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You’re a lot younger than Jack Nicklaus. He always used to say that he was not going to be a ceremonial golfer, which Arnold [Palmer] seemed to relish. What about you?
I’m not going to be a ceremonial golfer. If you’re not enjoying being out there, not being able to do what you want to do, or where a great week is a top-40, then I’ll say no, that’s fine. I’ll just pop out every now and then.

To the Masters and the Open?
Yes, exactly, where you’re exempt or something. I’d also be going into some tournaments for business reasons or design opportunities.

The book, inevitably, has a great deal
in it about the Ryder Cup. Let’s deal
with the past first: 1991, at Kiawah
Island. It wasn’t good to look at from

the outside, with some of the American team in camouflage hats, but was
there any actual animosity between
the players?
I think the players were pretty darned
good. We’d had a little bit going on, there were a few games being played. The Steve Pate thing – injury, play and then injury again. That was a question mark...

Particularly when they saw the draw
[Pate would have played Seve
Ballesteros, perceived as Europe’s top
player] before they withdrew him from
the singles?
Yeah, exactly. Little things like that. Seve obviously had his go with [Paul] Azinger [over playing the wrong type of ball] but out of 12 there’s always going to be one or two that are tricky, probably on both teams.

But more so than in ‘91 than other years and you’ve played in quite a few?
Yeah, quite possibly. Yeah, I think there was an atmosphere to that place. It was the War on the Shore. They were fired up.

In 1995, on the Saturday evening, you
were on the 18th green and it looked
like the day might end with the scores
tied at 8-8. Then Corey Pavin chips in,
you don’t make your putt, and it’s 9-7 to the US. Do you think they may have
suffered from complacency the next
day, thinking they couldn’t lose from
there given their traditional strength
in the singles?
I can’t possibly make a judgement on that. All I know on our team was that we werevery quiet that evening. We knew exactly what we wanted to do. Each man had to do his thing. You couldn’t bank on anyone else getting the points.