Without giving anything away, how do you hit the ball so far?

It’s really just natural. I’ve got a big swing arc that I developed when I was little. My dad always told us that we could hit it as far as we want and as hard as we want as long as we kept our balance. I developed a big wide swing because of that. I figured out a way to keep my feet on the ground and really bash it. That’s the way Nicklaus was brought up. He was taught to go ahead and swing at it and worry about straightening it out when he grew up. I’m not strong or muscular. I just have a big swing. The farther the club head travels, the more speed it picks up. That’s all there is. There’s no secret. If there was, I’d have a video out and be making tons of money.

How do younger players handle a situation like what happened to you at the TPC?

There’s where you get back to the money. If the money becomes the most important thing, you lose the whole joy of playing golf. We’re getting away from the Bobby Jones-type ‘gentleman’s’ golf, and I think the money is the reason. It becomes crucial when this putt is worth $40,000 or whether or not you won $600,000 last year. You lose the joy of playing golf and simply trying to do your best.

I grew up having to learn the rules just to go play. My dad was really big on teaching us the history of the game and why golf is such a great game. I feel that when something happens on the golf course, if you don’t call it on yourself, no one else is going to call it on you. If we start thinking too much about the money, some of those things won’t get called. If I stood there and thought about that call meaning $100,000 to me, I’d tap the putt in, go play the next hole and bend my putter when I was finished. It’s the integrity of the game. If a basketball player is dribbling down the side of the court and sees his foot step on the out-of-bounds line, he’s not going to stop and tell someone that he did it.

I knew the rule. I didn’t know my putter was bent, and I didn’t know how or where it bent. I knew that it didn’t come from hitting a shot. So I called the official.

I would say that 99.5 percent of the players out there would call it. That’s the way they were brought up. If you play golf a lot, sooner or later you’re going to play with somebody that does the same things. It’s happened many times. Guys call things on themselves all the time. I don’t think there are many bad guys out there. You won’t survive out there if you’re not well liked or if you don’t get along with people. There are incidents where players call something on other players, but it’s very rare. It’s not life or death out there. I think these guys feel better when they call something like that on themselves.