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ANA INSPIRATION

March 28, 2018

Rancho Mirage, California

STACEY COLLINS: Thanks for coming today. I think I know most of you, but if I haven't met you, I'm Stacey Collins, and I'm the new Senior Vice President of Tour Operations. So Donna and I have worked together quite a bit, but we had different logos on our shirt when we did, and Christina as well. So it's fun to be back together again.

The golf course is in great shape, I think you all have seen that, and the players are raving about the conditions of the golf course. So thank you to John Miller, our agronomist and his team, and Donna's our advanced official for this championship. So we're really excited to get started tomorrow.

Just a couple things for you all to know how we're going to be proactive how we plan our playoff, because it's so iconic here at Mission Hills at the ANA, we are going to play No. 18 four times. So four times we'll play 18. It will probably be dark by then if we need that many playoff holes. But then after that, we'll play 10, 17, and 18, and repeat those until we have a winner.

But we just wanted to keep in mind the expectations of the viewers and our sponsors and the history of the championship, so that's why we decided to do the playoff that way.

As I said, the golf course is in great shape, so I'm going to turn it over to Donna and to John to talk about the specifics on the golf course this week.

DONNA MUMMERT: Great, thanks, Stacey. I'm Donna Mummert, I've met most of you. Larry, nice to meet you.

I'm the LPGA advanced official for this championship, one of the eight rules officials that we have on staff. I've been on site since Tuesday, working here with IMG and Mission Hills staff, just setting up and preparing the golf course, doing the course markings, and working quite a bit outside the ropes too and all the logistics that go on with getting ready for our first major of the year.

But aside from all that, we know that the golf course is the most important thing, and we wouldn't be having this discussion if it wasn't for the course.

Just wanted to highlight a couple things for you all. Our total yardage, I think most of you have seen the white yardage. We're a par 72, 6763 is where our white lines are placed, and we will have some variations in the set-up throughout the four days, four tournament days.

On No. 5, the par 3, we do have two tees that we can play there. No. 8, the other par 3 on the front nine, we have quite a wide tee from left to right, so depending on the hole locations, Marty Robinson on our staff will be doing the set-up on the front nine, and I'll be doing the back nine.

So depending on the hole locations that Marty chooses for the front, he may elect to go left or right on No. 8. Then the two holes on the back side that we have options for teeing grounds are No. 11, both par 5s, No. 11, white line we'll start out at -- the intention right now is to start out at the forward tee for 488, and then 18 will be back on Thursday, and then each day we'll swap both of those.

So 11 will be forward on Thursday and Saturday, and 18 will be on the up tee on Friday and Sunday.

Q. Do you have 18 being 485?
DONNA MUMMERT: On 18, 485; correct. The weather forecast for this week is fantastic, although we will heat up in temperature, but the good part with the warmer temperatures is we expect the winds to lay down a little bit. Thursday and Friday our wind forecast is to be calm and variable, and then Saturday and Sunday we might see some gusts up to 15. But nothing really strong or nothing that we'd have to really significantly affect play.

Green speeds are currently running at 12-and-a-half, and it's our intentions to hold them there in the 12 and a half, high 12 range. Fairways are firm and fast. We will be working with the ground staff to manage the water over the next couple days just with the hotter temperatures and John will get into a little bit more of that.

We will be topping off the rough, around the fairways only, at three-and-a-half this evening, prior to play. One or two passes around fairways, depending on the nature of the hole. But the green surrounds, we are going to let that rough go for the remainder of the championship.

Q. Will you be cutting again, the rough, later in the week?
DONNA MUMMERT: At this point we don't intend to have to touch it again after today.

STACEY COLLINS: Our players hit it straight (laughing). But I think you can see, this is a major, and we've been very intentional in our course set up.

I think Donna also got some discussion about par 3s. We want to mix it up, so I'll talk about that as well.

DONNA MUMMERT: Between 5 and 8 what I described, and then on the back nine we have the shortest par 3 on the course, No. 14. White line yardage is 148, however, don't be surprised if you see that play 120 or 125 one day with a more forward tee and a front right hole or a front hole.

We'd like to, throughout the course and throughout the rounds, we like to have the players use different clubs on all the par 3s each time.

Then 17, the other par 3 on the back is 179, and we have quite a bit of distance to go forward on that one. That green's pretty severe, if you haven't seen it yet. So we need to be careful with the club and the yardage that players have going into that one.

Q. 14 is like any number of possibilities back and left?
DONNA MUMMERT: Yes.

Q. Forward, right, over the water. Do you have a plan there? Are you going to make those -- or are those day by day?
DONNA MUMMERT: The tee on 14 will stay on the right side, but the tee itself is about 20 yards in depth. So just moving forward and back on that tee where we are now.

Like Stacey mentioned, we're just really excited. We always get excited to see the players come out and play the course where it's set up fair. Where somebody who can keep it in the fairways and manage their approach shots into the green will have reasonable chances to make birdie putts. The greens are rolling fantastic. So I wouldn't be surprised if we do see a mid-60 score each day.

Q. Talking about the rough, a lot of the players have come in here and talked about not so much the height of the rough but the thickness of the rough. More thick than it's been, maybe, in several years. Is that just the luck of the draw? Has the weather been better this year and you had better growing, or is that something you did?
DONNA MUMMERT: We'll turn it over to John for the answer on that one.

JOHN MILLER: It was a little bit of both. They had a great overseed, which we've had before, but then we've also had some good temperatures conducive to growth. Since last October we haven't had those 90-, 100-degree temperatures that someone from the desert gets. In late January, early February, it's allowed it to grow and thicken up. Then it's not just melting away with the heat of the day.

So add cool nights, ideal growing for the overseeded conditions, and that's what's helped make it like that. It's almost perfect right now.

Q. Stacey was telling me that the greens are better than she's ever seen, and she felt like maybe -- she said I don't know what else was in there, maybe some Poa or something, but it was just all very consistent?
JOHN MILLER: Yeah, they're very clean this year, and that's one of the seeds that they overseed with is Poa trivialis, which it's already a Poa plant. So you do from time to time get some contamination. The club here has taken some steps to try to eliminate that to a certain degree. It's starting to pay off now. Because of that, we've got a lot more consistent green speed from and the actual rolling of the green's smoothness, from 1 through 18, the putting green, everything has been so uniform this year.

That's some of the comments I've been getting from the players is the consistency from green to green and from hole to hole. So it's been really good.

Just so you know, our plan is to keep everything exactly the same as it is to the best of our ability. What we're hoping for, we'll see the green speeds come up just maybe about an inch through normal maintenance, which is normal for every golf course that we do, just because of the constant mowing, constant rolling, you're going to gain a little bit. But we won't let it get out of control.

The good news is Donna says the weather's going to cooperate this year. That's always on our radar screen. If the wind's blowing out here and we're rolling at 12-and-a-half or 13, it's going to be too fast. You could get balls moving and we don't want that. Forecast is very favorable. But if we do need to make changes because the weather changes, we're prepared to do that.

Q. That goes to my other question. If you do have heat and you have a little wind and those greens are already fast, will they get faster?
JOHN MILLER: No.

Q. The other thing for those of us that live here in the desert, 93 is not bad.
JOHN MILLER: Exactly. Now the interesting thing that's going to be because we have been fairly cool the last week to ten days, mid 70s has been our high, little wind, sometimes we creep into the low 80s, this is going to be our, probably the last two weeks the first shot at 90 or low 90s. So we may see a little flush of growth. But we're prepared for that. If we need to put an extra cut on it in the afternoon to keep the speeds, we will.

But we'll measure them every day, morning, afternoon, and we'll adjust our game plan according to what Mother Nature does to us.

Our plan is to double cut in the morning and roll in the morning, and then we'll make those adjustments in the afternoon if we need to put another cut on or roll on in the afternoon, we will.

We are watching our water, as Donna said, very closely. We're taking measurements as to how much ground moisture there is morning and afternoon, and we're adjusting accordingly. If we need to put a little down, we do. If they're fine, we don't put any water down at all, so we're kind of maintaining that.

As she said, we're going to top the roughs off tonight, and more than likely that will be the last we have to do. We're not expecting any big growths over the weekend or anything, so this should be the last top off there.

Obviously, we're raking the bunkers every day. The bunkers are really, really good. They're consistent. They're still a test for the players that get in them.

The step cuts, cut every day in the morning, fairways are cut every day in the morning. Tees every day in the morning. So we've got that routine down pat, and now it's just a matter of adjusting to what Mother Nature gives us.

Q. They've done a lot of work on the bunkering the last years.
JOHN MILLER: They have, they have. It's not so much too what we've done in the last two weeks, it's what this staff has done over the course of the year. If you think back to what we left last year, there were trees, there was debris everywhere, it had to be cleaned up before September came. So, when they did their overseeding, they could overseed everything and get all the stump holes, ground, there was a lot of work that went into this golf course to get us ready to where we are right now.

Then maintaining from the time that they overseeded in September, October, up to now, to just have it where we are. They've done a tremendous job.

Q. Stacey, I know you've talked to a lot of players in your weeks on the job. Did any of them talk to you about this tournament and what they'd like to see as the tournament set up?
STACEY COLLINS: You know, we didn't talk about specific events, but we talked about the Tour in general. What we did talk about was more variety on the golf courses, a variety of par 4s, variety of par 3s, hitting different clubs into the greens. And I think we're doing that.

The staff is really very conscious of it, and I think you'll see fun things this year. I think you saw that at Bank of Hope, you saw it at Kia, so those are the things we talked about.

We also talked about not forcing something. If it's a reachable par 5, great, or a drivable par 4, great, but if the green complex isn't set up to receive those shots, we don't want to force the issue.

So those are the things we've talked about. It's been a very warm welcome, and I'm very grateful for having such a supportive team, so it's been a lot of fun.

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