WGC ANDERSEN CONSULTING MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 25, 2000

Darren Clarke

DARREN CLARKE: Yeah, I'm playing pretty solid. I made a few more mistakes today than I did yesterday, but I'm still playing -- hitting the ball very solid. Hitting a lot of fairways and a lot of greens.

DARREN CLARKE: Anything can happen all week, because -- as some results have shown. But if you get this far, there's no reason you can't go the whole way.

DARREN CLARKE: Not really. Butch has been here, and what have you, and it's just early season, and I've been swinging a lot better this time of the year than I have in the past.

DARREN CLARKE: Just the usual bad habits, all the same ones keep coming back all the time.

DARREN CLARKE: I play Hal Sutton, I think.

DARREN CLARKE: Hal's -- he's a great player. We played each other in the singles at Brookline. And I'm looking forward to playing against him again tomorrow.

DARREN CLARKE: Not an edge, no. He played better than I did at Brookline. And he won. I'd like to play it better tomorrow than I did on the Sunday at Brookline.

DARREN CLARKE: Most definitely. We don't have the opportunity to play match play very often. And I think the Ryder Cups are very good grounding for this week.

DARREN CLARKE: Not really. I think it's pretty good from a European's point of view that we've got three guys through. This stage last year, we weren't in the same position, and it's good to see the European guys coming through. This isn't the team format. Every guy is playing for their own, so it's different that way.

DARREN CLARKE: Pretty rusty. I lost myself out there a few times. It's always the same at the start of the year. We start our Tour in Europe later than you guys start here, anytime in February most of the guys are going to be rusty.

DARREN CLARKE: I came down on Saturday and played the course on Saturday and been practicing since. My manager, I played with him on Saturday and he stuffed me. 6 and 5 and he stuffed me.

DARREN CLARKE: It gave me a little more time to come down and work on a few things.

DARREN CLARKE: No. I think it's like anything, I think when you get to know the golf course a little better, you tend to perform a little better. We go and play courses in Europe where we keep going back year after year, the scores come down. The Americans know the course here, and I think the more you play the more you get to know some pieces about it.

DARREN CLARKE: I think the Ryder Cup is an awful lot more.

DARREN CLARKE: Of course you get a little bit tense, because you want to play well and you want to win for obvious reasons. But as regards the Ryder Cup, you're playing for the team. Here you're playing for yourself. If you make a mistake for yourself, so be it, it's not affecting the other guys.

DARREN CLARKE: Yeah. I think the Ryder Cup experience is not something you can easily discredit without having been there and playing on it. It's a little bit easier for me, because I've played Ryder Cup, I'd say.

End of FastScripts...