U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

July 6, 1999

Don Moorman

DR. DON MOORMAN: Certainly -- everybody is very happy today that it is 80 degrees and nice an breezy and the humidity is down, but we were told that the heat and humidity is coming back in a couple of days. So we are anticipating more problems with that. We have had a lot of problems yesterday with people that were hot, dehydrated. It was very important for people to realize, especially families, small children don't tolerate this kind of heat so well. We had a fair number of people that brought children under the age of five or six to the Championship, and you have those small children standing around in the asphalt in these cart paths, they heat up very quickly. The other group that is not very tolerant are the elderly. This is a Championship that is important to that population. And, of course, they are very susceptible to heat and humidity as well.

DR. DON MOORMAN: I had the good fortune of attending two previous U.S. Senior Opens in our Future Sites Program, and both programs had the luxury of only being two or three thousand spectators the first day. Yesterday, we opened with a sellout, and so we had to test the system immediately. We did have a few problems, but not many. The design we have for the medical services has been very effective. We have been able to evacuate people nicely. The crowds have presented a few problems with ambulance access, but not too bad. So things opened up pretty well. As far as what to expect, because we are going to be dealing with over 200,000 people through the week, we anticipate that we could see almost any degree of medical emergency.

DR. DON MOORMAN: At any time on the course, we currently have eight paramedics. We have two bicycle teams; that is two paramedics on mountain bikes circulating at any time. We have two on-course electric flat-bed ambulances and three medical stations, and then we usually have three physicians, including myself, on site. So we are pretty well equipped with personnel and capable of handling almost any degree of emergency and evacuating the patient.

DR. DON MOORMAN: We have had some problems with marshals. We corrected our water distribution to marshals on the holes. Typically, the water was available in one area, so the marshals at the far ends of the holes won't get the water. We have distributed to the marshals now. We are asking the players and the caddies to drink a lot of water. We are generally recommending the caddies have two bottles per hole; the players have one bottle per hole. And I think that is something that most of them have learned over the years anyway. But we have some nonprofessional caddies that learned that vividly yesterday that they needed to drink plenty of water. We also have electrolyte solutions, such as replenishing fluids like Gatorade, Powerade, things like that, available for those caddies.

DR. DON MOORMAN: We do, but interesting thing was that very few of the players that I spoke to and the caddies I spoke to yesterday told me that they were sweating so much they did not have to use a Port-o-John even though they were drinking that amount of fluid. One of the other things I might add regarding that fluid is the public sometimes thinks that if you drink anything it is okay. Thermoregulation is a problem if you drink alcohol. So we are asking people to avoid a lot of alcohol. We are also suggesting that if you are drinking soda pops, things like that, you are taking in more sugar; generate heat, metabolizing those nutrients as well as requiring for water to get rid of the soluble components of those drinks. So we sure would encourage you to buy all those. But if you are really hot and dehydrated, water is the best thing to go for.

DR. DON MOORMAN: I would respond to that by saying that I know of an occurrence where we had a player on one of the future sites trips that actually did go down during course of play, a practice day, at a very hot site. That player was rehydrated with I.V. fluid; was playing later that day. These are professional athletes; they are well toned. I would suspect that they have replenished and are ready to go this week. I think the play we saw yesterday from the players showed that they are very capable of recovering very quickly.

DR. DON MOORMAN: I would speculate that there is probably the greatest amount of difference you would see in that population is activity level. And because these players are so active every day, their muscle mass is pretty well toned for that kind of endurance already. I would anticipate, however, if we had any senior players that were over the age of 75 or that may be more of a thermoregulation problem and we would certainly be very cautious and be supportive of any player make sure that they had any assistance we could offer.

DR. DON MOORMAN: Most important thing is sun protection and I don't mean sun screen. Yesterday I had a huge wide brim hat on, not my volunteer cap, because that sun can really heat you up quickly. Loose clothing, light colored clothing, light fabrics. Again, a very important to think about who you are bringing to the golf course with you. If you are going to bring people over the age of 75 or 80 or under the age of 5, you need to be very watchful of those people; make sure they don't get overheated or dehydrated. Additionally, I think the other thing to remember when you are coming, you are coming to view a wonderful spectator event, but you are not necessarily coming to party - really go light on the alcohol. In the heat it is really bad for you.

DR. DON MOORMAN: That is a question I probably can't answer accurately because I can't tell you the exact number we treated. I can tell you we treated a lot of people for muscle aches, things like that, that maybe related to heat and dehydration. We did have two people that were treated for dehydration and collapse and heating. One of those patients was treated on site, one was evacuated to a facility. Both patients did fine with cooling and rehydration.

DR. DON MOORMAN: I certainly have not known of any problems of that nature. But I would not necessarily know of those because the security people I would anticipate would handle that.

DR. DON MOORMAN: Absolutely. A word of warning about the alcohol because the alcohol does affect first of all, the ability to know that you are overheated or dehydrated. Second, alcohol is a natural diuretic, so you are going to be excreting a lot more water just because of the alcohol.