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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 26, 2005

Brian Goin

Mark Russell

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

JOE CHEMYCZ: Welcome, Mark Russell and Brian Goin to the interview area. Obviously a long day, gentlemen. Maybe, Mark, just talk about briefly the suspension of play today and the plan for tomorrow, and Brian, maybe talk a little bit, as well, about parking and tickets and then we'll open it up for questions.

MARK RUSSELL: Well, we're going to be in position at 7:30 in the morning. We've got the last group on 16, and we've got the last group on 8. So we've got about 11, 12 holes to play tomorrow. We're going to start at 7:30, like I said, in position, and hopefully tee off the third round approximately 10:30 to 1:00, depending on how many players make the cut. Hopefully if we don't get any more bad weather tomorrow afternoon, we'll get the third round finished tomorrow and then play the fourth round on Monday.

That's about it.

Q. 70 and ties in the plan?

MARK RUSSELL: Yes, I hear so many people talking about it. The only time we cut the nearest to 60 is when we're trying to play 36 holes on one day, and the reason we do that is because logistics, it's the only way you can do it.

Q. You'd have to admit that there's a possibility of playing 36 in one day still.

MARK RUSSELL: Well, if we got totally rained out tomorrow, which I don't expect we're going to do, right, we'd try to play 36 on Monday. But right now the weather forecast is for afternoon thundershowers tomorrow afternoon after 2:00 o'clock. I think we're going to get quite a bit of golf played tomorrow hopefully.

JOE CHEMYCZ: Will you address some of the parking and ticket concerns?

BRIAN GOIN: We're in the same position with our lots. Clearly we got more rain, a little bit today, and our lots still are totally out from the standpoint of the general public, so they'll still be at the same two facilities they were today with free shuttles, again, encouraging everybody to carpool.

We are also going to be honoring the unused Friday tickets. We feel that the Saturday ticket today was definitely -- we held up our end of the bargain, Mark did finally do that, thank you, but we will have -- again, so Sunday tickets and the unused Friday tickets. We defaced the tickets that were used today, and again, our community was great. They carpooled, the shuttle worked very well. We had to bring people out, we brought them out, brought them back in. We just finished a sixth evac of the players tonight, so our volunteers have done a great job, so they're in good shape.

All of our lots, A, 3, 5 and 9, which are grass lots, will once again park off of County Road 210 here in the back of just off of A1A, and again, we're excited about the golf, and it was good to see the media actually have something to write about from the competition side.

Q. What are you doing about Monday tickets? What's the plan there?

BRIAN GOIN: I mean, clearly that's something we're going to have to look at. We were going to discuss a lot of things with our clients as to what a lot of them want to try to have us do, so we're going to work real close hand in hand with our people. Our main goal now is we're going to have to -- we've been very fortunate in our parking lots that we've been able to use, and we have always a bad weather parking plan, and going into Monday, really affects some of the things. UNF and FCCJ are college campuses that will be back in school, so we're going to have to look hard at where to park and that will help us determine what tickets will be available. Monday is still up in the air at this point, but we're locking that in and we'll have something to say about that tomorrow.

Q. What are your options there? What will be the options, a brand new ticket for Monday?

BRIAN GOIN: No, we wouldn't do a new ticket. It would be a matter of us honoring the Sunday tickets, some different tickets like that.

We've done this before twice and we've always honored the Sunday ticket for the last round, as well, which would be Monday. I think that we will be doing that, plus some different things, as well.

Q. Mark, can you give us a little more detail on what kind of weather forecast you have for tomorrow and Monday?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, tomorrow we're supposed to get some afternoon thunderstorms. There's a cold front moving through after 2:00 o'clock, he says, and we should be able to play golf all morning.

The forecast today was pretty bad. We were supposed to get some thunderstorms this afternoon, there were some thunderstorms in the area, but they missed us. It's kind of a hope-you-get-lucky situation.

Then Monday it looks a lot better.

Q. This morning can you walk us through the decision to go ahead and nullify the second round holes that had been played, and did you encounter any opposition from anybody like say Joe Ogilvie, who was 2-under?

MARK RUSSELL: No, the committee got together this morning and looked at the forecast we had. We were getting in a situation where playing the ball -- we got a lot more leeway when we let them lift the ball playing in marginal conditions, and it looked like from the forecast that we were going to have very marginal conditions. The golf course is saturated. If we got a tenth of an inch of rain, the fairways went under. We didn't have any problems on the greens. So we decided as a committee that the best thing to do, the most common sense thing to do, is restart the second round and lift, clean and place, and I didn't hear one player voice opposition to that.

Q. What's the plan for television on Monday? I know in years past it's gone to ESPN.

MARK RUSSELL: We're going to have to talk to them about that, but I think NBC is going to stick with it. I'm not sure of the time frame, and I haven't really nailed that down, but the first indication to me was NBC was going to stay with it.

Q. Do you expect to play lift, clean and place tomorrow?

MARK RUSSELL: Yes. We hope we can mow the fairways.

Q. Third and fourth round, too?

MARK RUSSELL: We'll make a decision on the fourth round, but tomorrow, I mean, we'll continue to lift the ball tomorrow in the second round, and then the third round we'll make a decision on that, but with the forecast we've got and the wet conditions on the golf course, I would be amazed if we didn't have to lift in the third round.

Q. If things are really bad, Mark, is this ever a 54-hole event?

MARK RUSSELL: I don't think so. I think we'll play 72 holes unless we've gone into Wednesday or something like that.

Q. Even if that means Tuesday, though, 72 holes?

MARK RUSSELL: Yeah, I believe we'll play Tuesday.

Q. Why don't you start at 7:00 o'clock tomorrow like you did today?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, we're going to get all 18 holes ready to go. It's not a situation where you can just hit on 1 and 10 and the superintendent has got a lot of time to mow. He's got to have all 18 holes ready to go at 7:15, 7:30 in the morning, so we gave him a little leeway, and we think we can accomplish and finish tomorrow afternoon by starting at 7:30.

Q. When the third round starts, will it be 1st tee and 10 tee or all from the 1st tee?

MARK RUSSELL: We'll play off two tees in threesomes, 1st and 10th.

Q. The only criticism I've heard, and it wasn't really criticism, Lee Westwood and Zach Johnson both mentioned, why didn't you lift, clean and place on Friday and then "you would have been an hour ahead because you wouldn't have had to go back".

MARK RUSSELL: We looked at it. We looked at -- we had that discussion, and we looked at the radar, and it didn't look that bad. We thought we could get by with playing the ball down if we got just a little lucky. Then as the morning went on, it totally filled in and you saw what it did yesterday.

When we play championship golf, we want to play the ball down very badly. When we lift the ball, it's a last ditch effort to play golf. I mean, it gave us so much more leeway today coming back from that suspension that we could do that. We would have had to wait a lot longer and do more work and wasted a lot more time when we could be playing golf lifting the ball than not. We talked about this yesterday, but the reason we lift the ball is so you don't have to take complete relief from casual water. If we can't play under the rules with the casual water rule, that's when we would go to lift the ball.

Q. I had a question mark and then I had a follow-up after my question. Why is it not? If the entire field has the ball in their hand, why is that not championship golf?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, I mean, it definitely goes against the essence of the game. The whole essence of the game is what kind of lie you have and what kind of shot you can play out of that lie.

Q. But you're not playing the ball out of the rough, so --

MARK RUSSELL: Well, you're able to lift the ball, clean it, make it dry and then tee it up. It's kind of like -- it's nothing like you get there and your ball is sitting down a little bit or it's got some -- maybe some mud on it or some other loose impediment. You're going to have a perfect lie every time.

Q. When was that rule made, that you should play the ball as it lies?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, that's always been the essence of the game. I remember reading that in the Tufts book yesterday, Principles of the Rules of Golf. That's the thought process. You play the golf course the way you find it, and the lie you have dictates the type of shot you hit.

But when you lift the ball and tee it up virtually every time --

Q. Do you put it on a tee?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, I'm talking about on tufts of grass out there. You can find a place to sit it up. I guarantee you nobody had a down lie there today.

Q. My follow-up was going to be when you guys were deciding yesterday morning whether to play it up or down, can you just give us an idea of how that decision is made? Is it ultimately your call and how much input do you have from the committee?

MARK RUSSELL: The committee members? It was purely the rules committee.

Q. Which is how many people?

MARK RUSSELL: There are 11 of our staff here.

Q. So it's all your staff?

MARK RUSSELL: Yes. We looked at the golf course and we looked at the forecast and we looked at the radar we had, and we determined if we get a little lucky here we'll be in business, but we got --

Q. I'm not questioning the decision, I was just curious --

MARK RUSSELL: We got a lot of rain and it changed it, and then when we came in this morning, and based on the forecast that we had, we all agreed that, look, we can play a lot more golf if we let them lift the ball, and the way we're going to lift it is to cancel the holes being played and start over lifting the ball.

Q. Joe Ogilvie talked about the fact that the weather people this year have been a problem in regards to forecasting. Have you been through enough of these rain delays? Would you comment on that?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, we do have a new weather team, and I guess it was the same when the first guys came out here. But, you know, predicting this weather is extremely difficult. I can't really fault them. It's just a very difficult thing to predict these showers. I mean, we had a shower coming in this afternoon late about 5:00 o'clock that I thought we were going to have to suspend. Brian the weatherman called me in, and we got to looking at it, and when it got here it dissipated. So it's very difficult to predict these things, especially when you're in a situation when the atmosphere is this unstable. I think the weather guys have done a good job, especially this week.

Q. If you have only the fourth round to play Monday, will you start as soon as you can, or could that be an afternoon show?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, it could be an afternoon show. We'll work with the television people on that, especially if we've got a good forecast.

Q. I'm not trying to put a downer on this, but if the weather just continues to be ridiculous, under any circumstances can this tournament be completed on Wednesday?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, I think that would be -- it would go against the regulations. The Commissioner would have to make that decision.

Q. But he could make an exception?

MARK RUSSELL: Yes, he could.

Q. Again, talking to some players, they only had to move the ball once or twice for casual water, but they basically picked the ball up every time to clean the mud off the ball. Is it possible to restrict what holes under your rules, what holes can be lift, clean and place and what holes can't be?

MARK RUSSELL: Well, I think if we're going to lift the ball, we go ahead and lift it. I don't think you have certain holes, then you run into a problem, oh, my God, I picked it up here and I've got a penalty because I picked it up on the wrong hole. I think either you do it or you don't. That's kind of the way we looked at it.

There were several fairways out there that once we got a tenth of an inch of rain they were just saturated. So I feel if we're going to lift the ball, we'll go ahead and lift it in closely mown area, fairway basically, we'll do that, not basically two or three holes and not the other one.

Q. I saw Tom Meeks the other night at the party so it occurs to me he's one of the 11 people on the rules committee, which makes me wonder whether there was any debate or opposition on the rules committee to lift, clean and place?

MARK RUSSELL: Actually Tom is on the rules committee, but Tom being an invited official, we have a situation where we have these guys come in in split shifts. We don't make them come in here and be here from 6:00 o'clock in the morning until ten after 7:00 at night. We let them split shifts, and some of them come in early, some of them come in late, and at that time Tom wasn't here during that discussion. He worked in the afternoon.

Q. Do you have a rough idea about how much rain we've had say from Monday on or whenever it started this week? I've lost track of days. I don't remember when it started raining.

MARK RUSSELL: A lot. I'd say inches of rain.

Q. Is there a ballpark cost for sending a tournament like this into an extra day from the point of view of labor cost? Would it be six figures per day?

BRIAN GOIN: Yeah, there's definitely additional costs if it goes long like that, and from my standpoint this week, we've had a lot of unexpected costs. This is an event that doesn't ever have to shuttle, so there's bus fees and a lot of different manpower that we've had to hire, but an extra day, yes, can cost you six figures.

Q. So the cost of the weather over the week, would it be a million?

BRIAN GOIN: No, not because some of the non-competition days, some different things like that, we actually had one day where we were able to have such good weather here, for Thursday. It won't reach that amount, but there's definitely a lot of additional cost.

Q. Along those lines, are there insurance policies available as there are with tennis tournaments, and do you have one?

BRIAN GOIN: We actually do not have an overall insurance policy against just rain. We have certainly cancellation-type policies but nothing that would be like this. You can get different policies like that. They're very expensive, especially in this industry, especially after this spring we've had (laughter).

Q. Would you both like to see the event in May?

MARK RUSSELL: You know, I don't even think along those lines. I think it's been fine in March. I mean, if they want to change it and play it in May, that would be fine with me. I really don't have any feeling one way or the other on that.

BRIAN GOIN: And my feeling is just that I want to do -- continue to try to drive this tournament to be the very best we can possibly make it. I think you look at the different ways you can achieve greatness, and again, we'll just -- which ones are the best. Right now we're pretty good.

Q. You'd expect your opinion to be sought, though?

MARK RUSSELL: Oh, yes.

BRIAN GOIN: Absolutely.

MARK RUSSELL: I'm sure it would be. They've been talking about moving this tournament to May for 12 years. I don't really think about it really to tell you the truth.

JOE CHEMYCZ: Gentlemen, thank you. Appreciate your time.

End of FastScripts.

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