Q+A: Premium Price

by Bruce Selcraig

Nick Pulls no Punches in a Candid Interview about the State of Almost Everything

Ask a roomful of veteran golf journalists which player they sought out on Tour during the last two decades when they needed a dependable, candid and articulate source, and the name most often mentioned will be Nick Price.

The unfailingly polite Zimbabwe native and now Hobe Sound, Fla., resident is so well-regarded by the media that in 2002 the Golf Writers Association of America bestowed upon him their first award ever for “consistent and thoughtful cooperation and accommodation.”

Later came his induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, the USGA’s Bob Jones Award for sportsmanship and the Tour’s Payne Stewart Award celebrating his professional conduct, respect for the game and commitment to charities.

“But when I got that media award,” he says, “it meant so much to me because I recognized a long time ago you can’t bulls**t the media. I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve, and told you what I feel.”

Now the limelight has faded and Price — content, happily married and father of three teenagers — is trying to regain on the Champions Tour some of the brilliance that kept him atop the golf world throughout the mid-1990s, including 10 wins and back-to-back majors in 1993-1994.

In lean or fat times, Price was never really one who wanted or needed to relive a round shot-by-shot with reporters, so it was no surprise when I caught up with him in Austin, Texas, that he was happy to talk about everything from parenting and the sad state of TV golf commentary to the downside of being known as Mr. Nice and the continuing crisis in Zimbabwe, where dictator Robert Mugabe has turned Price’s childhood home (then Rhodesia) into a rotting carcass of world-record inflation, tortured political opponents and starving rural villages.

How did you handle the adoration and ego-trip when you were at the top?

I never really had a presence like Greg Norman or Jack or Arnold. I was given a lot of respect, but when I walked into the room it wasn’t like everyone got quiet.

Money isn’t everything. It really isn’t in the big scheme of things. I’m a simple person and a lot of times I would be looked over because I didn’t make a lot of noise. And that hurt a lot of times. I think it took longer for me to get in the World Golf Hall of Fame (2003) than it should have. They put some guys in ahead of me who only had won two majors, and I had won three. That hurt a little bit.

There’s an ad right now on TV about the FedEx Cup and it goes from showing so-and-so up to Curtis Strange, then it comes to my era and it goes from Greg to Freddie Couples to Vijay, and there I was the two-time player of the year and wasn’t included. That hurt. I paid my dues. But over a period of time, it’s no big deal.

What did you learn from your friendship with Greg Norman?

Greg and I were close for a very long time. I think we just drifted apart. Our lives changed. His kids grew up and left. He basically quit playing pretty early and channeled all his energy into his businesses. I respect him a lot. There’s no way I could ever repay the help and kindness he gave to me.

We’re different people, and that’s what made us good friends for as long as we were. I remember one time we were having dinner, and he was number one or two, and I was number one or two, and unfortunately Greg always had this ability to attract the loudest, most obnoxious people, the biggest a**holes, in the room. I don’t know why. They’d always be shouting, “Hey, Greg” and slapping him on the back. Seven or eight people would ask him for his autograph, and maybe one would recognize me, and Greg would look at me and say, “Why can’t I be you?” And I’d say, “That’s why your contracts are worth four times more than mine.”

I think all the things that happened to Greg on the golf course took a toll on him. [Larry Mize famously chipped in on the second playoff hole to beat Norman in the 1987 Masters. David Frost holed a bunker shot on the 72nd hole of the USF&G Classic in 1990 to beat Norman by one. David Gamez in 1990 holed a 7-iron from 176 yards for eagle-2 on the 72nd hole to beat Norman by one at the Nestle. And, of course, Nick Faldo blew by him in the ’96 Masters, perhaps the biggest disappointment of all.] Greg dealt with it incredibly well. He dealt with adversity as well as anyone, but there’s a scar deep down inside him.

There’s got to be a downside to always being accessible to the media.

I wish I had been able to say “no” more often. When you’re an accommodating person people take advantage of you. If I had said “no” more often I might have extended my streak in the ’90s a bit longer. I was pretty much worn out by the middle of 1995, and most of ’96 I was sick, which was probably just stress-related.

It wasn’t just the media. It was the pro-ams. What irked me was that the guys who didn’t play in the pro-ams each week were the biggest gripers and always made the most noise about how they should be getting paid to play in pro-ams. There’s no doubt, if you were good at pro-ams and helping the Tour, they called on you much more than anyone else.
 
Are there many guys on Tour who are more comfortable finishing second, so that they don’t have to have their lives dissected by us each week?

Many guys. Too numerous to mention. Guys who shorted themselves because they wouldn’t put the bit in their teeth. They’d back off because in second place you get a nice big check and you don’t have to make
a speech. They don’t even know they’re doing it.

David Feherty was one, and he admitted that in your article (The Irish Times, Jan. 27, 2007). I don’t want to mention a lot of names. Many are still playing. You can see in the way they play coming down the stretch. They’re thinking too much about the consequences of their shots. John Cook is another. He should have won two or three majors. Scott Hoch was a phenomenal Top 10 finisher, but he just didn’t win enough. If you saw Scott and me playing and didn’t know anything about golf, you’d say if Nick Price won 45 tournaments worldwide, Hoch must have won a hundred.

Would you ever want to trade places with Tiger?

I wouldn’t want Tiger’s life for all the tea in China. I don’t care how many tournaments he’s won. And all the millions and millions. I’ve got to have a little bit of privacy.

When I first came on Tour we didn’t have wives or girlfriends. We partied, chased women and drank beer. We had an absolute blast. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. I feel sorry for Tiger because I don’t think he’s ever had that opportunity, or he’s always had to do it on the quiet, which is just sad.

What changed your life in terms of golf?

Two things. Billy Casper — one of the greatest to ever play the game, and he doesn’t get enough credit — came to my country, Rhodesia then, in 1968. I was 11 years old. He played an exhibition with Gary Player. And he gave me a golf ball on the back of the seventh green at Royal Salisbury (now Harare). It was a Wilson Staff, and I’m sure my mother still has it somewhere. That was a huge inspiration. And that’s why I get irritated with some players today — think Phil Mickelson — who don’t travel enough overseas. Tiger does. Ernie does. Playing in the rest of the world is very important.
Then in 1980, my third year playing in Europe, I had progressed steadily and finished in the Top 10 five or six times. But in 1981, I worked fives times harder and something went wrong. I played so poorly. The weather was always cold and wet, and we played a lot of really poor quality courses. I actually went home to Rhodesia. That’s when I made up mind that I was going to America, and I never looked back.

What was your childhood like?

I had two older brothers. Kit, the oldest — his proper name was Chris — died in 2004 of a heart attack. My older brother, Tim, who taught me to play, is a club pro in Zimbabwe. I was the youngest by seven years. I still haven’t gotten it out of my mother [laughing] whether I was an afterthought or a mistake. She keeps telling me, “You were my little girl, and you turned out to be a boy.” [Wendy Price is 85 and lives in England.]

My dad, Ray, was a military man. He served in the Indian Army until 1947, retired as a major. British citizen. Then he retired and ran a very small clothing business, just enough to keep food in our stomachs and a roof over our heads.
He died when I was 10. He spent a lot of time with my eldest brothers playing cricket and rugby, and I was still the momma’s boy. We did do some fishing. And then one time, I played golf with him when I was about 9. Three boys and my dad at this little golf club near my home. My Dad and I were both left-handed, so we shared clubs, but later I switched to right because left-handed clubs were so hard to find in Rhodesia.

It was the summer of 1966 in Salisbury. I think about that day more than you can possibly imagine. I think — if he’s looking down, is he proud of his youngest? That would mean more to me than anything else. Am I a person he would be proud of? I think he would have. I really do. I know my mom is.

How’d you learn golf?

I started when I was 8. I always wanted to hang around Tim’s buddies because they were older and did great stuff. We snuck on this one course, and they made me caddy. We had this hodgepodge of maybe 30 pawnshop clubs — hickory shafts, steel shafts, plastic-coated shafts. We might have paid 12 shillings for them all, about two bucks. So I was supposed to carry this bag, which probably weighed as much as my Tour bag, with just a thin rope. It was cutting into my hands, so after about two holes I threw it on the ground. A left-handed one fell out, so I just started chopping with it. That’s how I started.

From about age 11 to 16, that was when golf was just unbelievably fun. We’d ride our bikes, get to the course at 7, play 36 holes before lunch, then 36 in the afternoon, and putt ’til it got dark. That’s how I learned to play so fast.
 We had tournaments where we’d get on a train, 14-year-old buddies, bag of chips and a Coke. It was heaven for us. We never gave a s**t about who had money or who had what kind of clubs.

How’d you become such a consistent ball-striker?

I didn’t always try to hit the perfect shot. I got that from Hogan’s Five Fundamentals. When I finally broke through in 1991 and won the Byron Nelson, a confidence came over me because in the last round I didn’t actually play my best, tee to green. So I realized I didn’t have to play flawlessly to win. I just had to manage my game. That changed my whole perspective on the game.

You once told me you thought The Golf Channel was insipid.

Yes, I did [laughing].

Who do you like and dislike in TV golf and how can telecasts be made better?

I think they have to get away from kissing asses. Somewhere between Johnny Miller on one end and The Golf Channel on the other there should be a middle ground.

I think Faldo is doing a really good job. Jim Nantz needs to be more objective. He needs to be less dramatic. He’s got a great voice and understands the game, but he’s got to get away from — he launches into a syrupy, azalea-filled, Masters moment — all the blooming flowers! Get to the point. We know about the flowers.

I think too many of the networks are using Tiger as a crutch. Tiger is huge for us. He’s wonderful. But don’t have 80 percent of the show be Tiger. They’ve got to change something though. TV golf is basically the same as when I came on Tour 25 years ago.

Also, that 15-year contract between the Tour and The Golf Channel? To me that was the dumbest thing. If you’re the PGA Tour, surely you don’t sign anything more than three or four years. Now if you’re 50 years old [laughing] and some company says, “Here’s a 15-year contract,” I’m saying, where do I sign?

And another thing ... [referring to the PGA Tour ads] don’t make us out to be these demigods who are always doing things for charity. We’re not.

How much more money could you have made if you had “maxed-out” your endorsement potential during the ’90s?

Probably another 35 to 40 percent, but there would have been lots of ramifications. I could have pushed the envelope on appearance fees. There was a figure I was happy with, and I played for that. Guys who were number two, three or four in the world were making more than me. But I always gave people value for their dollar and they kept inviting me back year after year.

How old were you when you realized blacks and whites were treated differently in Rhodesia?

I’ll try to explain this a little. The black people who worked for us were part of our family. If the cook in our house, if his wife got sick, my mom would put her in the car and take her to the hospital and make sure she got the right treatment. We looked after them. They weren’t slaves. They were treated with the respect you would give anyone. That’s the way we were brought up.

People have this image of colonialism. It’s not like what you saw. We had a very unique country. It was more of a class thing because we had many blacks at private schools. I was at a government school and didn’t go with blacks. We played rugby and cricket against blacks (unlike in South Africa under apartheid.) I used to drink with the caddies at our golf course because that’s where the humor was. If I had an old shirt, old shoes, anything I wasn’t using, I used to take it to the caddies. I used to ask my mom for stuff. If I won a tournament I’d take a case of beer or two to the caddies.

Sure, some abused it, but the average person had very little racist (tendencies). ... That’s why so many guys fought in the war. We thought we were trying to preserve a state everyone could live in. It was a communist-inspired war. [The Rhodesian Bush War, or Liberation Struggle, lasted from 1964 to 1979, ended bi-racial rule and established the Republic of Zimbabwe. Price fought with the white-run government in the air force against the nationalist forces led by current dictator Robert Mugabe, who headed the Zimbabwe African National Union.]

How did you deal with race at home?

We were very aware of the racial side. There were certain people in our country who I despised for the way they treated black people. My mom was very aware of people I brought to our house who in their house might have used certain words ...

Like kaffir?

You did not mention that word. My mom and my brothers would beat the crap out of me if we used that word.

Mugabe was “elected” in 1980 after the revolution. Did you see that coming?

Either our government brainwashed us or propagandized us into thinking he had no chance of getting in, or our (military) intelligence was very poor. Mugabe’s intimidation and terror tactics really came to the fore during the first elections. Black people in our country were extremely fearful of witch doctors, and Mugabe made sure he had all these witch doctors on his side.

Look at who Mugabe’s friends were: Ceausescu from Romania, Mengistu from Ethiopia [a Marxist dictator convicted of genocide in 2006, given sanctuary in Zimbabwe], Arafat, Khaddafi from Libya. We went from being an ally of the Western world to having those parades when someone like [former Cambodian dictator] Pol Pot would come to town.

What’s it been like for you watching the steady decline of your country into an impoverished police state?

My brother, Tim, is still there and doesn’t want to leave. I’ve got lots of friends like that. No way they’re moving.
Hopefully there will be truth and reconciliation hearings like South Africa had [after apartheid] because there have been many atrocities. Mugabe has seized the land of white farmers, uprooting the lives of maybe 3 million people who depend on agriculture. A whole segment of the economy, a billion-dollar industry, is gone.

I haven’t been back since 2000, mainly because I don’t want to get depressed. The country has reached depths I never thought possible. The cities are like ghost towns at night. I’m still proud to be a Zimbabwean. I’ve never turned my back on my country. Not ever. I still harbor hope, though the light is fading fast. FG
 
Bruce Selcraig is an Austin-based journalist who has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s and Smithsonian, among others. He can be reached at Selcraig@swbell.net