'The Golf Channel did a piece and it was the most quotable golf quote ever'

How much did winning The Players change your life?

Lyle: The exemption was what I wanted, it meant that I could play anywhere and I wasn’t pressured to keep my card over there. Obviously you didn’t know how the tournament would grow, it was the tour’s baby and they wanted to grow it. The commissioner Deane Beman wanted a purse of at least $4-5m but they said no as the Masters and US Open was less. So they had to keep it to a certain level, but he got his way in the end.

I would put the win up there in my top three. I go back most years as I have a place there and do some bits. They used to have a past champions’ dinner at the club or in a nearby restaurant but not that many were turning up, it’s a long way to travel to go to a dinner. At the Masters you at least play in the tournament and the Par 3.

Sutton: I was watching Tiger beat Rocco Mediate in my den with my son who was five at the time.

He asked if I had beaten him one day and I said “yeah, I beat him buddy.”

And that was important to me that he did know that. He wasn’t even alive when I beat Tiger.

Perks: When I won I felt like I had to change my focus and live up to people’s expectations and the ones I put on myself.

Nearly every day someone will come up and say that was the greatest finish and that is incredible.

From a longevity standpoint it might have been beneficial to win a smaller event and fully understand the big changes in your life but I wouldn’t change a thing.

How bad did your game get?

Perks: I got some great advice from Ian Baker-Finch at the Deutsche Bank and he said not to change a single thing.

I listened, but maybe only half-heartedly. I changed equipment companies, but I don’t think it was that big a deal, I stuck with the Titleist ball but I changed caddies and my coach. Thank goodness, I kept with my wife.

The big thing that really fell apart was my driving. I went searching for the answer, I looked at my stats at the end of 2002 when I finished 36th on the Money List and I saw how bad a ball striker I was.

I thought I had to change to get better rather than what I had just accomplished.
I got a little wayward with my focus, it was all about the swing.

I worked with Butch Harmon for a while and one of Hank Haney’s right-hand guys and I lost the art of scoring and just playing golf.

I worked as hard as anybody out there and I got very little reward and I lost a lot of trust in these instructors and in myself.

How bad did your driving get?

Perks: I was hitting about 35 per cent of fairways, I was hitting two or three balls out of bounds every round and there was a lot of anxiety every time I stepped on to a tee.

My irons and short game were still great but I had a mental block off the tee. By the end of my career I was embarrassed to go out and play.

When my exemption ran out it was a very easy decision to bow out. There was no freedom to my swing, I was afraid of where it was going. I was hanging on for dear life.

In one event I played with David Duval and Tiger on Thursday and Friday and it had got to the point where I had difficulty getting to the 1st tee. There is a lot of compassion out there, they still want to beat your brains out but they’re not looking down on you.

I thought I was getting in the way of them playing their best. I was always looking for my ball and I had a rules official come out for three or four holes on the trot and we were two holes behind. So it was easy to step away.

Hal Sutton

You were touted as the ‘Bear Apparent’, the likely successor to Jack Nicklaus after winning the Players and PGA in 1983. How hard was that to handle?

Sutton: I didn’t handle it as well as I should have but it is unfair to put that type of pressure on a 25-year-old kid who is unproven really. It took many years for Jack to amass his record. For someone to say, after just a couple of years, that someone might do this is unfair. I don’t think any kid should buy into it and they should really try to stay in their own way of thinking.

My advice would be to listen to only the chosen few who have been there the whole time and don’t listen to the newcomers. Everybody else is trying to sell you something and get on your wagon.

I didn’t have the experience so I listened to people who were said to be knowledgeable and sometimes people are self-acclaimed as knowledgeable when in fact they haven’t lived it.

I had a slump in the early 90s so I went back to the guy who helped me in college and I also pretty much did it myself. I told myself that I was going to settle down and have a plan and work that plan every day. I wasn’t going to think about new things all the time, I was going to do what I used to do.

What is the best advice that Jack Nicklaus gave you?

Sutton: The main thing was to try and stop beating myself, and his best advice was to make sure not to hit shots that beat myself.

At the 1987 Ryder Cup I stayed with Jack as I was the only single guy on the team. I asked him if he could do today what he did 15 years ago. He said ‘no way’ for the reason that only three or four guys then thought they could beat him.

But in 1987 there were a lot that thought they could.

Like Tiger, there were a lot of people who didn’t think they could beat him down the stretch on Sunday. Some of it is put there. Some of it is self-inflicted.

He was playing the game at a level that few people have ever known. But that system doesn’t mean he couldn’t be beat.