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Craig Stadler made his first victory on the Champions Tour a major when he won the Ford Senior Players Championship by three shots over Tom Kite, Jim Thorpe and Tom Watson Sunday. Stadler, who turned 50 June 2 and was playing in just his fourth Champions Tour event, has 12 PGA Tour wins including the 1982 Masters.

PHIL STAMBAUGH: 65-66 the last two rounds and you become our third different winner of a major championship, and you also become the youngest winner of this event, ever, so congratulations. We'll just start with a couple general comments about how the day unfolded for you, and then we'll go through your round.

CRAIG STADLER: Well, it actually unfolded well. I birdied the first well. I hit a real good tee shot, a little sand wedge in there and made a good putt from about eight feet, nine feet behind the hole.

Then hit some very ugly shots on No. 3. Fortunately got them all out of the way on the same hole. Hit a drive that caught the edge of the bunker, swung around on the upslope and really had no shot from there. Hit a pretty good second shot from the right rough. Didn't draw a very good lie there, hit a horrible wedge into the bunker, hit a horrible bunker shot about 20 feet short. I thought it was a foot short; It was a good, solid six, every bit of it. But then I hit a real, real good tee ball with a 4 iron on 4. Caught it off the bunker about 12 feet but missed the putt.

I came back from No. 3 to hit a real solid shot on 4. From then I just hit a lot of good shots. Made some putts, made a couple unexpected bombs here and there on 6 and a chip in on 12. But other than that, the only other little bump was on 13. I kind of laid a sod over a 3 iron a little bit and left it about 45 feet short and 3 putted that. That was one thing I liked about my game this week because every time I seemed to make a mistake, I came back. And I came back with a birdie on 14, which I'm sure is by far the hardest hole on the golf course. It was a very hard hole for me with the wind blowing left to right. I came back with a good, solid birdie there.

Got a little up and down on the next hole. Kind of shook it in through the three tree on 18. Caddie tried to talk me out of hitting a wedge: "Sure you can get over the tree?"

"Yeah, I can see the blade right through both of them." Could have gone for the first, one should have hit the second one, but got it on the fairway and made 4. Somebody out in the lightning rods was very kind.

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Some general thoughts on what it means for to you win a major and for this to be the first major out here?

CRAIG STADLER: It's great to win a first event, any event would have been nice, don't get me wrong, but to win THE PLAYERS is awesome. I had a couple good chances at Jacksonville a long, long time ago, and didn't get it done. But I'm just very happy the way I played today. I played real solid. Made some good decisions when there was some decisions to be made, and I think especially on 17, after the delay, having to hit a 2 iron out there, I just kind of made par. It was an ugly par, but I just wanted to make par and make sure I didn't do anything disastrous there and then finished off on 18. As I said earlier, it is just you really can't imagine how fun it is to putt well for a couple days. Those of who you play know, but it's just been so long and God, it's nice, it's wonderful. It's a really good feeling. Click here to read the complete transcript with Ford Senior Players champion Craig Stadler.