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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 25, 2005

Mark Russell

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: We'd like to thank Mark Russell and Brian Goin for joining us here for a few minutes. Mark, why don't you go through what is going to happen over here in the next maybe 12, 14, 24 hours.

MARK RUSSELL: Well, we've suspended play for today, and we're going to be in position at 7:00 o'clock in the morning to resume the second round. Hopefully we can get that done. 7:00 o'clock in the morning, the 7:50 time will be on the tee. Their time will be 7:00 o'clock, and we're going to resume the afternoon rounds starting at 11:00 o'clock. We will revise some times and have those posted.

Q. Was there any thought to scratching and restarting the second round and playing the ball up given the forecast?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, no, not today because it doesn't matter if we would be playing the ball up. We just couldn't play golf under the rules on a lot of the fairways. Fred Klauk and his staff have done a fantastic job of getting the golf course ready to go, but it's just saturated. The rain we got today rendered some of the fairways unplayable under the rules.

Q. Depending on the forecast tomorrow, would that be an option?

MARK RUSSELL: We're keeping all our options open. Right now our goal is to finish the second round, and we're going to try to do that at 7:00 o'clock in the morning, but we're going to keep all our options open and take a look at it. The forecast for tomorrow afternoon is not good, but I'd like to remind you that the forecast has changed every 12 hours. Now they're telling us that Sunday is going to be good and it's going to be late Sunday night. So who knows.

In Orlando and Daytona Beach it's sunny, and north of here a couple of hundred miles it's sunny, so we're caught in a little trough right here, and I think Brian Goin advised it come over the top on us. If the jet stream would change a little bit we could have better weather. I'm listening to the forecast, but I've got to remember, too, that it's changed every day.

Q. If there are no more delays, can this tournament be finished by the end of Sunday?

MARK RUSSELL: Yeah, possibly, absolutely. We're going to do our best to do that. We're going to keep all our options open. Like I say, right now we ain't got a good forecast and we're going to try to do everything we can to finish the second round tomorrow.

Q. Was any thought given to playing it up before the round started, anticipating what might happen with the weather today?

MARK RUSSELL: No, we started playing the ball down, thought we could do that. We looked at the weather this morning and we thought there was a good possibility we'd get lucky, but all that filled in right across the state. When we looked at it early this morning at 6:30, it looked like we had an excellent chance to miss a lot of the rain, but as the morning wore on, it just kept getting -- we started getting some lightning problems and then it just filled in. We went from very scattered to just a very solid green and yellow mesh across the northern part of the state of Florida.

Q. Just to clarify, if you had, for whatever reason, started this morning playing the ball up, could you be out there playing now?

MARK RUSSELL: No, we could not.

Q. Since you know that the forecast -- what you believe the forecast now is, that that's not good tomorrow afternoon, was there any anticipation of maybe -- I think Doug mentioned scratching what started the second round and starting tomorrow morning with a new second round playing the ball up?

MARK RUSSELL: Didn't we have this conversation on the West Coast? We're going to keep every option open for tomorrow morning. We're going to take a look -- our goal right now is to resume play in the morning at 7:00 o'clock, but we're going to look at everything.

Q. So that is an option?

MARK RUSSELL: Exactly.

Q. Off the top of your head, right now what are the problems with the fairways and what are the problem greens?

MARK RUSSELL: There's no problem greens.

Q. What are the fairways that are the wet test right now?

MARK RUSSELL: 4th fairway, 5th fairway, the 7th fairway, the 9th fairway. They did an experiment out there, I have to tell you this, they did an experiment out there on the front part of 7 and it's perfect. They sand capped the front part of 7 fairway and it's perfect. The rest of the fairway is unplayable, but the front part of it is perfect.

Q. What does that mean?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, they pulled the turf up and put about this much sand under it for drainage purposes, and it's amazing how good that is out there.

Q. What about on the back?

MARK RUSSELL: On the back side, 16 -- I'll tell you what, guys, I was out there mainly on the front. I sent other guys on the back. But 16, 15 and 12.

Q. 17 fairway still under water?

MARK RUSSELL: We're pumping 17 (laughter) to try to get that water out of there.

Q. But all the greens are good right now?

MARK RUSSELL: All the greens are good. There was just a couple puddles, very small puddles on the greens, but if we got the fairways right that would be gone.

Q. What about bunkers?

MARK RUSSELL: The bunkers are fantastic. We didn't have to look at the bunkers. Fred Klauk did a bunker renovation here this past winter, and we didn't even have to look at the bunkers. They were fabulous.

Q. What would allow you to scrap the round and start over? Is it because nobody finished, or is there a certain point --

MARK RUSSELL: I really don't want to get deep into that. We're just going to take a look at it in the morning, I mean, see what the forecast is, see what the condition of the golf course is and see what we can do. I just hope we can play some golf.

Q. At this point what's more important to you, if it was one or the other, either A, getting this in by Sunday, or B, playing the entire tournament under the rules of golf and not touching the ball?

MARK RUSSELL: We definitely want to play golf the way golf is meant to be played, but we're just going to have to take a look at it. I mean, I would love to play the ball down all the way through the championship, but we're just going to have to take a look at the conditions and see what it dictates. Hopefully we can do that. Right now we're scheduled to do that, and I hope that doesn't change.

Q. Does the mentality toward playing the ball down change this week because it's THE PLAYERS Championship? Would you be working under a different hope if this were a regular Tour event?

MARK RUSSELL: I don't think so. I think we always want to play the ball down. I mean, that's the whole essence of the game, what kind of lie do you have and what kind of shots you can play. I mean, we're going to do everything we can to play the ball down, but the reason we play the ball up is because you can't take relief from casual water. A lot of people think it's because it's got mud on the ball. The definition of a loose impediment is a natural object that does not adhere to the ball. When you play golf on the ground they contemplate you're going to get some mud on the golf ball from time to time, but the reason we play the ball up is because you can't take relief from casual water. If you take relief from casual water, and I believe we've had this conversation on the West Coast, is you have to take complete relief. So if a guy drives it right in the middle of the fairway and the only place he can take complete relief from casual water is in the four-inch rough, you can't play golf under the rules.

So that's the reason we play the ball up when you can't take relief from casual water. We give them a chance to lift the ball, clean it and within a club length of the ball, place it. Hopefully we won't have to do that this week and we're trying to do everything we can not to, but if you have to, you have to. We're going to keep all our options open.

Q. If there's no more delays and obviously the goal right now is to get the second round in, can you bring us through what the perfect scenario is in terms of a schedule through Sunday?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, the perfect scenario would be getting the second round in tomorrow. We really haven't thought much beyond that, but we're keeping all our options open. We're definitely going to play 72 holes, and we don't throw out any option. If we got lucky and got it in tomorrow, there's a possibility we could make a decision to play 36 on Sunday. We're going to wait and see before we make any announcement and see what we have tomorrow. Our goal right now is to try to complete the second round.

Q. How much rain has the course taken?

MARK RUSSELL: The course has taken about three-tenths of an inch today, and on top of what we had the other night, it was saturated, and it's just basically filled to capacity. There's nothing we can do. I mean, squeegeeing is not going to do any good. There's no place for the water to go. We need an all afternoon and overnight for it to drain. If that happens we can play golf in the morning.

Q. Understanding that you're keeping all options open and haven't thought past tomorrow, do you follow the same weather guidelines that you do for other events?

MARK RUSSELL: We would, yes.

Q. What's the latest you could go with this tournament?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, I think that we're going to do everything we can to play 72 holes.

Q. By?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, Monday. I mean, if half the round was finished, we'd go into Tuesday.

Q. If half the round wasn't completed and the forecast were bad, and I know it's all hypothetical, would you play 54 holes?

MARK RUSSELL: To be honest with you, Doug, I haven't thought that deep. Right now I'm trying to finish the second round and it's Friday afternoon.

Q. Where do y'all want spectators and fans to go? Is everybody parking at UNF now?

BRIAN GOIN: On behalf of the tournament outside the ropes, I want to start out by thanking or volunteers. They've been in there hanging in, and all of the spectators, all of our clients. It's been a difficult week for us, a very wet week. We've been making them do things we haven't had them do in seven years. Our parking will be at UNF and FCCJ tomorrow. We will shuttle in all parking. That's on UNF off St. John's Bluff and we will shuttle all general parking in. Our parking for VIP, our parking pass will either be in the lots for the ones that are on pavement and different places like that, our grass lots, which are lots A3, 5 and 9 will all be off of ATP Boulevard and A1A, so that's where all of our VIP passes will park.

Our Friday tickets, as you can imagine they didn't get to see a lot of golf, so we've never done this and this is very difficult because we have sold out and most of it is because of the parking situation we have and the capabilities of our staff, so we're going to honor Friday tickets here on Saturday or Sunday, one day or the other, for grounds passes only. So in other words, if you have a Friday hospitality ticket of some type, you can come to the event as a grounds ticket on Saturday or Sunday.

Parking passes for Friday will not be valid for Saturday or Sunday.

If you have a Friday ticket, you can go to one of our two parking locations, get a free shuttle and come.

Now, the one thing media locally can help me with is to make this possible, this community supported this event for so many years, have been such great fans, the First Coast area has great sports fans, I'm going to need people to car pool tomorrow, try to find two or three people to come with them to get into these lots. Again, we are going to be -- we're going to have some big crowds out here. We're going to do the best thing we can to shuttle everybody for free and we're going to be counting on all of our patrons to do the best they can to come with one another to the parking lots.

Q. Will you be honoring those tickets Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and next Thursday, too (laughter)?

BRIAN GOIN: As long as Mark keeps us playing out here, I'll be trying to figure out how to get spectators and volunteers here.

Q. You didn't honor a rain check in 2000 and 2001. Didn't you have a situation where you did honor tickets?

BRIAN GOIN: That was kind of a carry-over where we allowed people to come out. Monday was a different scenario as you know. When you talk about our hospitality clients have hung in there with us. Usually a lot of times when you get to Monday, it's more difficult -- most tournaments will tell you it's more difficult to get the crowds out on those days. Those aren't my concerns. I have people who have bought tickets to be here on Friday and then on Saturday or Sunday, and with our capacity, we're talking about possibly doubling those numbers.

Q. Were you aware in any way of the situation at Bay Hill last week where they did not honor Thursday's tickets, and is this a response or reaction to that in any way?

BRIAN GOIN: Actually I did not know. This has happened to me at another tournaments, another championship event we have run, and clearly in my heart this is the only thing that I can do, but I'm going to need the spectators to help me. For people to tell me they had a Friday ticket and they got to see 40 minutes of golf today, I don't feel in my heart that I delivered what I sold, so we have got to make that possible.

Now, again, the reason that the hospitality isn't open is because these clients all have guests tomorrow scheduled and food scheduled and limitations on how many people can be there. We can get them on the golf course but I can't get them in the hospitality venues tomorrow. A lot of those people actually were here already. Most of our hospitality venues were full. They've had a good time being in the tents and our clients got to do some good entertainment because they were landlocked with their clients in the tents.

I think from that standpoint they actually were okay, but even if they were here today, we will honor those tickets for either Saturday or Sunday.

Q. What would double be, how many people?

BRIAN GOIN: Well, we have a lot of week-long ticket buyers, so clearly they're not going to be able to change their tickets, but we're talking in the neighborhood of 60,000 to 65,000 people.

Q. How will the golf course handle that?

MARK RUSSELL: The golf course can handle it. My issue is more or less -- we sold out this year for the 17th year in a row. We're basically landlocked with parking. You know, we're in the same situation tomorrow. We're talking about putting people in two different lots, running two different shuttles to get them here. We're lucky that we have those lots this weekend because they're on spring break, Easter weekend, there's nothing scheduled at those colleges, so we were able to put that together. There's a lot of times I'd like to say park here and/or shuttle. I can't even find places to shuttle from in a lot of years. Down the road we're looking at expanding our numbers because everybody knows we can handle more on the course, but a lot of times we are limited because of what we have from a parking standpoint.

Q. Would that affect a move to May? You're talking about the issues with lucky we're on spring break and all that stuff?

BRIAN GOIN: I think we could be in the same situations with summer schools and things like that. What we are doing right now is evaluating the long-term of THE PLAYERS Championship. Our goals is going to be to enhance the use of the lots that we have here as well as find some additional parking, and there are some plans for that in the near future for us.

Q. Just to make sure, I guess one of the options is to cut below 70 if you had to?

MARK RUSSELL: That would be an option if we played 36 holes on Sunday. That wouldn't be an option, that's what we'd have to do to complete that.

Q. (Inaudible).

MARK RUSSELL: When I made the announcement in the locker room I told the players what we told you folks, that we're going to come out in the morning and we're going to resume at 7:00 o'clock, but we're keeping all options open. I did get some questions like that, and I told them there is a possibility we'll play 36 holes on Sunday.

Q. It would be to 60, right?

MARK RUSSELL: Nearest to 60.

Q. You've been out here for a long time. Have you ever seen a run of weather like this?

MARK RUSSELL: We've had some pretty tough years. I mean, it kind of runs in cycles. The situation in Los Angeles and at Match Play, I hadn't seen too many things like that. If they hadn't been playing a match play event we probably wouldn't have been able to play at La Costa. But match play, totally different situation, and I can't remember, maybe in Houston a few years ago when we cancelled the tournament, it might have been '95 or so, I'm not sure that we totally cancelled the tournament there, but in Los Angeles it was Sunday morning and we needed five hours to complete 36 holes. I can't remember a situation like that in a long time. Let's hope we're getting it out of our system.

Q. Is there a Tour rule that sets a limit on the number of holes that if you're forced to wipe them out and restart that you could do?

MARK RUSSELL: No. I mean, that's -- that would be a committee decision. There's nothing on that.

End of FastScripts.

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