VOLVO MASTERS ANDALUCIA

October 31, 2003

David Garland

GORDON SIMPSON: Well, David, thanks for coming in. We're going for a third day and 36 holes tomorrow. Maybe you'd like to outline plans for play tomorrow.

DAVID GARLAND: First, I don't think we'll manage to get 36 completed tomorrow. The prognosis says that the second round will commence at 8:15, two tee start, re-draw, three-balls. And the third round will commence at 1:45, the leaders going off at 3:15. Third round will be played in the same draw order as the second round to save us some time.

Q. Still two tees?

DAVID GARLAND: Still on two tees, yeah.

So done half past 6:00, quarter to 7:00. That gives us 3, maybe 3 1/2 hours of play. We might have an hour to an hour and a half of play to finish off on Sunday, and then again a re-draw, two-tee start again and have the final round on Sunday.

GORDON SIMPSON: What's the prognosis from the Met office?

DAVID GARLAND: The prognosis, they have been very active today through Birmingham and down in Gibraltar and also Malaga; the airports we have been in constant touch with. We've had a forecast of these very high winds, which was an initial concern this morning, and that's why play did not start. In the back end of the high winds, we had this lull with heavy rain which we are experiencing now. We have actually had an inch and three quarters of rain, which I think is nearly 50 millimeters of rain this afternoon. That, of course, has been impossible to start. The course is flooded. There's a lot of standing water on the fairways and the greens. The wind has died from earlier and the forecast says this is going to continue until probably 4:00.

Now, from then, it's supposed to be reasonable weather, dry tomorrow, moderate winds, and a dry day again on Sunday. So we are still very confident we'll get 72 holes finished by Sunday evening.

Q. Monday, if necessary?

DAVID GARLAND: I would think Monday is a possibility, if we have to finish off five days and the time scale is short.

Q. You would go to Monday?

DAVID GARLAND: I think we would, yes.

Q. Can you paint the picture from the first thing this morning when you arrived?

DAVID GARLAND: Yeah, this morning the weather was pretty horrible but not completely unplayable. The forecast that we had from the Met office, on paper, it was pretty diabolical for later on in the day. We decided when we were on the phone after a very long chat with the Met office and contacted all of the various airports around, and we felt that it was too much of a risk. We didn't want to go ahead and start for maybe about an hour in two-balls and that would affect us doing a re-draw and two-tee start three-balls.

It was on the advice of the Met office that we did not start this morning because they said that was the best it was going to be for the day, which has been very accurate.

Q. What speed are the winds gusting to?

DAVID GARLAND: The forecast we had was up to 50 miles an hour. When we were actually on the course, we had a handheld anonometer and the largest gust we got was 35 miles an hour. Balls were moving on the greens at about 20 miles an hour.

Since then we have had a couple of trees come down on the golf course. Three trees have come down. There's three scoreboards were blown over, and a number of signs, as well. So it may have been stronger, but that's the only register we have.

Q. What's the forecast for tomorrow?

DAVID GARLAND: I don't have a wind speed, but it's down to be about 10 to 15 miles an hour.

Q. Where are the trees?

DAVID GARLAND: The trees, I believe there's one near the 16th tee and the others are on 7, I believe.

Q. Not the tree in the second fairway?

DAVID GARLAND: No, not the tree in the second fairway. (Laughter.)

Q. Did you say a ball would start moving on the greens at about 20 miles an hour?

DAVID GARLAND: It was up on the 11th green, it was about 20 miles an hour, it started to move if you got close to it because you're affecting the wind flow.

Q. Did they have a forecast of winds reaching 20 tomorrow?

DAVID GARLAND: It is 10 to 15 tomorrow.

Q. How grateful are you that this is Valderrama and the amount of rain that is coming down, it drains so well here?

DAVID GARLAND: Yeah, remarkably. This is a remarkable place for drainage. Up to today we have had seven inches of rain; and it was touch and go whether we played preferred lies yesterday, it was a bit more of a precaution. But the fairways are very dry and the greens held remarkably well. I can't think of another course here on the coast that would take all of this water.

Q. So did you say seven inches this week?

DAVID GARLAND: Yeah, we've had seven inches of rain up until yesterday from Saturday. And so another inch and three quarters will give us nine inches of rain we've had since Saturday, and I know there was quite a bit of rain the week before.

Q. What's the annual rain fall down in this area?

DAVID GARLAND: I have no idea.

Q. Given the speed of the greens, what was the speed of the greens reached yesterday?

DAVID GARLAND: The speed of the greens yesterday were 12.5 on the Stimpmeter.

Q. And given that, is the speed of 20 miles an hour a very moderate wind for the ball to be moving around in?

DAVID GARLAND: It's strange because 20 miles an hour doesn't seem that strong but when you are -- when we were getting gusts at 35, you would think you were in 50-, 60-mile-an-hour winds because it was affecting how you stand. So the gusts hit you. It doesn't seem much at all but it is strong.

Q. Is that a case for slowing the greens down?

DAVID GARLAND: We have. We've slowed them down. We've reduced the number of cuts. Jaime Patino is very conscious of the fact that we get a tournament played in the best possible conditions and the best surfaces. And it's a testament; we only cut the greens once last night and once this morning because of that fact.

Q. And what sort of speed do you anticipate they will run for the weekend?

DAVID GARLAND: I think today, before we had the rain, they were down to about 12, so we lost about half a foot on them. With the moisture, they are obviously a little bit slower now.

Q. On the 11th green the ball moved?

DAVID GARLAND: 11 is most exposed. It's on the top of the hill and most of the other greens are sheltered by trees and so just by the nature, that's where most trouble would start from. Certainly, the strong winds, even 14, the ball was moving.

GORDON SIMPSON: David thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.