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SHELL HOUSTON OPEN

April 25, 2004

Dudley Hart

HUMBLE, TEXAS

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Dudley Hart, thanks for joining us for a couple of minutes. You had a long couple of days, but you put yourself in a good position. A lot of golf to be played yet, but you're in a good position going into the last 20 or so holes.

DUDLEY HART: Yeah, I'm at 5-under, two shots back. There's a lot of -- obviously there's a lot of people bunched together there. I don't know that I've seen a tournament where I think when the cut was made, everybody was within six shots of the lead, so that's pretty rare, obviously. I'm happy where I'm at. I'd like to be -- I'd obviously like to be 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 under, but I'm happy where I am. I feel like I'm playing pretty well. If you get the putts to roll and we get on a roll tomorrow and have some good weather, it should be some fun.

Q. You had some injury problems last year, I think it limited you to 23 tournaments, and you're kind of getting back in the swing of things, made the cut last week at the MCI Heritage and playing well this week. Talk about the general state of your game and your health.

DUDLEY HART: My health is pretty good so far. I've got a herniated disk in my back and I'm trying to play through it. I've had a little bit of setbacks earlier in the year, just trying to avoid having surgery. And knock on wood, it's felt good in the last couple of weeks. I was a little worried and I think I got lucky today not playing 34 holes. I wasn't sure how well my back would hold up to that. I think I'd be okay, but I just wasn't quite sure. I was a little nervous about that. I feel pretty good, and hopefully -- I'm very cautious about my optimism because I've felt pretty good in the past and then it flares up on me. And my leg -- when my back goes bad, my left leg goes bad, and it's just something -- I'm not the only one that's had to deal with it, I'm just trying to fight through it and hopefully avoid having surgery at this point.

Q. How much pressure do you put on yourself with the money issue?

DUDLEY HART: Not a lot, to be honest with you. It may sound crazy, but I've been out here long enough to know that the more pressure you put on yourself in any situation, generally the chances of you doing what you want to do are a lot less than they should be. I'm still going to have -- the way I look at it, I'm still going to be okay the way I look at it, and I'm sure I can still get exemptions to plenty of tournaments.

I feel like when I'm healthy, and I've proven that to myself in the past, that I can play well enough to do some good things at times out here, and that's my main concern right now. I just need to keep doing what all the people helping me with my back -- I've got to keep doing that stuff and that's got to be my number one focus right now, is trying to stay healthy and try to play well. I'm going to go out there tomorrow and try to have a good time and make as many birdies as I can and not be tentative and be aggressive.

Q. How frustrating is it to the golfers in the clubhouse and out on the course are the weather conditions?

DUDLEY HART: It's a little frustrating because you just don't know what you're going to be doing. You sit in there for four or five hours and you're just kind of waiting for Mother Nature to make a decision either way, either just really rain or stop raining. You know, there's not much you can do about it, obviously. Nobody wants to be out there. Guys have been complaining about it being a long day, but it's been a lot longer for the maintenance -- the staff trying to get the golf course ready, the officials, the media, the fans, everybody, the marshall.

Nobody wants to sit out here and come out here at 6:00 in the morning and stay here until 8:00 at night trying to play four, five, six holes or whatever. It's just one of the things you have to deal with. It's unfortunate and you feel bad for the tournament, because I'm out there walking around and obviously there's not as many people as they'd like to have out here and it hurts everything. It hurts the charity, hurts the concessions, hurts -- it's unfortunate for everybody involved.

Q. It sounds like your injury comes and goes at different times. How difficult has that made it for you?

DUDLEY HART: I've really played five tournaments since July. I tried to play a couple tournaments in between there where I'd play nine holes or a round, and it just -- when it first started bothering me, I wasn't exactly sure what was going on. It would bother me and then I'd think it was a muscle thing and I'd try to take a week or two off and see if it would get better and I'd go out and play again and it wouldn't last nine holes.

I went and got an MRI and found out that I had a herniated disk, and that's when I shut it down. It's very frustrating. I want to play golf. I love to compete. I love to play, and when you can't do something that you love to do, it gets difficult, especially when I get to the point where I try to dedicate myself definitely a lot more than I ever have in the past to trying to do what my trainers are telling me to do, and it doesn't necessarily seem to be -- I spent three months at home working out and lifting a lot of weights and trying to get stronger and be more stable, and to have another setback or two the beginning of the year where it doesn't feel so great is definitely frustrating, but it's just part of the deal sometimes.

You know, you have some injuries and you have to figure out a way to either get through it or how to fix it, so like I said, I'm just trying to keep fighting through it, and hopefully it gets better and it progresses. If not, then I know where to go from there.

Q. The stop-and-start nature of the last few days and not knowing when you were going to play, how does that play into your back situation? I would imagine that's been a problem for you.

DUDLEY HART: I went in the locker room and stretched for a while. Every hour or so, I try to go stretch. I lay down and do some things on the floor and just try to stay loose because when the officials come in and they say, okay, 45 minutes back in position, it's not like you're going to have time to stretch and go do things. You've got to warm up, and that usually gives you a half hour to warm up, not including your shuttle ride out to wherever you were on the golf course. So I try to stay loose in the fitness trailer. I go in there and have the guys lay on some heat, but being Sunday they lock it up and take off.

So it's just a matter of trying to do some of the stretches that I do every morning and every night and just try to make sure my back is as loose as I can, as I can get it.

Q. Are you planning on playing next week?

DUDLEY HART: I'm planning on playing New Orleans next week.

Q. Can you compare the pressure of what you're facing now with the whole -- with anything else that you've faced before? I mean, is it similar to a Q-school?

DUDLEY HART: I wouldn't think so, no, because like I said, I'm going to play 25, 28 tournaments no matter what happens this week and next week. I mean, the downside is that I won't necessarily be able to pick and choose every tournament that I want to play in, but I'm still going to play -- the way I look at it, I'm still going to play enough events. As long as I can stay healthy then I should have no problem, in my mind at least, no problem doing what I need to do to get back in for next year.

I mean, that's kind of how I put it in my mind. That gives me an opportunity to go out and hopefully play well. I mean, if you look at it as this is life or death this week and next week, you're not going to play well.

There are a lot of things that have happened in my life the last few years, I probably didn't have golf in the proper perspective in the past, and I think I do now. It's something I love to do but it's not necessarily my life like it used to be. I'm not saying I don't want to be out here playing well, but if I go out and play poorly, I won't go back to my room and want to hang myself or something. In the past it used to be really hard to get over stuff like that, and I still like to play -- I don't like to play poorly, but it's just not as life-or-death. You just can't look at it that way. It's too difficult as it is.

Q. We use guns in Texas.

DUDLEY HART: Yeah, it's a lot quicker.

Q. Are you mostly talking about fatherhood when you're talking about --

DUDLEY HART: Fatherhood, my kids being born three months premature at two pounds and one of them being just under two pounds and things like that. You just look at it and go, you know, there's a lot of other things that can make you happy in this world other than playing golf well. You know, I'm not trying to trivialize anything about golf, but I'm just -- everyone in here has things that put

certain -- experiences they have in their life that you sit back and go, wow, maybe I shouldn't be so upset when I have a bad round on the golf course because it's not really that big of a deal. There's a small fracture of the world that really even gives a darn about it in the whole scheme of things.

You know, for me it's nice to know -- for me going home and knowing I've got three beautiful little kids sitting there and they could care less if I shot 60 or 90, and they still love me and still can't wait to see me, and after what they've been through and how little they were and having them just loaded up with all kinds of -- hooked up to all the machines they were hooked up to when they were little, you look at it and go, golf isn't as big of a deal as it used to be. That's kind of where I'm at.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Dudley Hart, thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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