U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 17, 2001

Paul Azinger

PAUL AZINGER: I played good today, I just didn't score that good. I felt like all day that I had chances, you know, to get under. I look at the week, and I'm going to lose by five or so shots, and you can always find plenty of those. I'm a little disappointed, but I played pretty good. The course didn't really fit me that well. And I hit it exceptionally well for three and a half days.

PAUL AZINGER: I didn't shoot low enough.

PAUL AZINGER: I don't know. I'm going to go to Westchester to play, and I'm hitting it decent. I've played one tournament in the last eight or nine weeks, and I finished second in that one and finished fifth in this one.

PAUL AZINGER: It was kind of nice. I think it shows you that there's a lot of great players outside of Tiger Woods. I think that the media has been very fortunate that they can be covering one guy. If you're not careful it will make you lazy, because there are a lot of players out here, not just one great player. Even though he's clearly the best. And I think the danger is that the networks and the press will cover just one guy, and when that guy is not in contention, they won't watch. There's a fine line, and if you're not careful, you'll cross over. The weeks Tiger is not going to play, nobody is going to watch. If all the networks want to show is Tiger Woods, and if all the press wants to write about is one guy, the weeks he doesn't come there's going to be no interest. So for the tournament sponsors who are paying the big bucks to advertise on the network television that's airing an event without Tiger Woods, they're going to start demanding paying less money. There's a fine line there. It was nice for us not to see him up on top, and I'm sure you guys all had withdrawals.

PAUL AZINGER: I never thought about it.