RUSH: Steven (might be pronounced ‘Stefan’) in Windsor, Connecticut. It’s great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello?
RUSH: Yeah, hi.
CALLER: Rush, how are you?
RUSH: Very good, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to finally talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I just had a few things on a lighter note but I just wanted to say one thing about regarding Obama and, you know, trying to reform the jobs in Egypt. I think that he needs to spend a little bit more time on his people himself and turning around this unemployment. It’s just ridiculous. But on a lighter note, I just wanted to call and ask you how you liked working with Hank Haney on the Golf Channel.
RUSH: How do I like working with Haney?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Haney’s been very helpful.
CALLER: I think you’re a great face to have on the Golf Channel. I’d like to see you there more often.
RUSH: Well, let me tell you something: This is one of the reasons I got so frustrated with television. The most recent episode which was at Baker’s Bay in the Bahamas?
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I mean, it was a killer episode. It was a great, great episode. That episode was 22-1/2 minutes. That episode required 14-1/2 hours to put together, over three days. Now, it didn’t require it. That’s the amount of time it ended up taking. We coulda done it probably in much less time but it’s just the way television works.
CALLER: Right, right.
RUSH: And I’m Mr. One-Take Spontaneity here —
CALLER: I hear you.
RUSH: — on radio, and television isn’t that way. For example, you watch… I’ll pick a show. Kathryn and I watched a show ’cause a relative had a cameo in it last night called Up From Wherever, and it was a volleyball scene, a bunch of kids playing volleyball on the beach in Hawaii. The scene took maybe a minute and a half, and they told me they were on that beach for 12 hours shooting that minute and a half. It’s just the way TV is. I could never be an actor. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t last a week with all the hurry up and wait stuff, the retakes and all that. But Haney has been fun to work with. He’s a delight.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Fort Pierce, Florida. This is Ray. Ray, great to have you.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from the golfing paradise of the world. I was very impressed with your appearance on the Hank Haney program, and I was really impressed, I came out of my chair on that bunker shot you made last week.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, that.
CALLER: Oh, man what a shot.
RUSH: Let me tell you about that. That was the 18th hole at Baker’s Bay. That hole is 600 yards from the tee I used. The professional in that shot, Pat Perez, his tee was probably about 640 yards, a 35-mile-an-hour wind behind us. I hit a drive. My second shot was 260 yards in. So I must have hit a 300-plus-yard drive with the wind behind me. And I pull out a 4-wood and I hit that shot and I aimed a little bit too far right counting for the wind and I end up in that bunker, green-side bunker that you saw. Then Perez is 40 yards ahead of me on that tee shot, he’s in a Fairway bunker, he pulls out a 6-iron, hits it 240 yards, his putt is so long he pulls out a range finder to see how long the putt is. The putt was 39 yards, so times three, almost 120 feet. So he thinks he’s got this hole in the bag because I’ve got this long bunker shot and they’re both telling me before they shoot, ‘Look, Rush, this is an impossible shot. Even pros don’t like this shot, just try to get out, just do whatever you can to get outta here, just get the ball out of the bunker.’
So you saw the shot, it ends up 12 feet away, and they were stunned. They were going bonkers. Perez, Haney, they just couldn’t believe it. I was happy as I could be. What they didn’t show you was — they may use this footage in another show — Haney was so ecstatic he grabbed a camera crew and followed them into the bunker where he explained the technique and what you do to make that shot and how it happened. I guess they didn’t have time to include that in the show itself.
CALLER: I would have liked to have seen his face.
RUSH: (laughing) They were convinced I’m gonna leave it in the trap a couple of times before I get out. They were convinced I was a typical amateur and was gonna get stuck in there.
CALLER: Because that was one of your — as I remember this, you had a lot of trouble getting out of bunkers and that was one of the things that he worked with you —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — in the beginning of the show and to see you pull that shot off under that situation with the wind and everything, I mean I came out of my chair. I was so impressed.
RUSH: Well, thank you. Thanks very much. It’s all confidence, and I had none in the bunkers. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had literally no confidence, and I found out why I was having trouble. He explained it to a T. It all had to do with swing plane and hitting way too far behind the ball and I don’t have time here to tell you what the fixes were, but, as you could see from that shot, it worked.
CALLER: Well, congratulations and keep up the good work.
RUSH: Thank you very much. Appreciate that, Ray, very much.