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THE HONDA CLASSIC

March 10, 2004

Tom Fazio

PALM BEACH GARDENS, FLORIDA

GARY FERMAN: We welcome Tom Fazio to the Honda Classic. As you all know, the golf tournament will be played this year on Tom's Sunrise Course. He's here today to answer any questions you guys might have about the course and how it might play for the tournament. So we'll open up the floor for questions.

Q. Are you satisfied with what you've come up with and the] reactions and so on and so forth?

TOM FAZIO: Very much. It's always interesting to, especially before a tournament starts, to get a lot of different comments. In fact, they just read a couple little blushes there from Freddie and Davis. It's kind of interesting. I saw David Toms just a minute ago and of course, he had a good round today, I guess he was about 2 or 3 under par. So he didn't think it was too hard for him. So I guess it depends on how you play.

Q. I'm sure you've heard it all, everybody who plays golf is a critic or an architect, and you've heard it all on all of your courses, is it different when you hear comments both pro and con from players or do you take more heart in what they say?

TOM FAZIO: Well, I think you always take heart in what they say. I don't think if somebody I think on both sides, if you can take all of the positives, life is not just about positives every day, no matter what it is. I'm sure when you write a story and you maybe even see the finished product, it's not all that you wrote; meaning, it gets condensed or placed or whatever because you have editors and other kinds of people.

For me and my business, I have critics. So after almost 40 years, I just ran into someone out here who was a member of a course I did in Philadelphia like 30 years ago. Actually the guy was complaining about a bunker on the 12th hole that the lip was too steep in the bunker. And I haven't stood in that bunker maybe for 20 years, I guess. So I don't know why the lip is too high. But lots of reasons it could be. Probably it's not even the same bunker, but you listen to it, so it's part of life.

Different here for a new golf course, of course. We have the best players in the world. So you take what they say, you evaluate it, you have your own opinions. It will be interesting to it will probably be the last comments by players who shoot low scores and different comments from the player who don't play well and shoot high scores. That's life. That's the way it is.

Q. 30 years on a bunker lip and he's not over it yet?

TOM FAZIO: Oh, he's not over it. He's not over it. But you get used to that sometimes.

Q. Freddie's comment was today it's hard, it's really hard. When you hear that? What do you think?

TOM FAZIO: I think all golf courses are hard in the wind. Very few golf courses are not hard when you're playing in the wind. I think the wind was quite strong today. There's no reason it wouldn't be hard in the wind. If you went to the Sunset Course on our west side, last year's course it, would be much harder than it was last year probably in the same Pro Am. I don't remember back last year whether the wind blew on Pro Am day or not. But certainly this golf course would be harder, even with the scores and I think I even remember some comments last year that the golf course was too easy.

So, you know, that's golf. That's also, you know, you go and I can remember a few years ago at Augusta National on a Friday round where the wind was blowing, there was a possibility that the tournament was going to be stopped because the balls were blowing off the green. The greens were obviously typical Masters greens, slick, and the balls were just about starting to move off the green because of the wind. There's the stories.

Q. You said you had seen what Freddie and Davis had had to say. Have any players spoke to you directly?

TOM FAZIO: Just David Toms. David Toms and Jeff Sluman are the two players I saw.

But also, again after all of the years of my experience and business, I don't find it's the right time for me to ask them what they think, per se. You wait until after a tournament. You wait till how things get played out. I think in a brand new golf course, it does make the difference, as well. Freddie mentioned a comment about how he played the ninth hole and now that he knows what's behind the green, he played differently. So it's normal for people to have to get used to a new golf course.

I think that I can remember back again with all of the years I've been involved in golf, I can remember and if you can go back and check the history of Harbour Town, Spyglass and TPC Jacksonville, those are three golf courses that are considered some of the best on the PGA TOUR. The players will tell you how much they love those golf courses. Go back and look the comments when they were first built and the reaction to those golf courses. They were very different than what you get today because they are used playing them. They know how to play them. And it's only logical. Especially, even on flat terrain you have a hole like No. 9 with the contour and elevations it's shaped and the angles of these greens, and this is not an easy golf course. It wasn't designed to be easy. It's designed to be fair and challenging and exciting and dramatic and a strong test for the best players in the world for this event.

Now, this is also the same golf course that members play on a regular basis. I just had a man stop me, I didn't get his name, he and his wife are members here, they are here just for the winter and they are members. He was telling me how much his wife enjoyed it. She shoots right around 82 from her tees and he's a 12 handicap and he loves it and it's just perfect for him. He says when he leaves here and goes back north to his home course, he's ready for the test of golf in the spring because of the challenge. I couldn't get away from him, actually. We were trying to get in the press room and he wanted to go hole by hole with me to talk about how much he loved the golf course.

And obviously it's not the same golf course that's being played out there today with the cut of the grass and the rough and the firmness of the greens. I've been away the last two weeks on a western trip, so I just got in last night. When I saw that wind blowing this morning, the first thing I knew was going to happen, we were going to have some reaction about the strength f the golf course.

Q. You've been doing this a long time and have built so many golf courses, but this is the first of your designs that's a PGA TOUR venue; is that right?

TOM FAZIO: I guess you could call that technically that. I don't consider it that way but everybody else does. I've been involved for so many years with my uncle and without my uncle, and whether it's from a course that we made major renovations like the Wachovia Cup where we built a brand new course over an existing course. This would be even though across the street here where we had other events like Ryder Cup, PGA Championship, some of those kind of things.

So I know it comes out that way as a detail as maybe the first golf course at a TOUR event, but doesn't feel that way for me, being involved with Augusta National for past so many years and so many golf tournaments there.

Q. Is it important to you what the reaction is, though, in the end?

TOM FAZIO: It's always important. I don't think that you can ever say that reaction isn't important. It's important that the members also like it. This person out there today that I didn't get his name, but I'm sure I'll find him out there again, for me, that's just as important as a tournament player.

Certainly if the members don't like it, and interestingly enough, I guess we have been open since November, I'm not sure we've had many complaints from members anywhere. There aren't enough tee times for them. So a lot has to do with the the reaction, I understand a tournament player's position. They are out here to make a living. This is their life. That's how they support their families.

And golf is that game. It is the type of environment as someone said earlier, everybody that plays a golf course is a critic. It's a little bit like I guess we could all be food critics as well whether we like a restaurant or not. Everybody has an opinion because it's not an exact science.

I guess what I would say is I certainly am sensitive about it because you always want whatever you do to be well received.

Q. You mentioned this is a tough golf course, but how much of a role does course setup play into being whether it's simply tough or maybe over the edge tough?

TOM FAZIO: Well, I think that's the interesting thing, again, about tournament play. There's ways you can make any golf course difficult and it has a lot to do with it. People ask me the question, they say, well, how do you react to the equipment today in the golf ball and all of the issues that we hear about the technology change. And the people who are against the technology change would say the scores have not improved any by the PGA TOUR. The scoring average has not improved any. I disagree with that.

I think the scoring average, and I don't have the exact statistics, but you listen to the tour pros, week after week and you listen to them talk about how the golf courses are being setup, when the pins are being put closer to the edges on courses where they play regularly on the Tour. So the Tour staff, the tournament organizers, they are creating a stronger test and almost every golf course over time, whether it's a U.S. Open golf course, whether it's the Masters or whether it's other regular tour venues are adding a tee, adjusting a bunker. Look at Doral at the 18th hole, moving a tee back, I read last week it was moved back 27 yards.

So I think golf courses are set up more difficult and even though the scores may be somewhat the same, they are playing a stronger, more difficult golf course and maybe they should because these players are better and they hit it farther and with the technology. So it's hard to pinpoint that. Again it's the same as a reaction to the opinions that everybody has about golf. There's no exact comparisons. You can't go and chart golf holes to say, well, last year or three years ago at Doral, for example a tournament which is finished and how you compare that score with last week's score and how you compare it to ten years ago.

The only thing people generally do, they compare the total number what was the winning score in the tournament. And so, I profess that what has happened, as well, in golf to the setup of the golf courses, because of the strength of today's player, because of the equipment and the length that the golf balls are going, golf courses have been adjusted.

Riviera for example. Riviera has been strengthened and lengthened and adjusted. On the surface if you look and say, well, the scores aren't any different at Riviera than when Ben Hogan won, I don't think they are playing the same golf course because of today's player and there's so many more of them. I always count scores.

And Jackie Burke, 50s Masters Tournament winner, he's always telling the people he's involved with teaching, whether it's Phil Mickelson or Ryder Cup Captain this year, Hal Sutton. He said there's only one score that matters and that's 6. 6 is the number. Now, for us, we think automatically, 6 we don't want to make 6s' that's double bogey. He's talking about 6s; he means shooting in the 60s. He means 69, the worst score.

And it's true. If you look at today's score in the newspapers, if you're not in the 60s, and you may shoot three or four rounds in the 60s and still may not be in the top of the leaderboard. So to me the scores have the gone lower overall even though they have got specific total number I'm surprised somebody I guess I should do it since I complain about it all the time. I guess I should look at all of the scores and check them myself to see if there's a difference. But I really don't know that there are.

Q. Do you have to do anything different when you are pretty sure the course you're designing is going to be used for a competition among the top level players?

TOM FAZIO: I think what we did as Mike and a group here will tell you, we asked added some tournament tees, I guess you would call them Honda tees. You look at the overall length of the golf course today probably somewhere around 7,400. So there were some tees added for that. I think our original design may have been just under 7,200. So it's probably been just for tournament play.

Now it also doesn't mean we have to play them all. That's the question and that's also relates to course setup. And again, I read in the newspaper every time I hear a comment about the third hole, I read about the hard pin placement on the right side at 245 yards. Well, from a design side, I can't stand on that tee every time and explain it and it's not my job to explain it. It was never intended to play the right side pin placement if the tee were all the way back.

Now how do you ensure all that have doesn't happen? So there's a lot to be said about how you relate to that. And I'm not sure the tee was back and the pin is in the middle and the tee was back at the middle left, 236, about nine yards but still it's a different golf hole.

Q. Toms hit a 3 iron and he was about ten feet short.

TOM FAZIO: Short of the hole, not the green?

Q. No. Short of the hole.

TOM FAZIO: If we were ten feet short of the green, it could be a good shot. See, for him, he's ten feet short of the pin at 235. That was 3 iron you said? Where was the wind?

Q. Wind was into him, a little bit cross.

TOM FAZIO: And again, I think if you look at and again somebody was mentioning either Davis or Freddie mentioned that the golf course will play harder because there's going to be a lot of 4 , 5 and 6 irons played to the greens because of length of the holes. As a spectator, as a golfer, I mean, don't we want to see players hit 4 , 5 , 6 and 7 irons into greens. And do the math, do the numbers, take a number, let's take a round number very easily, 450 yards, take that number, subtract it from what today's players are driving the golf ball, anywhere from 280 to 310, depending who that player is. Let's go to the middle of that and say 290.

290 from the 450. So you have 160 yards. What do players hit 160 yards depending on the wind? They are hitting 9 irons. When you look at the yardage overall for a golf course, and even if it's 7,400, if you go individual and pick every golf hole and look at the yardages, subtract what the standards drives are and if they are playing downwind they are driving it 320 or 330, and that's where it's so different, the game and that's why we need to test the best players. We need to have mid range par 4s in the 450 to 460, and some of them for now and I'm not protesting a par 4s has to be 500 yards. Certainly if it's playing in the wind, it doesn't need to be.

But if you're playing with any wind helping you or crosswind that's helping you and you want to test the players hitting middle level shots, you have no choice. Now there's nothing wrong all of the holes do not have to be to 450. The first hole, you can have a 390 yard hole, what does that mean based on the wind and based on the angle and based on the shape and form of the green? Hence, the greens have angles to them, the greens have target areas and maybe pin placements where you have to think your way around the golf course or if it's just a 7 iron hitting it to the middle of the green, may not be the right shot. It may be a hard 8 iron to the back left pin placement based on the wind. So there's a lot of work that the players have to do to think about it.

Unfortunately to some degree, and I would respect the players' opinion about their likes or dislikes because everybody has their opinions about it. If you don't know the golf course that much, if you have not played it enough, it certainly does make it even harder. But I think we are going to see that change by the end of the week, unfortunately by Friday afternoon for those who didn't get to know it. It's a little bit more difficult.

Q. Is this course above average in terms of TOUR courses for TOUR players to learn in two practice rounds?

TOM FAZIO: I'm not sure there's any average. I really don't think there's an average. The TOUR has moved to a lot of different golf courses and for a lot of different reasons which is great for the game. It's great for the fans. It's great for each city that has new events and new venues. It creates excitement. How many times do you have to go through this? It can be boring if it's all the same all the time. And you guys would be struggling more than them; what are you going to write about if it's the same and everything was just automatic.

So that's the one interesting and great thing about golf is that every venue is different. Every tournament has a different focus and that's what makes the game so much fun and so interesting and keeps the fans interest as well.

Q. You mentioned that you feel like the players are playing something you have been very much associated with had they play the Masters. Do you feel almost as though as many changes have been made in the last six or seven years there that you are as much of a designer in that course other than the routing as it was originally?

TOM FAZIO: I never think about it in those terms. No, I never think about it that way. It's just been part of what I do and I've been involved there for a long time. I certainly would never I would not be facetious enough to think my name to be placed there as designer of the golf course, no.

Q. What do you think about that course now and all of the changes that have been made and how dramatic it's been and how different do you think it is since '97?

TOM FAZIO: I don't think it's substantially different in its actual playability. What's different is the scorecard. It's the same, different scorecard and different length. But the goal and the objective was if you go there and you have not been there before in a while, you would not know if it's any different. You look at the photographs and look at the so called revised holes and the original holes, same holes, bunkers in the same place. All that was done was in effect, adjust some tees and landing areas to create somewhat the same types of shots for today's players because of the technology change.

So, same thing I mentioned earlier. We took a hole that used to be hard at 440 yards' length like the 11th hole, the start of Amen Corner that was hard and took that golf hole that evolved into a driver, sand wedge. That's what it was playing the last year before it was adjusted to anywhere from I shouldn't say sand wedge for everybody. Phil Mickelson and Davis Love, Vijay Singh, all the young guys who hit it long, that's where they were hitting. The middle level people were hitting it with 7 to 8 iron or the short hitters were sitting 7 to 8 iron.

If you go back and look, check Jack Nicklaus made two he made two eagles on the fifth hole hitting 5 iron second shot. No one in the recent Masters any more than a 6 or 7 iron to that hole. Most people hit a 3 wood, 9 iron. So what was done was adjust the golf course to meet today's conditions and capabilities.

In the same year at Mirasol when you look at these golf course holes and you go through the hole by hole and you look at some of the yardages your first impression is wow, 465, 470 yards with the prevailing breeze out of a left to right and that's a strong golf hole. Well, the intent is to have a strong golf course for the best players in the world and we have a major golf venue going on here to the world is going to see it.

So our goal from the developer's is creating this golf club for its members to have a world class facility. And so, hence, we have a venue going on today and it's testing the best players. It's not easy. Never meant it to be overly difficult. That was never the goal. Still isn't the goal. Now maybe the conditions are going to make it harder than we'd like to to be for a specific day. But if the wind two things would happen. We don't want rain we won't even mention that word. But if we had rain and no wind, it would be a very, very different golf course.

The way the golf course is set up, last year I did a golf course, brand new golf course in Atlanta they played THE TOUR Championship, the Capital City Club Crab Apple, designed as a members golf course, never intended to have a PGA TOUR played there. Well, there was after 9/11 the American Express tournament was cancelled and then the move to different places in Europe or wherever they played and now those four tournament are placed every year. But they were looking for a venue for this world championship American Express tournament that happened to be in the fall and this brand new golf course was from 23 months from breaking ground, this tournament was played and it was designed as a members' golf course.

Well, the golf course was set up by the PGA TOUR. The greens were firm. Par was moved from because we couldn't add many tees because of the site conditions, so par was moved to 70, they just took two par 5s and made them par 4s like the USGA has done 50 times in the last 100 years during U.S. Opens, and the golf course was set up, 7 under par was the winning score. No. 1 player in the world finished first; No. 2 player in the world finished second. Amazing how that happened. And didn't rain the week before at all. Didn't rain, so the golf course was firm and hard and played fast. That's why they had 7 under. And had it rained in that location, that time of year, scores could have been 12 , 14 under, made that much difference.

So it's a fine line of how golf courses are setup and the conditions that have to do with it.

Q. Do you think players these days are so used to hitting 9 irons and wedges into greens that when they encounter a 4 , 5 or 6 iron, it makes them think that it's a hard hole.

TOM FAZIO: No, I don't think it's a player's issue. I think the most players are capable of they are so good and that is whatever PR firm came up with that logo for the PGA TOUR, "these guys are good," it's so appropriate because they are good. They are fabulous.

And I think that the biggest challenge becomes the unknown and the fact that it's a new golf course and especially when it's a strong test like Mirasol is set up to be that you hit 5 irons s in the air where it comes down and maybe where it's going to roll, once you get to know the greens and the pin placements it makes that same shot much easier for them.

So I think it's more the unknown than it is it's obvious it's easier for them to hit a 9 iron than it is hitting a 5 and 6 iron. But I really don't think that it's that much of a difference in terms of the reception. I don't think it is about that they don't want to do it. I think they are all capable.

Q. Can you talk about the 11th at Augusta and how different that will be?

TOM FAZIO: I don't think it's going to be that much different for that the Top 10 finishers, whoever finishes in the Top 10, whoever they are, because they are got to go hit it there. It has nothing to do with the line of play. Stand on the tee, you don't see it. Well, you couldn't see a couple of the trees, but it's too the far right and to some degree, players were able to bail out to the right and then if the gallery could trample down the right side, so there's really no premium, not as much premium staying in the fairway. Now there is a premium to stay in the fairway, so that was one of the adjustments that were made especially on that particular hole.

It used to be big tall pine trees up on the right corner and they couldn't get it over to that position. Over a period of time trees were lost through storms, wind storms, so they were able to hit the golf ball over what was there even though we adjusted the tee back and to the right and try to use the existing tree forms to make the player play. No one ever thought in the past about playing down. Couldn't get to the right side because of the trees, and that's some of the things that happened with when you refine golf holes and adjust golf holes for the players.

If you go back to Mirasol and say if we were to be playing the golf course on the Sunset Golf Course, which I wasn't involved in, so I'm only giving a generalization. Assuming you wanted a test of golf stronger than what was designed to be for a members golf course, you have to realize Mirasol is about a great venue to hold a great tournament but also as a great residential community for its members and what's going on in this whole development. So it was never intended for either one of the golf courses to be overly difficult and hard. And I would never propose doing that, even though the reaction is going to seem in the general thought out there is, well, the Sunrise Course is really difficult.

If Freddie couples and whoever the top players are saying it's hard, everybody is going to think it's hard. But I think that you'll find that it isn't. My point being that if you were to play in the tournament on the Sunset Course and you wanted to go in and make it harder, how would you do that, what would you do? You'd do some of the same things that Augusta National has done, either by planting trees or adjusting green contours to create stronger pin placements and you just move over and you come right over to here and that's what it is and add some length. So that's how we evolved to that.

GARY FERMAN: Tom, thank you very much for coming by.

End of FastScripts.

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