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JOHN DEERE CLASSIC

July 9, 2004

Jamie Conkling

SILVIS, ILLINOIS

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: PGA TOUR rules official Jamie Conkling, thank you for joining us. Maybe we can just start with a few comments about the day. Talk a little bit about the weather and the job that Greg Quinn did from The Weather Channel regarding the weather situation, but maybe just talk about the day and possible scenarios for tomorrow and Sunday.

JAMIE CONKLING: All right, well, as you know, we resumed play a long time ago, long days in golf, especially Thursday and Friday. Like Joel said, Greg Quinn just stays in front of those monitors and he just sees it developing down in the southwest all day.

The first time we suspended play for two and a half hours, and he had mentioned that about four or five hours after that, usually stuff like this is going to reappear, and it did maybe five hours after we resumed play, and it hit again, and as you might now, it's forming a very large basis right now, so it might go through until maybe 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.

We hope to resume, as you know, at 7:00 a.m., finish round 2, hopefully around 10:30, cut and re-pair and start again between 11:00 and 1:00 if possible and try to finish by 6:00 o'clock local time.

Q. You don't do anything different with the cut, it's still 70?

JAMIE CONKLING: As of now it's still 70 because we're still figuring on finishing by Sunday. Our regulations say finish 72 holes by Sunday, so we'll do everything in our power to finish 72 holes by Sunday. The reason we did not go back out tonight is because the storm is still developing, still overhead, and even if we waited around, we wouldn't have enough time to get the course prepared to play and the players out there practicing and warmed up and back out there, so that's why we called it at 6:15.

Q. What was happening at 6:15? It didn't seem like there was any rain out there.

JAMIE CONKLING: It's really not the rain that we're concerned about, it's the lightning near us and around us, and that's what was happening. There were bolts all around us in the southeast and east.

Q. Is there a certain distance with lightning that you like to stop play at? Does it have to be a certain mileage close or away?

JAMIE CONKLING: Once it gets around 10 miles we start thinking, and then if we start seeing more movement on radar then we're going to suspend play. When you have a lot of spectators out there, the concern is safety, number one, for the players and the spectators.

Q. Is there more of an imperative to finish this on Sunday given the fact that the British Open is next week?

JAMIE CONKLING: You know, we take each tournament as its sole entity, and our regulations just state to finish 72 holes by Sunday.

Q. And if this has to go to Monday, it has to go to Monday?

JAMIE CONKLING: If it has to go to Monday, it has to go to Monday.

Q. What does the forecast look like then? What are they saying?

JAMIE CONKLING: You know, Greg thinks it's going to stop around 3:00 to 4:00 a.m., it's going to be around for a while, and then we'll come here in the morning. Chris Hagen and his crew have done a wonderful job with this golf course, and they're prepared to have everything status quo when we get here early in the morning at 7:00 a.m., so that's what we're hoping.

Q. If it stops at 4:00, they're going to be ready by 7:00 a.m.?

JAMIE CONKLING: Yeah, unless it's just major downfall and the course is just totally deluged with water and the bunkers are not ready. The real difficulty is making sure the bunkers are ready to go, and that takes a while. If the fairways are covered with casual water then we're not going to be able to play until some of that subsides or dissipates.

Q. Is there rain in the forecast tomorrow?

JAMIE CONKLING: Yeah, it looks like it could be hit and miss, like all day today. We're in Moline, aren't we?

Q. Could be like today?

JAMIE CONKLING: Yeah, it could be like today.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Jamie, thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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