TITLE: MCGINLEY PARTS 1 AND 2 FOR EXPORT_1

DATE: 18th September 2014

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: # Speakers

TRANSCRIPT STYLE: Intelligent Verbatim

FILE DURATION: 23 Minutes

TRANSCRIPTIONIST: Margarette Searing

SPEAKERS

PM:Paul McGinley

Others:  By initial or as MS# (male speaker), FS# (female speaker)

[Film clips]: Transcription from film clips in italics including VO: for voice over.

[INTRODUCTION SCREEN -Film Clip]

Announcer: Well it’s my honour to present the Ryder Cup Captain Mr Paul McGinley.

[PRESENTATION SCREEN - Film Clip]

PM: To be quite honest it’s a very humbling experience to be sitting in this seat.  It will be a whole new experience for me.

[PRESENTATION SCREEN – Film Clip]

PM: Well Gaelic football is where I started.  I always performed extremely highly when I did play as part of a team.  Some psychologists might explain it back to my Gaelic football days.  My heart ticks a bit faster, my adrenalin goes more and I just love the whole environment of being in a team.

[McGINLEY – THE MAKING OF A CAPTAIN – FILM CLIP]

PM: Tony, yeah, how are you Jesus.

T: It’s good.

PM: How are you yeah. 

T: Meet Murphy.

PM: How are you Alan, how are you.

AM: [unclear 00:00:59] Good to see you.

PM: You haven’t changed much.  You’ve changed a lot.

[Laughing]

T: Well that’s, I’m nearly 50 now.

PM: Brings back a lot of memories.  I played football and hurling here, it wasn’t just football but mostly football.  This was a home ground, exactly the same, the same pitch.  Houses are the same.  It’s funny you know how things haven’t changed much in what 25 years since I used to play.  Padraig Harrington is from just here.  He just lives down, just over the hill there and I’m over there.  And our school was over here so it’s all kind of in a circle and this was the local football club.

[Film clip]

PM: This was when I had black hair.  That was also we were still amateur.

MS1: Yeah.

PM: We were both still amateur then yeah.

PM: I think a lot of what’s me what I am and what’s made me as a Ryder Cup Captain and things that have worked out in my life in order for me to be Ryder Cup Captain, have been...were formed here.  You know this is where I started.  This was the heart.  This is where the heartbeat started of being a professional sportsman.  I know was in a different sport, a different discipline but this is where I got the heartbeat and the desire really to be involved in sport.

PM: Part of the fabric of Ireland is the GAA connection for most people.  And certainly my family was no different.  My dad played for Donegal, he played for his county.  He’s still very proud of that.  He goes to all the games still and has a big connection with it.  And it was part of an upbringing.  I played half forward.  I use to play on the left side and the reason I played on the left side was I could turn infield and kick on my right foot.  I was pretty down with right foot.  Although I used my left, I was much better on my right.  And probably my forte was reading the game, picking up the scraps around midfield because you had the big guys, the big 6ft 4”-5” hook guys.  They would play in midfield and obviously when you’ve four guys of 6ft going for the ball together a lot of scraps fall out when they try to catch and that was my forte, was coming round and trying to pick up the scraps and then distributing it.

[Film clip]

MS2: Best of luck over there.

PM: Alright lads.  Thanks a lot.

MS2: We’ll see you over there.

PM: You’re going yeah?

MS2: I am yeah.

PM: Good man.  Thank you.

MS2: Sunday.

PM: Sunday oh good.

MS2: Yeah, get a phone call...

PM: Well I remember a lot of goals but there was one incident I really remember.  I always remember when I come back here and it’s not one I’m proud.  It was my one and only time ever being sent off.  And what happened was I was playing over here, I was playing half forward.  And before the match started, you take your positions and the marking you is there.  And you man, saw me, me not being very big and also being very young.  And he tried to soften me up a little bit.  So I got a few punches in the kidneys and you know off the ball and all of that and it was niggley, niggley, niggely.  About half way through the first half the ball got loose and it was on the ground and so with picking up the ball you have to bend over and put your foot under it to pick it up.  And he was, as he was bending down to pick it up, I came at him from an angle.  And I hit him, it’s called a fair tackle, I hit him with my shoulder which you’re allowed to but I hit him as hard as I could.  And of course because he was off balance and he was bent over, he went flying.  The crowd jumped out of the way and he went flying and I remember there was a car, the old fashion bumpers, with still bumpers in the front.  And he went, tumbling, tumbling and tumbling and then smacked his head against this bumper.  Knocked himself out.  Well all hell broke loose.  All hell, both teams milled in on top and they all kind of calmed down while the referee pulls me aside and sends me off.

But that was my one and only time I was sent and not something I’m proud of.  But every time, I see it.  It was right there.  It was actually down this of the pitch right over there.

[Film clip]

FS1: You’re starting off in England so it’s...

PM: Oh is that right.

FS1: Yeah she’ll be watching the...

PM: Good girl.

FS1: ...Ryder Cup.

PM: Good girl.  You’re keen on it yeah?

FS1: Great thanks very much.

FS2: Yeah.

PM: Alright good girl.

FS1: Thank you.

FS2: Bye.

PM: Bye-bye.

PM: It’s one of those things the older you get the better you think you were.  But I like to think I was pretty good yeah.  And I like to think that I would had a really good a shout at representing Dublin and making the Dublin team that’s what I was really focused on.

PM: I mean if you told me back when I was 18-17 years of age that I would (a) be a professional sports person and (b) be a golfer.  Honestly it was not even...not even remotely on my mind.

PM: [inside] My life turned in a different direction and with my injury playing football here, the Gaelic football...

PM: ...which happened just actually across the road.  Right across those training pitches across there that’s where I did my injury with my knee and that was the end of my Gaelic football when I was 19.

PM: [inside] I wouldn’t have been a golfer but that for that injury. So it’s funny life twists and turns in different ways.

[Film clip]

PM: My knee injury happened in 1985 and then I turned pro in 1991.  So I mean in six years I’d gone from basically 0, 9 handicap or 8 handicap to being on the tour within six years.  It was a very small window and moving on as you say to play Ryder Cup was the part of it that was great. 

[Film clips]

PM: I remember 04 particularly because we were playing in Detroit...

[Film clip]

PM: He’s my dream partner and we had a great day and a proud for Ireland and a proud day for everybody.

MS3: Got a bit of local support here I think Paul don’t you?

PM: Ah it’s marvellous isn’t it?  Everywhere we go it’s great.  I’m so proud.  I mean they should enjoy themselves they were great...

PM: I often feel that the Irishmen living abroad are patriotic than the Irishmen living in it.  And your sense of identity with Ireland and how a lot of Irish people do that is to wear what we call a county jersey so 32 counties in Ireland and every county has a particular colour and a particular jersey.  You know when we were in Detroit, I remember particularly how many county jerseys there were.  And I remember one of things that me and Padraigh were talking about as we walked around was seeing how many different counties we could name in the crowd.  And it was full of Irish as you say yeah.

[Film clip]

Announcer: From Ireland Paul McGinley

Applause...

PM: The Ryder Cup didn’t come quickly to me as a pro.  It took me nearly ten years to become a Ryder Cup player.

 [Film clip]

PM: Yeah I went into that first Ryder Cup off form and with you know a certain degree of trepidation.  I certainly rose my game during that week and I really played well and I think a lot of that was down to Sam’s management of me personally.... [Film Clip]...and also a sense of me being in a team with him and for some reason I seemed to go to a different level and seemed to forget about my bad form and forget what was I doing and I was able to increase my level of performance.

[Film clip]

Applause...

PM: We had a really good team, I was lucky.  A bit like I was very lucky to be playing Ryder Cup with some great team mates and really good players that seemed to win a lot of Ryder Cups.  It was the same when I played Gaelic football and hurling growing up.  We had a great team.  We were one of the best in Dublin.  I was fortunate...[film clip] to have a lot of success and being part of a team that was successful which is always makes it a lot more fun.

[Film clip]

MS1: That’s the 16th champion team and...

PM: Oh yeah.

MS1: ...and [unclear 00:08:13] 1, 2, 3, 4... the tallest feller in the back row beside Ken [unclear 00:08:17]...

PM: Yeah I see...

MS1: And Flaherty [unclear 00:08:17]

PM: ...and Flaherty yeah.

MS1: In the front there’s John Dempsey, myself, Paul Stafford.

PM: Jim Steins who was the best player on our team, his dad Brian was the coach.  And Brian was very driven.  Brian was the hard task master.  You know wasn’t afraid to shout and roar and let you have it if you weren’t performing.  And very, very, very passionate.

[Film clip]

PM: Smells exactly the same.   Exactly the same.

PM: I do remember very vividly sitting here in the seat that we’re sitting in and you know, you’re team mate here, team mate here.  Everybody used to get an orange.  Hand the oranges, the little quadrant of orange.

[Film clip]

PM: And this is something we didn’t have. That is ice.  We didn’t have that.

PM: You had nearly sometimes 30 people in a very small confined spaced like this.  That was very intimate, it was very passionate and it was very noise.  But you know obviously when the coach spoke it was his voice and his voice only.  But that was a very strong voice.

[Film clips]

PM: The Ryder Cup is a different environment obviously.  I think it would be a lot more cosier than this, a lot more plush than this dressing room.  But you know there’s only so much you do as a captain.  Yes we’ll have our meetings most evenings and...  But they won’t be very long.  They’ll be short and sweet and we’ll have you know most of my management as a captain will be going on an individual basis rather than collectively in a team or in a locker room as such before again.  For me it’s all done and everybody prepares their own way after that.

[Film clips]

PM: The captain’s job very much is setting the tone and setting the field behind the scenes, creating an environment for the players to go out and play their best golf and be passionate and that sense of sharing.

[Film clips]

PM: That sense of everybody pulling in the same direction.  The energy is multiplied so much more when there’s more people all pulling in the same direction and be excited and be up for what they are trying to achieve which is win the Ryder Cup.

PM: [outside] This is where my association with teams and my bonding of teams and my excitement of being part of a team all started.  This is just right here.

[Film clips]

PM: I’ve been on a learning curve all my life for this role that I am in captaincy.  It started here in the dressing room in the GAA and then it moved on to playing Ryder Cup and then it moved on to Seve Trophy captaincies then it moved on to vice captaincy.  So I’ve been preparing in so many ways unbeknown to me but I was preparing in so many ways for this moment to be the European captain. I’ve a lot of experience in different environments from a Gaelic dressing down here as we’re sitting in to a Ryder Cup team room.  And I’ve a lot of experience of teams and how it all comes together and hopefully I can put that to good effect and put it all together and make some good decisions and hopefully be a good captain.

[END OF PART 1]

[PART 2 – THE BELFRY –FILM CLIP]

I: you just won the Ryder Cup. Tell us how that feels?

PM: Tell me about it all.  What is about the Irish and the Ryder Cup?  I don’t know.

[PRESENTATION SCREEN – FILM CLIP]

PM: I’m so happy for Sam.  He’s been the most majestic captain this week.  To win it’s been great.

[PRESENTATION SCREEN – FILM CLIP]

PM: Well it was electric obviously.  The crowd, you know in a lot of those times you’ve got tunnel vision as much as you can hear.  It’s like white noise.  You just hear masses amount of noise and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing. 

[Film clip]

PM: I remember as I walked up here Sam was waiting for me here, right on the bridge. I remember him walking over the bridge with me and saying, his exact words were, you know what you have to do up and down for the Ryder Cup.  Do this for me and the team.  I mean looking back on it now, you know think well wow, it’s a lot a pressure the captain is going to put on you but I didn’t see it that way at the time at all. 

[Film clip] 

PM: It was quite the opposite. I had an incredible sense of loyalty and bonding towards Sam and I really wanted to do it for him and really wanted to do it for the team for that reason.  And he kind of left me at this stage and he wandered off.  

[Film clip]

PM: At this stage now I’m focused on getting it up and down and making par.  And as you’re walking on the green, obviously the noise is going.  The stands are packed, people hanging over everything they could, up the tree, they were in all kinds of places.

[Film clip]

PM: I was in a completely cocoon of getting it up and down, the match was all square.

PM: [inside]I hadn’t hit a particularly good second shot unlike the night before. I hit a three iron.  The wind was off the right, I pulled it left of the green.

[Film clip]

VO: And it’s tucked over the left side and it’s not easy from there because it’s beyond the pin.  It’s chipping down the hill from there.

PM: Jim had hit his in the bunker.

PM: [outside] My second shot I carried the bunker in and kind of kicked left.  Whereas his has had pitched in the bunker on the fly so being the match player I am and what I’ve learned about match play over the years, you know, I wanted to assess where my opponent was.

PM: [inside]He was on a slight of an upslope.  He was chipping, his bunker shot was slightly uphill.  He was into the wind and the pin was quite close to him.  As bunker shots go it wasn’t difficult by professional standards but obviously the situation made it incredibly difficult.

[Film Clip]

PM: But was I pretty sure having looked at his lie that he was going to make four.  Then it was a case of okay.  I definitely have got to get this up and down.

PM: [outside]And I guess it was somewhere...it was somewhere around here I would say.

PM: [inside]Walking over to my shot it was in that bird’s nest.  It wasn’t a great lie.

PM: [outside]And I remember the tear that’s just here, I had to deal with that tear.

[Film clip]

PM: So really what I wanted to do more than anything was give myself a chance to hole the putt.  So I remember picking a spot there and trying to just kind of almost duff it out of there knowing that the moment and the fact it was coming out of a bird’s nest lie it was going to have topspin and then roll down.

[Film clip]

VO: This is not easy.  Well he’s done quite well to get it there.

PM: [outside] So the ball, I’d chipped it kind of here and it had rolled kind of like that.  That’s about it.  It was rolling away from the hole.  It was about that...a little bit further away than that.  I’m going to say it was about there.  It’s like catching fish.  As you get older and the longer it is since the time, the bigger the fish get so the bigger the putt gets.  

[Film clip]

PM: I’m going to say it was about, I mean what is that, ten feet.  So I marked the ball and stood away.  And Jim was in the bunker.

[Film clip]

PM: And I knew he was going to hit a good bunker shot.  So Jim hit a really good bunker shot.  What was the thing...

[Film clip]

PM: ...I didn’t notice this till afterwards when we were watching the highlights on that night.  His ball came up and it nearly went in the hole.  It nearly came in the whole [crowd] and it kind of clipped the pin and the hole at the same time.

[Film clip]

VO: And it’s pretty much stone dead.  And Paul McGinley knows exactly what he has to do now.

PM: That was a very missable putt.  Down here, a little bit left to right.  And I remember, I put down my market, lift up my ball and I’m walking around to read it and Jim had come out of the bunker and he’s walking up.  And as I’m walking by Jim, I say that’s good Jim.  And I remember him, I was over this stage and I remember him looking at me...

[Film clip]

PM: ...as if to say, are you sure? Are you sure and I said it twice, Jim that’s good, pick it up.  So I think he was quite grateful to be able to pick it up.  So he picked up his ball and I’m left with my putt from about here.

[Film clip]

PM: As I was walking around reading the putt with JP my caddy, it was very clear to me that I could see it.  I could see what I had to do.  The ball was going to break significantly from outside left lip and I was putting across the slope. And as JP was talking to me about the reading of the putt I kind of dismissed him.  I said you know basically go away.  I’ve got it, I’ve seen it.  I know what I have to do.

[Film clip]

PM: As I approached the ball, of course people ask me the question, “How did it feel to win the Ryder Cup?” I mean obviously incredibly nervous is the answer. It wouldn't be telling a lie if that wasn't the case, but I also say I was really exhilarated, I was very excited about the opportunity that I was just about to face, the opportunity of holing that putt. Also in terms of my own confidence, I just holed a really good part on 17...

[Film clip]

PM: ...20 minutes earlier, to go all square in the match.  So I obviously had a nice feel with the putter but I saw exactly what I wanted to do and when I saw it, I stood into it and I actually hit the putt really quick; a couple of practice swings, stood over, one look, two look, bang and it was gone.  As I hit the putt, by the time I looked up, the ball was on that line and tracking and tracking right into the middle of the hole at a really strong speed.  And as I looked up from here, that’s where the ball was and from there, with six inches to go, not even with an earthquake could I miss from there. 

[Film clip]

VO: He doesn’t waste much time. In she goes and 17 years on and the same green and Sam’s there again at the Belfry and the Torrance troops have their hands on the Ryder Cup, in what has to be the most exciting for many a year.

PM: And what a feeling that was and of course it disappeared into the middle of the hole and I put my arms up in the air like that and I remember saying, “Yes, Yes!”

It was like time stood still. I had these two thoughts; the first one was, "Why are all the rest of the players not jumping on top of me?” And then the second thought was, "Maybe it missed, maybe it leapt out, maybe it didn’t go in” and I was about to turn down and look at the hole and I was jumping up and down and that's when Sergio and I think Dave McNealy were very quickly on top of me on the green.

[Film clip]

PM: I started jumping up in the air.  I didn't know what to do. I think I had the putter left-hand.  So yeah, I mean what a feeling, what exhilaration and everybody came pouring on the green. It was all instantaneous if you look at it in real live footage time, but in my own head it was slow motion and it was a very special moment; one that very few people get to, are privileged to enjoy and share and to share with everybody, not just me and the teammates and the caddies, and Sam and all the backroom team but, everybody in corporate hospitality. If you look at the photographs, the people that were lined along the fairways, they were 10 deep right down as far as you could see. There was people over here, obviously the stands were packed as well, people were over here. It wasn’t me holding it for me and the teammates, obviously it was, but it was also for everybody else and the sense of pleasure you give everybody else is the thing that makes it so special. 

[Film clips]

PM: As they say in Ireland “I was thrown in the pond”.  I didn’t have a choice about it I was doing an interview and I remember (a radio interview I think it was) when I was I was pulled away and marched; they had me on me shoulders walking down towards the lake… I knew where I was going. 

[Film clip]

PM: I remember it being very shallow as well too. I wasn’t very deep and obviously very muddy. 

[Film clip]

PM: Just as well it wasn’t deep because obviously I’m not very tall. 

[Film clip]

PM: I’ve been very privileged that we've won all five that I've been involved in and this will be my sixth. I really feel there is a template there, there's a reason I've been riding shotgun myself; three times as a player, twice as a vice captain. In terms of the success we have had, that template, I can see it, I can identify it, I've got a good idea of what it is in my head and I really want to share that with the players. 

[Film clip]

PM: I really want to get that excitement generated in the team room in certain specific ways that I feel has been reasons why we have been so successful.

[Film clips]

PM: I'd like to think at the other side of it, when we come out, just as I have a special bonding with players that I've played Ryder Cups with, I'd like players to feel that bonding with each other when they come out and I think I can help create that as a captain. I see my dad for example, who played Gaelic Football in Ireland with Donegal and I see him when he meets somebody he played football with and immediately there's that synergy and that symmetry and that common ground and that respect for each other, where they want to chat and converse and reminisce about old times. I'd like to think that you know, us, when we get old and grey (I'm grey already) but when we get even older...

[Film clips]

PM: ...that you know, the Ryder Cup players when they meet down the road in 30 years time, they’ll be, “You know what that really was that great”. I think that's what makes the Ryder Cup so special and I'd be delighted if I could create that sense of bonding with each player towards each other.