WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — If you can’t get inspired, or motivated, when listening to Jim Justice speak, you might want to take your pulse, or check your heart.

As eventual runner-up Jeff Overton was hitting on No. 3, Gentleman Jim, owner of The Greenbrier, was holding a press conference in the media room of the Greenbrier Classic.

The man was there to say thank you. To the state, to his outstanding team, to the fans, the players and yes, even the media.

“I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart,” he told the assembled media. “You’re a really big part of it, and I really appreciate you.”

He had several great quotes and a lot of good information Sunday afternoon.

Justice said next year he will likely give exemptions to both the State Amateur champion as well as the State Open champion.

“We thought about he West Virginia Open (champion), and we were going with that, and I thought, really and truly, we need an amateur in this event,” Justice said. “So we went that way. I think we’ll do ’em both next year. I think we’ll do ’em both, yeah. You know, I think we’ll do ’em both.”

He was asked about his week, which included playing a round of golf with John Daly in Wednesday’s Pro-Am and introducing Brad Paisley Saturday night at the concert in Fairlea.

“Well, sure it’s been enjoyable,” Justice said. “I mean, that’s for sure. It was fabulously enjoyable to play with John Daly and to introduce Brad Paisley and to get to hug Carrie Underwood. It was all really good. It was great.”

Justice also turned to state natives to help him run the state’s first PGA TOUR event, guys like Tim McNeely (the tournament director) and Kelly Shumate (superintendent).

“We were struggling,” Justice said. “And of all places, we go to Brier Patch, a little golf course that I own over in Beckley, and the guy who is over there taking care of the greens and stuff over there and does a magnificent job, Kelly Shumate. So I bring Kelly over here and I say, ‘Kelly, we gotta go now.’ And everybody vapor locked.

“Between Kelly Shumate, Bob Cochran and Joey Cochran — you know, they’re my right-hand guys, they’ve been with me a long time — I know what they’re capable of. They work. They work from daylight till dark. The condition of the course, I mean, they pulled it off and they pulled it off magnificently.

“Tim McNeely’s done a magnificent job. Tim’s worked hard all year in player recruitment and everything.”

Other topics Justice addressed included:

n On the economic impact of the tournament: “I’ve heard like 92 gazillion. When the economic impact of this whole thing comes out, it’ll be incredible. That’s all there is to it. (It may be) the biggest event that’s ever happened to West Virginia.”

n On the trophy which will stay at the resort: “I’m not going to be good at what it’s made out of (crystal and silver) but I know what it cost. It cost $220,000. It’s made out of really, really special stuff. We came up with the idea and the idea was (The Greenbrier’s iconic) Spring House.”

n On bringing a major to the Old White course: “I told (PGA) Commissioner (Tim) Finchem I won’t stop till they come to me and tell me this is the best event they have on the PGA TOUR. Now I’m telling you there’s a lot of stuff right now that they’re already saying it is the best that they have. But to have a major here, we’d probably have to add a little more length, and there are ways to do that out there; maybe pinch in the fairways a little bit and toughen it up just a little bit.

“But really and truly, look at the support. We had 41,000 people here yesterday. And we had back-to-back concerts with 50,000-plus. The first night we had, I think, 32,000. Look at the first day when we came out on a Monday Pro-Am and all the pros were coming in saying, ‘What’s going on here? We’ve never seen this many people at a Monday Pro-Am.’

“President’s Cup, a major, we’re way down the road. We want to walk a little before we run. Let’s step away from this and clean up our mistakes. But we’ve batted a pretty good batting average here.”

n On the field for this year’s event and looking ahead to next year: “In all honesty, I knew it was going to happen (no Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els in the field). And I’ll promise you to the Lord above that there are players sitting at home saying, ‘Why in the world did we not go to this event?’ I mean, you would have to. Look at the people.

“Not to take away from other events that are going on, but you’ve seen events where there’s nine people walking around. And these players love the fans and they have to be talking.

“Next year I think it’ll get better and better. I would say right off the get-go, it’s better this way. It’s better. If we had Phil and Tiger and everybody in the world here right now, what could we look forward to? Let’s walk before we run.”

n On the traffic problems at Saturday night’s Carrie Underwood-Brad Paisley concert: “What happened (Saturday) night was just this: Everybody was supposed to have a badge and a ticket to come to the concert. Well, all of a sudden we’ve got 20,000 people that show up and they’re trying to buy tickets. Well, we’ve got another 40,000 who have badges and everything. Well, we didn’t expect that to tell you the truth. Nobody did. And when they called Jeff Kmiec, our general manager, said, ‘We finally locked it down.’ Well, we did. We had everything locked up last night.”

And they’ve certainly locked down an event that, based on popularity alone, isn’t that short of a major. It’s certainly major in this state.