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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 28, 2005

Scott Verplank

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Scott Verplank, thank you for joining us. Long week for you, but speaking for a lot of people, you made a Monday feel like a Sunday. Great playing this week, but start with some opening comments. Great day for you today.

SCOTT VERPLANK: It's nice to be inside. I mean, it's brutal out there.

It was a long day. I played 30 holes today in adverse conditions. I played good, I mean I did as good as I could. I sure hit a nice putt on the last hole, and whether it was the wind or the grain or something, it moved about half an inch, inch to the right in the middle of the putt and I didn't see that and it missed. I kind of felt like 9 under par was going to be the score, and that's the way it looks.

Q. Where does this rank in the toughest rounds you've ever played, condition wise?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Oh, I don't know, behind last year's U.S. Open on Sunday. The weather was about the same, although it was a little cooler here, but the golf course was playable here.

I don't know, it was awful hard. I'm just telling you, the wind is blowing hard. Like I told someone earlier, I live in Edmund, Oklahoma, and the wind blows hard sometimes, but you can always tell which way it's coming from. Today the wind is blowing 30, and it's kind of switching back and forth, so that makes like 16 and 17 and 13, and kind of those little squirrelly holes on the back nine, it makes them pretty hard to pull the trigger.

Q. Considering you played 30 or whatever holes, it's got to be one of the toughest days of golf you've ever played.

SCOTT VERPLANK: Oh, yeah. I think it was the least amount of holes in the most amount of time (laughter). We were talking about that. It was so slow and they gave us all of about three and a half minutes from when we finished 18 and had to go to 1. And it just the conditions obviously make it slow, and the huge cut, too many players lots of players on the golf course. But it took a long time to play 30 holes. I don't know how long it took, but it was forever.

Q. How tough were the greens to get a read on as the wind kept blowing and making it drier and drier?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Well, they got a little they basically you knew it was going to happen with the wind blowing that hard. We were playing I don't know, we were on our 4th or 5th hole this morning, and I said to Bob Tway, I was playing with him, I said it's going to be kind of ironic, because it's been raining and raining and raining, and they're going to have to come out and water the greens today. Bob's ball stopped about two inches from the hole on 3, and a gust of wind blew it about four feet. And he called the guy over, and he said it's the first one. I don't know if they watered or not. Maybe they did, because they didn't have any more that bad later.

Q. How hard was 17 to have to face again after and you're playing with Bob and seeing what happened to him and coming down the stretch and obviously you knew

SCOTT VERPLANK: 17 is always a dicey little hole. But with the wind blowing like that, it was almost to the point where, well, you can't out think it, because you could hit the same shot twice, and one of them is going to be perfect and one is going in the water. The wind was switching and gusting and changing. You just had to pick a club and aim at the middle of the green and hope that nothing bad happened. The shot I hit, I thought I flew it up on top, and it barely got on the green.

Q. You looked like you couldn't believe where it ended up.

SCOTT VERPLANK: Yeah, I couldn't believe it was short. I mean it was on the green, obviously, so I was quite thankful for that. But I thought I flew it up on top. But it hits a wall up there. I saw a lot of shots in front of me and unfortunately in my group go in the water, and the wind did something different on every one of them.

Q. Just to follow up on that, obviously you feel for a guy, what were you thinking, what were you feeling when you saw Bob?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Obviously he's a very close friend of mine, and his brother caddies for me. So we weren't all that excited about it. I mean, obviously we weren't excited about it. Obviously he was in shock. But we were, too. I got up there on he finished that hole and I'm keeping his score, and I'm certainly not going to ask him what he made. And I'm trying to figure it out, well, hell, I'm feeling so bad for him, I got up and yanked it right in the water to finish the third round and made double. It's nobody's fault but my own.

But I wasn't it's one of those deals that I'm in kind of a little bit of shock myself, and I wasn't paying enough attention, unfortunately.

Q. How did you figure his score out? Did you check with somebody else to confirm it or wait until the end of the round?

SCOTT VERPLANK: I don't even remember. As soon as I hit it in the water I forgot about it. We got it figured out, though; unfortunately, it was a big number.

Q. How would you describe this whole week?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Oh, gosh, long. It just so far this year, it seems like it's been like this I've only played seven tournaments and four of them have either had total days rained out and had to play 30 or 36 holes a day, and I mean, it's getting tough to do that. I'm hoping we'll hit a stretch of good weather here. Unfortunately this week is a tough tournament anyway, the golf course is always pretty penal and the greens are fast and all that, and you throw what happened today in.

I think besides the obviously tough conditions, I think the scores were pretty high today. When you have to play that many holes in these tough conditions on a golf course that kind of messes with your head. On a lot of shots it's definitely going to wear you down.

Q. Would you rate this as the toughest course on Tour to play? If you have to play gusty, changing 30 mile an hour winds, wouldn't this be right up there?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Yes, because it's target golf. Thank God it's not 500 yards longer. I'm sure it will be here in a couple of years, though.

Since it is target golf, particularly, like I said, the holes on the back nine that are sitting on the edge of the water, when the wind is blowing that hard it makes it tough to go ahead and pull the trigger, but it's only golf, so you eventually have to hit.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Let's go through your card and we'll take a couple of last questions.

Birdied No. 2.

SCOTT VERPLANK: No. 2 I was short of the green, about 20 yards short of the green. I chipped it up and hit the flag and was going in and the wind gusted and it popped it straight back at me. Sometimes you hit the flag and it will go sideways; it looked like it was going in and it hit the hole and came back and came back short of the hole.

6, I just made a fantasy putt. The pin was on the front right and I hit it, trying to keep it down, I hit it too far, and it was probably a 50 footer from kind of back center, that broke about three feet. And one of those deals that if you leave it short, now you've got a six or eight footer downhill and downwind, if you miss you're going to putt it off the green. It went in and I was pretty happy with that.

And then 9 I made about a 20 footer and got it up there and had it back uphill to the green and into the wind and made a nice putt.

And then 11 I made double. I hit a bad drive, but it was it was in the fairway, but it was really a bad drive. I laid up, I thought I had a good number and good club. I was in between a 7 and 8 iron. I said, I'll go ahead and hit an 8 iron. I flew the green by about ten yards, so I guess if I hit a 7, I'd have flown it by about 20. I was totally dead. I should have made bogey, but I three putted from I missed about a three footer.

Next hole I hit a nice tee shot, hit an L wedge up about 12 feet and made that.

And then the par 3 I hit a 5 iron about three feet, aimed at the middle of the green and I pulled it a little bit, and the wind rolled it and it went right down by the hole.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: 18 you left your second shot out to the right.

SCOTT VERPLANK: I was trying to keep it down out of the wind and just keep it middle of the green. I knew the wind was going to take it to the right, I felt that it would take it to the right. I didn't hit a bad shot, in all honesty. I was a little surprised when I looked up and saw it tailing off so much.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: What did you hit there?

SCOTT VERPLANK: I hit a 5 iron. I hit a decent chip, just kind of released a little bit out of the rough and hit a nice putt. I'm not sure I could ask for a better effort on like the putt on the last hole. I did everything I was supposed to do. I hit a nice shot, it just didn't go in.

Q. Your thoughts on Fred Funk, your local favorite, maybe the oldest one of the oldest guys on the Tour, shortest guy on the Tour and he's going to prevail, probably?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Good for him. That's great. He is obviously he lives here and he's a local, is somewhat of a local favorite. The guy can play. I mean, obviously he's proved that he plays similar to how I play, hits a lot of fairways and a lot of greens, and you get the putter going and you can play.

Q. Speaking of that, when you got up this morning and saw the conditions, saw how windy it was, did you feel that that would be an advantage for you, knowing that accuracy would play such a big role?

SCOTT VERPLANK: Not really. When it's like this, it's pretty much every shot is a new adventure, every hole is a new adventure, and you just try to get it going and keep it out of trouble if you can. It's so penal around here anyway, but then you throw in the wind blowing. It had to be gusting I don't know what it was gusting, but I'd have been inside if it was at home (laughter).

End of FastScripts.

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