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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP

February 23, 2005

Mark Russell

CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA

MARK RUSSELL: We're on schedule. We're scheduled to play. Steve Auckland and his staff have done a tremendous job on the golf course. It's amazing when it stops raining, and you get out there and start pumping fairways, you don't know how it reacts.

Right now we're on schedule, and we're going to try to come in and play golf in the morning, and we'll look at it in the end. I think overnight is going to make a significant difference. That's about it. They're working very hard and the 4th fairway had a gigantic puddle in the landing area, and they put pumps in the drains, and an hour and a half later it was gone.

The creek has gone back down a little bit, has had a chance to drain. The 11th fairway has had a chance to improve tremendously from this morning.

I think it will get better. The forecast is good. The sunshine, the humidity has gotten a lot lower, and we're looking at playing golf tomorrow.

Q. Could you play it now?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, the guys are out there playing practice rounds. That speaks volumes right there. A lot of guys played 18 holes. It would have been difficult, impossible to play this morning. But the conditions are getting a lot better. I think we'll be able to play tomorrow.

Q. Is your expectation to be able to play a complete day tomorrow; you don't anticipate a delay or having to wait?

MARK RUSSELL: If it doesn't rain, which it's not supposed to, we'll start playing tomorrow, just like we would have started playing today. We just moved it up a day, did the same thing today that we had scheduled for yesterday. So we'll see what happens. I hope we can get out there and get these guys playing golf, and you can stop talking to me and start talking to some of them.

Q. What particular parts of the course are the biggest concern for you now?

MARK RUSSELL: The 11th fairway is wet, second shot landing area.

The 4th fairway is wet, but we feel like we have places where we could take relief for casual water if you wanted to.

The 8th fairway is wet and the 9th fairway is wet.

Q. What's dry?

MARK RUSSELL: The 10th fairway is pretty good.

Q. Were you able to bring in some of the equipment you wanted to? You were talking about bringing some lighter mowers in.

MARK RUSSELL: They haven't been able to mow anything yet. It's going to be a day or so. We'll look at it in the morning, tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully we'll be able to get out and mow some things. The best part about it is the rain stopped falling on it. At least there's an end to the water. Once that water drains, we're not getting any more.

Q. The greens, when were the last time they were mowed?

MARK RUSSELL: They weren't mowed this morning, so yesterday.

Q. Do you have a little more flexibility in terms of when you start and when you play, because of the format?

MARK RUSSELL: We do, because you reduce the field in half. Every time you play a match, you lose a player. The big part of it is to get

Q. Just the idea that you're not playing the course, you're playing the man, does that allow you to do things you might not do in a stroke play tournament?

MARK RUSSELL: It does, exactly. The match is between you and I. We're not concerned about everybody playing in the same conditions at the same time because the match between you and I doesn't concern anyone else, whereas in a regular tournament we want the players to play under the same conditions at all times so no one has a huge advantage.

Q. In the rules of play that you have for this event and for the World Golf Championship events, can you limit the final match to 18 holes under those rules?

MARK RUSSELL: We could, if we had to. Right now we haven't planned on doing that, but we do have the flexibility to do that if we had to.

Q. Is there any place on the course that you've had to mark off because of silt or other flood sediment?

MARK RUSSELL: No, not really. The 18th hole, the right side has some silt in it, but we haven't marked anything off. I'm sure tomorrow morning we'll be lift, clean and placing in order to get the golf tournament finished. We'll go from there. It's nice to see the sun out in sunny Southern California.

End of FastScripts.

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