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SHELL HOUSTON OPEN

April 25, 2004

Mark Russell

HUMBLE, TEXAS

CHRIS REIMER: Mark Russell, Tournament Director for the PGA TOUR. Talk us through the day and the decisions that were made out there today.

MARK RUSSELL: Well, we wanted to play golf all day, but it finally got to a point late in the afternoon where the golf course -- the fairways just were under water. It was going to take several hours for them to drain, and once it got to about 4:00, we knew that it wasn't going to stop raining for another 30, 40 minutes, so there was no use to try to play any golf this afternoon. We have a forecast tonight that's pretty good. There's some possibility of some fog in the morning, but we're not going to resume until 8:00. Hopefully we won't have any fog problems by then, and we're going to start the fourth round at 8:40. We're not going to re-pair.

When the guys come off the golf course they'll have 30 to 40 minutes, grab a bite to eat, do what they want to do, then go back out. Hopefully we'll finish tomorrow by 3:30. We've got a pretty good forecast for tomorrow, so hopefully the golf course will drain and we'll be in business.

Q. Some of the players seemed a little bothered that in their view they were sitting around for like five and a half hours, didn't hear any word about anything that was going on and they felt uninformed.

MARK RUSSELL: Well, you know, all they had to do was look outside. We sent people over there periodically. They had the Weather Channel on there. All you've got to do is look at the radar. I mean, I don't know what to say about that. We try to keep them informed. If we know anything we're certainly going to tell them. I had contact with a lot of them and a lot of them came over to see us, a lot of them came over to the weather trailer. We talked to a lot of the caddies. We were readily available.

Robbie Ware tried to go over there every few hours and say, gentlemen, we're in the same situation. You go over there and talk to them, they act like you're an idiot, we know that, and when you don't go talk to them, they think you're crazy, so you tell me.

Q. Was that final round of golf off split tees?

MARK RUSSELL: Yes, we'll play off two tees tomorrow. We're not going to re-pair. We'll send them right back out, and hopefully we'll finish by 3:30 and get a winner here and get the players wherever they're going.

Q. Where are the volunteers to park tomorrow?

MARK RUSSELL: Where are the volunteers to park tomorrow? That's going to be a question for the Houston Golf Association. I'm not really sure about that. We'll get the information out for that.

We know it's difficult for everyone to stand around all day. I mean, it's very difficult for our staff, too. I mean, we're looking at this radar hoping it'll quit raining. We only had maybe an hour and 45 minutes to play the third round, and we thought, well, if we can just get it to stop raining we'll get out there and play some more golf, but it just didn't cooperate.

This morning when we came in, we thought if we could get by without any lightning situations or any heavy rain, we could get the golf tournament in today, but we had some lightning problems. Our lightning equipment said for most of the afternoon it was a dangerous situation. We heard several times rambles of thunder, and we couldn't take a chance of putting people out there in that situation.

We went as far as we could. We realized that we couldn't do any good playing golf because of the condition of the golf course, and we just made that decision at 4:00. And I appreciate all the volunteers bearing with us and all of you folks bearing with us in a difficult situation. It was all we could do. I wish we could control the weather.

Q. Is there any chance of rain tonight, and if so, how much?

MARK RUSSELL: There is a possibility of some showers tonight, but this system is finally moving out of here. Greg Quinn, our meteorologist, tells us he thinks it's going to be dry tonight. He says there is a possibility of some fog in the morning, and that's the reason we're looking at 8:00. We want to finish around 3:30 to give Kevin Carpenter 30 more minutes to get the golf course ready. We hope it's going to be dry tonight. We don't think there's going to be any heavy rain. There might be a shower or two, but nothing heavy.

Q. What would be the saturation point for this course, another half an inch tonight? Do you have a number?

MARK RUSSELL: If we got another half an inch at 6:30, 7:00 in the morning, we'd have a major problem. I feel like it's going to need two and a half, three hours to drain. It's pretty saturated out there. It was a steady rain for four or five hours.

Q. Just to make sure, it starts at 8:00 --

MARK RUSSELL: Back in position at 8:00, and then we're going to start the fourth round -- the first groups will tee off at 8:40. The last group is on the 12th hole, so they'll start at 8:00. They'll probably play three holes, probably be on 15 or 16 before that first group tees off, and then when they come off the golf course, every group, they'll have about 30 to 40 minutes, according to how long it takes them to play those last holes, where they're to make their tee time. We tried to stretch it out a little bit so nobody is hard-pressed and they can get a sandwich, or whatever they'd like to do, hit some balls and go back and play.

Q. Will there be any course maintenance in between that short time, the end of the third and the start of the fourth?

MARK RUSSELL: Our staff will set up for the fourth round in between there. They've already got a three-hole buffer -- a two-hole buffer in there, 10 and 11, and they'll start that when those guys finish the 1th hole, cut holes behind them, reset the tees and do whatever we need to do.

Q. Are you playing lift, clean and place tomorrow?

MARK RUSSELL: We'll determine that in the morning, but probably. We'll probably have to to get the golf tournament in.

Q. Is there a back end time frame as far as -- is it you're hoping to finish at 3:30 tomorrow? If you get out here and there's something that's pushing back the start, is there a threshold where you say -- other than darkness, where you say we need to be out of here by 5:00?

MARK RUSSELL: No, if we get in a situation where we can play and finish by dark, that's what we'll do.

Q. Was part of your decision to try to give The Golf Channel a live window to show the final holes tomorrow?

MARK RUSSELL: As far as an 8:00 start? Yeah, exactly. I was asked that question this morning. If you have a situation where you couldn't play, what time would you start in the morning, and I said, well, we'll discuss that with you. We'll start at 7:30, 8:00 or 8:30 would be fine, if it meant that window for television, we'd do that. We wouldn't start at noon, but we'd deal with 30 minutes or an hour.

Q. How unusual is a Monday end for a tournament? When was the last time you've run into this?

MARK RUSSELL: The last time we finished on Monday? We finished on Monday in Washington, D.C., last year. John Deere, I wasn't at that tournament, but I remember a Monday finish in Washington last year, about the same situation, had to play about 25, 26 holes, the last group, on Monday.

You know, the regulation on the PGA TOUR is 72 holes. If we have to play 36 on Monday -- that was put in place by the players, and we make every effort to finish Sunday afternoon by 6:00 eastern time, usually, but if we don't, we will go to Monday as we're doing tomorrow.

End of FastScripts.

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