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SYBASE CLASSIC PRESENTED BY SHOPRITE

May 16, 2008

CLIFTON, NEW JERSEY

ASHLEY CUSHMAN: Thanks for joining us again. I have to my right, Sue Witters. She's the director of tournament competitions for the LPGA and also the advance official on site for the Sybase Classic Presented by ShopRite. At this time we'll let her answer any questions you might have about today's announcement. And also with us is Andy Bush, the executive director from Octagon, he'll be joining us and he can answer any tournament-specific, sponsor-related questions.

Q. Half the field did tee off?
SUE WITTERS: Yeah, the morning waves teed off.

Q. The decision to wipe out every stroke that was played today instead of just suspend it, why was that made and was television a factor in this as well?
SUE WITTERS: No, television was not a factor in that.
Basically when you make a decision to wash a round, no pun intended, usually you're dealing with the equity for the majority of the players. You're never going to make anybody happy.
Obviously there's a couple players I heard that played well today, but the conditions they played in today -- and either we couldn't play anymore golf today and the conditions they will play in tomorrow would have been totally different. I mean, it started raining about 6:15 this morning, very light. We teed off at 7:15. It was light, getting a little heavier to moderate on and off until we suspended at 11:02, and more was forecast for this evening and maybe tomorrow early afternoon. So tomorrow, we would have had 12 hours of drying and they will be teeing off with no rain, very different conditions.

Q. Any consideration trying to play 36 one day?
SUE WITTERS: There was that conversation. The problem is, our forecast on Sunday is not looking great, either. So that doesn't help us.

Q. Is there a precedent for this anywhere?
SUE WITTERS: It's happened before. I can give you tournaments; I can't give you dates. I know it was done in Michelob in 2005. I know it's been done in Chick-Fil-A, maybe twice in Chick-Fil-A; it has been done before.
I mean, you never want to wash a round. That's the last thing we want to do. But the flipside of that is you don't want to play in completely different conditions, either, which we would have been doing.

Q. Was the lift, clean and place issue at all an issue, the fact that you didn't have it today?
SUE WITTERS: No, players did ask. And the reason we didn't do it today was the fact that our original forecast was supposed to be a maximum of half an inch of rain, light, sporadic throughout the day.
We had a worse forecast on Monday and we played our qualifier down; we did not play preferred lies. We actually had a worse forecast on Monday.
So the phrase I kept hearing over and over yesterday and this morning was, yeah, we'll get should rain and it will be light, may get a little heavy here and there -- I should say moderate, not heavy, but total it will amount to half an inch; it's not going to be a showstopper.
Hindsight always being 20/20, if I knew this was coming, we would have played the ball up.

Q. Do you think you'll have to play it up tomorrow morning?
SUE WITTERS: Oh, yeah, with all of the rain we're taking on today, you know, we're lucky that we're going to have a long period of drying time and give the course a chance to catch up a little bit. It will drain okay, and with it getting a complete break, that's really going to help us.
That's what hurt us with the resumption; just when we were getting back out the rain started to pick up and we have about three greens that are saturated. They are not taking the water. So as soon as it starts raining, it will accumulate very quickly, and that put the nail in the coffin today.

Q. What are the three greens, and when is the last time you washed out a round; do you recall?
SUE WITTERS: I can tell you, I know we've done it in Michelob. I know we've done it in Chick-Fil-A. When we were in Korea in October, we were going to restart the third round because we have severe, severe wind that had come in, and you know, again, talk about playing in complete different conditions; and we didn't get to that because we did not resume.
But I apologize for not giving exact dates.
The three greens are 12, 1, 14 and then we are keeping an eye on 13, 4 and 5.

Q. Bunkers?
SUE WITTERS: The bunkers from what I've seen out there, and I got a preview of rain on this golf course on Monday; they do puddle, but there are areas to get relief from, so we have not lost an entire bunker.
Now, I don't know if that's the situation right now, but that's something where, you know, we would evaluate and reevaluate and also when the rain stops, they will be able to pump bunkers if they need to.
The bunkers weren't the issue; it's the greens.

Q. What's the ticket situation? What's going to be honored?
ANDY BUSH: We'll honor today's tomorrow. Most of our tickets are good any day, anyway, or good for the week, so it's not a factor for us.

Q. Did you think about reducing the tournament from $2 million?
ANDY BUSH: No, not at all.

Q. Is there any fear of parking spaces?
ANDY BUSH: No, we are actually very fortunate here that everything is on property and we have a lot of space.
As far as the total acres we have, we could still park several thousand cars tomorrow without any problem. It very fortunately drains very well here.
ASHLEY CUSHMAN: Thank you.

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