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SHELL HOUSTON OPEN

April 22, 2004

Fred Couples

HUMBLE, TEXAS

FRED COUPLES: I fell asleep on 17 and three-putted from not very far and then put a terrible drive on 18 to bogey those. Other than that, it was difficult. To be 3-under, I was cruising along and finished 1-under. It was disappointing, but it was a good round.

Q. How difficult was it with the wind blowing?

FRED COUPLES: Well, it seems like a lot of the holes we played were with the wind because of the nines we played. It wasn't horrible. It was hard to get the ball close.

There were a couple tricky shots, but the back nine, once you got by 10 and 11, you could get by some of the holes by driving it okay, which I did. It's just hard to get an iron close and it's hard to make birdie. You're going to see a lot of guys shoot 1-over, even, 1-under.

It's hard out there. Tomorrow I have the afternoon, so I'm going to try and get that out of the way. I guess the greens will be even drier tomorrow. The course is nothing like last year. I don't know what someone is, 6-under or 5-under, that's pretty good. I don't know if they'll be able to do that for three more days.

Q. You don't expect the scores to be that low?

FRED COUPLES: No. I think if we get 12- or 14-under, that's pretty good. We might see one or two guys get past that, but you're going to see a lot of guys shoot 6- or 7-under. It's very difficult. Any course we play where the wind blows it's going to be tough. With the water out there it's hard to hit the fairways and it's tough.

Q. So you need about 13-under par the next three days you think to get there?

FRED COUPLES: Yeah, and that's probably not going to happen. You know, I might go out there and shoot anything tomorrow, but the idea is to hit the ball solid, which you have to do in the wind. It was a little disappointing to bogey the last two holes, but at the same time I got away with a few.

Q. You had some big crowds following you at this tournament, but being defending champion even more so this year. How was it out there? Were there some high expectations?

FRED COUPLES: Well, there's always people around, and it's certainly fun to play in front of a lot of people and they come out and support you. With a 7:30 tee time today it was nice to see more than ten people out there, and then with John Daly behind us it was nice. They were coming out to watch him. Houston has always had incredible crowds. Last year was no exception. Most of them weren't rooting for me, but they come out and support the tournament and the charities, and it's a great event.

Q. As the defending champion do you feel more --

FRED COUPLES: No, defending champion was a year ago, so when I come here, I don't think people are expecting me to win, and if I hadn't won last year it would have been the same thing. It's not like I'm out there going, oh, my God, I'm leading going into the fifth round, which is the first round, but it's fun -- when you tee off and you're defending champion it's not over, but it it will be in three days unless I get going, but it's always fun to come and play Houston.

Q. (Inaudible).

FRED COUPLES: A lot of times it drives you nuts because you can't remember your own name when you're out there trying to hit a shot, and you're thinking is it Carl or is it Bob, so I try not to get too involved in seeing everybody, but you say hello and hope they don't expect five minutes of a conversation.

End of FastScripts.

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