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AT&T NATIONALJune 30, 2012Mark RussellBETHESDA, MARYLAND MARK STEVENS: We'd like to welcome Mark Russell, vice president of rules and competitions at the PGA TOUR. If you want to kind of give us a status update on today's play and then we'll take some questions. MARK RUSSELL: We're ready to go at 1:00. I mean, Mike Giuffre, head of grounds here, and his superintendents Dave Hutchison and Derek Trenchard, I can't tell you what a great job those guys did. When I came in here this morning I didn't think that we had a chance to play. I mean, giant trees down on fairways, cart paths blocked, just trees everywhere down, just right at the base, like a tore Nate owe went through here. It might have happened. No power, no anything. But those guys and their crew worked so hard and we're able to play golf at 1:00. I'm amazed. Let's hope the weather cooperates this afternoon and we can get finished. I expect us to finish around 8:00, 8:15, something like that. MARK STEVENS: If you want to now touch on the rule that you touched on earlier, any specifics that would help everybody along through the day. MARK RUSSELL: What kind of rule? Q. About the pile‑‑ MARK RUSSELL: Pile for removal. For a superintendent, the rules of golf, if something is piled for removal, you get relief off it. If somebody piles a‑‑ mows the green and piles the clippings up over here and they're going to remove them later and you're playing and your ball is in the middle it, that's ground for repair. Piled for removal. Doug, you can write that down. But it's ground under repair. And we'll have some of that because we've had to pile some things up, and we kind of got together and talked about that. It's not something that happens very often on the PGA TOUR. But in this situation we kind of sharpened up on that rule. Q. Have you dealt with anything this severe before? MARK RUSSELL: Yeah, right here, Avenel years ago. I think we had a Tuesday finish. There was a rain situation. Very difficult, trees down, things like that. We've had‑‑ we've dealt with severe weather before on the golf Tour. One time in Chicago we had some very severe weather come through. We were at Butler National. Cog Hill, also. But yeah, I mean, we've dealt with severe weather before. But this is kind of beyond that. With all these trees down‑‑ there's some trees down that have been here for a very long time, seen a lot of storms, but this one took them out. Q. When is the last time you can remember that the players were allowed to play without a gallery on the golf course? MARK RUSSELL: I can't remember that. I can't remember that. But once again, it's a situation where it's dangerous out there with a lot of limbs down, a lot of trees down, places to walk. With a large gallery, we just thought it would be best for everyone and everyone's interest and safety that we didn't allow that today. Y'all know what an extreme measure that is. We don't know that. Q. Did you get an idea how many people were working to get this done? MARK RUSSELL: I went down and addressed them at lunch and told them what a great job they did. I figure he's probably got 50, 60 people maybe. I can find that number out for sure. Q. At what time did the work start on the course this morning? MARK RUSSELL: They worked all night. After the storm went down, they realized they had these huge trees across the entryway to the club, so it took them most of the night to cut those up. If you go out there and take a look at them, those are huge trees, and they had to chain saw those things and get them out of the way just so people could get in. Q. Are you getting any reaction from spectators to being turned away? MARK RUSSELL: I haven't really been in contact with any of them. But I'm sure that they're very concerned about that. But at the same time, we've got over a million households that don't have power. It's dangerous to be on the road. We've got a heat advisory today. So I think you're going to have a lot of people staying home and taking care of their business, too. With no power in that kind of heat, it's a dangerous situation. Q. Was 1:00 a target time, or it just came together? At what point did you say we can go off at 1:00? MARK RUSSELL: Well, we can finish then. If we don't get any interruptions we can finish then, finish the third round. That was our thought process. We've got a pretty big cut, 81 players, I think, but if it's over 79 we'll have another cut after the third round, so it'll reduce that number, and we'll go from there. Q. Any update on whether you'll allow fans out here tomorrow? MARK RUSSELL: We hope so, certainly hope so. We'll do everything we can to ensure that. Q. I saw a picture this morning of 14. MARK RUSSELL: Yeah. Q. I was wondering what it looks like right now. MARK RUSSELL: Go take a look. It's phenomenal. 18, also. There was a giant tree in 14 fairway. They've got it cut back, and we'll be able to play there. And a lot of limbs down, a lot of things like that. Q. Do you know if the cleanup effort is going to continue during play today? MARK RUSSELL: No, we're going to stop. We've got to let these folks take a break. We'll probably play off two tees tomorrow and give them an opportunity in the morning to do some work. If we play on one tee we start very early, but if we play off two tees, we start in the vicinity of 11:00 to 1:30 or something and give them an opportunity to move some more debris and clear some things up, give them a chance to mow, too, if they need to. We've got to give these guys a break. MARK STEVENS: Thank you, Mark. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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