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BUICK CHAMPIONSHIP


August 27, 2004


Jon Brendle


CROMWELL, CONNECTICUT

JON BRENDLE: Dudley Hart, rule 411 states that if you start a round with a non conforming club the rule is disqualification.

The club he started with was a conforming club at one time, but he pulled it out on the 15th hole and found out it had a kink bend in it. Now, he doesn't know where that bend came from, and the first four holes, had that kicked the bag or done something, he would have made it a non conforming club and he wouldn't have been allowed to play with it.

But the rules say in 411 that if you start the round with a non conforming club, the rule is disqualification. It was a 3 iron. Somebody could have kicked the bag in the locker room or something like that, but USGA takes it that you're responsible for checking your clubs before you play. They take that stand on it.

It isn't like what the rule sounds like it's written for, which is if you start the round say with a cheating type club, with a non conforming grooves, something like that, it says unwittingly this is kind of a weird deal because he got it somewhere and he couldn't tell us where.

Had he been able to say he did it in the first four holes, he just can't play with it and there's no disqualification. But in this case since he couldn't tell us and he was honest enough not to make up a story about it, he got the bad end of that.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: In the course of a round if you turn a club into a non conforming club you're allowed to play that club the rest of the round and replace it or fix it.

Q. Did he turn himself in?

JON BRENDLE: Yeah, he brought it to my attention on the 15th tee.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: I would call it a heavy kink. It was right up in the grip, so therefore it makes it non conforming in two ways. In the grip you can't have a flat area, and you also can't have a bend more than five inches above the sole of a club, so it was non conforming in two ways.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: That was his fourth hole. He just started on the back.

Q. Did you just happen to be there?

JON BRENDLE: Yeah, because we were waiting at the 15th, and that was the second start of the wave for the afternoon, and I just happened to be there. He just found out on the hole before.

Q. To have a shaft in that condition, what are some typical causes of that?

JON BRENDLE: Anger I mean, you don't know. The weird thing about it is if you were out practicing and you went and got a drink and I fell over your bag and didn't say anything to you and you went over to the tee and then you started your round and pulled out a club that was bent, you'd get disqualified for it because at the first tee you're responsible for checking your equipment.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: Had he been able to tell us that he tripped over it after play was started or something, then he can't play that club. He can't play that club.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: If you use a non conforming club if I bend it like that, that club is non conforming. If I use it during the round, I get disqualified for that.

Q. At the moment it happened, if he figured

JON BRENDLE: If his caddie said after we pulled it out, I threw something over there or I kicked the bag or something like that on the second hole, if he could have come up with any kind of story like that, but nothing like that was there. He couldn't come up with a story.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: He did not use it. He didn't warm up with it, either.

Q. (Inaudible).

JON BRENDLE: Well, because I went to the USGA because I feel like it's a hard thing to disqualify somebody and tried to find any way at that point in time to get you out of it.

End of FastScripts.
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