BELL CANADIAN OPEN

September 4, 2003

Bob Burrows

Rhod Trainor

BOB BURROWS: Good afternoon. I'd like to thank the opportunity to be up here before you, and essentially we are here to highlight the golf course, highlight the staff that's contributed to the success of the Canadian Open. We have Rhod Trainor, the superintendent at Hamilton Golf and Country Club. We want to spotlight the efforts that have been made to prepare the golf course for this national tournament, and I presume they started over a number of years, and also to highlight the efforts of the staff and particularly Rhod, to prepare the course for this tournament.

Before I begin, typically we make a presentation to the host superintendent of the national tournament at the 18th green. We thought this would be perhaps an even better opportunity to highlight Rhod, and I would like to make a plaque presentation to Rhod and turn the mike over to him to answer questions. I'm also available to answer any questions related to any golf-industry related issues.

So on behalf of the Canadian Golf Superintendent Association and our over 2000 members across Canada, I would like to thank Rhod for contributing to the success of this opportunity. It's not an easy undertaking and I know it's long hours. And I also want to thank the membership of this club for giving up their golf course. Congratulations, there are rave reviews about the golf course and you deserve a vacation after this.

Q. Maybe you could just respond to some of the rave reviews that have been coming in, the players all seem to love the course and the preparations; and does it make the work worthwhile that you don't get ripped as so many courses have by professional players?

RHOD TRAINOR: Absolutely. We always knew the golf course was good. The members all know that it's good. There's a little doubt, I guess, until the players actually come and play. But I remember back in '96 when we had the Seniors and most golfers like to come back to the old courses like this and play. Those are the same kind of comments we are hearing here.

I think they are very happy to be here. We don't have the length or size of some of the other courses but there's a quaintness to this place, and it's a tougher golf course in that respect because you have to think your way around. I think the players really appreciate that. They are challenged by it.

Q. I'm sure you watched the PGA Championship with a lot of interest and the rough and how they set up Oak Hill for that. At what point -- and I know that your rough is kind of monitored by the PGA TOUR in this case, but at what point does it become unfair and how tough could you have made this golf course?

RHOD TRAINOR: That's a good question, because what is unfair anymore, with the way these guys can hit the ball? The PGA TOUR especially is a lot more lenient in the rough that they will allow. One of the other things they do is they put pins a little closer to the edge now because the players are just so good now. There's nothing to stop somebody from firing 62 on pretty much any course.

The rough that we grew here, we grew it long all season long to build body in it, to give it thickness. The membership put up with it all summer long. Actually, they enjoyed it. It was a challenge to them. They will be very happy when we start cutting it after. There are some limitations. They don't like to see it all thick and matted and laying over, so the ball disappears. As long as it has density which is what we have, the ball sits down in it and it has lots of strength to grab the club. I guess what's unfair, I don't know. That's a question you'd have to ask the Tour guys.

Q. Do you feel you've been able to keep the PGA TOUR --

RHOD TRAINOR: The PGA TOUR has been a treat to work with. They have very professional. Their course setup, their philosophy of course setup is everything that we and our membership would like. They want to present a challenge and they want the course to be tough, too. So they have been very good -- it was very good when they got here because in the week before the event -- when the Tour officials arrive, it really gave us focus in the final stages that we needed to pr5epare the golf course and the grooming that we have to do and the little things that we had to do to finish off the golf course and make it ready for the championship.

Q. What's your thoughts about the weather, the forecast is breezy --

RHOD TRAINOR: If I could have written an order for weather a week ago, this would be exactly what it is right now. We are nice and cool, cool nights. It allows us to dry the course down. It doesn't put it into stress and we can make the golf course firm, which is getting -- you'll probably see it getting firmer over the next few days, maybe a little browner in some of the corners and things like that. I don't think you could have written the textbook any better for weather than we are having right now.

Q. So the fact it was cool last night -- as it dries out --

RHOD TRAINOR: In the hot summer months when it's 30 degrees (Celsius) and warm nights when we let the course get as dry as what it is right now, then we start losing turf; it starts to die. Now it turns brown and we putt a little bit of water on it, it comes back. It's completely different at this time of the year. This is a great time of the year.

Q. So you cut back your regular watering schedule?

RHOD TRAINOR: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Q. Going back a year or two to when you received word of getting tournament, how much input did the PGA TOUR have at that point in giving you general guidelines?

RHOD TRAINOR: It's an RCGA event and the RCGA selects the venue and then presents it to the PGA TOUR, who then sends a representative up to see the golf course is suitable to stage that kind of a championship. They don't really have a lot of criteria.

Our club, we had a master plan that involved a lot of projects that lengthened the golf course and things like that and we brought all of those projects forward. We put together a package that we presented to the PGA TOUR: Here is what we want to do with the golf course and they embraced it completely. They thought it was a great idea and we did all that work last year. The key was our driving range. Our driving range is not suitable for the -- we are having trouble with our own members. We have a 70-foot net and our members are hitting the ball over the net now.

So the technology has really come a long ways. When we were able to take our short nine course and make a driving range over there, it made it very simple to host this kind of an event and the easiest thing was to take our driving range and make it corporate area. That's the hardest part on the golf course is getting all of these tents and grandstands and things setup.

The nine-hole, it's still out there. You can see the greens and things. We are the members are going to use the course after it's over. This driving range goes back to being the membership driving range.

Q. (Inaudible.)

RHOD TRAINOR: The No. 1 tee is right where it's always been. We rebuilt it. It used to go this way and now it goes this way, but it's in the same spot.

Q. You mentioned technology, what's your view with courses becoming obsolete because of ball and club technology?

RHOD TRAINOR: I think it's out of control. I really do. I think that the new clubs and the golf ball are -- I don't know if you want to call it obsolete, but how far do you go? Do you want to start taking up more land to build golf courses or do we build longer golf courses? You restrict places where you can have tournaments like this.

I think we are kind of right on the bubble with how short a golf course would be now rather than how long it can be. I think they need to -- whoever it is, the governing bodies, the RCGA is one of them, and the R&A and USGA, they need to get some kind of control over how far the ball is going; or, a tournament ball. Let's let the average guy have the big clubs and the distance balls and things. It certainly helped my game.

Q. (Inaudible.)

RHOD TRAINOR: If you build that kind of a course, your membership is not going to like it. Right now I think that the PGA TOUR, if they demand those kind of specifications, the club members, they are going to say we don't want fairways that narrow and we don't want rough like that to play in. I think you'll see clubs just saying, we can't handle it, we can't do it because we are not prepared to change our course like that.

We have made mild changes to our course but it's been accepted by the membership. Actually when we made the presentation to the membership as to what we were going to do, we told them they have no plans to go back to where we were and they accepted that.

Q. How much narrower are the fairways?

RHOD TRAINOR: Our fairways before were very big. We had 35- and 40-yard wide fairways in some places. So our average width of fairway now is 25 to 28 yards. In some places we still have 30 yards out there in width.

Q. Inaudible?

RHOD TRAINOR: Which association, the Canadian?

BOB BURROWS: Really, we haven't. Essentially I would suspect because each governing body -- in other words their requirement for the National Championship are their own requirements. And climactically these tournaments are held in different geographic regions, that has a bit of an impact. As Rhod indicated, a general membership club would certainly not want to play that seven days a week and not enjoy it. There's no doubt.

They are playing it the day after, when everybody pulls out, but they certainly wouldn't want that seven days a week. So to answer your question, there's really been no representation.

Certainly, as Rhod indicated, the general feeling is that the golf ball and technology in general is getting a little out of hand. When you look at architectural trends, they are now not going back to a minimalist style of architecture, not those 7,300-yard golf courses. So that traditional feel is coming back, I suspect.

Q. (Inaudible)?

RHOD TRAINOR: That's one of the things about golf courses like ours, newer golf courses are being built, you'll see the standard golf course construction and green construction are less grain, flatter grains, less so because you can make greens very fast now with some of the new grasses. And you put those seeds on greens like ours and they are unplayable. That's the unfair word, I guess it is unfair, but we have some greens out here there are pretty steeply pitched. We have a speed, and we have learned over the years how fast we can get our greens and still be able to play on, and the PGA TOUR knows that, too. They were here one day and they said: This is the speed, 10 1/2 feet. Once they get past that, it starts to become pretty tough.

Q. (Inaudible.)

RHOD TRAINOR: You have to be able to stop the ball by the hole within reason. 10, 13, 17, 18. Those are probably the ones that are monitored the closest. No. 10 especially.

Q. (Inaudible.)

RHOD TRAINOR: We are at 10 1/2.

Q. Slower than last week at the TPC?

RHOD TRAINOR: It's funny, one of the Tour officials said to me, regardless what you hear, 90 percent of their events, their greens are 10 1/2 feet.

Q. Bragging rights?

RHOD TRAINOR: We haven't rolled our greens yet.

Q. Looking at the pin sheets today, some of them are four paces.

RHOD TRAINOR: You'd have -- do it daily. This morning when we set the pins up, we picked the pin positions for tomorrow, and then they will give me a pin sheet tonight. So there could be some, but you'll have to ask them. There's no legal limit. We got some lies little pin placements and you have to go pretty close to the edge.

End of FastScripts.