U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 14, 2001

Tom Meeks

TOM MEEKS: I can't tell you whether there was any damage or not. The maintenance crew and Tim Moraghan will evaluate that as soon as this lightning quits. We hope that once this is through here, and ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how much rain we had, and I don't know how much longer it's going to go, though I understand it could go into the evening. This morning I heard that after this storm went through here we were clear sailing for the next three days. I don't know if that's true or not. I will tell you what our gameplan is. The maintenance crew hopefully will evaluate the golf course as far as cleaning it up is concerned, with a lot of debris and everything. Also, we'll try to get all the bunkers back in proper order, maybe even mow the greens tonight. But if not, they'll certainly mow them tomorrow morning. Fairway mowing will be out. Mowing of tees will be out. We have just informed the players that the practice range will open at quarter to six tomorrow morning. At quarter of seven we will start loading vans to take players back out, and we will resume play of round 1 at 7 a.m. The last group is on the second green. The first group to go in round two, which is the Faxon group, is on 15 green. If they -- we would anticipate them playing the last three holes in about 45 minutes, meaning starting at 7, they would finish at 7:45. They will lead off round two at the first tee, and we have set that time at 9 o'clock. In essence, we're backing round two up two and a half hours. We will go in ten minute intervals, and the last group will, in fact, go at 5:30 tomorrow afternoon. Now, I know they're not going to finish, but if we can get the last group, and I think we can with a break in the weather, if we can get them through 13 or maybe 14, then the gameplan would bring the six or eight groups that are still out there back Saturday morning to finish round two and then would resume round three at whatever time we worked out, based upon the completion of round two. I want to say a couple of things here, if I can. I went down to the locker room to announce this to the players, and generally when you have something like this, there's a lot of negatives being said and criticism about why we didn't do this and that. I think we made an excellent call in getting the people out of the stands. And this is to the two interns we have upstairs doing the weather. Second of all, I think we did a good job of bringing the players right in. Normally, we would leave them out 15 or 20 minutes to see what happens. But our forecast from upstairs again said this is in here for quite a while, with a lot of lightning and rain. So we decided to bring the players in immediately, which we did. When I went down just a few minutes ago to announce to the players, I had not one negative comment. Most of the players came up and said, "Good job on all this", and even though we hate to come back tomorrow morning and start at 7, and look at round two, and that last group is going to have 34 holes to play. But I must admit, I congratulate the players for their positive attitude on realizing we've got a tough thing to try to get back on schedule. But they're going to be very cooperative. So we're pleased about that.

TOM MEEKS: Obviously, everything is going to be softer. If the golf course is not playable, if there's casual water everywhere, we may have to delay round two and even the resumption, but we're looking at it optimistically, and with a positive attitude. If this front gets through here, and then we start getting some weather that would dry things up, I think the golf course drains fairly well, and we're just taking what we think is the best offer we have. If that can't fit, then all we can do is go further the other way time-wise. In other words, instead of starting at 7, we may start at 8 tomorrow. But we put together a program that we think is realistic, if we get some cooperation from the weather. I think John Szklinski and his crew will do a magnificent job of getting this golf course back to as good as it can be got back into condition-wise as soon as this weather stops. We're optimistic about that.

TOM MEEKS: The worst one was 1989 at Oak Hill. We had -- it was funny, we had so much rain, but there was a big drain down towards the 7th hole that a piece of plywood that was used for the players to walk across was washed downstream and then went up against the culvert and now it's serving as a dam, so it's blocking the water. So now the water comes out over the golf course. It was amazing how quickly they got the course back. And they had to use a crane to pull this piece of plywood off the culvert, so the water could get through it. And then -- that was -- then we got round two done, and we had a two tee start for round three that put everything back on schedule. So someone said, how about a two tee start tomorrow for round two. There's no way with this number of players. We still have golfers out on the golf course finishing round one. I think we can get back close to schedule tomorrow, and then finish up Saturday morning with round two and be right back where we hope to be on Saturday. That's again -- I'm being very optimistic, because I certainly don't want to look at the other side until I have to.

TOM MEEKS: I can say that there's been no strong support for using a two tee start in the U.S. Open. I will say the Women's Open started it last year, and continued it this year, and it worked okay for the Women's Open. The Senior Open, which is going to be held in two weeks at Salem Country Club in Massachusetts, we're going to do a two tee start on Thursday and Friday. But there has not been any movement for the U.S. Open. I don't anticipate that. I'm of the old blood myself, that I like one tee, but I'm not saying it won't happen down the road, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

TOM MEEKS: It gives you about two hours, as far as finishing in the evening, that's what it gives you. When you have something like this -- see, our tee times, if you'll look, you'll notice -- the Faxon group today, and they go at 6:30 tomorrow, but they started today at 10:50. So wherever you start the first day, there's about a three and a half, four hour difference for the next day, morning or afternoon, depending. I don't see us going to two tees. I don't like it, either -- I like it for other events, but not the U.S. Open.

TOM MEEKS: You weren't at Congressional with us a few years back, were you? I'll say two things, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely no lift, clean and place, absolutely no lift, clean and place. And the question that I was given at Oakland Hills in 1997 was, "What if the only way we can play tomorrow is to play lift, clean and place?" And my answer is, if that's the only way we can play tomorrow is play lift, clean and place, we won't play tomorrow. I'm serious about that. We will not sacrifice the game of golf, and the foundation of golf by doing that.

TOM MEEKS: First of all, I slightly disagree with you. I don't think the British Open would have thrown this round out. Here's the deal: Did anybody have to play in unfair conditions? The answer is no. We stopped play before the weather hit. So why lose everything we had? Now, if we'd have started this morning, and it was bad, and it continued to get bad and it continued to get bad and about three hours later we say we can't go anymore, there's a chance we might have canceled everything and started over. But the 22 groups that finished, they didn't have any weather. They had the wind and what everybody else had. But, no, we're going to resume right where we left off, and that's the way it should be.

TOM MEEKS: That's right, but that can happen anytime. You can have rain in the morning, sun in the afternoon, wind in the morning, nothing in the afternoon. That can happen anytime, there's no way to factor that out.

TOM MEEKS: We'll let mother nature take care of the course tonight, whatever it does.