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BUICK CLASSIC

June 12, 2004

Slugger White

HARRISON, NEW YORK

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: PGA TOUR tournament director Slugger White. Thanks for joining us for a couple minutes here. We're just going to go ahead and field your questions.

Q. Slugger, what can you do about a slow play situation? Do you address it at all or is it an isolated incident or something that's developing over the course of time, considering two-ball and it's taking almost five hours to play?

SLUGGER WHITE: Yeah, it was very slow today. In all my years out here I haven't seen anything like this today. We've got a situation now where I really feel like the ball is going too far. We've got guys that are driving the ball further than they ever have. They're reaching the 5th green, which we didn't do four years ago probably.

Then we've got the 6th hole, which is like a 9-iron or pitching wedge and then you've got a 7th hole that everybody is driving, too.

Every now and then we'd have somebody in the group that would wait and go, but now it seems like it's every group or somebody in every group anyway.

Then we've got the 8th hole plays fairly fast and then they run up the hill at 9, they're getting to 9, which you couldn't get there four or five years ago, and then we have two or three groups on 10.

Now where guys used to not -- you'd have maybe 20 percent of the guys driving the ball at 10, we've probably got 90 percent of them driving at 10. It just backs it up and they can't go anywhere unfortunately.

So we're trying to help ourselves tomorrow, just to let you know what we are going to do. We're going in 3s tomorrow, one tee, 11-minute intervals. It's almost going to be about the same playing time as the pairs took today, which is unbelievable. That's what we're trying to do.

Q. Have you monitored what the LPGA has done? Do you consider that at all or do you figure that the PGA TOUR is a separate entity?

SLUGGER WHITE: Well, they're separate, but there were no gaps out there. That's the thing about it. Once they played 10, then everything flowed fine. It was just those holes. It started at 4, so 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10. After they got past 10, shoot, nobody waited at 11, you didn't wait at 12. You went on and played 13 and went on through. I think probably the last couple of groups may have waited at 18, which is a par 5, but everybody flowed through there. We've got about four or five holes. We may have a golf course now that we've found we can't play pairs. It's the first time we've played dry here in a long time, so the ball is going further, they're reaching these places. It was unbelievable today. I mean, believe me, I was scratching my head.

Q. How did the pace compare to the first two rounds?

SLUGGER WHITE: Almost the same, which is unbelievable. I think our last groups were playing right just under five hours on Thursday and Friday, and that's the end of the day. That's 13 groups a side.

We expect that because we've got 26 groups on 18 holes, you're going to wait. But this today was unbelievable. I mean, I had a conversation with Vijay after the round. I said, if you've got a solution, I'm listening, because like I say, I haven't seen anything like what I saw today.

Q. Did you have a breakdown for how long it took on the front nine and the back nine?

SLUGGER WHITE: No, because it wouldn't even help because we stacked it up so fast there, like on 10, when we walk off of 9 green -- then we got a situation where we started waving guys up at 7, and then that went away for some reason, and then we were waving them up at 10.

I don't think it would do any good to look at that, and I'm sure we'll look at it and see what it was, but I don't think it'll help.

Q. Why were you saying like equipment being what it is now and the way guys hit it, is there a threat that they may not be able to play this golf course eventually?

SLUGGER WHITE: I don't think so. I think this golf course will stand up. We're treading water right now to see exactly what we're going to do with -- again, we may find that we can't play pairs here, and we'll play threes on the weekend and on one tee and go.

Q. Could you explain the speed benefit of playing threesomes versus twosomes?

SLUGGER WHITE: Well, usually the pairs play -- they play a lot faster on Sunday and get out of the way because usually the lead five or six of them are going to play well under their time par. We know it kind of backs up as the field -- as the players get in the field, the grounds get in the field.

But we had guys who were playing with no gaps out there on their time par, and it's just like a domino effect. It just starts to slow down. I don't have an answer for this one today.

Q. What I'm trying to understand is to go to threesomes tomorrow, that's not really going to change anything, is it?

SLUGGER WHITE: It's going to be almost the same pace of play, but the guys won't be waiting on the tee. They're not going to be sitting on their bags, and that's what they were doing today.

Q. What is the time you should be able to get pairs around here at?

SLUGGER WHITE: 4:10.

Q. What was the time today?

SLUGGER WHITE: Just under five hours. 4:10, I was basically looking today at 4:15 because last time was 1:40, try to finish about five till, and we finished at, what, 6:30, 6:35, something like that.

Q. The last group was 4:55.

SLUGGER WHITE: Right.

Q. Understanding, there was no one put on the clock today?

SLUGGER WHITE: There were no gaps. I mean, how are you going to time a group? That's what I'm saying. That's what people don't understand. Yeah, somebody is slow, but the entire field was slow. That's what happened. And when you have a couple train wrecks early and a group starts playing on their time early in the round, early in the groupings, then it just backs up and it's a domino effect.

Q. Which did occur today, correct?

SLUGGER WHITE: I think it did. I think we had some problems with --

Q. Very early on?

SLUGGER WHITE: Early on, I think so, and they never caught up. They weren't over their time par. This is not a track meet. We're not asking them to run around this golf course, so that's pretty much what happened.

Q. Is there a course outside of this one that you're thinking about that you can't play twosomes on the weekend on the PGA TOUR?

SLUGGER WHITE: That we can't?

Q. Can't.

SLUGGER WHITE: You never say -- never say never, but we've found in Atlanta that it's very difficult to play pairs there, as well. For some reason -- but that's a little different because there's a lot of walks between greens and tees, so that backs up there, too, and we found that out four or five years ago and tried to do it again a couple years ago and it didn't work.

Q. That's the only one you play threesomes on the weekend?

SLUGGER WHITE: That I can remember right off the top of my head. I can't think of anything right now. Atlanta is the only one that comes to mind right now.

Q. That's the TPC course at Sugar Loaf?

SLUGGER WHITE: Right.

Q. When you mentioned the ball going too far, is this type of thing an argument for putting more controls on the ball?

SLUGGER WHITE: Well, I think we've reached that point. It's like we've drawn a line in the sand, and I think the USGA has, and their tolerance is such now that -- you've seen the testing of drivers, the spring-like effect. It's come to pretty much an abrupt halt right now.

Q. Is there any preparation to this course, narrowing fairways, growing the rough higher, making it more of a penalty to go into those places that they can go to in two or one off the tee, would that speed play up a little bit?

SLUGGER WHITE: Get them to where they're pitching back out and keep going?

Q. Maybe on 7 you make it so penal for them to go and miss, is it that you wouldn't go after it?

SLUGGER WHITE: Maybe that's a thought, like we need to kind of look at that and try to play the hole the way it was designed. It was not designed to take a driver out there and knock it over those trees at the green. I mean, that's just not -- I don't think that's the way -- it was Travis I think that did this place.

Q. Do you believe that you wouldn't have learned this problem with the driving if it hadn't been a dry week? This is the dryest week I can remember here.

SLUGGER WHITE: We had some records back in '02, and it was like the last group played in 4:18 or 22, but that's 15 minutes longer than it should have, but it wasn't dry then, either. It's like it was pretty wet and guys weren't getting it to 5, they weren't driving as far there. Like I said, I'm scratching my head, I'm sorry. I don't have an answer to it. I'd love for somebody to come up with a solution.

Q. You say most with hitting 9-iron, wedge second shot at 5?

SLUGGER WHITE: No, they're hitting Woods at it on their second shot, but they're driving it down to the end of the fairway where they didn't used to do that. Now they can get a 3-wood or something on the green. I mean, like 17 I talked to Vijay at the end of the round. I mean, he drove the ball 40 yards from the green at 17. I remember playing this golf course back in the 70s, it was an 8-iron shot, driver and an 8-iron.

Q. Have you talked to the players about the possibility of recognizing the fact that they need to have guys hit up at 7 and hit up at 10 to try to speed up play?

SLUGGER WHITE: We don't tell them that until it happens. We wouldn't get in a situation -- they don't need to be looking over their shoulder. When we get that situation, we'll start waving them up if we get to that.

Q. So tomorrow you won't say anything until it comes to that situation?

SLUGGER WHITE: Right. It won't be something we tell them on the first tee or anything like that.

Q. What about the Sluman ball incident?

SLUGGER WHITE: Unfortunate, really unfortunate. It didn't have any markings on the seam. We were all sick about it. We exhausted every resource to try to see, and that was it.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Is that why he discovered it apparently on the first hole and he played three more holes, because you guys were kind of exhausting all your resources to try to keep him in the tournament.

SLUGGER WHITE: Exactly right. It was just hoping to find something, maybe there has been a precedent set elsewhere. We pretty much knew that that wasn't the case but didn't want to take him off on the first hole and find out later on.

Q. He reported it?

SLUGGER WHITE: He reported it. He called it on himself.

Q. Was it just one ball in the box?

SLUGGER WHITE: It's my understanding a ball -- I don't know that. I don't know that.

Q. Have you ever seen that before?

SLUGGER WHITE: Never.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: I think it was a sleeve actually, one sleeve out of the box.

SLUGGER WHITE: Oh, the entire sleeve? I don't know.

Q. When I talked to him he said it was one ball out of the box.

SLUGGER WHITE: I don't know. I haven't talked to him.

Q. I asked him if there were any more and he said no, it was just one?

SLUGGER WHITE: It was a ball he put in play on the first tee. I think he found it on the first green when his caddie was cleaning the ball. Like I say, it didn't take him any time at all to call.

He was told at 4.

Q. He had just holed out for an eagle.

SLUGGER WHITE: He made 2 there? I didn't know that.

It's very unfortunate. We hate when something like that happens. It happened at Hartford a couple years ago.

Q. You said in all your years. How many years is that?

SLUGGER WHITE: This is 23 doing this and another four or five -- it's like 26 or 27 years just kicking around out here.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Slugger, thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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