U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 27, 2001

Tim Moraghan

Kip Tyler

TIM MORAGHAN: Good morning. Thank you. I think anybody who lives in this area really understands how bad the winter was. And it makes it very, very difficult to put on an event of this magnitude for everybody. Not only the course superintendent, Kip and his staff, but the membership and the community and I want to go on record in thanking the members at Salem Country Club for their patience and diligence in keeping the course closed and really sucking it up and not playing golf when they really wanted to play. And giving Kip and his staff the opportunity to present the course in its best condition for not only for his members but for us, and I hope they really, really appreciate it come next week, because he has done a remarkable job. Three feet of snow, two feet of ice, cold temperatures, eight inches of rain in five days, a late spring and an early summer. This is a very, very difficult industry that we're in. Much underappreciated and a lot of work that goes unnoticed, but the course is in outstanding condition at this point and it has made a miraculous turnaround since we first met this year back in April when we really had very little to look at because there was still snow on the ground. I know there was some concern at the Media Day in May, there was no golf. Some people had an opportunity to look around, but if you have the ability to get out and take a look at the course today, I think the players and all the competitors this week should be very, very thankful to have the great conditions that they have. So I'm going to let Kip detail everything that he's done because he is the true hero here and he and his staff deserve all the credit.

KIP TYLER: Thank you, Tim. It was the winter from hell, I guess. We looked at it for a few days and kind of shook our heads and we didn't shed any tears and just hoped that it hadn't happened, but it did. So it was time to move on. And as soon as the soil temperatures warmed up a little bit where we could get out and start ripping things up with aerifiers and seeders, at least seeing the holes in the ground and the dirt laying on top of the dead, gave you some hope that there was relief in sight. At least we were doing something. And I have to give credit to my assistant, Rich Gagnon and the entire crew who have been working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, not just this week, but for probably the last six weeks. Everybody was very selfless - whatever that word is there - and really had themselves into this. They're appreciative of the opportunity to show off their course to the players and to the world.

KIP TYLER: I think at that time when Hale was here we thought we were going to be okay. We never felt that the tournament was going to be cancelled, moved somewhere else. All the rumors that we heard I could tell you 15 of them, that you wouldn't believe. But I didn't think it would look as good as it does today, to be honest with you.

KIP TYLER: As far as greens go, the putting green, which was 90 percent dead and we had to resod that, that's come out very well. And it's going to take a beating this week. We opened it up three days before this event. It gets a lot of traffic on it. It's starting to show a little wear and tear. But that's to be expected on a young green like that. Tournament 9, the front of that green was completely dead. Tournament 12 was probably the worst overall besides the putting green as was tournament 17. And those greens have come back very nicely. Tournament number 9 is just perfect. And we also threw in three little lines of gas spills when one of our older mowers, the carburetor started to separate and so we had, right across the middle, three lines of gas about a month ago. But that's probably the nicest looking green out here. And even the others up until about 10 days ago there was a couple others that I mentioned, and I pretty much said to myself we're going to have a good putting surface on those. But again, in the last 10 days, those things have really responded very nicely and they're almost as good as the others. As far as fairways go, as it always is, it seems like the worst were tournament number 16, 17, 18 and 1 and 2. And I'm always saying "tournament" because, of course, we think in Salem layout. So it's pretty confusing for us when we have to talk "turn-talk." And those have responded again to the point where they're 99 percent healed in. We still have some spots around a few approaches that aren't as good as we would like them to be. But essentially they have responded very nicely and I get a lot of comments from players that I guess have seen the pictures, have heard the stories, and they say they just can't tell that there was any damage.

KIP TYLER: If I had to rate it?

KIP TYLER: I would say it stands at a 9. Just because we do have a few thin spots here or there. The greens aren't perfect. Two months ago I would have been told you it would have been a 7, I would have been happy. What was the first question?

KIP TYLER: Well, that's gone very well. And the results are out there to be seen.

KIP TYLER: No, I don't think so, Jim. Tom and Fred Ridley and I went through the whole process and we may have had to move maybe three or four a couple feet maybe left or right of where we initially hoped to, but there's no significant changes. They're great greens and we will have the opportunity to really move them around.

TIM MORAGHAN: Well, we're pretty close, Craig, initially we were looking for 10 and a half feet and as Kip just elaborated on, two months ago we were just hoping to have turf grass, let alone worry about green speed. And unfortunately in our part of the industry, green speed is a very overrated aspect of the game and on a great old course like this with some of these undulating upsidedown greens, I personally don't think it's significant. I think we challenge the player more with shot value and hole locations than we do with green speed. Having said all that, I think we're at the 10 and a half as an average. There are several greens that were being very careful with, due to the fact that they're almost a new green. And six weeks ago there was no green to them. But I think -- and again we don't want to go overboard over the next 24 hours where players come out and go, "Well, typical USGA, look what they've done now." But I think we're pretty close. We're in the 10 and a half to 11 foot range. And the thing is that you have to understand, for the last six weeks we have tried to get the greens to grow. And now they're growing. We have moist soil conditions, we have heat, we have humidity, there's an awful lot of cultural practices that have gone into curing the woes we had six weeks ago and now we're trying to get them to go the opposite direction. It's a little bit different than Southern Hills where we had one green that was too fast and we wanted to slow down and we have 18 greens that are good but we want to get them just a little bit better. I think we will be fine.

KIP TYLER: No, I was aware of what was probably going to happen in the fairways. When we were going to have that first supposed blizzard of 25 inches of snow in late December, we ended up with a couple of inches of slush that froze right in our area. And so it was pretty easy to go out there and see, as I call it, the skating rinks in our fairways, you could just go play hockey on them if you wanted to. You always hope that you're going to get your winter which we usually do where you get a couple three days of warmer weather and this stuff has a tendency to go away. But it didn't. The snow kept piling up on top of the ice. And as far as the greens went, we had green covers, we had our layer of ice on them, and it wasn't as thick on the greens. And each time it snowed we would go out and we would snowblow the snow off of them. Get back down to that ice layer. And we did have a couple of days in the 40's or so where that thin layer of ice actually disappeared and we were right down to the turf, it looked good. Then we had snow cover again and we just left that snow on them because ideally you want to have frozen ground and dormant turf, then frozen ground and then snow over top of that as an insulator. So the greens that we had no more ice on we just left the snow. The ones that were always in the shade, such as tournament 17, we went out with for several days with just sledge hammers and wedges trying to break stuff. And I guess before the crew mutinied and whacked me with a sledge hammer we decided to get a jackhammer and a compressor in. And just spent all day jackhammering ice. And we have pictures of stuff that's about eight to nine inches thick. So I was optimistic about the greens. I thought they were going to be better than they were. Fairways, I feared the worst. And then when this stuff starts to melt off, you can get fooled by looking at the fairways especially and you have this dark green grass. And it's looks healthy, and you say, yeah, we made it. But in reality it's just been frozen in time and it was really dead. As soon as that weather starts to warm up a little bit and that sun hits it, all that stuff just dies. And even when Tim was here there was still some snow around in the shade and people were asking him, "What do you think?" And his comment was, "I don't know, it's still winter, it's Salem Country Club", because you have to give this stuff time. What we do do is go out and take plugs out of the greens and the fairways, you clear away the snow or the ice and you take a cup cutter and bring those in. You put them in sand, you put them in your window. And that's a pretty good indicator if it's going to live or not. And the stuff out of the fairways wasn't too promising. And even some of the greens.

KIP TYLER: I would say every player that I've met, including Tom Watson and Andy North today, I marched up on one of the greens to introduce myself. I figure if I'm getting autographs for my kids I better do it today. But everybody I've talked to, and including guys that I don't know, that come over and introduced themselves. They're all very appreciative and seem to know quite a bit about it. Whether through rumor or they have seen the pictures that are out and about. But, yeah, I got to say they're very thankful.

TIM MORAGHAN: Well, I think we're hoping they're going to get firmer. With the high sky that we have and a little breeze that's going to cause a little more evaporation than normal. But the humidity is up. These are old soil greens and they hold water. To my knowledge they don't have any internal drainage, so they are what they are. They're mostly surface drained. It's just a mater of time. And we did get, oh, about a half inch or so, a little bit more over the weekend. And the water is going to stay there. And if the humidity remains high, it's going to be a slow process. And you would hope that they would firm. That's the goal. We will do the things necessary to move that process along. But with the weather we have and kind of the situation we're in with the type of greens and the surroundings with trees and such it may stay a little softer than players would expect.

KIP TYLER: I think that today they're already starting to firm up. Some of our ones that are the hardest -- I think we have already had a comment from one golfer in particular that our first green, tournament 1, is getting quite firm.