THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 23, 2001

Tom Kite

TOM KITE: Any time you get some sort of record, it's always nice to have those. I was not aware of that at all. I knew that I wanted to come in here and make a cut and continue to play well. I was -- I played six tournaments on the regular tour last year and I made all six cuts. So since going on the Senior Tour, I have actually played better on the regular tour than I have a couple years prior to that. So, that is pleasing. I want to keep that streak going as long as I can.

TOM KITE: Yeah, I'm really not all that satisfied with the way I played today. I played a pretty good round yesterday at 2-under, and I was hoping to build on that. And I was a little erratic, very erratic with the driver today. You drive it in this rough and you are going to have a tough time, and I did. So I struggled a little bit with my game and I actually feel pretty fortunate to get in at 1-over par today. But hopefully a little session on the practice tee this afternoon will straighten it right out and I'll hit it a little better tomorrow.

TOM KITE: That's the only way you can play this course. That's the only way you should play golf any time. If you get ahead of yourself or behind yourself, you are really asking for trouble. You really need to keep it in the present tense as much as possible. That old cliche, "one shot at a time." I know you get tired of it and we get tired of saying it, but the cliches hang around because they are true. You know, if they were not truths, well, then those would go out the window.

TOM KITE: I've always thought it would help this tournament. It would help the condition of the golf course if some of this winter rye would die out. It would get this golf course to the way it was originally designed to be, back when Pete Dye designed it. I think it would improve this tournament a lot. I think the exposure would help it an awful lot, but I've felt that way for 10, 15 years, and it's still in March. So see how much pull I've got. (Laughter.) I think it would help it. I really do. I think it is a major, anyway. It's so darned close that it's -- it's certainly got a significantly better field than the one in April. I mean, the field at Augusta is so weak comparatively to all of the major championships; it is not even funny. This has a quality golf course that is at least as difficult as that and a stronger field. So it's got all of the components. The only thing it doesn't have is history. It's getting a lot of history right now.