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WACHOVIA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 7, 2004

Kirk Triplett

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Kirk, for joining us for a few minutes in the media center at the Wachovia Championship. Not the round you wanted in the second round after that excellent round yesterday, but you have to be happy where you are right now. I know it was tough conditions out there. I know Tiger went real low, but the conditions were tough.

KIRK TRIPLETT: I wanted 58 or 56, something like that. That's what I was really hoping for. If you're two shots behind Tiger, you're probably going to do okay and have a shot at him on the weekend. I played a nice round of golf course today. I didn't have the momentum I had yesterday. I didn't make the putts I did yesterday, but I was making fairways and greens.

I came around to the stretch there, the short par 4, 14, 15, and I was hoping to kind of make a move there. I hit a real nice wedge into 14, but it was just four or five feet left of the hole and the green slopes down, and it ran off the green to the left, and then I hit a poor wedge on the next hole and hit the front edge and it spun way back. I made two good par saves, but that was the stretch I was looking to build momentum for 16, 17, 18, and I just kept making mistakes on 16. Hit a poor tee shot to the right, not a bad lie, did the smart thing and laid it up to 85 yards, hit a sand wedge on, hit about 10, 12 feet left of the hole, it spun off the green, only had a about a 20-foot chip or so, I was looking to make it and keep going, come up about two and a half feet short, a little inattention on the putt or just poor stroke and 6.

But I was proud of myself, 17, 18 were playing very difficult. I hit a very nice iron shot on 17 to about 20 feet past the hole and had a shot on the birdie. I had two good shots on 18 and had a birdie chance. I feel I have control of my game and I feel I have a good chance to shoot good scores on the weekend..

Q. Are the conditions today different from yesterday or are they as good as they were yesterday?

KIRK TRIPLETT: The weather conditions are exactly the same. The golf course -- and I don't know why there is such a discrepancy in scoring. Correct me if I'm wrong, there is a big discrepancy, or no?

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Yesterday I looked at the morning wave and afternoon wave as two separate. The morning wave was an average of 72 and the afternoon noon wave was 71.96, but there was only one bogey-free round in the morning and there were four in the afternoon.

KIRK TRIPLETT: You have all the information.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: I was looking at those numbers.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Do you use ShotLink?

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Yes, I do.

KIRK TRIPLETT: The scoring average probably for this morning is higher than it was for yesterday morning.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: I haven't looked at that yet. The morning isn't over yet.

KIRK TRIPLETT: That's true, too. I think there are four or five pin placements that are more difficult today, and I think that's making the difference. Because you look up at the board and there is maybe a dozen out of 24 names they flash up there, there is only a couple of guys that are 3-under, and yesterday there were a whole bunch of guys, 4, 5, and a few 6s.

Yes, it is playing harder. I can't tell you why. I guess my reason for that would be, it's a tough golf course. Yesterday was an anomaly. You're not going to get it every day. It's going to get you, because it's relentless, it keeps going and going and going. You have a tough finish on 9. There's my answer, I'm sticking to it. Final answer.

Q. Given that, obviously you had a great round yesterday to start it off and you didn't see what Tiger did today, but the number he posted, given what you saw today, how impressive is that?

KIRK TRIPLETT: He played a wonderful round. I'm just glad he didn't keep going. He was 6 under through 12 and I thought I was going to have a course record for less than 12 hours. You like to have them for a couple of days anyway. Give the ink a chance to dry for that score card they're going to put up in the locker room.

Looking at how the field did today, he played a nice round. I didn't look at it and say, wow, how did anybody shoot 6 under out there today. Like I said, the conditions weren't that different, I think the pins were a little tougher. You get the course one day and you don't get it the next. Today, the guys that shot one or 2 over, they be the ones shooting 3, 4, and 5 under and the scoring average may be exactly the same. I don't know.

Q. Were the roughs the same?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I believe there was maybe a little more rough. It was a little more consistent last year, and it was colder and the course was playing longer. That would be the main difference.

Q. I guess if you wanted to create a category of say precision player, maybe we would count you say among Mike Weir, who isn't necessarily a power player?

KIRK TRIPLETT: If you want to put me in a category with Mike Weir, I'll take that. I like the kind of golf course that's out there right now, where the fairways turn a little bit, where you have to pick your distance and your line. You can't just walk up and blast it down the middle and get it between the trees and your ball is going to be in the fairway with a shot to the green.

I like a course like No. 10 out here, you have to really either draw the ball or you have to go straight down that left side. A hole like No. 18, yeah, you can kind of bail out, favor the right side a little bit, but you risk bringing that bunker into play. If you're willing to challenge the water, go up the left side, your balls kicks forward, you get a shorter shot to the green

Q. The rough is still penal enough --

KIRK TRIPLETT: 16, I had to lay up. If I was 10 years less than where I was on 16, I would have hit a 5-iron to the middle of the green. It's relatively inconsistent. It's rough. Sometimes it's okay and sometimes it's not okay. If you're going to play out of it on every hole you're going to have some lies where you can't get to the green

Q. Last year it was more consistent?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I think so, yes.

Q. You and Tiger talked about how fond you are of this golf course, the traditional layout. Is there any reason you couldn't build new golf courses and make them traditional layouts and call them TPCs if you wanted to?

KIRK TRIPLETT: If you built a new golf course today from scratch, it would take 30, 40, 50 years to look like this one. For the most part, you could cut them out of a forest. You know, that's the only way you can kind of recreate these kind of courses. These courses were relatively open. Most of those trees are planted trees. It's mostly farm land out there. So it would take 30, 40 years.

Q. If you could design courses that bent right and left, and all the things you're talking about --

KIRK TRIPLETT: But when you do that on an open piece of ground that has no trees on it, you're going to plant a tree, and your tree -- unless you're at Augusta, the biggest tree you're a going to plant is 15, 20 feet, and people don't even see it, they go right over it, it doesn't bother them. It's these mature growth trees, courses you see up and around Westchester County, these old time courses just have a different feel to them.

Q. It's really hard to follow a great round with another great round. Does that thought ever enter your mind?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I hate that something, unless someone else shot a great round. Of course it is. I'm out there, cruising along on the front nine, which is the nine I shot 30 on. I hit nice shots and just a little bit farther away, I didn't make the putts, standing on the 7th tee, I'm even par, and the day before I was 4-under at that point. I hit two good shots on 7. I had a 25-foot eagle putt, and I thought this is the one that get's it going, and it just misses. Made a nice birdie, feeling good, feeling confident about my game.

Hit a nice wedge shot into No. 8, hits right by the pin, spins down off the front. The day before, I hit it way left and hit a pitching wedge out of the rough up there and it bounced just right and had a five-footer. I played the hole much better but walked off with one shot worse. You just have got to wait it out, wait it out.

That's how I felt on 14, I had done a good job of waiting it out. I had a lot of nice putts, I thought here is where I'm going to start. 14, 15, I'm going to get a couple here. And of course you get ahead of yourself like that and what happens, you're struggling for pars instead of making birdies.

JOAN v.T. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Kirk, for joining us.

End of FastScripts.

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