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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 27, 2004

Frank Lickliter

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Frank, for joining us for a few minutes in the media center at THE PLAYERS Championship. Great round today. Difficult conditions out there this afternoon, and great position going into Sunday in a place that you call home.

FRANK LICKLITER II: Yeah, it's nice to be here on Saturday afternoon. The golf course is incredible. Mr. Klauk has done a spectacular job of making the greens probably as fast as I've ever seen them. It's nice being at home, going straight from the media room to my couch, so it's a great day.

Q. Could you just talk about everybody is so focused on the big names, here, the crowd support for guys like Tiger and Ernie and Vijay is pretty obvious. For somebody who's not as big a name on the Tour, could you talk about what a win here would mean, beyond the fact that you live here, but for your career?

FRANK LICKLITER II: It would be No. 3, which would be spectacular.

Q. Does your house actually front a hole on the course or are you off the course?

FRANK LICKLITER II: I'm off the Valley Course, I'm actually looking at a house over on the island, and it's not Rocco's.

Q. How about the push you had at the end of the day? What happened out there?

FRANK LICKLITER II: You know, I made the turn at 1 under, and made one little error on 10, made bogey.

Hit it at the green with a 3-iron on 11 and ended up making bogey, so I wasn't happy.

I made a very nice birdie on the next hole, dead into the wind. That hole is playing -- we're hitting driver there, whereas normally under these conditions without that wind, I mean, it's a 2-iron or 3-iron tee shot and then you're hitting a little wedge, but right now it's a driver, just so you can get around the corner. You're still hitting a wedge, but it's definitely a driver off the tee for me.

I made that birdie there, and really settled in and calmed down, made a great swing on the next hole, made par, and then I made birdie on 14, which is -- with where that pin is, probably not too many birdies there today. But I had a spectacular 9-iron just under the hole.

I made a nice up-and-down on 15. And like I told one of the guys outside, walking to 16 tee, I was just kind of thinking about how many times I've birdied the last three holes in practice rounds -- not practice rounds, but just playing out here, and it kind of put me in that not-forcing-it mode, and it just kind of relaxed me and I hit 4-iron into 16 and hit 9-iron to 12 feet on 17 and then five inches on 18. And all of a sudden I was finishing with three birdies and I get to talk to you guys.

Q. How do you go from clearing your head from hitting two bogeys to moving into a birdie? Was it something you were thinking about doing or was it a matter of relaxing?

FRANK LICKLITER II: Just hunkering down and going after it.

Q. Did playing here at your home course relax you enough to be able to score as well as you did on the backside?

FRANK LICKLITER II: No, this is another golf tournament. This course is playing totally different than the way I see it the other 51 weeks of the year. So there are some things that helped me from having played here so much. And there are a couple of things that hurt me, just because of my expectations of what's going on around the hole are totally different this week. In one aspect, yeah, I do have some local knowledge. In another aspect, I have to be very careful about what my expectations are of the holes.

Q. Like yourself, Paul Stankowski also finished pretty hot today, and he talked about how going into tomorrow. He said he's going to feel good to feel the nerves and be nervous, he said he's looking forward to that feeling. What do you feel your frame of mind will be like? Will you be a bundle of nerves or will it be a relaxing thing? How do you think you'll be going into tomorrow, going into -- being in contention at such a huge event?

FRANK LICKLITER II: Well, I had a discussion with Randy Sonnier last night, and even -- we were talking about today and tomorrow and what we talked about was -- what he talked about was that I needed to go out and be comfortable in my own space and not let you guys or any of my friends put any kind of expectations or names on anything or get me thinking about playing the games that you want to see. I'm going to go out and do what has got me to this point.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Let's go through -- you went through some of those holes, but we didn't get all the club selections on No. 2, birdie on No. 2.

FRANK LICKLITER II: 2, I hit 5-iron just short of the green.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Did you say what you hit on 17, the par-3?

FRANK LICKLITER II: 9-iron.

Q. Are you normally pretty good about not getting great expectations ahead of time or are you talking about that because you have had problems with that in the past?

FRANK LICKLITER II: No. I mean, you know, I won't know if I've won the golf tournament until after I'm finished. So thinking about winning when you're on the first tee tomorrow is absolutely the wrong place to do it because there's a lot of work to get from 1 tee to 18th green.

Q. Does that mean you won't watch the leaderboard?

FRANK LICKLITER II: I didn't watch it today. Joanie was telling me what was going on as we were talking over here. Why watch the leaderboard? Like I can do something about it, other than my long name up there. And I do that by being in my own space.

Q. Any pride factor? This is your home course. Is there any puff up to being able to say I played well on my home course?

FRANK LICKLITER II: Pride, yeah, I have pride in this golf course. It's spectacular. It's the best in Florida, top hundred in the world. I love playing this golf course. If you've got a chance to play a golf course in Florida, this is the place you play, in my opinion.

End of FastScripts.

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