BUICK CLASSIC

June 21, 2003

Briny Baird

Q. Playing as well as you are, how much of this is a momentum killer or can be a momentum-killer?

BRINY BAIRD: It's a give and take. I wasn't feeling unbelievably great out there today. I hit just an okay 6-iron on the first hole and kind of a loose drive on the second tee shot.

I felt somewhat comfortable. I'm not talking about my insides, either; just my golf game itself. It felt okay. It didn't feel like I was going to go out there and shoot 63. So maybe I'm going to feel when I wake up tomorrow and I go out to the range, maybe there's going to be a feeling that's just a little bit better.

It might have been a good thing. I'm not going to look at it as a negative, that's for sure. I went to sleep last night with a one-shot lead and I'm going to go to sleep tonight with a to two-shot lead. If we keep doing this, eventually no one will be able to catch me.

Q. With a name like "Briny," do you like this kind of weather?

BRINY BAIRD: Yeah, this is freshwater, though. "Briny" is a little salty.

Q. Do you mind playing in this kind of weather?

BRINY BAIRD: Yeah, I'd rather play in sunshine, 75 degrees, no wind. But as long as it's not cold, I don't mind rain. I grew up in Miami Beach, so obviously cold weather is not a real good thing for me. But, no, I don't mind playing in rain.

Q. How about the prospect of playing 30 holes tomorrow?

BRINY BAIRD: I don't really think it's a factor. I think it will probably be easier that way because you've got more time to recover from anything happening. If something happens early tomorrow, I'm still in the same day. You can fix and you can tweak things in the same round, and it's going to feel like one round tomorrow, one 30-hole round.

I am probably better off trying to do it this way, believe it or not.

Q. Are you surprised that it took them so long to call it today?

BRINY BAIRD: No. Probably actually more surprised they decided to tell us to go home at 3:15. It's not a knock on the TOUR guys, either. They want to get as many holes in today as possible.

So a lot of times they call it at 12:30 and say, "We'll make a decision at 2:00." And at 2:00 they say, "We'll make another decision at 3:00." And then it's, 4:00, and finally by 5:00, they say, "You can go home." And they are not asking us to be out here like at 7:15, that they easily could. Knowing the forecast, 9:00 might be unrealistic in itself, but at least it's not the crack of dawn.

Q. What do you do during those delays?

BRINY BAIRD: We can't tell you that. (Laughter.) Privileged information.

Hey, people just sit around and joke, talk about each either's families, look up stuff on the Internet; just, stuff. What do you guys do when you're not reporting? Just joke around, play pranks on each other. Same thing when you get 10 or 15 guys in a little huddle together. Usually some stuff is not going to be allowed to talk about because it would just be bad, but some of the other stuff is funny.

Q. Where were you on 7? Did you pull your drive left?

BRINY BAIRD: Yeah.

Q. Up against that tree?

BRINY BAIRD: No. It won't be tomorrow when I get out there; it will be perfect. I've got people working on it right now. They are going to move that tree. Actually, my shot is not in that bad of a spot. I'm not going to hit a tree either way, backswing or follow-through.

Q. When you came here in first place on Thursday, you were talking about how you had not held a lead solo at all, now here you are leading heading into the last day. Can you talk about the dynamic of holding lead going into the last day, by yourself?

BRINY BAIRD: Holding the lead going into the third round?

Q. I won't be able to stop you after your 18th tomorrow. What's the mental dynamic of that?

BRINY BAIRD: I don't think it's going to be any different. I felt really good today. Internally, I felt pretty solid today.

You know, I think it makes it easy. I watched a little TV last night. I'm not sure what happened, one of the U.S. soldiers over in Iraq, he got shot or killed and they were doing this report. You see things like that, we are supposedly not at war, and this guy died and they show these 19 -, 20-year-old men crying, and you're just wondering, "Here I am trying not to get nervous about playing a round of golf."

Financially, my family and I are doing fine. We are not struggling to eat. Is this really worth getting your stomach in knots over? So you kind of think things like that. I'm not sure if that's really good to say. I'm not using something in Iraq to try to help me win a tournament, but it puts things in perspective, what you should and should not get worried about. And golf definitely shouldn't be something that you get worried about.

Ask me that question when I get on 18 tee tomorrow on my fourth round. If I have a one-shot lead, I'll tell you I'm having trouble breathing probably. That's the nature of the game. I don't think I'll have much trouble going to sleep tonight or anything like that or what I'm going to be thinking or feeling.

Q. Conditions may be even worse than they are today, even if the rain stops. What about playing in conditions that are going to be probably pretty bad, at best?

BRINY BAIRD: We were lift, clean and place anyway. As far as the fairways go, it's not going to be as big of a change. If this rain doesn't stop and we are not going to be able to play for a while because they are going to need some dry spots in the fairways, so we are not taking the ball and actually taking relief in the rough.

As far as the putting greens, it's going to make it more difficult, because the spin that I talked about on Thursday, it's hard to get the ball close with the amount of backspin that our clubs are generating in these wet conditions. It's hard to hit it on the right level, and that's going to be the toughest part.

Q. What do you know about Skip?

BRINY BAIRD: Yeah, I know Skip pretty darned well. I know his caddie very well, too. I get along with Skip great. We actually did a photo this Tuesday together for Travel and Leisure Magazine together. It was the two of us doing it at the same time, and it's just a coincidence that we are playing in the final group together.

Skip is a great guy. I don't think there's a person -- I was going to say on TOUR, that could say anything about him -- or a person on the planet that could say anything bad about him. Just a very, very nice guy.

Q. He's had a pretty long stretch of starts without a win. You haven't gone as long as he has, but can that start to weigh on somebody?

BRINY BAIRD: I can only -- I can't speculate on what Skip is thinking. He's obviously put more time on the PGA TOUR than I have, but I can't speculate if he's been thinking: "Oh, my gosh, I've been out here eight years haven't won and I can't do it."

Skip is a great player, it's had straight as an arrow and has a tremendous short game. There's a lot of guys that can win this tournament, and Skip is definitely very much in the hunt of it.

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