Austin Balances Life on the PGA & Champions Tours


Woody Austin was the surprise winner in the 2013 Sanderson Farms Championship. Playing on a past champions' PGA Tour exemption when the tournament was held in July and on a different course, the Florida native finished with a 5-under 67 and a four-round total of 20-under 268.

He tied Cameron Beckman and Daniel Summerhays in regulation, then beat the two youngsters in a sudden-death playoff for his fourth career title. At 49, Austin became the eighth oldest winner in PGA Tour history.

Since turning 50 in January, Austin has played one event on the regular tour - the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas last month where he missed the 36-hole cut - and on the Champions Tour where, in eight events in the just-concluded season, he finished 12th in the Charles Schwab Cup standings after recording six top-10s.

The $4 million, 72-hole Sanderson Farms Championship gets underway Thursday for the first time at the Country Club of Jackson in Mississippi (the tournament, under previous sponsor names, had been held at Annandale Golf Club in Madison, Miss). It will be played opposite the PGA Tour's $8.5 million WGC-HSBC Champions in China.

Austin will be paired in the first two rounds with Ben Martin and Robert Streb, who both won tournaments last month - Martin in Las Vegas and Streb in the McGladrey Classic.

On Tuesday Austin sat down with reporters and talked about his time on the Champions Tour as well as his occasional dalliances on the regular circuit. Here's what the voluble and often brutally honest "senior" had to say.

MODERATOR: Like to welcome our defending champion to the Sanderson Farms Championship, Woody Austin. Woody, you've played the back nine, I believe here, a new course, new venue. Do you want to start off talking about some of the changes and then we'll take a few questions.

WOODY AUSTIN: Well, obviously the changes are not where I was last year. I mean, it's a beautiful place, so the greens are extremely nice, really quick, a little soft. Hopefully they'll get firmer so that guys can't just land them anywhere they want. But the golf course is in great shape.

MODERATOR: Getting into your schedule a little, you've been playing on the Champions Tour and finished up at the Schwab Cup last week. Now you've got to switch gears back out on to the PGA Tour. Kind of talk about the last few weeks or month.

WOODY AUSTIN: It's been a busy schedule here at the end. I've played more than I wanted to here at the end. This will be five weeks in a row, which is way too much. But when I started playing the Champions Tour during the FedEx Playoffs, I didn't know that I would make it to the Schwab Cup, so the fact that I had a shot to get in the top 30, I went ahead and took that opportunity and played in San Antonio a couple weeks ago instead of McGladrey, and played really well. So it got me into the Tour Championship. So I played again last week, which was going to be a week off. So it's been a bit of a long stretch. This will be it for the year.

Q. With the course change, are you able to walk into Sanderson Farms this year with the same level of confidence as you would having won a tournament the year prior?

WOODY AUSTIN: No.

Q. So have you been able to go out and play the course yet?

WOODY AUSTIN: I played the back nine. I played a few holes during the media day as well, but I just played the back nine. It's in good shape. But like I said during the media day, unless they do something as far as either firm the greens up a little bit, there's not enough deterrent out there for the guys. I mean, these young guys hit it so far that they're going to beat this place up unless they firm the greens up, so that when they're coming out of the rough, the balls are not landing on the green. Because right now you can hit it out of the rough and the ball's not going anywhere.

Q. Was it frustrating? I mean, just kind of selfishly when they changed the course just because -

WOODY AUSTIN: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, this is my 21st year, I think. 20th or 21st year, and I've been in it every year. So you get used to a place, and it was a place that if you'd look even before I won last year, I played really good there. So you get comfortable with the place. You look at what happened last week. Ryan Moore winning back to back because he went back to the same place. I'm going to an entirely different place.

So now, instead of having that great vibe and that good feeling about coming off a victory from last year, I don't have that because I'm looking at an entirely new golf course, new venue. So everybody is back to square one. There is no - I have no knowledge that I can fall back on. I have nothing I can go off of, so this is entirely new. I'm just basically another person here this week.

Q. Obviously the courses are only about 10 miles apart, so maybe the grasses are the same and stuff like that. What are the differences here? What makes this course different?

WOODY AUSTIN: The greens are different. You can tell this place, the Bermuda is more adapted to here. When they switched to the Bermuda over at Annandale, it made the golf course better, but you could tell it wasn't Bermuda at the beginning. Here you can tell it's adapted better. I don't know when they switched or whatever here, but the greens are really nice. They're just too soft. They're really good. The ball is really rolling on the greens. I mean, you can hit some really fast putts.

Q. It seems like it's kind of a tighter layout. Did you notice that throughout?

WOODY AUSTIN: Well, it may be tighter as far as fairway goes. But there's not enough trees out there to really make you feel - they're really, so far, like I said, I didn't play the front. The only difficult, what I would say is really narrow from a standpoint of being penalty wise, would be 16. 16 is a very hard tee shot. There is no question. As far as the other one, I would say 11, you can hit it in the rough, and you still have all the openings. 12 you still have openings into the green. 14, it's narrow, but, again, it's a par 5, and you've got plenty of room. There's nothing on 15. 17 there's nothing to stop it. And 18, although there are some trees, they really don't - unless you hit it right up against the trees, they don't cover the area that goes towards the green. So you're always going to have an opening to the green. It's not like you're going to be blocked out. So there is just not enough as far as to make it feel tight, I guess you'd say.

Q. (Playing) 21 events on the PGA Tour, eight on the Champions Tour, and you look back and say this is the end of it, what was the most difficult part of trying to balance where you're going to play and what you might do moving forward?

WOODY AUSTIN: I guess the difficulty is the fact that I've played so poorly on the regular Tour, and I played so good in the eight events on the Champions Tour. So there is the tug in that why would you keep busting your head when you're playing so bad, and then you go out here and you do okay. So I've tried to explain it. When I'm ready to stop, then it will be easy. Right now I still want to play against the best players in the world. Nothing against the guys out there, but the best players in the world are right here. Until I'm done with that, this is where I want to be.

The other, unless something happens to the Champions Tour itself, it's going to always be there for me, but I want it to be my caveat. I want it to be what I worked for my 21 years for. I don't want to go out there and have a second career. That's not the way I look at it. I look at it that this was my career, this is what I wanted. I still haven't accomplished what I wanted out here. Not that I will, because it is really hard to do at this age, obviously.

But when I make that transition, I want that transition to be this is now my time to relax, my time to just take it easy. My time to just play when I want to. I am not going to be Bernhard Langer, and I'm not going to hit a million balls, and I'm not going to see every golf course every day and I'm not going to grind my butt off. So that's the way I look at that.

Some guys who may have lost their card at 40, 41, and that's kind of like their second coming or their second career, that's fine. That's not the way I'm going to look at it. It's hard for me to explain that to people, but that's just the way I look at it. That's going to be me swan song, so to speak, and that's the way I look at it.

Q. Going off of that competitively speaking, can you going into the champions event with a different mindset than when you play on the PGA Tour event? Because you're in the Schwab Cup next?

WOODY AUSTIN: Well, like I said, I didn't plan on it. I only really played my first real regular senior event was the start of the FedEx, because I didn't make the FedEx cutoff, so that's when I played. So I had only - I only played six events. So I realistically you're not going to think in six events you're going to finish in the top 30 on the money list. I mean, I didn't know what to expect. The only information I had was from my one tournament from The Senior Open. So I didn't know how it was going to work out.

It just so happened I finished second the first one, and then third, and then fifth and next thing you know you're moving up. But I went into it as I needed to play for those two months, so when this season started again I'd be ready. I didn't want to take those few months off from competitive golf was I didn't make the FedEx Playoffs. I didn't look at it like, oh, if I don't go out there, I'm not going to make it. No, I went out there thinking I want to play.

I want to see what it's like, and I want to keep myself ready so when I start up again next year or this year, however you want to look at it, that I'd be somewhat ready.

The transcript for the above interview is courtesy of ASAP Sports.