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BANK OF AMERICA COLONIAL


May 22, 2004


Brian Gay


FORT WORTH, TEXAS

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: I'd like to welcome current co-leader in the clubhouse, Brian Gay. Brian Gay, 65 today, 5-under par. Came out of the box with birdies on 8 of your first 12 holes. Talk about that start. Obviously a great one for you.

BRIAN GAY: Yes, I was pretty happy about it. Things are going great, obviously. I'm hitting it nice. The putter got hot. It's the first time I've putted that well, actually. It was quite fun for a while. I hit a couple of bad tee balls and made a few bogeys.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Overall, talk about going into tomorrow. You started the day three shots off the lead and right now there are still some players on the course, but right now you're in a three-way tie for the lead. You're in great position. Let's talk about your plans for tomorrow.

BRIAN GAY: Hopefully get off to the same start I did today. That would be a good idea. Nothing different for me. I love the golf course. Hopefully I can go out and do the same great things starting out tomorrow, too.

Q. When you start out a day like this, is your glass half full because you got to 8 under for the day and 11 under for the tournament or half empty because you came in with three bogeys down the stretch? What lingers with you more?

BRIAN GAY: Hopefully it's not half empty. It's always hard to forget about coming backwards coming in, but I would have gladly taken 65 starting the day, so you have to feel good about that.

Q. Talk about this golf course, how it suits your game. You don't normally go out and overpower the Tour courses, and this course, I assume, is right up your alley. You have a long history here. Do you always play well here? Do you like this course?

BRIAN GAY: This is my fifth time and I've made every cut. I finished second in '01. I was playing really good in '02 and got pneumonia on the weekend. Had I been anywhere else, I wouldn't have played on the weekend, but I figured I would give it a shot because I like this place so much. I just like it. It gives you many options out there. I don't think it favors any one type of player.

Q. You said you had pneumonia when you were here?

BRIAN GAY: Yes.

Q. Go through that, if you could.

BRIAN GAY: I started feeling bad on Friday afternoon, as I was finishing. I kind of felt bad that day, and actually played well on Friday, and I was in the next to last group, I was tied for fifth or something, and called the doctor, felt miserable, came out, had a high fever, came out Saturday. I woke up, I was all dizzy, went out on the putting green, I was completely out of it. The doctor walked with me all day. I mean, I finished. That was about it. But like I said, anywhere else, I probably wouldn't -- had I not been playing that well or playing here, I would have withdrawn. And then they told me Sunday it was walking pneumonia. We didn't know what it was on Saturday. They gave me steroids in the locker room.

Q. How hard of a course is it to walk with walking pneumonia?

BRIAN GAY: A lot harder.

Q. As far as today, just talk about that little stretch there. You had 6 out of 7 birdies. Had you reached a point where you almost felt you couldn't miss on the greens, or what kind of confidence did you have flowing from that early start today?

BRIAN GAY: Well, I had a gimme on 1, and I made a nice putt on 3, 6, 7, 8, and about that time I really felt I could make them all. It was weird, because the first two days, the putter didn't feel very good in my hands. And I hit it really well yesterday and didn't score very well, missed a lot of good opportunities, and honestly, the putter didn't feel good on the putting green this morning. So in that respect it was quite different to really get it going like that, not really having any good feelings prior to.

Q. (Inaudible)?

BRIAN GAY: Like I said, yesterday, I had a lot of good chances, but didn't make anything, but it was sure nice getting on a little bit of a run.

Q. When you were in the middle of that run, did you have a point where you started getting crazy numbers like 60, 59 in your head, or were you getting conscious of where you were on the leaderboard or any of that kind of stuff?

BRIAN GAY: No, I wasn't thinking of any kind of low numbers. I caught a glimpse of the board on 8. I knew what Chad had done, and I thought I was tied with him at that point. I made birdie there, and I didn't look at any boards. I caught a glimpse when I was getting ready to putt on 12 and I saw my name. And I guess I was 10-under at that time, so I knew I was leading, but I didn't know what anybody else was doing. No, I tried not to think about anything. I didn't get ahead of myself or anything like that.

Q. So how did it start unraveling? There was no nervousness involved, it was just a couple of bad swings?

BRIAN GAY: I was a little nervous all day. I mean, almost any day when you tee off, you have a little bit of nerves, but usually I play worse if I don't feel anything on the first tee.

Like I said, I hit it to the right on 14, a tough driving hole, I was in the hey, I had nothing.

16, I had a good shot right over the pin, flew the green, wrong club.

And then I hit it to the right on 18 and had a tree in my backswing. Two chip-outs, basically.

Q. There were a lost crazy shots today, and I wondered, do you think that's because of the wind? There were a lot of shots like off the course and here and there?

BRIAN GAY: The shot I had on 16 was -- right after it came off the club, we were kind of debating between an 8 and a 7, and I didn't think an 8 would be enough to carry the bunker in front of the pin. Petrovic in front of me cut a little 7, a beautiful shot, right next to the hole.

So I choked down on a 7-iron, and as soon as it left the club I could just tell, it got into a jet stream. It was out of there.

Q. (Inaudible)?

BRIAN GAY: I guess I should really appreciate how good I was doing prior to that, because I didn't really realize how tough it was playing, because I was in such a zone and hit great shots and was making every putt. But shots on 15, 16, it's really hard to figure out if the wind -- especially 15, it's coming out of the south, but always in that fairway, you can't really figure out if it's in or -- it's hard to figure on those holes back there. For some reason, it's more difficult than the front.

Q. The things that you were just talking about, were you having a hard time figuring out how a guy posted a 61 in front of you in these conditions?

BRIAN GAY: I wasn't really thinking about it. It was a hell of a score, hell of a round.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Brian, if we could touch on those eight birdies in the first 12 holes. You said you had a gimme, basically, on No. 1.

BRIAN GAY: Drove it just in the right rough, laid up and hit an L-wedge inside of a foot.

3, hit driver and 7-iron about 16 feet or so.

6, I hit it in the fairway bunker with a 7-iron about 12 feet.

7, I hit L-wedge about 14 or 15 feet.

8, I hit a 4-iron about nine feet -- eight feet, nine feet.

10, I hit 3-wood, 9-iron, about 12 to 15 feet.

11, I hit it right in front of the green, chipped it by, rolled on the fringe and made a 12-footer.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: What did you hit on your second shot there?

BRIAN GAY: 3-wood.

12, driver and 8-iron, about 6 or 7 feet.

Q. Did you feel a good week coming on, any recent changes you might have made that got you on this roll?

BRIAN GAY: Actually, I was glad to come here because I knew I never missed a cut here, and I've missed the last three, so there was pressure there getting off the missed-cut streak. I knew coming here would give me an opportunity to get something going.

Q. I saw where it said that you were born here in Fort Worth. Can you talk a little bit about that, how long you spent here?

BRIAN GAY: Not long enough to remember, but I was born here.

Q. (Inaudible)?

BRIAN GAY: My dad was in the service, so I lived all over.

Q. (Inaudible)?

BRIAN GAY: Actually, at the time he was not in. I think he was in, out, and back in. At the time I was born, he was not in at the time, and then we were in Alabama, Georgia, Germany.

Q. (Inaudible)?

BRIAN GAY: I think just a few months.

Q. Can you go over the story of the putt on the lip at the Honda again?

BRIAN GAY: You had to ask. The story of the putt. I guess I had a 20-footer, kind of straightaway, a little downhill on 17 off the fringe, it was going dead center. I started walking, thought I made it. The ball stopped on the overhang of the lip. I walked around to the side. Jonathan Kaye had an eight-footer direct off the side of the hole, and I got down there parallel to the hole about eight feet or so away, and he said, wait, it's still moving. I took a couple of steps, peaked down at it, saw that it was turning over, stepped back, and it fell in.

And then after, obviously, there were some calls or what have you, they used a blimp shot, got the clock on it, said it was 13 seconds from the time I reached the hole until the ball fell in. You have 10 seconds. I never reached the hole because I was never in a position where I could have tapped it in. Like I said, I was about eight feet off to the side. That's when they started the clock, is when I started walking eight feet to the side of the hole, and it was 13 seconds from that point that the ball fell in, so it didn't count.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Before we finish up, it looks like there's going to be a three-way tie for this week's Crestor Charity Challenge. This week is the beneficiary is Cook Children's Heart Center, who will receive $50,000 from Crestor Bank of America, and Brian Gay, along with Chad Campbell and Steve Flesch. Congratulations on that. And you'll also be able to split $50,000 three ways to go to a health-related charity of your choice.

Congratulations, Brian, we appreciate it, and good luck tomorrow.

End of FastScripts.

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