KEMPER INSURANCE OPEN

May 26, 2001

Mark Russell

MARK RUSSELL: Well, regulations say we need to make every effort we can to end the golf tournament Sunday night. So that's what we're trying to do. We have a situation where we have a severe weather warning this afternoon. That's why we didn't start the third round. And we have the cut to the nearest number to 60. Which I think was 65, Joan? Was that right? 65 players. So we think we can start at 7 o'clock in the morning and finish tomorrow night if we don't have any weather interruptions. Which is always a possibility. But we're going to make every effort to finish tomorrow.

MARK RUSSELL: Logistics and time. We're not going to re-pair between rounds. We're going to keep the players in the same position and turn them right back around and send them right back out.

MARK RUSSELL: We had a severe weather warning this afternoon. We made that decision a few hours ago. If you look at it, we got some very severe weather to our south and could still have some still here this afternoon. Our meteorologist, Greg Quinn said that our weather channel said that about 50 miles from here is sunshine. And with the heating of the atmosphere, we could have some severe weather at any moment. Something that doesn't happen. But we just looked at that and thought, well why should we send the players out and the spectators out and subject them to that this afternoon when we had problems with that all week.

MARK RUSSELL: Mark Russell. M A R K. R U S S E L L. I'm Tournament Director for the PGA Tour. Lenny, did you get that?

MARK RUSSELL: I wasn't in Atlanta. That was a Slugger White production down there. Was it 52 players? Yeah. It's a difficult decision to cut those guys out. But it's a numbers situation. We're going to play from 7 o'clock. We wouldn't start before 7 o'clock in a regular round. And we're going to try to finish tomorrow night before 7 o'clock. So it's difficult, but we think we can do it if we have the cooperation of the weather. This low pressure system has really caused some problems throughout the country.

MARK RUSSELL: Not really. It's the same situation. We're on their case. But the golf course here is not a real fast playing golf course. Doesn't have that type of history. But if somebody gets out of position we'll be on their case. Just like normal.

MARK RUSSELL: In this situation, no, I don't think we would. Simply to make that television time.

MARK RUSSELL: Greens are awesome. I'm amazed how good the greens are. We have had some problems with some tees and some fairways, but when it stopped raining this afternoon we gave it 35, 40 minutes to drain, it worked out great. The superintendent and his staff have done a great job. Scott, he's been on top of everything. I was amazed how the bunkers held up. We got some major rain last night and the bunkers did not wash. All we had to do was touch those up a little bit. And the greens were fabulous.

MARK RUSSELL: No. The bunkers can be a major problem. If the bunkers wash out, there's a lot of work to do there. A lot of hard work to do there. Plus the fact, if the bunkers are flooded and we have a situation where there's water, where you can't take relief and play, that's a problem too. If we can't play under the rules, we wouldn't play. But we're lift, clean and placing the ball in the fairway, that's going to help tremendously. And we had to squeegee up some tees to get them in shape to go back out this afternoon. But it worked out good.

MARK RUSSELL: Appreciate it. And it's going to be some great golf out there tomorrow. I hope the folks come out and see it.