CHAMPIONS TOUR MEDIA CONFERENCE

June 19, 2005

Rick George

Gary Player

JEFF ADAMS: Welcome, everybody. This is Jeff Adams with the Champions Tour back in Ponte Vedra along with Phil Stambaugh, Dave Senko and Rick George joining us from Hualalei, and Gary Player will join us in just a moment. The Champions Tour is going to kick off a very special season Friday at the MasterCard Championship at Hualalei, our 25th Anniversary season. Before I turn things over to Rick George and Gary to talk about last year, this year and the 25th Anniversary, just a couple of reminders. It will be two years this coming Monday since Rick George was named the first president of the Champions Tour and he has created a lot of energy and momentum on the Tour for the last 24 months. It gives me great pleasure to introduce him today. He's joining us from Hawaii where it is 9:00 AM in the morning. Good morning.

RICK GEORGE: Aloha and mahalo for being on this call today. Excited to kick off the year. As Jeff had mentioned I'm joining this call from Hualalei where the Champions Tour will start its 2005 season this Friday, the MasterCard Championship will feature an elite field of 37 players including six World Golf Hall of Fame members, and it will officially launch our 25th anniversary celebration. What I'd like to do quickly is review 2004 and then preview what's ahead in 2005 and then introduce Gary Player and bring him on the call, and then once he's through, we'd be happy to take any questions that any of you may have. The Champions Tour has experienced two really exciting, memorable seasons last two years. There's a renewed interest in the Champions Tour with more and more popular players joining the Tour and the level of competition getting stiffer every year. I think the Tour has great momentum and I'm personally excited about 2005. Just a few things from 2004. As you know, attendance in 2003 was up 10 percent and we're right at that again in 2004. Our charitable proceeds of the Champions Tour and its tournaments were up 19 percent from 2003, and our Golf Channel ratings were up once again. All of our indicators point positively to the future and the direction that we are headed with this tour. In the second year of our fan-friendly activities, we feel like they are clearly working. The feedback we are getting is very positive. The player support has been terrific. We're not going to add any new fan features. We'll continue to refine and enhance the things that we're doing in this area. I've said often that one of the things that differentiates the Champions Tour from not only the PGA TOUR, but from all of the professional sports is the interactive and accessible nature of this tour. Our players get it, they do a tremendous job with corporate clients, with fans and the sponsors that we have, and they continue to step up to the plate and our fan-friendly features have grown each and every year and have provided some positive feedback for this tour. In 2004 Craig Stadler earned three prestigious awards, the Jack Nicklaus Trophy for the Player of the Year, the Arnold Palmer Award for the Money Title and Byron Nelson for the scoring average title. He had a phenomenal year and based on what he did last week at the Sony Open he will continue where he left off. Hale Irwin, another great story at the age of 59 continues to astound people with his level of play. He won the Charles Schwab Cup last year for the second time and his fourth Champions Tour title which appropriately came at a major championship at the Senior PGA Championship in Valhalla. He continues great play and at 59 continues to get better, it seems, each and every year. We also had 13 events that were won by players age 55 and above, which dispels that myth that once they hit 55 they hit the wall. We had 13 of our winners come from that 55-plus group. At the other end of the spectrum, the rookie class that we touted as one of the best in our history did not disappoint. Rookie of the Year Mark McNulty had three wins, won the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, Peter Jacobsen wins the Senior U.S. Open and Jay Haas, Mark James, account for the -- five wins. Dana Quigley continues to amaze golf fans everywhere and he will tee off his 263rd consecutive Champions Tour event on Friday at MasterCard Championship. And three of our players this past year were inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame; Aoki, Tom Kite and Charlie Sifford. We are proud of their accomplishments and we are proud of them joining the World Golf Hall of Fame. 2004 was a spectacular year in our opinion and we look for much of the same as we look for 2005. As good as 2004 was, we already have a number of positive storylines developing for 2005 highlighted by our 25th Anniversary Celebration. Throughout 2005, the Champions Tour will celebrate its first 25 years. One of the focus events will be the 25 Memorable Moments Countdown that we will conduct in cooperation with the Golf Channel. Hopefully you all have received a release this past week announcing those 25 moments in chronological order. We also have a few new faces coming out this year. Curtis Strange turns 50 on January 30th and will make his debut at the Ace Group Classic in Naples, Florida. Greg Norman turns 50 February 20, and Loren Roberts turns 50 later in the year, June 24, and all will make their Champions Tour debuts in 2005. We are also playing for official prize money that is very close to $52 million, and the average tournament purse will reach a record of just under $1.8 million this year. We like the way our purses are going. It's kind of a steady increase, but not a real drastic increase and we'd like that the tournaments are doing well, so we feel good about the prize money and the first levels on our tour. The Golf Channel will televise 23 events this year, and they continue to be a wonderful broadcast partner providing strong promotion and telecast innovation. Look for a few new jingles in 2005, some new graphics and new things they are doing in their broadcast. We have a tremendous relationship with the Golf Channel and we expect as you view our TV broadcast you'll be pleased where we are headed with our broadcast. The title sponsor situation is particularly strong. We have 26 events or title sponsors already extended through 2006 with a number of those committed to 2007 and 2008, just last week we announced Allianz Life sponsorship through 2007. The Turtle Bay Championship returns to the schedule after a 15-month hiatus to augment the season-opening MasterCard Championship. We think that makes a lot of sense to start with two events over here, take a week or two off and then head back to Florida to kick off our season on the Mainland. One new event that we have coming this year that we are really excited is the Greater Seattle Champion's Classic that joins our Portland and Pebble Beach events to form a strong later-summer northwest coast swing. I've been there two or three times since the announcement that we are going to have that tournament and which Chuck Nelson and Todd Lewaky (ph) from the Seahawks and all those involved in that event have just done a great job of getting that tournament ready for its first season play at the TPC. First Tee Open at being presented by Wal-Mart, was golf's freshest event last year bringing junior golfers and Champions Tour players together for the first time in professional competition and returns to Pebble Beach for its second playing over Labor Day weekend and we look for that event to grow and get better, and the excitement our players have in First Tee and Wal-Mart, we felt strongly about that that event is going and speaking of the First Tee Open we just put on the wire and announced earlier today Commissioner Finchem was in Kansas City, he had to go to Kansas City, I came to Hualalei and Wal-Mart suppliers convention and he and Mike Duke, president of Wal-Mart, announced a two-year extension of the Wal-Mart First Tee Champions Tour relationship and we are excited about that. We feel pretty strongly about where this tournament is going and where our relationship with Wal-Mart and The First Tee is going so we are pretty excited about that. So we have two great pieces of news, Allianz and Wal-Mart to kick off this season before our first events. Finally Champions Tour will be participating in a big part of the Drive to a Charity (ph) campaign. The TOUR, all three tours, the PGA TOUR, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour is expected to reach $1 billion in total charitable donations in the first quarter of 2006, and we are proud to be a part of that tremendous milestone. I think it's unique to a sport like professional golf to give some money back to charity and we anticipate hitting the $1 billion in the first quarter of 2006, which we think is very significant. So with the 25th anniversary as a backdrop, the 2005 season holds much promise, not to mention the next 25 years with names like Fred Funk, Mark O'Meara, Nick Price, Nick Faldo, Langer, Sutton, Woosnam, Tiger Woods I guess in a few years, Phil Mickelson and others. We are pretty excited about the future of this tour. With that, I'd like to bring Gary Player onto this call. Gary is here Hualalei too, competing in the MasterCard Championship. And we are delighted he is on this call as one of golf's greatest ambassadors and strong contributor to the growth of the Champions Tour and golf worldwide both on the course and off. We've asked Gary to join us to provide some perspective on the 25th anniversary and whatever else is on his mind.

GARY PLAYER: I'd like to say how proud I am to be a part of 25 years on the Champions Tour, and the thing that comes to minds is that I don't think that we are quite given the recognition by the media. If you think, for example, last week that Craig Stadler lost by five shots, he originally when he came on our tour, he played for a while and then he won and he went back to the regular tour and won on that, I mean, that to me at the age of after 50 is remarkable, Lee Trevino was leading money winner. People very quickly forget, for two years Lee Trevino was leading money winner on the senior's tour, even against the regular tour. Of course, our prize money didn't escalate as high as the regular tour, understandably so, but he was still the leading money two years in a row. I think the thing that makes me happy as a professional golfer, that this is a tour of giving back, I think our pr is good. The guys are very good with the amateurs, and it's through the amateurs that we have a tour anywhere in the world today. Charity, well, I think that's something that makes us very happy -- inaudible -- which I think if I'm correct is more than any other two sports put together. The Tour is so healthy at the moment, with all of these wonderful players coming a long in the future, so there will be no vacuum. So all in all, it's been a tour of great laughter. I have never had so much fun. I've had far more fun playing the Champions Tour than the regular tour. Great international global societies, global tour. I had dinner with President Eisenhower one night and I'll never forget him saying, "We're a global society and we must keep that in our sport and in our business and in our lives." And the Champions Tour has done that. We go around the world playing, we have all of the international players playing here, and really, it's just been a tour of fun, which is important, of great laughter, and I think the guys have realized that our stage of life that this is a tour where if it wasn't for the Amateur, we just wouldn't have the Tour. This is essential.

RICK GEORGE: Thank you very much for your comments. Rick, thank you very much for yours. One other note before we open it up to question and answer, Dick Madge, by the way Sunday qualified for Sony, but he also Monday qualified this past Monday for the Buick event out in San Diego. He flew overnight, red-eye, left Hawaii at 8:00, had an 8:41 tee time and shot 65 on his two qualifiers for the Buick. Pretty remarkable.

GARY PLAYER: That is unbelievable, to fly from Hawaii, which as you know is further than to Europe; and with the time change, and particularly after playing last week and doing so well. Well, this is the kind of thing that I see all the time and, you know, having played as a professional golfer for 52 years, I keep saying wherever I go in the world is completely naive of the standard of playoff the Champions Tour. I mean, every week, you take an average score at least for three rounds, I would say now this is a guess, would be 14-under par. Some weeks, 18-under par. Well, you know, nobody has greater respect for Tiger Woods than myself, but it would be hard for him to even better that. But now, would he better that but not by much, because the hole is the same size and contrary to what everybody is thinking, we're playing golf courses that are 7,000 yards long, the greens are slick, tough pin placements. So it's just something that is just one of the great phenomena in golf to see the standard of play. Now admittedly, equipment has made it a lot easier for us, if we had to use the equipment we had to use in the old day, we would not be able to do it but so has the regular equipment.

RICK GEORGE: I will add that we averaged about 6,900 and 7,900 yards on our golf courses last year and we had 14 courses that were over 7,000 and I think the length is the issue, I think the fact that when they come out here, the pins are tucked and it's competitive and our players have continued each and every year to raise the bar in their games and as I've said earlier, you know, you've got 13 wins from the group that's 55 and older, I think it's pretty significant and it sells you the quality of athlete and the quality of player and competitive level that we have on this tour.

GARY PLAYER: You see, we have today, it's a different world we live in. I mean, when I was a young man, I used to go to the YMCA to do my training and you'd have to wait for 20 minutes to get to use the apparatus. Now we are so spoiled. We have a gymnasium that travels around with us every week, with physiotherapists and so now these fellows now are training so hard, they watch what they eat and so really when a man is 50 today, you can really say he's equivalent to 40. And also, I see the Tour going from strength to strength. You know, you talk about the distance the ball is going. We're going to see a tour, and never mind 20 -- let's say 25 to 30 years time, they will be hitting the ball - not on our Tour - but the guys are going to be hitting the ball 400 yards. Already we have had Stuart Appleby hit one at 400 yard at the Mercedes in Hawaii last year and South Africa in the Million Dollar he hit one 392. So we are going to see a tour of Michael Jordans. But this is going to creep over onto the Champions Tour. The guys are going to be fitter, they are going to be bigger, they are going to be stronger. The standard of play is going to improve, and always remember that the majority of Americans are, you know, you're an older race, not a younger race like some other countries, so the Champions Tour is going to be prevalent. It's a tour that gives people encouragement. You see a man going out there who is 55 years of age. His father always telling him he was old, when he was a young man he said, when you get to 55, my age, you'll be an old man. I'm 69 and I'm still wanting to win a golf tournament out here and I'm traveling more than I've ever traveled, working harder because the human being is changing and changes the price of survival; mindset.

RICK GEORGE: Well, I don't think it's necessary because I think on this tour, you know, I've said it in the two years that I've been out here, I think this tour has a lot of different personalities and I don't think we need to hang our hat on promoting one athlete over the other -- is everybody still there? We don't think that we need to promote this tour around one player, two players. We think that from top to bottom as you look at the players on this tour, Gary Player at 69 who is coming out here and is as fit or a lot more fit than I am at 45, and you look at the players that we have on this tour now, you've got the Hale Irwins, the Stadlers, D.A. Weibring, a good young guy that's out there playing, Tom Purtzer, you have so many names on this tour. And each year, we continue to get an influx of names that come onto this tour. So we don't feel like we have to promote this tour around one or two players. You know, I didn't even mention Tom Kite, Tom Watson and the others that are here. You know, we have got so many names and so many personalities. Peter Jacobsen, what a personality he is. We have so many personalities and names on this tour that we sell it as a whole because we think that we have a product that is tremendous in this world today. It's great for companies to be involved from a business-to-business relationship, our guys get it. Gary Player has got a number of businesses. He understands when a title sponsor brings a client that that client wants to hear some things and talk about business and Gary has been there and done that. That's the difference between our players, they understand the value of our sponsors and the fans, and as Gary said a minute ago, they do a tremendous job. Our No. 1 assets are players and we don't have to promote one; we promote them all.

GARY PLAYER: I've just arrived over here from South Africa. I've been on my ranch with my grandchildren and I'm going to be working on my itinerary when I go back to the mainland in ten days. I sincerely hope so because I just love that part of the world and we've had very successful events there every time we've played there and I will know my itinerary 100% in about two week's time.

GARY PLAYER: First of all, you know, obviously, we've got accustomed to playing in South Florida and we always enjoyed it because the weather was always so good, and you know, the Tour goes like this, you know. It's always been like this throughout history. You go to places and then they don't have a tournament and they come back on the roster. So, you know, I just hope that we get another tournament there and Rick works diligently for us and does a tremendous job for our tour. I think it's just a vacuum at the moment. I think it will come back there and I sincerely hope so. There's just one other thing that I wanted to say, which is beside your question, and that is there's an old saying that the pen is mightier than the sword and one of the things that Rick gets us to do, all of us, and that's to drop a note to all of our Pro-Am partners that we play with throughout the year, and that's been a very, very significant thing, because everybody likes to get a letter from an Arnold Palmer or a Jack Nicklaus or a Lee Trevino, and this has been a very good thing on our tour.

RICK GEORGE: Let me add, I think the biggest disappointment I've had in two years in my role is not having a South Florida event. We identified that as being very important for us for the 2005 schedule and frankly we failed. You know, it was our intent to play there, and it's our No. 1 priority from a scheduling standpoint for 2006 that we get an event back on our schedule. We like the fact that we play three weeks in Florida after we come back from Hawaii and frankly very disappointed that we don't have one. We are working diligently on it. We had a conference call yesterday talking about South Florida and we will continue to work to get that event back on our schedule. It may not be at the same place but we are looking in that general area to find a title sponsor and a group that will run that event for us.

RICK GEORGE: The policy, this is not old news, we announced this in November about 14 months ago that we would enact this in 2005. Just so everybody is very clear on the cart policy, what we're asking is that the players will have carts up through Thursday. During the competitive rounds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday will be the only three rounds that they will not be allowed to take a cart. In all of our five major championships, plus Pebble, our first tee open at Pebble Beach and our Schwab Cup Championship, there will be no carts allowed for the entire week. So that's our policy that's in place. It starts this week. Our players are out today in the Pro-Am in carts if they choose today and tomorrow and Friday they will be walking. This has been an issue that's been discussed I think since the inception of the Tour 25 years ago. I think Arnold was the first that worked to eliminate carts. It's been an issue that we've discussed ever since I've been on board. You know, our process as it goes through our Players Advisory Council and it goes to our players director and to our board, and that's a process that we took. The decision was made and in 2005 and we begin this Friday with no carts.

RICK GEORGE: Well, we just look at -- it kind of goes along with what Gary says. It has to do with image, it has to do with the fan. We think it's better for the fans and the viewers and provides a better look to our broadcast, and it's better for the condition of the golf course. I mean, there's a lot of reasons that we made this decision to move forward in this direction but it's like everything else, we'll evaluate it as we go, but we evaluate everything as we go almost every day and certainly throughout the year and if something is not working we'll go in another direction, but at this point we feel like it's the right decision for the long-term future of this tour. At this point we feel like it's the right decision for this tour.

GARY PLAYER: I would be embarrassed quite honestly to see a 60-year-old man and wife come out and watch us play and you stand here and they want you to tee off and the next thing, you zoom off in a cart and they say, well, now, here we are, 60 years old, how are we going to possibly keep up with those guys, and we are supposed to be athletes. And I mean, there's Arnold Palmer at 76, he's had a prostate cancer operation, and he still walks around there and after all, surely the man that goes to the gym and works out and keeps in shape should have the advantage. But you could have somebody that doesn't even take care of himself and he's around there in a cart and you get more tired than he does. I mean, the whole idea in golf is that we've got to remember that we are athletes, and the average man on the street does not want to see us zooming away in a golf cart when he's walking around there, especially if he brings his young son out with him or his young daughter to watch us play. I think the image is a very, very good one.

RICK GEORGE: Gary says that right. One of the things that we looked at, we didn't do this in a vacuum. It's been done over a number of years. It's very difficult for a fan to keep up with the player, and, you know, there's a lot of reasons that we did this. But I think that Gary is right, you know, and he's probably said it better than I could. It's the direction that we've elected to take. We think it's in the best long-term interest of this tour and we're moving forward.

RICK GEORGE: Again, we'll evaluate the strength of our fields just like we do every year and see if there's been an impact from the field. Personally, this week, everybody that could play is out here. We had 38 players. I think the only one that wasn't able to play this year is Jack Nicklaus, but we've had 37 players and they are all walking. So we'll look at it as we move forward throughout the course of the year. I guess the feedback that I've got gotten, I think it depend from the players, it's mixed. I think there's a number of players that have not been happy with the decision to take away carts. So it's not been a lot of fun at times, but again, you know, you've got to do what you feel is in the best long-term interests of the Tour and that's how we make decisions.

GARY PLAYER: There are 200 golf courses around the world, and this is something that's on my mind every day or every week or every month that I design a golf course. You take courses like Merion that have become obsolete and they were steeped in position and history. And nobody can deny that they are different. I think we should, in, my opinion, hit the ball as it is in place right now and it is in place right now for the amateur player but I think the ball should be curved and put back at least 30 yards -- inaudible. The way we are going now, all the golf courses, for example, there is no such thing as a par 5 for a young guy playing on the regular tour today. At Augusta, where Jack Nicklaus used to hit a 4-iron to No. 15, and occasionally he would hit a 5-iron, they hit a wedge there sometimes now. And we've just got to stop it otherwise it's going to be a mockery. Now that's the job of the USGA and the R&A and they have got to have the discipline to go ahead and do this; and really, it's not going to deny the public any great golf. They will still see a tremendous amount of great shots and scoring, just as when we played. Actually, today, if you take a combination of the club, the ball, the short-cut fairways, the lightweight shaft and the trampoline effect on a driver, that today it goes 56 yards further than when we played, and we did some pretty impressive scoring in our time.

RICK GEORGE: I don't recall if anybody has asked for a cart this year. I don't believe there have -- there may have been some for the end of this past year for one of our major championships or something like that, but there has not been one to my knowledge moving forward for this year in the past month or so, but I believe that's accurate.

GARY PLAYER: Well said. You obviously understand golf very well. You know, when -- I think I heard Vijay saying the other day, at 42 years of age, say on TV that he just was going back to hit two buckets of drivers. Well, you get somebody who doesn't play a lot of golf or just plays weekend golf, let him hit two buckets of drivers, he'll hardly be able to move the next day. The golf swing does take its toll, just like in football it's usually knees. In golf, it is the lower back, and that's why today you see all of these guys doing -- I mean, here at 69, yesterday, I did 1,100 sit-ups with an 80-pound weight on my chest because as you get older it just tears your back apart so you have to have a strong stomach to hold it. That's why the gymnasiums that travel the Tour now, even the European Women's Tour, every single tour in the world, everybody is working out now whereas in the old days I was ridiculed. Frank Stranahan and I started it and we were ridiculed and now everybody is doing it. If you don't do it, you are going to be subject to injuries and you'll linger, but you don't last. Tiger Woods has been a perfect example. When you think how hard he hits that ball and how few injuries he has, it's mainly due to the fact that he's in that gym and he trains like a boxer. He's an incredible athlete.

GARY PLAYER: You know, I've been very blessed, and I think that the harder you work, the luckier you get, and having worked on my body since I was nine years of age, which is 69 -- 60 years of doing it, and I still do it very enthusiastically, it's kept me from and prevented me from having injuries, but I might also be a little fortunate. Some people, like Sam Snead, he had very few injuries. He was the greatest natural athlete I saw in any sport combined over the years. At 70 he could still kick the top of the door and do five one-armed push-ups. I mentioned it on British television to Peter Alliss, in two year's time there will be many hitting the ball over 400 yards, and he scoffed at me and said I was talking hogwash. I said it's happening right now. I said it's happening in 30 year's time, and we have to think about this, gentlemen. We have never had a big man play golf yet. The biggest man we ever had was George Bayer but wait till you a get a Michael Jordan and Shaq O'Neil playing golf, they ain't seen nothing yet. They will make the golf course look like a pitch-and-putt course, unless we obviously do something for the equipment.

GARY PLAYER: Well, I must say, I think Vijay Singh the last -- the last 13 months has played as good of golf as any human being that has ever played. He deserves it. He's a workaholic, he has a work ethic that is quite unbelievable. And I know every time I go to the gym at 6 o'clock in the morning when I happen to be at some of their tournaments or in the evening, there he is working out as well. I mean, wow, he's really -- it's just been phenomenal, the standard of play that he's done. To be No. 1 today or to be No. 1 any time in the world is always when you think of how many people are playing, it's remarkable to say a man is No. 1 in the world.

GARY PLAYER: Yes, well said. I think this is developing into a Big 4 in the future. I think they are all vying for No. 1 position. I know Ernie Els wants to be No. 1 and Tiger, obviously, is burning inside to get back to No. 1, and Vijay doesn't want to relinquish it. And Phil Mickelson now has got the monkey off his back with the major championship. Well, I think we are in for a very exciting time. This is what the American people and the galleries around the world, they want to see people vying for No. 1. They get entangled up in the excitement.

GARY PLAYER: Yes, wherever I went in the world, you know, they would always be saying, well, now, you think you're going to be No. 1 this year, who do you think is going to be No. 1, do you enjoy competing. That was our whole lives. When you think about it between Arnold, Jack and myself, that time does make people forget. But counting the Champions Tour and the regular tour, we went far off winning 60 major championships so we were at each other's throat and everybody knew, we didn't hide it. We were the best of friends and we loved each other a great deal, but we would tell each other, we want to beat you like a drum and today it still exists. Can you believe at our age, it still exists.

GARY PLAYER: That's correct. They have this wonderful book out now, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, and in conclusion it says that "it's all small stuff." You know, invariably a young guy comes to me and tells me how upset he is, the last two weeks he just lost a tournament by one or two shots. I said, well, in six months time you won't even be worrying about it, so forget about that now and go in and win one and forget about what happens in the past. It's no use worrying about a missed putt. But the emotional side of things, one has got to work on that, you know, and I found like a self-hypnosis in my life helped me very much in my life indeed. This is another area; there's nothing new in the golf swing, nothing new theoretically although the gurus like you to think so, but I'm dying to hear one thing that's new in the swing. The golf equipment has improved, well beyond recognition. Condition of golf courses have improved. The physical side has improved, but we still are in our infancy with the mind. The mind is going to be the -- the two next big movements in golf are going to be the mind and food. That's going to be the next two really big improvements in the game. So emotionally, yes, one has got to learn to shake it off, one has got to learn to handle adversity. I think it's God's plan for people to suffer, because nobody goes through the world without suffering, and you've got to realize that and shake it off and come back punching the next week.

RICK GEORGE: Not at the moment. It's funny, I got an e-mail last night from somebody saying, well, how about a Champions Tour event in Chicago. I said, why not, love to. But no, we don't have anything going on in Chicago at the moment?

RICK GEORGE: No, I mean, I talked to Greg last year, saw him at the World Golf Hall of Fame induction, and chatted with him earlier in the year. Really don't know exactly what Greg's plans are. I know he had indicated he was going to try to play in the majors and he may play a few other events. I think once Greg gets out here and sees the quality of play and the interaction of our players, I think he'll enjoy it out here and we're hoping that he will play. But again, we build this tour on the players that we have from top to bottom and we're really focused on one over the other, but we would love to have him come out and hopefully he will at some point.

RICK GEORGE: I've been listening to his comments he's made and I chatted to him, I know, one, that he's excited to come out here and he's excited to play on the Champions Tour. Right now he's going to play a full schedule. We think he will be good for attendance at our events. We think that he's going to add a lot. He's got a good personality and he's got a good following from being on TV and we also know that Curtis is a competitor. I don't know how well he will perform initially, but I think as he gets in the groove and gets back to playing competitive golf consistently full-time that we'll a lot from him moving forward.

GARY PLAYER: I've got to be excused because I have to go get ready to tee off.

RICK GEORGE: We would love to be back in Ohio. It was a business decision that Kroger had to make with the long strike that they had and other things. We were not able to find a replacement for them initially, but we'll continue to look in Ohio and potentially may be back there somewhere in the near future.

RICK GEORGE: Well, I mean, certainly one thing that we try not to do is we try not to compete against the PGA TOUR. We're a totally different product than the PGA TOUR. We say we don't want to compete with the PGA tour and the broadcast overlaps one hour with the PGA TOUR and we think it makes sense to do that. We know the strong viewership that they get. We try not to compete in that way but at the same time we feel like we have a product that's really unique in professional sports. Our guys do a tremendous job. I think, you know, if you have people that sponsor both the Champions Tour and the PGA TOUR, those sponsorships would tell you that our guys do a great job with their business-to-business relationships. So we feel like we've got a real solid product to sell, and it's just getting in front of the right companies that have a business-to-business, nature of their company that, you know, to entertain clients throughout the course of the week playing two Pro-Ams with some of the greats of golf and so we feel like we've got a real positive -- our momentum is strong, continues to build and viewership gets better as the Golf Channel expands. Our challenge is to make this tour as strong as it can be and we are not going to compete against the PGA TOUR. They are on network TV each week and that's difficult to compete against.

RICK GEORGE: Yeah, do I, I really do. I know -- I applaud the moves to the LionsGate, Links of LionsGate, it's a Jack Nicklaus golf course. It's in the right area of town, I think in the Overland Park area where there's a lot of businesses and a lot of homes and the National was good to us. Frankly, we grew out of that and it is a critical year for us. And we need to have great attendance there. We need to renew our relationship with our title sponsor or potentially find a replacement but we'd like to be in Kansas City. It is the home of Tom Watson and we've got a great setup with the pride of Kansas City foundation and with Steve Palermo (ph) as the chairman of that event. So we feel like we've got all of the things in place, now Children's Mercy is involved and we are at a new golf course. It seems like -- I was just in Kansas City about ten days ago and it seems like there's a lot of energy in that community for that event. We feel like it's going to be there for hopefully 14 more but we know this is a very important year for us.

RICK GEORGE: In your area, we don't have a lot of coverage but we are partnering -- I know the local host organization is partnering and the Golf Channel is going to allow the field to be on a local cable station. From that standpoint as you look at the Golf Channel, it continues to grow, their viewers continue to grow and as they grow, we're growing as a tour. We think it's a pretty strong fit and gives us a good platform. Unfortunately in your area it's not covered as widely as we'd like it to be.