those eyes.

You just didn't know where you stood with Ray. So he was a little very intimidating, I would say. Everything I've ever heard, like Ray Floyd sounds like the biggest, just sounds like a minute. Alpha, minutes. Yeah, and he used it. I mean, he's still, I think, has got the record for winning. He won both on the regular tour and the Champions tour in the same year at age 50 or 51, which he won D'Arral and then he won, I guess, then he turned, then he played in something. You have seen your open one that or something like that, so no other players have ever done

that, which is pretty amazing. And we've gotten to be good friends now, like in his older years, we always see him at the masters. I do stuff with AT&T, and he's a big AT&T guy, and I interview him and stuff like that, and now, and we have fun with it, but when he was a player, he was all business, and he was old school, and you had to respect them. If he came in the fitness van, you got your ass off the fitness table.

And he gets on the table. And he's never seen anybody cross him. One time there was a little, not an altercation. It was just he and George Burns went at it in the fitness van. And I was like in the corner just sitting there going. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. What was it about? I have no idea. But it was like they were going out of pretty good. That was my rookie year. Yeah, that was crazy. I'm curious what on the on the

Champions Tour circuit, it can be kind of, maybe it's not, maybe for you guys it's easy to see. Kind of difficult for people to prognosicate who's going to succeed out here and who doesn't? And for some guys, your game just goes. And your 50s or maybe it's late 40s and it doesn't come back. Is there anything you can kind of shine a light on for? You know, what goes when it goes for a lot of people? Is there a common trend you see? And are you able to see guys that are coming out? Be like, oh, I think he thinks he's going to be successful here, but he doesn't know how hard it's going to be. Yeah, I think you have to work at it. I think you have to be in pretty good shape. I think the guys that have kept themselves in good shape that come out on the Champions

Tour are going to continue to play well. It's the ones that have broken down that have had a lot of injuries or gained a lot of weight or just don't have the physically. They can't do it. We can and we can. Those guys might have problems. The other issue is too is you might have been a hall of famer.

You might be in the hall of fame. And then you come out here and Paul Goydosa's beat and yeah, Billy Andrade's beat and yeah, Michael Allen's beat and yeah, guys that you've crushed your whole career. And how do you handle that? How do you handle that mentally? And I think- You're saying this with a smile interface.

Well, I think you've got to do it this way. Also, I think you've got a couple of guys in mind. Well, it just, you know, and- You're rookie. Yeah. But no, it's true. I just think that some guys have a, you know, it's a different game again. Now you have to prove yourself again,

even though you're a Hall of Famer, or maybe gonna become a Hall of Famer, of your body of work you did on the regular tour. When you come out on the Champions Tour, you gotta have some edge. You have to have, you have to continue to perform. And if you don't, how do you handle that? I mean, how do you handle?

Nobody wants to finish 30th or 40th. And why? When I came out, Nick Price was on his way down. And for Nick, who had a nice career on the Champions Tour, he heard himself. I think he had some shoulder injury, maybe an elbow problem or whatever. And he hit the wall. And he was just telling me, maybe an elbow problem or whatever, and he hit the wall.

And he was just telling me, I can't do this anymore. And he basically retired, though he's late 50s, maybe 59-60, and still plays very well, good golfer, unbelievable career, just couldn't do it physically. So you have that physical thing, and then you have some guys that just, how do you deal with the fact that, you know, a guy that you've beat left and right and now all of a sudden, you know, he's winning and you're not. I mean, how do you deal with that? So it is a little bit of that, too. Do you think, in the coming years, most guys are going to come out and play a champion store? Well, we hope so. You know, I don't know. We're going to come out and play a champion store.

Well, we hope so. I don't know. We're going to see next year, Phil Mickelson turns 50, US Senior Open, Newport Country Club, Newport, Rhode Island. Being a Rhode Islander, I'd love to see Phil in his first week, turning 50 play in that tournament. That would be awesome. So, if Phil's listening, Phil wants you you come up to Rhode Island, we'll take good care of you and

Play in the senior open, but you know, we've had our star and he's been unbelievable for a decade over a decade is Bernhard Langer and he's been he's been kind of our Our go-to, but we need the new go-to who's gonna be the new person that's gonna take over? You know, Freddie when he comes out, it's a different game. It's a different feel. It's like when Tiger first came out and when Tiger plays an internment, Tiger doesn't play an internment, they're two different kind of tournaments. The excitement, the energy level.

And for us to have that, to see, you know, Davis is starting to play a little bit. I don't know, I just read where he's now going to do TV. I don't know how much golf he's going to play, but having our stars out here is huge. Freddy's not playing this week in the Charles Schwab Cup. That hurts us. Steve Strickers not here. That hurts us.

So we need those guys to play. And only time will tell to see how many of these big guys want to play and come out here and want to continue to compete. I think because Phil is a junkyard dog and he loves the competition and he loves to perform, I can see Phil playing a pretty good diet on the Champions Tour. After he finishes up playing on the regular tour. For him, it might be 55 before he decides to maybe play full time out here. So it comes down to the competition and not necessarily, hey, I'm comfortable.

I made $40 million in my career. It's just the competition. Yeah, of course, it has nothing to do with money. That's what it's like. You can't be half in, half out. It's really hard, course it's nothing to do with money. It's not what's like you can't be half in half out on the You can't it's really hard. I would imagine to do like I'm gonna play like 10 events this year on the champions tour because Like you said guys are grinding. It's not you're not this is not a vacation. You're not coasting well You have to play great golf right and you think about it on the scores these guys that we're all shooting out here is pretty amazing So you can't just come out here and think that if you turn on that, turn the light on,

you're going to go out and shoot 25 under and win. It just doesn't happen that way. But you get these guys that just play some great golf. So it'll be interesting to see. I hope all the guys that turn 50, I know Ernie Ellsick is excited about coming out and playing Jim Furious, very excited about coming out and playing. He told me he's still going to play on the regular tour this coming year because he's close to the top 50 and he wants to play the Masters one more time.

These guys are talking about wanting to play the Champions Tour. If those guys come out then we're in good shape to have somebody like that be the next Bernhard that will carry our tour for the next 10 years. Do you ever see the age limit dropping for the Champions Tour? It's been talked about, but I just don't see it. I just think that 50 is a good number. I do know that 45 to 50 is the No Man's Land for a lot of guys and they have to wait to do it. But when you see all of us that have waited, now all of a sudden we put it down to 45. Is that going to make our tour better? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe yes. And maybe no, I can't answer that.

All right. Well, we're getting the motion that we got. Let you go. We really appreciate the hour and love to do this again sometime. Best of luck this week. Awesome. Do you have any questions for us? No, I'm just huge fans of you guys. You have no idea. You're up there with Larry David.

Well, you don't like that. That's flatter. There is one thing I need to fill in here. You probably don't get this a lot, but when I was maybe nine or ten years old, you were my favorite player on Earth. Because walking off the sixth green at your field village, you handed me a glove when I was maybe nine or ten years old you were my favorite player on earth because walking off the sixth green at Near-Field Village you handed me a glove when I was a kid and my mom took that glove back to Near-Field Village and had you told you the story and had you sign it and she sent me that picture today

Oh, right. Which is the glove that we've kept awesome So all the little small interactions over the years. So they didn't so So my stick was golf balls and gloves. I would give to kids all the time when I was started. I would get an extra dozen balls from Tidalist so I could do that. So I did a commercial with Wesley Bryan. He's a sketchers kid. So we did this commercial with Coocher and I know it. Yeah, well, yeah, I've seen it a hundred billion times. Right, right. So we did this whole day, a shoot. And when it was over, he says, hey, I just want to tell you,

you know, you flip me and ball to masters, you know, and I was nine years old. Yeah, I was like, oh my god. It's crazy. I'm so old. Well, that's how when you walked in, you did a clinic for Tronaldine Heist. Yeah, it was a merist. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it was a merist.

Yeah, sure, yeah, remember that. Over at Cherokee. Yep, I think Chip X kid was on that team, it was. Yeah, awesome, cool. Alright boys, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, appreciate it. Get the right club.

Be the right club today. Yes! Not enough. better than most. That is better than most. Better than most. Different!