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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. This is a very exciting edition because we’re so honored to have you with us today. Steve Scott, he’s the author of this great new book. Hey, Tiger—You Need to Move Your Mark Back: 9 Words that Changed the Course of Golf Forever. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Steve Scott.

Steve Scott: No, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

John: Hey, Steve, we’re going to get into the book and a lot of issues today, but before we get going, talk a little bit about where you grew up and how you got into golf just to start with.

Steve: Yeah, for me, my dad got me into the game when I was young and he cut a potter down for me when I was five years old. I just loved the game, I took to the game. In a team sports setting, as a young person, I was the ball hog. I wanted to play, I wanted the ball all the time. So in golf, you always have the ball. So I was able to have the ball, playing golf and I just ran with it. You’re able to practice by yourself if you want. You don’t have to rely on other people to pass you the ball, or you could have a great game as an individual, but the rest of your team is not good and you could lose. In golf, you do lose more than you win, but you can still get out of it, really what you put in a lot of ways so that’s why I loved it. I grew up in south Florida in the Coral Springs Fort Lauderdale area and went to high school down there. Went to college at the University of Florida, and yeah, just it was a great place to get into the game, and definitely credit to my dad for doing that.

John: You wrote this book, which I want to get into, “Hey Tiger-You Need to Move Your Mark Back.” For those listeners and viewers and I’m not a golfer, but I’m a huge sports fan, and I was just introduced to your story about seven months ago. Bought the book, read it, loved it, invited you on the show, and thanks to your graciousness, you came on today. Go back to 1996, and it’s so well done in the book, but I want it to come from you. Explain where we’re at. Tiger has a chance in ’96, you’re playing for the US Amateur Open Championship.

Steve: Yeah.

John: He could win his third in a row. The Cinderella story. Give our listeners and viewers a little bit of how the 36 holes went.

Steve: Yeah, it was really a David versus Goliath sort of scenario, right? Tiger Woods was going for his third straight US amateur. He had done everything really he’d never really wanted to do in the amateur game. Nobody in the history of golf had ever won three US amateurs. Not Jack Nicholas, not Arnold Palmer, or Bobby Jones. Nobody had ever won three in a row. So the only guy in his way was 19-year-old me. I was just going into my sophomore year of college at the University of Florida. I was pretty unproven at that time. I had a couple of good finishes that year, but I’m 19 years old. I didn’t have a lot of experience and all of a sudden I’m thrust into this moment where the world was watching, there were millions watching on television. We got better ratings for that match than the PGA tour did that Sunday afternoon.

John: Wow.

Steve: It was a magical day in so many ways. The only thing that was missing from it for me was walking away with the trophy. I got my own sort of trophy that we can talk about in, my caddy, my girlfriend at the time now, my wife. We’ve been married now for almost 24 years. It’ll be 24 years coming up, and very, very lucky. I wouldn’t always recommend marrying your caddy, but mine was perfect.

John: Millions watching on TV, you’re 19, 15,000 or so people in attendance, the first 18, you’re up five, you got them by five, which is itself already an amazing part of the story.

Steve: Yeah.

John: Now, the second day comes. Walk us through where you were on the second day. You came out and Tiger came out, as we all know, tiger is. Explain where things went from a momentum perspective.

Steve: Yeah. It wasn’t even a second day. We played the whole match in one day.

John: Oh, sorry. Okay.

Steve: Crazily enough, yeah. The match was scheduled for 36 holes and which is two rounds of golf and most people don’t play that much golf in one day.

John: That’s right.

Steve: Nor should you, you probably tear your back up, but we’re walking the whole day. It’s a 10-11 hour day and the whole week itself, that was the seventh day in a row of competition by the way. So that tournament is very long. I illustrated in the book pretty well, but yes, it’s such a grueling week and you’re just running on total adrenaline at that point and all the great things that you’ve done to that point. Yes, I was five up, and it wasn’t just five shots for your non-golfers out there, I was five holes ahead.

John: Right.

Steve: Each hole-in-a-match play situation, what you see on the PGA tour every week is mostly stroke play.

John: Right.

Steve: You can pick up three shots on one hole.

John: That’s right.

Steve: In match play, each hole’s its own tournament, each hole’s its own little match. So, if I make an eight and you make a four, you only win one hole. What Tiger did in that comeback, was what he continued to do throughout his career and his 82 PGA tour victories, and his 15 majors. That day was the jumping-off point for him going into the professional world the next day. That was the Hello World and $40 million contract from Phil Knight at Nike.

John: Who was in attendance that day?

Steve: 15 miles away from the campus there in Beaverton, Oregon where the Nike headquarters are. So it was almost like, it was absolutely perfect fate for that moment to happen at that point and then Nike just jumped on. You can’t script so many things that happened that day.

John: For us non-golfers and also for the golfers that are out there, because I’m sure there’s a bunch of golfers watching now. Explain what happened on 16 though, with the famous words and what happened on 16.

Steve: Yeah, so I was five up after the 18 holes, and then I was still in the lead. I’d never trailed the whole entire day. I’m two up with three to play, so if I could win this particular hole, it was the 34th hole to match the 16th hole on the course. So if I could win this hole, I would win the US amateur and take history away from Tiger Woods on this stage was just this monumental stage. NBC Sports was covering it. Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller were in the booth. It was this amazing day, and it was on the West Coast, so you had this prime time in a way kind of golf audience watching. There was so much riding on this moment. Anyway, we both hit our drives down there. I hit my approach in the green side bunker, and he hit his drive. He was such a long hitter back then and always will be known for that.

John: Right.

Steve: He hit it 53 yards past me off the tee. So he had a sand wedge to the green and I had a sand iron. So, you’re going to get a sand wedge closer than a sand iron and he did. He spun his ball back off the hill, and hit it to about six feet. So I’m in there and I hit my bunker shot out. The best I could do is about 10 feet from the hole. I’m looking at the putt and my putt breaks about a cup which is four and a half inches wide, about a four-and-a-half-inch break from left to right. As I’m reading this putt, his coin, his quarter, and his ball markers are right in my line. So what you can do, you can ask your playing partner to move the marker over so you can have a fair line of putt. So I did, and I get up there and I made my putt for par, which forced him to have to make his birdie putt. Because if I would’ve missed this particular putt, I would’ve conceded that he was going to two-putt from six feet to win the hole. Anyway, I made this great putt. I was under all this pressure. I was so nervous to perform a putt of that magnitude under that pressure at that moment and to hit it as great of a putt as I did right in the middle, I was elated. The adrenaline just goes through your body. You don’t even realize it until you’re in that moment. So I’m walking off the green, and all of a sudden I see out of the corner of my eye that he’s put his ball down on the ground in the wrong spot. So in a match play situation, if you don’t play your ball from where it was, right? Because he moved it, if you don’t play it from the correct spot, you automatically lose the hole. Knowing that I was too up, if I would’ve won the hole, I’d win the match. So the match would’ve been over in that instant. But here’s the beauty of this story, right?

John: Right.

Steve: I think, we can get into lots of topics about what happened and what’s going on in the world since, of things that maybe people should do or shouldn’t do. For me, golf taught me, that the first rule of golf, by the way, is to play with integrity.

John. Right.

Steve: Playing with integrity was something that was in my DNA, was in my upbringing in the game as a junior. Now, not too far removed from being a junior golfer, only 19 at the time. It was this instinctive, reflexive action that just kind of blurted out of my mouth, “Hey, you got to move that back.” So he moves it back and he ends up making the putt to win the hole instead of me, not saying something, and then him playing from the wrong spot and losing the hole, and then the match right there, and then he went on to make a 35 footer on the next hole to tie the match. Then he won on the second playoff hole. So but all of that could have changed history. Maybe he doesn’t turn pro right away and this isn’t to say that he wouldn’t have gone and done all the great things that he did. But to think about history he turns pro, he wins two events in the fall and seven events that he played in in the fall. He won two of them on the PGA tour right away, which got him into the masters, which he won by 12 shots. So he would not have played in the Masters had he turned pro and not won, because you forfeit that invite to Augusta. It’s just amazing how it all transpired. He wins the Masters and turns the golf world on his head eight months after our match.

John: As you and I know in sports and in life momentum matters, and that was the beginning of his momentum going in, as you said. I read the book word for word, many sections over and over again. A couple of things. One thing, then caddy now, wife of almost 24 years talked about afterward is that tiger, since that day he actually, when he puts his coin down, he actually chooses which side to put it on based upon if he has to move the mark back. Is that not correct? If it’s up, he doesn’t have to move it back. If it’s down, hint tails down, he has to move back. Is that true?

Steve: That is correct. Yeah. That got around social media quite a bit actually in the last few years. Yes. So when he moves his mark over, because he always sits at heads up all on a normal day, but when he moves his mark, he flips it to tails.

John: Right.

Steve: He knows that he has moved it.

John: Yeah.

Steve: It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, you want to make sure you remember it and put it back. I guess that moment, affected the way he marked his ball forever.

John: First of all, when you talk about character and integrity and what you did with all that adrenaline running through your system, what was second nature to you and become axiomatic, and let’s just call it, it was part of your DNA to do the right thing, integrity and character. Was that from mom and dad? Was that from partially Mom and Dad, and some of your mentors like Ray Daly who you talked about in the book? Where did that come from when you look back now on being such a tender age, but having such great instincts?

Steve: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. Certainly, my parents were influential. My mom never really played the game, but my dad certainly, got me into the game. I think just being around golf, because as a young player, I was pretty good at an early age, so I would typically play with older kids. I would play with adults a lot. So with all of that, and then understanding what the game is, the bedrock of the principles that the game is based on. You just learn it, and you just know that that’s what you do in golf. This is why a super high pedestal as far as the level of integrity that you should have. Now, we could argue that with what’s happened through the PGA tour recently and whatnot. I guess that’ll play itself out. But for me, at that moment and all the things that I learned, yes, it was certainly an important thing that I learned. My coach, Ray Daly certainly helped me as well. Yeah, all those things were definitely factors.

John: That happened when you were such a tender age. As the world goes, you’re still a very young guy. You’re 45 or 46 ish.

Steve: Yeah.

John: You and your wife and family members, but especially you and your wife have had a lot of history behind you now to think about that moment. How often does this come up organically through your head? Because you have a very active life as obviously, a very successful author public speaker, and also a broadcaster, how often do people ask you about that 1996 match play?

Steve: Seems like every day, right? Yeah, it’s funny being known best for losing, right? It’s kind of a funny thing to say, but in life, and this is I talk about this a lot in my speaking engagements, right? The life is, you’re going to lose way more than you win. So you have to quantify, like, how do you win without winning, right? Like, how do you do that? After that moment, yeah, there were certainly some down times, yeah, I was bummed out. I wish I would’ve won. But when you give it your all, when you give everything you’ve got, and you play the game by the rules, by the spirit of the game, no matter what game it is, for me, it was golf. You do those things and you can’t be upset. You can’t second guess yourself because you did everything you could possibly do.

John: You left it all on the field, and you also did it the right way and as you said in the book, you can win in life without winning. That’s one of the reasons I had you all on the show today because, for our listeners and viewers, there are tons of life lessons in this book. It goes way beyond golf. This is for any golfer, non-golfer, father to son, mentor to mentee. This book has a lot of life lessons in it that we’re going to go into. When you were thinking about all this, you and I were just briefly chatting off the air before we went live, one of the main reasons I was so excited to chat with you today, Steve, is I think your message is one that’s perfect for the times that we live in, think about who has gotten headlines of recent years, the Elizabeth Holmes’ and the Meltdown of Theranos and Sam Bankman-Fried and even if you go back a couple of years, Lance Armstrong, Sammy Sosa, countless politicians we’ve put on display and almost glorified in almost a sickish way. The meltdown of integrity and the meltdown of character and the domino effect of what that leads to the destruction of industries, destruction of fame, of fortune, and the loss of hundreds if not billions of dollars for investors and things of that such. What was part of your thinking when you went to write the book, or what was your main impetus?

Steve: Yeah, I completely agree. So many things have happened. If you just take sports, for example, right?

John: Yeah.

Steve: That Sammy Sosa incident, I was actually at that game, which was very ironic, to say the least with Lance Armstrong, Houston Astros the New England Patriots, a couple of times, Spygate, Deflategate the guys who got caught maybe a year or so ago, putting weights in the fish so they could win the contest.

John: Right.

Steve: Just yesterday I heard about the two tennis players overseas who got banned from the sport for life because they were match-fixing. So it’s like, “What cost do you do these things?” Right? I was watching my kids last night, the old 1990s movie Cool Runnings knowing what the Jamaican bobsled team.

John: Yeah.

Steve: Where the coach was saying, well, the story, he got kicked off of the other team, or they got stripped of their gold medals because he put weights in the bobsled to make it go faster. You’re right, all these things that we hear in life on social media, all these stories that we see on the news, you’re right. There is kind of a glorification of the negative and the positive stories, if you watch the evening news, there’s one positive story in the last three minutes, right? That’s all there is.

John: Right.

Steve: The rest of it is doom and gloom. I was a communication major, so they always said, that all these stories they lead, if it bleeds, it leads, right?

John: Right.

Steve: That’s kind of sad in a way. So, you’re right. When I wrote this book with my co-author, a great, great writer in his own right trip out, and I got to give him a lot of credit as well. He’s written some other books as well. He really put the magic in this and the flow into it. But really it was about what we wrote during the pandemic. We put the formulation out there a couple of months before the pandemic hit to the publisher, and they approved it, and all of a sudden the pandemic hits. Now, we got all the time in the world to dive into these stories and really dig deep. I think that’s what we did so well in these stories because there was so much bad happening at that time. There were so many uncertain things. I wanted a story that would be a reminder of what we are going through right then and there. A kind of here, this is the good side of life. This is the good side of the sport. This is the good side of honoring your opponent, honoring your own integrity and your own beliefs, and staying true to yourself. That’s a hard thing to do, and for whatever reason, I instinctively did it at that moment, it would’ve been pretty advantageous had I not.

John: By the way, you said after you had hit the ball during that match play, you never looked back. That was the one time you glanced back when that mark was sitting in the wrong place.

Steve: Yeah.

John: Therefore, you felt that was imperative to say something. But you could have gotten a free pass if you never looked back, because you would’ve never even seen him, he would’ve hit the ball, and you would’ve been looking. So no one would’ve ever held you to any standard because there was no standard at that point. You just have to…

Steve: That’s a great point. I’m not sure that I even remembered it putting it that way, but you’re completely right.

John: Right.

Steve: Because you’re right, I didn’t want to watch Tiger play.

John: Right.

Steve: Because he was so dramatically longer and more impressive physically off the tee with his ball striking than I was. So I didn’t want to get caught up in his game. But at that moment, you’re right. I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.

John: For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Steve Scott, the author of, Hey, Tiger-You need to move your mark back, this book you can find on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and great bookstores near you. It’s a great read. It’s not only for golfers, it’s for moms, dads, and anyone who’s trying to teach or show the next generation the right way to win in life and to do it with character and integrity. Steve has written a real beauty here. He’s also the founder of the Silver Club Golfing Society. Steve, let’s talk a little bit about life outside of golf for you as life went on. Obviously, the PGA career didn’t turn out to be what exactly you wanted it to be. But, you stayed in and around the golfing world. You are a broadcaster, you started the Silver Club Golfing Society. Explain what the Silver Club Golfing Society is.

Steve: Yeah. I do wear a lot of hats. I’m a PJ Professional. I represent the PJ of America.

John: Great.

Steve: I was a head pro at the traditional head pro role at a couple of different clubs up in New Jersey, in the New York area between 2009 and 2017. After that, I founded in conjunction with the Outpost Club, which is kind of our parent or sister society, I guess, if you will. We developed an amateur golf society for single-digit handicaps so good players.

John: Right.

Steve: We basically, set up really fun camaraderie field events at great venues all around the country. Like an Inverness club, like Prairie Dunes, like Ballyneal, we’ve been to Pumpkin Ridge actually a couple of years ago as well. Oakmont, Oak Hill you name it, we go to the Cream of the Crop, and we’re very fortunate. Yeah, it’s just a fun group of people, they’re Golf Aficionados, but they love to travel and they love to compete a little bit. It’s just a fun time with a bunch of like-minded people, and for me, in some of these places, I don’t even bring my clubs. I don’t really play all the time with them, but I’m watching them…

John: Right.

Steve: …go through the things that I went through as a competitor. I think that’s been the fun thing for me to do. You mentioned broadcasting. I’ve been doing a lot of work the last few years with PGA tour live and ESPN. That’s been a ton of fun, and I love doing that. A director of instruction for Golf Week on their online platforms and dishing out golf instruction to the masses, which is really fun, and doing a lot of public speaking engagements as well. Yeah, my time is definitely spent all around the game and with people who just love it.

John: For anyone who’s had been blessed to have 46 years on this planet, you have the same wife for 24 years, you have beautiful children and you’ve got all these hats that you’re wearing, so it doesn’t seem like you’d ever be bored at this point. Although it didn’t work out perfectly on that day in Pumpkin Ridge. It sounds like you’re having a pretty good life there, and you’re on a pretty good run.

Steve: Yeah.

John: Integrity and character really do add up a little bit to destiny, if you ask me. That’s one of the big messages I think we should all take out of your great book.

Steve: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that, and I hope so. I hope it does mean something. It may not get the major headlines everywhere, but I think it’s definitely an important thing, and one of my inscriptions in the book, I wanted to write this book, not only for me at this time in my life, I could have written it 30, 40 years down the road. But it was the 25th anniversary of the matches when it came out back a couple of years ago now. I wanted to write it because I was picturing four generations away from me. I’m long gone and this story is easy to just get swept under the rug. I wanted the future generations of my family and future generations of golfers to learn and understand that no matter where golf goes, no matter what happens in the game this is the core of golf. This is the essence of who I was and the essence of what you should do in a moment like that.

John: There are some other great lessons, and I’m going to come back to that. I’m going to come back to also Tiger Woods in a little bit. But there are other great, great lessons that you leave as breadcrumbs throughout your book. You do it so well, and it was really impressive. I want you to explain what you meant, though to our listeners and viewers out there when you said you got to lose to learn how to win.

Steve: Yeah, I think winning in golf again, you win very, very little.

John: Yeah.

Steve: If you win once a year no matter what level, pro, amateur, whatever, you’re doing great if you win once a year because you play against 155 other people, typically in a full-field event. Yeah, you have to learn the lessons in defeat. You go through a lot mentally, and you certainly learn more when you lose than when you win. But you have to learn that to get to the point where you want to get to, because it’s when you win, I don’t know. Those things kind of get forgotten, I think.

John: Yeah.

Steve: When you lose, it’s those stepping stones, those blocks, those life-building blocks that you need to continue to get better.

John: All the GOATs always say over and over again, if you’re going to take away just some common threads from all of them, that their rings are just the collected memorabilia from the wins. But in their mind, play over and over again on a continuous loop, their mistakes and their losses. It’s so interesting.

Steve: Yeah. No, you definitely learn from that. It gets you better if you allow it to. Now, for me, my professional career was six years long. I had reasonable success on the Canadian tour, and I won a couple of times out there. I got up to maybe 250th or 60th in the world at one point. But I just never had the quiet of the success. I always wanted to win. I always wanted to compete and as a pro, you have to be very comfortable finishing 40th or 50th. I think my mindset just didn’t really compute with that.

John: Talk about, though, when you talk about losing, but then there’s also a line that you have in the book that’s really brilliant. But I want you to explain to our audience, how to get over it and how to help folks that we mentor or our children get over it as well. Broken confidence is a bone that never heals. How do you move forward when you lose confidence? Because we all have moments throughout life in anything that we’re doing, relationships, business or financial sports, that we lose our confidence. How do we get over that bone that never heals?

Steve: Yeah. I think it’s something that always sticks with you for sure. It’s something that if there was a big moment that happened, like it did with me where you didn’t win, it can lead you down a bad path. For me, you noted a lot of the successes that I’ve been having recently, and I’m so blessed, I’m so lucky. Let me see how I can put this, the things that happen when you don’t have the success they…

John: Let me put it to you this way.

Steve: Yeah.

John: You could have ended up a very bitter person after [crosstalk].

Steve: Yeah.

John: But you focused on making yourself a better person, even better than you were there, where you showed the ultimate in character and integrity. You focused on having a better life in front of you no matter what it brought.

Steve: Yeah. I had to in a moment like that, that was so big. When you get defeated, I could have totally broken me forever.

John: Correct.

Steve: I could have gone down the wrong path of drugs and alcohol. Lots of these things happen a lot to people.

John: Steve, this happens all the time. Let’s be honest.

Steve: All of the time.

John: Right.

Steve: For me, I chose, it goes back to the winning without winning sort of mentality, right?

John: Right.

Steve: You have to take the good out of what you do every single time because you are going to lose a lot. It’s easy to focus on the negative, that’s the easy, that’s the low-hanging fruit that people tend to, just wallow in the mud about. They just hide themselves in a dark room sometimes. But you’re going to have losses in your life. There’s going to be things that happen, and maybe probably smaller than how it happened to me, but it’s like, “Okay if I’m going to be reminded about this thing for the rest of my life if I’m…” Tiger Woods ended up just continuing to be great and every time somebody, they start asking me, “Hey, what’s…?” I could have definitely gone down a bad path, but for me, yes, it’s choosing the good out of it. Because there is good in every situation if you look for it. For me, there was so much good. There was 99% good and 1% bad. So why am I going to let that 1% kill my 99%? Right?

John: Such a great way to be. Talk about being way beyond your years, I don’t know, including myself at 19 and I’m now 60. I don’t know many people at 19 that would have that poise character and ability to push on 19, after going through both the elation and electricity that you felt that weekend, but then also the end part of that situation as well.

Steve: Maybe I didn’t have it right away.

John: Yeah.

Steve: It wasn’t immediate. I think if you watch the YouTube Roger Maltbie is interviewing Tiger and me on the final green there, and asking Tiger if he’s going to turn pro and whatnot. You look at my face, I was pretty satisfied with how I played.

John: Yeah.

Steve: Again, I gave it everything I had.

John: Right.

Steve: It wasn’t like, I’m going to go crawl into a hole. Yeah, again, if you give it your all and, and you leave it all out there, you just have to say, “Okay.” There are things in life that are meant to be, and there are so many things that I won that day. I have to look at it for that. I got more traction from finishing runner-up in an event than most people get from winning. I got sponsored exemptions into countless tournaments. I got to play in the Masters. There were so many great things that happened because of that day. That’s the only way I can look at it.

John: You got the girl.

Steve: Then I got the girl.

John: Got the girl. Come on. One beautiful part about your book, your book was literally an essay in a magnanimous spirit. You were very open and frank about how shocked you were as a 19-year-old, of course, about how cool and aloof Tiger was that day, including not only during the play and the other mental jujitsu he did with you during the 90-minute break, the bathroom break, and other things that go into making Tiger, Tiger. But even after his win, instead of thanking you for the great match play, or for saying “Hey, Tiger, you need to move your mark.” Being more of the gentleman that he obviously has become in later years, you were very open about the shockingness of how this affected you in the moment, but removed it. You also left lots of space in the book, and so did your wife Christie for redemption. You went out of your way to show how Tiger, unlike many others who go through things in life that are life-changing crises that he’s gone through seems to have come out on the other side a better person. Talk a little bit about that part of your journey and how you’re able to remain so magnanimous and leave space in life for those who exhibit maybe poor character and integrity at certain points, but those are setbacks. Maybe setting them up for a bigger comeback.

Steve: Yeah. I think what you’re referencing right is the award ceremony particularly where I got up there and spoke first and I said, “Hey, Tiger, you’re an amazing opponent.” Thanking the appropriate people at the club at Pumpkin Ridge and whatnot. Then I put the mic down, and he comes up and speaks, that feeling wasn’t reciprocated like, “Oh, hey, Steve, hey, thanks for giving me a solid for reminding me to move my mark.”

John: Right.

Steve: He wasn’t wired that way, he was super young. He was 20 years old at the time, but I think mentally he was probably younger than that. This isn’t trying to knock him or anything, but when you’re so good at something, there are other things that are not going to be as good or developed. He was a single only child, didn’t have tons of friends and golf was his thing. He and his father, they were best friends, basically. I think his mental development, his social development I think it’s caught up. Listening to interviews that he’s had, he’s a different person. Completely 100% now, that everything has gone on, and the fact that he has children now, but then at that moment, yeah, there was no, “Hey, Steve, thanks so much for reminding me.” It was his father who taught him this cold-blooded mentality of not really acknowledging your opponents or thanking them, and it was just kind of how he was wired, so be it. That’s the way he was, but I have seen a different Tiger in the last three to five years without question and I think the world has.

John: Tell the story about accepting the awards after the awards ceremony, but you could have chosen a million quotes, “Tiger’s, a very well-quoted human being.” Obviously, one of the most famous people on this whole planet of 8 billion plus human beings. But at the beginning of the book, you chose this quote, “Achievements on the golf course are not what matters. Decency and honesty are what matters, Tiger Woods.” In Christie’s afterward, she basically said, “Tiger call what Steve did, a testament for what the game is all about.”

Steve: Yeah.

John: You both left room for redemption and an afterlife to folks who went through. Listen, as I said, I don’t play golf, but I’m a huge fan of the sport. A huge fan of folks who have achieved greatness. You’ve achieved greatness in your own way. He’s achieved greatness. I think both of you have had tremendous life after Pumpkin Ridge. But when you look back and you, and it’s been studied more. I think as you point out Tiger adopted a lot of his father’s generational trauma. The father was what? Some form of Green Beret or something in Vietnam came back.

Steve: Yeah.

John: The story goes, he brought his girlfriend back a necklace of ears that he collected along the way. His necklace of ears that he had collected, and was part of the trauma that he endured in Vietnam. Then when you watch the HBO special, I think about almost three years ago

Steve: Yeah.

John: It was when they talked about what Tiger, basically saw some form of normal behavior growing up. His father was a tremendous role model in many ways, but obviously was deficient in others like we’re all deficient in some ways, but those were very big deficiencies that loomed large in Tiger’s young life, it seems like. So but what I love is that you leave the room. You wrote a beautiful letter to him at the end of the book, and I think one of the things you left a lot of room for is somewhat akin to Ali and Frazier sitting down years later and really ribbing each other and having a good time. Even now, Schwarzenegger and Stallone doing the same when they were huge adversaries, their whole careers. Bird and Magic, you leave room for one day, hopefully sitting down with Tiger and catching up about 1996 in that match play.

Steve: I think it will happen at some point, hopefully. We’ve got lots of life to live and I do hope we can do it. It’d be pretty amazing for sure to be able to do that. Yeah, I think it would probably put some closure on some questions that I have in my brain. Yeah, I think it would just be pretty neat. It’s amazing how time flies. In only a few more years, it’ll be 30 years now. Yeah, we might as well go have a few beers and chat about it, right?

John: It would be great television too. I think there are a lot of people that would love to listen to the play-by-play by you guys at this point in your lives and just see there’s something wonderful about seeing two tremendous historical adversaries be human to each other. There’s so much fun to that. I’ve seen it with Ali and Frazier, and even Stallone and Schwarzenegger are going through it now in their 70s. I think why wouldn’t that happen? I love what you say in the book, “My life turned out better than I could have ever imagined, and so did Tiger.”

Steve: Yeah, he had more success on the course and maybe I’ve had more success off the course, so whatever it. So many good things. I mean, look, we’re talking about golf, we’re talking about these are first world, any problems that we have are first world problems. Definitely, we love the game and always be around it. Account for my lucky stars for having my dad get me into the game, because of all the great people that I’ve met and gotten to play golf with, it’s not just Tiger Woods. I played a practice round at the Masters, with Jack Nicklaus. I’ve even played golf with, let’s see, you mentioned Larry Bird. I played with Gary Carter. I’ve played…

John: Jack Welch.

Steve: I did some caddying. Jack, I caddied for Jack Welch and Rush Limbaugh, and just Gary Player. Yeah, I’ve been around and been able to be around some really neat people and I’ve been very, very fortunate just because of golf and know the place you get to…

John: I bet you there’s a long list of people that wish they were a broadcaster on ESPN and also on the PTA tour life as well. We’re going to ship from the book, and again, for our listeners and viewers, I really recommend you buy this book. You’ll enjoy it if you’re a sports aficionado or just someone who wants to share more about just winning with character and integrity and living a life of character integrity. This is a tremendous book, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. You can find it in a local bookstore to find Steve. You can go to stevescottpga.com. But Steve, let’s move into a couple of other topics.

Steve: One other thing though, with the book, if you want to get it signed by me personally.

John: Oh.

Steve: movethatback.com. If you go in movethatback.com, you can buy the book right for me. I will sign it, however, you want me to sign it, and I’ll send it to you personally.

John: That’s wonderful.

Steve: The only other way is you can’t get it personally.

John: That’s great. Let’s say, so it’s movethatback.com.

Steve: movethatback.com. That’s it. It’s really simple.

John: I love it. Then we’re going to do that and let’s go into a couple of other timely issues, integrity and character. So, although I’m not a golfer, I followed very closely what was going on the last couple of years with PGA in the Live tournaments.

Steve: Right.

John: If I was one of the great golfers on the tour, I was offered lots of money, and some of them took it. I’m not saying what’s right and wrong because I don’t know enough about the politics of what’s right and wrong, Steve, but what was fascinating to me is some of the folks took 50, 80, a hundred million dollars, God knows, life-changing generational money. Now, a couple of weeks ago, the tours merge. So, the guys who took the money and these guys that turned down the money, Tiger turned down, what? Almost a billion dollars or something close to that. It was reported between 700 million and a billion dollars, a lot.

Steve: A lot.

John: Even for Tiger Woods. It’s a lot of money.

Steve: Yeah.

John: I don’t understand a little bit the mechanic. So if I was one of the folks who took the money and again, this doesn’t cast any aspersions on any of those folks. Did they get to keep the money and now they get to be part of the PGA again? Is this how this whole thing is going? I don’t know.

Steve: Yeah. I don’t think enough people know what’s going to actually happen with that.

John: Yeah.

Steve: How the PGA tour will now be in control of the Live tour?

John: Yeah.

Steve: Who knows if this will even go through and there’s some antitrust thoughts out there and some things that they’ll have to get by through the government.

John: Right.

Steve: Yeah, they’ve talked about those people. If they pay a fine to get back on the PGA tour, that fine, it might help balance things out a little bit.

John: Right.

Steve: Their fine money might go to the other guys who remain loyal. There’s an infinite amount of ways this thing could go.

John: Right.

Steve: Yeah, it was a little shocking when I heard the news a few weeks back for sure. Yeah, we just don’t know quite enough to make informed decisions. I don’t think.

John: As just a sports someone who loves sports and I love watching golf. I just hope it makes the sport better, whatever that means. At the end of the day, I just hope the sport gets bigger and stronger.

Steve: I think it will.

John: Yeah. That’s exciting. Let’s talk about another Stanford phenom and her upbringing where she is today, Rose Zhang.

Steve: Yeah.

John: Talk a little bit about, Rose Zhang. Today, what? She comes out she wins what? Two opens amateurs back to back and then wins her first major, not major, but wins her first tournament right out of Stanford.

Steve: Yeah.

John: Hasn’t been done in 71 years or something like that.

Steve: Yeah. What she has done, yeah. I hope the media will give her a little bit of a break if she doesn’t always continue to perform and live up to what her former Stanford alum and Tiger did. But yeah, she’s got great potential, doesn’t she? She won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She won the NCAA, she won everything, she had to and wanted to and could basically as an amateur. Now, she’s jumped off into her pro career and she’s got the Golf World by right in the palm of her hands. It’s pretty awesome to watch.

John: She’s pretty fun to watch. I was watching a little bit this morning and she was, I think two under and only, in fifth or sixth place at her second tournament, I think the KPMG. So it’s fun to have a new superstar on the horizon. A rising star just brings great attention for all the right reasons to a sport that I know you love and you’re great at and a sport that needs even more attention with, I think the youth of the world. Steve, we froze up there for a second.

Steve: You may have to repeat that in some way. I just lost you there for one second.

John: No problem. We’ll bring…

Steve: Yeah, repeat that.

John: Yeah, this will be fixed in the post. I think it’s really great to have a young superstar on the horizon to draw more good and positive attention to a sport that needs more youth coming into it around the world to have a Rose Zhang. I think it’s great to see that again.

Steve: Yeah, it’s awesome. It definitely energizes the golfing world. Have it on the LPGA tour they need sparks like Rose Zhang to keep fueling their story and their message. Women’s golf is very powerful and she’s got a great opportunity to do a lot of great things in this game.

John: What’s next for you, Steve? You wrote this book. You’ve got ESPN, and PGA tour live. You’ve got Silver Club Golfing Society. You’re also a public speaker and people want to hire, you can go to stevescottpga.com. What’s next for you? You’re very young still, and you have lots of years and fun ahead of you. What are some things on your mind that you’re looking forward to?

Steve: Yeah, I think just continuing to build the Silver Club Golfing Society up and keep meeting more people from all around the country and around the world, and go travel to some amazing places. I’m going to go to Bandon Dunes for the first time this year over in Oregon. I’m going to go over to Scotland again to watch the Walker Cup at the Old Course.

John: Wow.

Steve: The home of golf that’s going to be amazing with our golf society. So I’m looking forward to that. Yeah, lots of public speaking opportunities and I’m getting into the corporate space quite a bit now, and would love to continue to do that as well. I’m going to speak in a group of over 500 people in Nashville at the end of July at the Farm Bureau Insurance Agents convention. So that’s going to be really awesome, just continue to spread this message of good, right? This is my story and to tie it in with having integrity and showing courage in a moment where it was challenging to do so honestly, and with all the pressure that I was under, especially as such a young person and just showing people how you can win without winning and, and how do you do that? Just kind of teach people that you’re going to lose. But how can you quantify your own personal success no matter what the outcome is? I think that’s a thing that everybody can try to grasp. I think that whether it’s in the corporate world, the business world, or the sporting world, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose deals, you’re going to lose rounds of golf, you’re going to lose games. It’s just going to happen. So you have for your own sanity, I think you have to understand and learn. How you can quantify and how do you figure out what you did so well, and turn every situation into a positive as opposed to looking at the easy side, which sometimes is the negative?

John: Steve, we’re going to continue to follow your great career. For our listeners and viewers out there that want to find Steve or hire him to come to speak at one of their upcoming events, go to stevescottpga.com. If you want to get a signed book, moveitback.com.

Steve: movethatback.com.

John: Oh, movethatback. Sorry. movethatback.com. “Hey, Tiger-You need to move your mark back, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and other great bookstores. movethatback.com. You’ll get an inscribed, personally inscribed book by Steve Scott. Steve, your message is so universal, it’s so timely. I wish you continued success not only in life and in marriage and as a father, but in all the professional endeavors you take on. Honestly, the reason why I had you on the Impact podcast is because the world needs more, Steve Scott, and I hope they become more of them, and you continue to inspire our next generation to become the next generation of Steve Scott. So thank you so much for spending this time with us today, and thank you so much for all that you’ve done in messaging the good word.

Steve: Well, that means a lot. I really appreciate your sentiments. Yeah, we’ll just continue to keep spreading that good word. Thank you.

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