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CIALIS WESTERN OPEN

June 29, 2005

Tiger Woods

LEMONT, ILLINOIS

TIGER WOODS: Connor was a great guy. We had a good time today, and boy, he's pretty funny. We had a good time chatting and telling stories and just having a good time. It was fun. I mean, that's one of the great things about playing this event. Evans Scholarship kids are able to come out here and enjoy us and enjoy the day with the Pro Am, and it just makes for just a pleasurable experience.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: He did good. If Stevie is ever injured again, you never know.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Without a doubt. I mean, what they do for the kids here is absolutely fantastic. I mean, to give them an opportunity to go to college and further themselves through golf, I mean, it's a great situation for everybody.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: A little drier, a little faster. The rough is up certainly in places, spotty. Some places it's six, eight inches, and other spots you can go out there and you can hold a wedge or hold an iron shot on the green with no problem, so you don't know.

The greens are good, as always. They're good every year, and hopefully we get some good weather.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No. I mean, you're trying to win the golf tournament, and you're going to have to beat everybody in the field. That's just the way it is. Whether it's the top five guys in the world who are in the same field, you've still got to beat everybody, and that's the way you have to approach it. I mean, you can't approach it like a situation, well, I just have to beat him and I'll win the tournament because you'll probably be blown by by everybody else. You just don't know what can happen. The whole mindset is to win the golf tournament. If you do that, you'll beat everybody in the field.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Today? I don't know, probably 2 , 4 under, something like that, somewhere in there.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Well, it took us, what, 3 hours and 15 minutes to play that back nine. It was a little slow.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: It's nothing like British Open site, so it's not a preparation for British Open. It's a great event and you treat it as such.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: You can, but I feel pretty good about what I'm doing. I hit the ball beautifully at the U.S. Open for all four days and I hit the ball well at Memorial, so I just need to continue to build on that. Hopefully the wind will blow this week so we get a little bit of preparation, but I'm going to be over in Ireland next week anyway, playing J.P.'s tournament, so I'm sure we'll get plenty of wind over there.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Yeah. You know, I could not get the speed right, and when you can't get the speed right, speed determines line, and I could not get the speed right. I had a hard time making putts because my speed was off. I was either leaving it short, running it by, and as you know, at Pinehurst, any putt that goes three, four feet past the hole is probably going to go off the green. It's like unlike any other golf tournament that you've played in your life, the way they set up those pins.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Well, I'll tell you what, they're trying to get us to play like it used to play, iron shots into the greens, but they fail to realize the greens are running at 12 now. They used to run at, what, 7 and 8. We used to see all the old footage of guys making shoulder turns on four footers. Nowadays you just need to breathe on it and it's going to roll quite a bit. I don't quite understand it because we haven't had since they changed it in 2002, we have yet to have a dry week.

When we went into this year's Masters we thought that over par could probably win the tournament, and it rained. It softened the golf course up, and there was only a handful of guys under par. It wasn't like there was a bunch of guys and three quarters of the field was under par. We have yet to have it hard and dry and fast for the entire week, and if we do, with these new tee locations, it's more likely over par will win.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: I don't agree with it, but we've all got to play it. You know that front left pin? What are you going to do there? I mean, hit I don't know what you're going to have to try and hit to that front left pin. To actually land it and keep it on the green, you only have about six paces to work with, and you've got a shot from 240 and you have to land the ball six paces, it's a pretty tough shot.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No, we just go out there and enjoy each other's company. That's all we do. No show, just have a good time. We try to help them with their swing and a couple reads here and there and make sure that they have an enjoyable day.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Because they played it faster last year. The rough was up but the greens were a lot springier than they are today and this week. We had a hard time keeping the ball where the ball landed. It was bouncing a lot. Any time you get the greens firm, the scores are going to go up dramatically. The scores will be better this year. The greens are a lot more receptive.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: I don't know, is it (laughter)? I don't know. What is it? 63 for one? Could be. What else?

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No, it's just that it takes when you sit there on each tee for 20 minutes, you get tight. That's all it was, it was just that you stop, start, stop, start, and you just keep there's no flow to it. The front nine was great. We had a great time. The back nine took us just over three hours to play. That's a long time.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Well, if the sponsors want to get a crowd, that's what they do. I got an exemption when I was 16, too. I understand where she's coming from and where they're coming from.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Who's Bob Verdi (laughter)? No, Bobby is a good dude, man. I'll tell you, he's one of the best. He's one of the guys you can trust, and for us as players, that's very rare. I trust him with everything. He deserves it, he's been through it all, and he's seen everything with MJ and now out here with me, it's been I'll tell you what, the stories he tells, that's the great thing, sit him down and listen to him ramble on about stories, that's really cool.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: It pays the bills (laughter). It's nice.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No, God no. You don't play for money. You play for hardware.

Q. Talk about St. Andrews, how special a place it is.

TIGER WOODS: It's the home of golf, and it's one of the greatest venues you'll ever play because it's so dependent on weather. The golf course is not that hard when the wind doesn't below, as we saw last time at the British Open. We all took it deep.

But then again, if the wind blows, you see what happens in '95. Maybe a handful of guys are under par. You just don't know. I think that's just the beauty of it, and for a golf course to be built that long ago and to stand up under the test of time and still be one of the great venues of today's golf is just a testament to how good that track really is.

End of FastScripts.

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