U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 11, 2003

Tim Moraghan

Dave Ward

RAND JERRIS: It's our pleasure to be joined this morning by Dave Ward, the golf course superintendent here at Olympia Fields Country Club. And on the far end of the stage from me Tim Moraghan, who is the Director of Championships Agronomy for the United States Golf Association.

Q. How does the course look for you, and Tim, how does it look to you?

TIM MORAGHAN: I think it looks very good. We've had a great couple of weeks here. I'm very pleased with what we have. I think going back to last year, it's a little bit of a departure, different type of golf course. I feel it's probably more what people will imagine in a U.S. Open venue to be, tree-lined, old classic style golf course, interesting layout up and down, left and right.

I'm very impressed with what Dave and his staff have done. I think as always this end of the industry is kind of forgotten, but the hard work and dedication of the golf course superintendent, their staff and the volunteers that have come away from their own clubs to volunteer to work at another club is exceptional. And on top of that I just want to add that Mark Mungeam, who is the golf course architect that we worked with here did a sensational job, not only guiding us from the USGA, but being open-minded with some of our suggestions, and making Dave's work be highlighted. I think the competitors are really going to enjoy it, and I think as opposed to some past years, we're going to have a lot of people with a lot of opportunity to win the national championship, and I think that's pretty neat.

DAVE WARD: Well, as a golf course superintendent we tend to drive around the golf course and look at everything that's wrong as opposed to everything that's right about it. And also when you're looking at it every day I think sometimes you don't see the tree for the forest, so to speak. Like the other evening, Monday evening was a glorious evening, and if you were out on the golf course on Monday evening, it just looked very special. And so I'm proud of what my staff has done. And I think we're pretty much ready.

It's going to be interesting to me to see what the player reaction ultimately is, what the scores are. I think there's a lot of unknowns, but I think we're ready. We've been working on green speeds all week, and Tim has helped us out greatly in that area. I think we're pretty close to being there if not there. I'm just excited to get things started. We've had -- this is our third practice day, and we were ready to go after the second practice day, the ground crew. The ground crew practiced the first three days, also, but we're excited and ready to go.

Q. Dave, a couple of weeks ago when we talked you were praying for more days like Monday, sunny. Did that -- we didn't get a whole lot of those. Did that hinder what you were trying to do here?

DAVE WARD: Well, over this past winter we put together a whole management plan, leading from January up until today or tomorrow. And you kind of have to base all of your management plans on what would be average weather. You can't base it on -- you can have contingency plans for things, but you can't base it on anything but average. We had, last Sunday morning, it was 34 degrees here. Last -- I hope I said Sunday, last Sunday was 34. Last Monday was 36. The Saturday before that I wore my winter coat all day and was looking for more clothes because I was freezing to death driving around out there.

That affects everything that you do. The weather really affects what we can do. We're doing -- when you're getting ready for an Open, you need to do some things that are abusive to your turf. We want to have turf left over for our members after this is over. We waited longer than we wanted to wait to do it, and we just this weekend are working on green speeds.

Our fairways went dormant, the greens were almost dormant -- when I say dormant, it was like November out here, we verticut the fairways. As of last Wednesday, you could still see the verticut lines, and things were yellow. We did some things with some quick acting things to try to get our colors and get some growth going. And we're still fighting the weather a little bit, but I think that considering the weather I'm really proud of the way this looks right now.

Q. You mentioned the green speeds earlier. Phil Mickelson was in here yesterday and he said, I'm going to quote him, there are holes that are very fast, and there are holes that are a lot slower. The inconsistencies of the speed here this week are much more difficult to judge than last week. I'm just wondering what you guys can do in the next couple of days.

DAVE WARD: I'll comment on that, and Tim probably can, also. First off, we're working with Mother Nature and we're working with the creation of man. Some of our greens are -- we had to build some new greens for this event. Some of those are USGA spec, they're just not maybe quite the same in terms of what's underneath them, and that makes it a little bit difficult sometimes to get everything equal.

We try to stimpmeter every green, every morning. We've been keeping track of that leading up to this. Actually if truth be known, we probably only have three or four good places on the golf course, where you can actually get what I consider a legitimate stimpmeter reading, because of slope.

The other thing about this golf course that I think the players are going to discover is that the greens are tricky slopey. You don't -- you can get on a green, you can stand there, you can look around, you can putt around and the slope is more, either uphill or downhill, than what you can feel and what you see.

So I think maybe some of those comments might have to do with not actually realizing what the slopes are. I think as the players get in the competitive rounds they're going to discover that a little bit and hopefully the better players are going to adjust to it and figure it out.

TIM MORAGHAN: I think Phil and I had a little conversation Sunday during practice rounds. He was out here practicing. And the inconsistencies are in tune with what Dave just mentioned, that you have different putting surfaces. You have different greens growing at different rates. Golf is inconsistent. We're doing the best we can to even it out. This morning we had two groups out there checking green speed, and we're pretty much right where we want. I think the consistency this morning has been as good as it's been since I've been here.

Again, referring back to what Dave mentioned with the weather changing rapidly, everybody -- it's just like you and me, you may not need a windbreaker this morning, here I'm bundled up like an Eskimo, I'm freezing. It's the same concept.

We're doing the best we can with a living entity to try to even it out for 18 holes, from the practice greens right through to the 18th green. I think Phil and all the players will probably see it get a little better today. It's not easy, and again we'd like to have, from the USGA's perspective, Olympia Fields have good quality turfgrass when the membership comes out to play the golf course. We're getting there.

Q. I'm just wondering with the firmness factor of the course and how it -- if we get a quarter inch of rain how that affects your ability to keep these fairways and greens fast, like everyone would like to see them?

TIM MORAGHAN: Well, David knows the golf course better than I would, but we can't react to weather, other than to clean up what it gives us. And like I said, golf is a game played outdoors; it's inconsistency, it's not routine.

I don't think you take 156 competitors, you have 156 different swings, how to approach the game, how to approach the golf course. We will try to do what we can with what's given to us by equipment, labor, et cetera, whether it's a quarter inch of rain or four inches of rain. And hopefully we don't get that. We try to make it play the same the best we can from the first tee to the 18th green.

We're kind of low with a little creek running through the golf course; water may not drain off as fast as Shinnecock Hills or Pinehurst, where it's mostly sand underneath. We'll just deal with it.

Q. How would you describe how firm these greens are right now?

DAVE WARD: I would say it's not playing very firm at all. But if you go out and stand on the greens, the greens have a really good consistency under foot. We've been getting these little spitting rains, a tenth, those type of things, on about a two-day basis. What happens there on the course is actually -- the greens in particular can take a fairly heavy rain and drain what we call the gravitational water, or water that moves with gravity, and you have capillary water or the water that doesn't move through, it just sits there, and that's not going to go anywhere unless the plant uses it or it evaporates.

So if we get a day like today where we don't get a lot of evaporation, you've got 15 hundredths of an inch sitting on the surface, it's not going to firm up. You get two sunny days in a row, and I think you see a different golf course. So we've got water draining through it very well, but it's all going to be based on how the weather is.

The fairway firmness will be the same thing, and we do have clay and some heavy soils here, so -- and we have several different types of soils here, so the lower fairways are different than the ones say 13 and 14 and 6, just because of the nature of the soils in those areas.

Q. Did you feel any extra pressure having to follow Bethpage, which everyone kind of deified?

DAVE WARD: I don't know if -- it's hard just having a U.S. Open. No matter who you follow there's an incredible amount of pressure for a golf course superintendent. I've made this quote several times, but perfection is expected. Bethpage was perfect. You go to a place like that and you're really in awe of what guys are doing. It's just the expectation; the players expect a perfect golf course.

So if you provide perfection, you're just doing what's normally expected of you. If you have anything less than perfection, you've failed. So the amount of pressure -- and plus all my colleagues around the world everywhere are looking at what we're doing, and golfers around the world. So you have to -- the pressure is pretty incredible.

Q. Dave, obviously preparing for a major is something they don't teach you in turf school, and it's obviously different than what you do on a day-to-day basis for your members here. What's been the biggest surprise for you in these months leading up to this event in terms of preparation, in terms of things you might think, wow, I never thought I'd have to do this in my job as golf course superintendent?

DAVE WARD: I guess I would say the preparation that takes place in the shop. You see the mowers out on the golf course[] cutting and things like that, but you never see the literally thousands of hours that go into getting your mowers getting just right, making sure the spin is just right. Grinding reels is a time-consuming process. Every time we've mowed the greens the past two weeks, those reels have been ground. It's an incredible effort in the shop, and I guess that was my biggest surprise.

TIM MORAGHAN: I don't think anybody realizes, like Dave said, you see what's out there, you see the players play, either like it or not like it. You see some equipment moving around and you think it's a pretty easy job to do. But no one, and I'm telling you no one, knows the difficulty, whether it's Dave Ward here at Olympia Fields, Greg Currier last year, Mark Michaud next year at Shinnecock, what they've been going through minimum five years, the amount of behind-the-scenes work. No one will understand unless they are in Dave's shoes.

You go out and look, hey, it's green, throw some water and some fertility, and we're going to cut the grass today, that's nice. And they're doing it in a nice pattern. No one understands.

That's the saddest part of the golf industry, that there's not enough recognition to the golf course superintendent and the individuals that do the work behind the scenes, because the work that goes out there -- and granted, they're not the only ones, this whole show is a lot of hard work, but no one has to deal with Mother Nature like the golf course superintendent and the expectations of players, members and Association people, like myself. So it's an incredible adventure.

Q. Tim, when Mickelson tells you something about that like some inconsistencies, it seems that's an advantage that he should keep under his hat. Another part, isn't that a point of practice rounds? How much consistency are you striving for in variation, if your target speed -- I don't know exactly what, what kind of variation is expected from green to green?

TIM MORAGHAN: I don't think I can say it any more eloquent that you did. That's golf. That's what practice rounds are for. It's a blind golf shot, it's only blind once. We're always on that tightrope of being accused of goofing it up. Here's the USGA, they're going to do something goofy to make us moan and groan playing for the National Open.

We do want to have at least the opportunity for the player to expect kind of a normal situation from green -- hole to hole. I don't want to throw a curve ball at anybody that it's completely off base. We're trying for minimum 12 feet, and again, when dealing with the weather situations, I think there's some advantages and yet there's some disadvantages to being at a member-owned facility as opposed to a municipal facility, so some flexibilities on both sides of the fence.

So a comment, I'm not too concerned about it on the weekend before the championship. If we have players coming in Thursday through Sunday mentioning the fact that there is a difference from one green to another, then I might be concerned about it. But Phil was at a time on Sunday afternoon, where we really aren't preparing as intensely as we had started Monday morning. It's kind of a -- we just weren't there yet, that's all.

Q. What's going on with the rough? How deep is it and, Tim, how does it compare to other Opens that we've seen?

TIM MORAGHAN: Well, we've had -- I think the rough is just right there. You have some difficulty with the kind of handwork you have to do around green surrounds, et cetera, bunkers. But uniformly I think we're there. We're in that four-inch range, which our championship committee chairman, I think he's comfortable with where we are. We'll probably just clean it up this next couple of days and I think we'll just let it go for the weekend, unless for some reason we get a huge spurt and get some real inconsistencies.

But at four to five inches, it's what you would expect for U.S. Open rough. You stand from a distance, it doesn't look very challenging, but it's very uniform. Again, Dave and the guys behind the scene have provided a penalty for missing the fairway. And you may get a break where you are. The ball may sit up, it may disappear. But I don't think it's a hundred percent take a sand wedge and just get it back in play. I think there will be some opportunities for some of the guys to take a go at it from a good distance. It's right where we want it.

Q. Why do you think more players will have an opportunity to win than in other years?

TIM MORAGHAN: Well, I think because there's a decent width to the fairways, where everybody can use the driver, that length isn't going to be the only answer. There's different types of holes out here. We have long holes, we have medium distance holes, we have not-so-long holes. I think there's a stretch, in my opinion, from U.S. Open 11 through U.S. Open 14 green that's going to make or break somebody on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. There's some pretty neat par-4s over there. Some are over 450, some are under 450.

It's going to require skill to maneuver your way around the golf course. When you ask the players to put all their talents on display, other than hitting the ball long off the tee, you're going to see a variety of players have an opportunity to compete.

And then you look at the putting greens, as Dave said, we have some quiet little slopes and lumps and bumps and pitches that is also going to bring putting skills. Given the surfaces Dave provided this week, all of those guys are pretty good putters. So I think it's going to be fun seeing a lot of people competing for the championship, a good range, and I think that's fun, that's what it's all about.

Q. Tim, how much will your post-tournament evaluation play into whether or not Olympia Fields gets another Open?

TIM MORAGHAN: I don't think my post-tournament evaluation means anything at all.

Q. Why not?

TIM MORAGHAN: To this point everybody in the club, from the board members to the members to the professional staff that I've dealt with, have done an exceptional job. And if I'm asked by our executive committee and our championship committee to evaluate the week so far to this point in time at Olympia Fields, I'd have to give it a grade A. Everybody has done a wonderful job. It's been easy for me, friendly atmosphere. We've provided a lot of people access -- if you look at the entire U.S. Open experience and what it means to the fan, the player, the staff and the administrators, to this point it's been a home run.

RAND JERRIS: Dave and Tim, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules to spend some time with us.

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