FBR OPEN

January 27, 2004

Kirk Triplett

KIRK TRIPLETT: I think it's a little too early to tell. I think the philosophy is root for the most part on the golf course. Trying to get the golf course to play the way it did ten years ago. Guys who hit the ball 250 ten years ago, hit it 275 now, none of my doing, 10 percent farther based on the equipment. If we can make the golf courses 300 yards longer and do it on specific shots.

For example, the 14th hole, most of you are familiar with it. It's got a bunker on the right off the tee, and on the left there's a grass bunker with kind of a wall, and I don't want to say in the old days but I'm going to say it anyway, in the old days if you didn't hit a real solid shot or if you had the wind coming into you, you had to play the right center of that fairway and it was significantly fairer. There was just a small portion of the field that could carry it over the corner. Now with the new tee, we've recreated that same shot. Just adding length for the sake of adding length I don't think works out well in the end. Some of the changes they've made here maintains the same shot values that we had before.

They did a great job with 15, the par 5, moving the tee up on top of the hill. By giving the staff the flexibility, the tee is 40, 50 yards long. If conditions are slow like they are and you play at the back of that tee, nobody in the field will be going for it in two, and 15 would be kind of another ho-hum par 5, but the tee is 40 yards long so you can play from the front of the tee and entice players to go for the green with a 3-wood or 2-iron or something like that when they ought to be laying up. You'll see some more interesting shots. Not from me, but last year I played in the last group with Vijay and I think he hit 3-wood, 6-iron there. You want to challenge the guys more than that, so let's get it up to at least a 1-iron.

I'm happy with the changes. I think the staff is happy with them, and we'll find out what the players say. The players are never happy with anything really, though. One guy is always happy every week.

Q. How do you feel with mandatory driver testing?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I don't know. In essence, it really is mandatory right now. There's no sense for you as a player not to have your driver tested Monday or Tuesday before the tournament starts because if someone asks that your driver be tested after the tournament starts, then through no fault of your own, you could be disqualified, which that situation already exists now with respect to other conforming clubs; are your grips flat on one side or are your grooves too big or don't fit the specifications, that kind of stuff, so that scenario is there now anyway, it's just applied to the drivers now.

I think the most difficult thing as a player is a manufacturer gives you a club to use, and that club at one time was tested, maybe not that individual club, but the model was approved by the USGA, and now we have such a test that can measure every single club. The model may be approved but your particular driver may not be. To be honest with you, how we pick a driver is, there's a bag about three times that size full of drivers and we just start hitting them until we find the one that goes the farthest, so if anybody is going to find an illegal driver it's going to be a Tour pro because we can tell the ones that go farther.

Q. (Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, but I don't say anything. I had a driver three or four years ago that really -- it really went very well. I went from 100-something in driving distance to like 55th one year. I was hitting the ball better, made some changes to my swing, but it was this match and marriage of the ball and the club, and I certainly don't think the club was illegal. And I used it for a couple years and the face caved in, and I never found one that was really -- I use that same driver, same model after that, but I never found one that had that same reaction, and it might have been the shaft and just the combination, all the factors were just right.

Q. (Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, I think for one, the main impact of the technology is that the ball -- it's not necessarily that it goes farther, it's the ball goes straighter, okay, because the clubs, the perimeter weighting in the driver heads, the strength of the graphite, the lightness which allows you to build light clubs, the materials allow you to be able to build the big clubs with a high moment of inertia so when the ball is hit that far off center it still goes relatively straight. What that has allowed golfers to do is to swing hard. 15 years ago we had some who swung hard, in the top 10 on the driving distance, and they didn't keep their cards. Now the top 10 on the driving distance is the top 10 on the Money List, and there never was that correlation before.

So it's changed the way the game is played. And for me, it's actually the 12th anniversary of the metal wood.

Q. Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: Easy some years, harder others. Sometimes it's very much a relief to be out there on the course playing just because there's a lot of other stuff going on, especially this year we've gotten involved with some other things. Is that my segue? I enjoy this tournament tremendously. The Thunderbirds do a fantastic job. I'm so excited FBR has come on board and they have a tremendous potential for a great relationship not only with the Thunderbirds but with the city of Phoenix, as well. That's going to allow the Thunderbirds to have more of an impact in the community as they've been searching for a sponsor, not just any sponsor but a sponsor that would be sensitive to what the Thunderbirds want to do, and it is the FBR Open. And contrary to what I heard on the radio this morning, the "F" does not stand for Phoenix.

Anyway, it'll be the same golf tournament, tremendous drama, great place to come out and see the pros play, plenty of stuff to do, place to see and be seen. It'll be the same event, just a different name, and everybody will benefit.

Q. What is your strategy going into the first day?

KIRK TRIPLETT: It's the same as it is every day, you know that. You're a competitive player, come on. One shot at a time. That's what it all boils back down to.

Q. How will you handle 16?

KIRK TRIPLETT: There's two ways to do it. You can just kind of hope it gets calmed down. The best way to handle it is to hit a good shot so then you don't get jeered at too much. I saw Gabriel Hjerstedt a couple years ago. We couldn't get people quieted done, so he stood on the tee and raised his arms and had them raise the roof, and it got so loud, and he hit it while it was loud and he hit it 20 yards over the green. He was so pumped up. They've made some changes. It's a neat atmosphere.

Q. (Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: I was playing with David Wood, who is a noseguard for the 49ers for a number of years, and I said, man, this is the closest I get to coming out of the tunnel right here when they get going. The last couple years they've had some Vikings fans sitting right over the top of the tunnel doing some hollering. It's a wonderful event and I'll be excited to get going.

This week we're very busy. We've started -- my wife Kathy and I have gotten involved with the Dave Thomas Foundation for adoption, and as you can see by the golf bag here, we've got a young man named Saul, he's a foster child here in Arizona, and what we're doing is we're having what we call the Tour For Adoption, and all the cities around the country that I go to this year we're going to have a foster child from the local community and kind of feature him and try and enlighten the community a little bit about these kids that need homes, and doing that in partnership, like I said, with the Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption, and we're very excited about it.

Kathy and I have two adopted children ourselves, a daughter 3 and a son 1, and it's just something we feel real strongly about and excited to have this platform and be able to talk to you guys about it and have you spread the word about what a great thing adoption is, not only for the kids but for the adoptive parents and for the community.

Q. (Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: No, this is our big kickoff. Saul is around here somewhere.

Q. So you have spent some time with him?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, he was entertaining everybody in here, telling jokes.

Q. (Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: No, absolutely not. I was at a symposium a number of years ago where we had a lot of experts, a few journalists, too, and we were talking about golf, and everybody said the same thing, the game is dying, we're wrecking the game, this and that. A guy stands up who owns a printing business in Ohio. He stands up and he goes, now, let me get this straight. The game is 500 years old or so, and we started with rocks and sticks. So it's a very dynamic game, constantly evolving, always changing. He goes, that's the joy of it.

As a player, the joy is adapting to the new things, new courses, new technologies, and everybody kind of sat back and went, well, yeah, if we were still playing with rocks and sticks there wouldn't be nearly as many people playing it. Yeah, it's a tremendous shame that a golf course like Marion is not played as a U.S. Open championship, okay, but Marion is still a great golf course. It'll give you all the tests you want, be a great place to be a member at. That's what it's really all about, in my mind.

Q. With all the charities that are out there, and I know you said you and your wife have two adopted children, how did you choose the Dave Thomas Foundation?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I went to an event in Minneapolis a few years, ago run by a fellow up there who's a Wendy's franchisee, and got involved with these people from the Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption, and they were -- their enthusiasm was so inspirational, and a half hour after being there it was like, how can I help, how can I get involved in this, because these people are so committed to the cause. And some of them are adoptive parents, some have nothing to do with adoption, but it's so inspiring to see these people want to make a difference in their community.

Kathy and I have been very successful, very fortunate. We're blessed to play this great game. If I could pick anything I could do in my life, I would choose to be a golf pro, and I get to do it and I've been successful doing it.

We had twins -- we have twins that are eight years old and we wanted to have more kids and couldn't, and we had a situation come up where we got involved in adoption. We did it for us. We thought it was just great for us. And as we've done more of it, we had another situation come along and we had -- well, you know Mark Rolfing, his wife Debbie is a Cradle Care Foster chair in Hawaii, and she said, I've got a baby six days old that we can't place. Well, I don't have to tell you what my wife wanted to do, and we have him, Kobe. He's a little over a year old. There are situations like that all the time.

We want to get the word out and we want people to be aware that there are these situations and that adoption is not about the horror stories you see on 60 minutes. That's one out of literally thousands or tens of thousands of stories. We want to tell those other 9,000 or 10,000 stories that are good ones.

We got involved, and after we had been doing it for a while we started talking to our friends, where people would come to us and ask us what to do, or aren't you scared, aren't you afraid that the parents are going to come back or that the court is going to take the children away, and that's one of the problems. That's one of the things that we have to address and educate people, is that if you follow the laws, follow the rules, get knowledgeable -- use the resources like the Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption, those kind of things don't happen, and they don't hardly ever happen, but unfortunately those are the only ones that are ever in the news.

Q. (Inaudible).

KIRK TRIPLETT: I'm going to try and do it every week, and I think we've made a pretty good start on it. Rita -- I have Rita Soren in here from the Dave Thomas Foundation. She can answer a number of those more specific questions, and then Saul is back here.

We started talking to friends mostly, and we've had people who we've -- I feel like we've influenced and who have adopted children themselves, and we got started thinking that we wanted to do this on more of a public scale. We have this natural platform and people will talk to us and return my phone calls because I'm a PGA TOUR golf pro, so we've gotten involved.

We've gotten involved in fundraising. We're hosting a charity event March 7th and 8th here in town to raise money for the foundation, and we've started a foundation of our own called the For Adoption Foundation to help people defray some of the costs of adoption, because that's another issue, as well. Kids like Saul and foster kids, there's lots of those children ready and waiting for homes, and there's very little expense and it's relatively quick to adopt these kids if you're certified and ready to go. If you're looking for a Caucasian infant then you're going to be on some lists or spend a lot of money, but there's lots of kids that need homes, and that's what we're trying to make people aware of. You sort of want to do it for the kids but then you end up doing it for yourself, and the bottom line is it's great for the community.

Q. Tell us about Saul.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Saul is 13. He's an eighth grader. He likes movies. I think he was really into that Pirates of the Caribbean because he knows most of the words to it. He likes a Mexican haystack, likes to eat. He's a busy guy, pretty outgoing, and he's got some pretty good jokes. Most of them are a little off-color.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you all for coming. I'm sure you all want to talk to them further and you'll have an opportunity to do that in the back sometime later on today. Thank you, Kirk.

End of FastScripts.