Golf is still fun -- and relaxing -- for Fred Couples

Fred Couples’ smooth swing and laid-back personality have helped make him one of golf’s most popular players since he broke onto the PGA Tour in 1981. Couples, who turned 50 last month (how is this possible?) and is now eligible to play the Champions Tour, was in Los Angeles last week to promote the Chevron World Challenge, his friend Tiger Woods’ tournament at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks on Dec. 3-6.

Couples, winner of the 1992 Masters and 15 PGA Tour events, was captain of the victorious U.S. team in the Presidents Cup in October. He talked about his plans as a player, Michael Jordan’s role as an assistant at the Presidents Cup, Woods’ season and a variety of other topics. Here are excerpts from that conversation:

Question: What’s your plan for playing next year?

Answer: My plan is to play the regular tour. Knock on wood, I’m going to play more golf than I’ve played since I was 25 years old, tournament-wise. I have to play seven or eight on the senior tour and about 12 on our tour. I’ll play Newport Beach, the L.A. Open, San Diego ... Pebble Beach. ... I’ll never really be able to come back to the PGA Tour, but I still love to play with the guys and get the good pairings that I get. I’ve played with these guys my whole life and I want to play with them as long as I can, and I think that’ll be one more year.

Q: Why do some players move on to the Champions Tour and have so much success right away, and others, like Ben Crenshaw, not do so well?

A: That’s an unbelievable question. I just played with Nick Price, and he hit it better than I did, and he hit it pretty long, and he’s won once [on the Champions Tour]. Then you get Tom Pernice and he turns 50 and wins his first event. I have no idea. I think one thing is ... Nick Price had such a long, strong career and won a lot of majors, and when he turned 50, he wasn’t playing that much golf. Whereas Tom Pernice, and Fred Funk is another guy, they seemed to be able to win and they have good games. Putting is a strong part of their games, and maybe it isn’t for Nick Price. I think Mark O’Meara never won an event. I play with him a lot in the desert, and that’s hard to believe. He’ll tell you the same thing.

Q: How much do you play when you’re not competing?

A: Now, I’ll play a lot. I don’t ever practice. I’ll warm up for 15 minutes and go play. When I’m done, I’ll go do something else. I’ll be home next week and I’ll probably play three times and not practice one time; in the old days I would not play any golf and practice four days. It’s just more fun to play. The grinding of pounding balls is the hardest thing, and there are guys that do it because that’s what they have to do to play at a high level, and there are guys who practice just because they don’t have anything else to do, and I think that’s great. I get very relaxed when I go play golf; there’s just a difference between pounding balls and just playing 18 holes.

Q: Tiger Woods had an interesting year; he won a lot, but no majors. Why?

A: He’s won 14 majors pretty quickly; it was very condensed. And he’s still got a long way to go. He’ll tell you to get the first major was hard, but to get the 15th is just as hard or harder even though he’s a much better player. [In this year’s majors] he didn’t panic; he didn’t choke. I watched the final round of the PGA. Did Tiger play his absolute best? No. Did he in every major he won? Of course not. I think the other guy played an extremely good round of golf. Y.E. Yang on Sunday didn’t miss many shots, and that’s not easy to do against Tiger. So when he got down to the nitty-gritty, the guy beat Tiger. He’d have 25 majors by now if no one ever beat him. Last year for Tiger, in his mind it was probably a good year and a bad year. You can’t really call it a bad year, but he wants to win majors. If he could have won one major, he’d probably trade that for five other wins.... Still, he was a threat in all the majors but one.... Looking into next year, I’m sure Tiger himself is working on a couple, three or four things on his swing in the off-season to make him even better than he is.

Q: How many majors is Tiger going to win?

A: I would bet everything I own ... how many has Jack won, 18? ... I bet he wins 19. Whether he wins 25, it depends on when he wins his 19th. He’s got eight more years or so of top golf, he’ll win 20, easy.

Q: Tiger or Jack, the greatest golfer ever?

A: Well, I think now it would be Jack. But Tiger’s been on tour, what, 13 years; Jack won again at 46. You give Tiger 12 more years and he’s going to go down as the greatest player by far. But today, I can’t give that to Tiger. He doesn’t have as many great finishes. When Tiger gets up to Jack, he’ll become the best player. And if he stays at 15 majors and wins 30 more events, he’ll probably still go down as the best player, because he’s there every single week that he plays.

Q: In your mind, how many majors should you have won, besides the one (’92 Masters)?

A: I would have loved to have two or maybe three. The PGA way back I think I bogeyed five of the last nine holes, with Wayne Grady [in 1990 at Shoal Creek]. I mean, I was flying, I was birdieing holes, then I got to the point where I was two ahead. He didn’t do anything to beat me, I just started bogeying holes. But the big time where I played really really well was against Phil [Mickelson] at Augusta [in 2006]. I should have won there. Of course, if my ball had rolled into the water on the 12th [in the ’92 Masters], I may never have won any of them. I would have loved to have won another. In the U.S. Open, I had one opportunity, a couple back in a playoff. That’s a tough tournament for me. British Open I had a couple of chances but never could shoot a couple under par on the last nine.

Q: Did you have any expectations that Michael Jordan would work out as well as he did?

A: I knew he would. Michael Jordan knows more about golf than probably most of the caddies and a lot of tour players. And he knows people. He could come watch you and if you’re a six handicap and you say, “Geez, I gamble with these guys and I can’t beat them,” he’ll tell you what you need to do to beat them. You may not beat them every time, but you’ll beat them. He was telling guys on the team, they were eating out of his hand. I knew. I play golf with Michael a lot, and I wanted him there. He’s been to every Ryder Cup, most of the Presidents Cups, why not give him that chance to be with the team? And they loved it. It was a huge deal.... Michael took three or four guys under his wing and had a ball with them. I was never near Michael for four rounds. I said, “You hang with these guys. You just stay with Hunter [Mahan] and Sean [O’Hair],” and they had a ball. It was a highly interesting week.

Q: Did you enjoy your role as captain?

A: Yeah, I liked it. I had a great assistant in Jay Haas, who did a lot more work than I did. We made the picks together and stayed up at night talking about the team, but I just wanted to be there and poke guys. I’ve had other captains say stuff to me that I just didn’t really like. I felt like I didn’t say a lot, but when I did I could poke fun at them and I could tell them how great I thought they were. I mostly told them how great they were. ... It was a lot of fun.... I thought long and hard about a lot of stuff, but the main choice I made for the players was anything they needed, I was going to get it for them.

Q: Can you compare the Presidents Cup with the Ryder Cup in terms of intensity and the feeling about the event; what are the similarities and differences?

A: Well, they’re similar, but the Presidents Cup is a looser event for everyone, including the captain. Everyone plays. Whereas the Ryder Cup, I might play you one match, then hold you out until I throw you in on the singles. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t even think that’s right. I don’t understand why they do it. You’ve got the best players in the world basically playing the same tour, so when you get these guys to make a team and you say, “Hey it doesn’t look like you’re playing that good and I’m not going to play you,” that’s ridiculous. The Presidents Cup is way better in that part; the Ryder Cup is way better in history.... I think the Presidents Cup is a better event for the players; I know it is. The players like it more. It’s easier to team people; it’s not easier to team them when you’re playing only eight out of 12. Then you’ve got to sit guys and give a guy a rest, they don’t really want a rest, but you have four guys that don’t play. That’s a fiasco.

Q: Would you want to be a Ryder Cup captain?

A: I would love to be. I think I would make it the same as the Presidents Cup. The laid-back part of it.... Amy Mickelson coming in on Saturday night was huge; it took a couple of hours of people’s minds to get away and be with her and talk to her. I just didn’t want people to leave the course at 7, sit in a team room and have dinner till 9 then go upstairs and look at each other. We always had stuff going on, but it was easy stuff, and they all liked it. It was good.

mike.james@latimes.com