BUICK CLASSIC

June 10, 2000

John Cook

JOHN COOK: It was real good at times and then I made some real good par-saving putts. Chipped in once. Made one bomb. A couple of 10-footers for pars and the rest of it in between was pretty good. So it was decent. It was a tough day to play. The wind was swirling. It was picking up towards the end and the golf course is drying out. So it's getting pretty fun. Good test.

JOHN COOK: I've started to play a little better in the last month. Starting at Colonial, I finished 8th there, which was -- made my first cut I had made in a long time. So my game has improved a little bit in the last few weeks. I've really worked very hard on it this year. It doesn't show in the results, but I've worked pretty hard and starting to come around. Getting a little more confident in what I've been doing. I've putted decently this week and the last couple weeks; so, that's helped. It's exciting to be back again. It's exciting to play well again. It's exciting to be close to the lead again. Like I said at Colonial, you don't know how many more of these you have left, and it's fun to get there. I love this golf course. I have a decent track record around here; so it's fun to play. When the conditions are such, you don't have to shoot a lot under par. It's really a -- kind of a patient game, and you hate to use the -- it's a good tune-up for next week, but it's that caliber of a golf course when they have the conditions like this. It's a very patient -- a player's golf course. You know you're going to make a couple bogeys but you know you're going to have some birdie chances and you just have to think along those lines. I haven't been a very patient player this year, so it's fun to hang in there and play well.

JOHN COOK: I wouldn't blame them. I haven't done crap this year, so it doesn't bother me. You know I've been out here long enough and won some tournaments. You know, I've -- not because those guys are up there I'm going to back down. That's not why we're here. I think if players and golfers know the board, they know that I've done okay and had a pretty long career and been out here for a long time, won some tournaments. So, I don't know if they would skip over me, but, if they do, I don't blame them.

JOHN COOK: I wish I knew what the problems were. I put in so much work and got so little out of it, it got so frustrating. Really disappointing, I guess. I don't know what was going on early in the year. I was -- it was just -- nothing went right, nothing. Not one thing from Hawaii to the Colonial went right. You know after seeing three or four months of that, it gets very frustrating out here. These guys are too good. You just can't have bad weeks and I was just missing everything. Colonial, I played well on Sunday. I shot a couple under on Sunday, another tough day. Nobody ran away with that. So it was nice -- I hit good golf shots coming down the stretch which is a good sign that something is turning around. Made some nice putts coming in. Again, you see things in little steps at a time and I've seen that in the last month or. So not all of a sudden that something clicked, but just kind of a progression of things happening. So again, we're excited for a good round tomorrow. It will be tough.

JOHN COOK: I talked with Kenny, yeah. Not much you can say. We talked a lot about a lot of things. You know, it's just nice communicating with him. We haven't really worked together much, just haven't had that opportunity. Missed every cut so I've been gone before he's gotten to town so I haven't really been able to spend a lot of time with him. We talked and he knows where I stand on what I'm doing and what I'm thinking about towards the end of the year, next year. Like I said, it's fun to play well again.

JOHN COOK: We don't play many courses like this anymore. I can't think of maybe three or four courses that we play all year that we played my first year. This is one and Colonial is another one. Riviera is one and maybe Pebble Beach and San Diego. That might be it. It's nice to come to a golf course that, again, conditions dictate the scoring. Conditions are tough, the scoring is high. When the conditions are here -- when there's no rough and not much weather, you know, the scores can be low. But this is -- this is a very patient type of golf course and you have to be patient around the golf course. Great champions have won here. Major championship winners have won here. So it's nice to be around this one.

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