WGC AMERICAN EXPRESS CHAMPIONSHIP

September 12, 2001

Mike Bodney

Jerry Ritter

MICHAEL BODNEY: Thank you, James. As most are you are probably aware, due to the tragedy that happened in New York Tuesday, the PGA TOUR has made a decision in regards to the playing of our competitions this week around the country, the American Express Championship, the Tampa bay classic presented by Buick, the Senior PGA TOUR Vantage Championship, and the BUY.COM Oregon Classic have all been cancelled. There is a press release that's been put out from our office, and will be available to you after this press conference is over. The decision was made to do this out of respect for the tragedy that has happened in New York City, and I want to offer, on behalf of everyone here, our condolences to all of those that are affected by this in New York and we felt out of respect for all of those people and the situation that currently exists that we were best to follow this course of action for the week.

MICHAEL BODNEY: Obviously, there were a number of conversations, Jeff, with American Express, as well as Vantage, as well as Buick, and also those in Oregon, to discuss the situation. I think that the best thing I can say on all that, Jeff, is that when you are a little bit removed from the tragic situation that's happened in New York, and we sat here in St. Louis on a beautiful 75-degree day, quite a bit removed from what had occurred in New York City, and the people that were directly involved with this event, the American Express people, were feeling this thing in quite a different way than what we were. I think when you take into account the kind of factors that they were dealing with, in trying to understand their situation from the standpoint of their overall business and loss of life and dissemination that has occurred, that directly affected them, obviously that had a huge impact on the way in which we proceeded throughout the week.

MICHAEL BODNEY: We are in the process right now of trying to figure all the financial part of this thing out, Doug, and we'll have a little bit more on that tomorrow.

MICHAEL BODNEY: We are meeting later this evening to discuss those exact topics, and again, we'd ask everyone to have a little bit of patience with us. Obviously, this is something that has just happened and, you know, we are going to come to some solutions on that later tonight.

MICHAEL BODNEY: That's under discussion. What it is, really it's a matter of us being able to talk to the players, seeing what their availability is going to be. A lot of them are talking about getting automobiles and driving to places where they might be able to fly out or get to someplace near home. Again, it's going to be a long night. We've got a lot of things to talk about. But that is one of the things that we are talking about doing, yes.

MICHAEL BODNEY: Bellerive has been fabulous throughout this whole ordeal. My hat is off to Jerry, and his committee. The club has been very, very special in regards to their partnership with the Federation on this, and we'd Love to come back to Bellerive with an event, and those are subjects that need to be discussed further. I don't think they have had time to think about it. You know, we've thought about it, but we've thought about it a long time before this event happened.

MICHAEL BODNEY: There were probably about 30 to 35 players that were in attendance of the conference call. The atmosphere was solemn, as it is probably all over America right now, and I think that Commissioner Finchem did a great job of explaining the circumstances to the players. They understood it completely. They are fully supportive of the position that's been taken on this. And again, on behalf of the players, I'll offer their condolences to everybody that's been affected by this, particularly those in the American Express family.

JERRY RITTER: Well, the economic impact is going to be less positive than obviously we had anticipated going in. But I don't see it being a huge negative economic impact. I think economically, the community in general is okay.

JERRY RITTER: Well, this was a wonderful experience for us at Bellerive, as we've gone through this, and the St. Louis golfing community in general. It's been one of those things that you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in, and we all enjoyed it very much, and this decision is very difficult for us. The support we had from our volunteers and from our membership about continuing on was very strong, but Mike expressed some thoughts about how you would feel and how you would behave if you were on the scene in New York City as the folks from American Express are, and they are right down the street about four or five blocks from the World Trade Center. So you can imagine the trauma that they are experiencing now. And it is difficult for you to think any other way than to have sympathy with their thinking.

JERRY RITTER: Well, that's something that is not something we've been giving any consideration to at this point in time. Perhaps that's something that we will talk about down the road.

MICHAEL BODNEY: I think the caliber of golf would have been fine. I think the players, they are professionals. They are professional athletes. They would have -- they would have performed as well as they could have under the circumstances, and I don't know if you would have seen anything close to what we experienced a few weeks ago in Akron, from that perspective. But these are professional athletes. They would have put on one heck of a show for the fans this week, and I think it's fairly understandable that you didn't see a whole lot of smiling faces out there. I don't think anybody around America is smiling very much right now.