BOB HOPE CHRYSLER CLASSIC

January 18, 2002

Kirk Triplett

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: We'd like to thank Kirk Triplett for joining us for a few minutes. Great round of 64 today, 19--under par, 200. Why don't you talk about your round, the day and then we'll go into some questions.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, it's the Bob Hope and the weather is nice, so to be there on Sunday you've got to be around that 30-under range. So I was starting the day 11. So the bath is pretty easy, 6 or 7 a day, you have to be there to have a chance.

I went out and got to a slow start, but made a couple of putts, couple of good saves. Really didn't have my best round, but I made most of my birdie chances, and there it is, 8-under, no mistakes.

Q. You said Brandel Chamblee has been beating you all winter at home. Have you made corrections this week?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Is he still beating me? As far as the scoreboard said out there, he was still beating me. He's 18-under. We don't have to pay after today. I had to get rid of my velcro wallet, it was making too big of a sound every time I played him.

Q. Were you making some adjustments or were you playing okay all week?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I think I was playing okay. I think we played 22 holes, he birdied 11 of them. It's going to be tough to beat him under those conditions. We've played I think three times in the last couple of weeks when we were at home getting ready, and he's beaten me every time.

Q. It seems like guys are making these incredible shots. Jerry Kelly had a hole-out for 90 yards, and John Senden -- did you have anything like that today?

KIRK TRIPLETT: No, I didn't have anything crazy like that. I had some poor iron shots and made some nice chips and putts for recoveries, which really kept the momentum of the round going. There was a couple of holes, I didn't birdie 11, after being in the fairway, with a chance to reach the green on 2. On 12, I hit a poor iron shot right of the green, short-sided myself, hit a chip up about three feet.

Hit a good drive on 13 and just a miserable iron shot right of the green, down by the lake, and had a very difficult pitch. And hit a nice pitch up about 8 feet and made a nice left-to-right putt. If I missed those putts, now I'm 3-under going in the last four or five holes, instead of 5-under, and maybe things don't turn out as well. Maybe I'm seeing the canal that runs through the holes, rather than seeing the pin and where I want to go.

For me it was more the saves kept the momentum of the day going, and allowed me to shoot the good score.

Q. It would appear that the rotation is going to work in your favor, playing Indian Wells tomorrow. Are you looking forward to that?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, yeah. There's a lot of low scores shot at Indian Wells over the years. I played out there early in the week, and the greens are very, very fast -- I think a little quicker than the other courses. So maybe the scoring is not as low there this year as it has been in the past.

But the rotation for me, I seem to -- I do reasonably well here at this course, because if you can kind of keep it going down the center -- this course I don't think plays quite as tricky as the other two. The minute you start steering away from the trouble at this course, then you have some problems.

Q. Is there such a thing as an easy course or more difficult course here or is 64 what you're going to shoot here at all four courses now?

KIRK TRIPLETT: If you're hitting it decent and making putts, that's the kind of scores that these courses yield. And one of the reasons that they yield them is because they're in such good shape. Your lies are the same, all the time. You never get anything real squirrely happening. The greens roll so true. You stand there and hit the same putt over and over and it's always going to break an inch to the right or two inches to the right or be straight.

Whereas the rest of the West Coast we play on the poa annua and it gets soft and bumpy, and you've got a little more of a -- well, that ball didn't do that last time when I hit this putt. You don't have that here. That's why the scores are so good.

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Kirk, for joining us.

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