Johnny Miller Continues to Be Modest

You either love him or hate him, but probably hate him a lot more than you wanna hang with him. He's Johnny Miller, and for lack of a better insult term, he's an arrogant dick. He just is. Sorry, Johnny.

Monte Burke of Forbes.com talked with the NBC announcer, and pulled out a few gems from the two-time major champion.

First, and this one is my favorite, Miller answered the following question with this response, that really has nothing to do with what was asked.

Q. What's your take on the overall state of the game?

Johnny Miller: They've got it really good. The Tour is a fantastic place to be right now. I don't look back and say I got hosed. I think our era, if you don't count money, was maybe the most exciting era. You had Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, Trevino, [Raymond] Floyd, [Hale] Irwin, [Tom] Weiskopf, myself and Hubert Green. It was a golden age of golf from 1970 to 1980. I don't know if there will ever be one quite like it. Every era has two or three great golfers. Our era had six to 10. I probably shouldn't say this, but if I had played in the [Greg] Norman-[Nick] Faldo era, instead of winning 25 times with two majors, I probably would have won 40 times and had six majors. That era had [Fred] Couples, Norman, Faldo and [Curtis] Strange, but it didn't really have guys who could play on Sunday. We had the great era of Sunday players. There's a lot to be said for that.

I played the game super aggressively, more aggressively than Tiger does now, very similar to the way Phil Mickelson and Arnold Palmer play.

Like my buddy Ryan Wilson points out, it doesn't matter who you played against if you couldn't putt consistently. Also, I personally don't think Miller ever had the mental capacity to win six major championships. One major, the 1973 U.S. Open, Miller went out an hour before the leaders and shot a salty 63, hardly the pressure that he might have felt if he was leading all three days. The other major was a six-shot victory, again playing too well to feel the pressure that comes when you have a shot or two lead at a major coming down the stretch.

Oh, and as for his current job, he wants you to know he does that better than anyone else too, just in case you forgot for a second he's the best around.

Johnny Miller: I don't want to brag, but I do more homework on the course than any other announcer. I chart the greens to get all the breaks. I walk down into the greenside bunkers. I walk into the fairway bunkers to see whether a player can reach the green from them. My goal is to get to know the course as [well] or better than the players.

I really wish I could start a list of things people should never say. Miller's would be, "I don't want to brag." Stephon Marbury's would be, "This might sound crazy, but ..."

h/t Shackelford