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MCI HERITAGE

April 14, 2004

Marco Dawson

Harbour Town Golf Links, Hilton Head Island, S.C

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Okay. Marco Dawson, 34-34, 68, and' very fine 3-under round to open the 2005 MCI Heritage Classic. Making your third appearance on the PGA TOUR this year. You shared the opening round lead at the Ford Championship at Doral. Just a couple of thoughts on the day. It was obviously different than probably the practice rounds.

MARCO DAWSON: Yeah, I guess it's cold and I'm not really a good cold weather player. But somehow I managed today, made some putts, hit the driver pretty good, so I set myself up. I was in the fairway most of the day. The few fairways that I did miss, they weren't very -- they were still pretty good so I could hit the greens. But I hit some good shots when I needed to, made a lot of putts.

Q. Can you quickly just take us through your birdies and bogeys at any good saves you had?

MARCO DAWSON: It's hard to remember. I started on 10, so I had -- 11, I missed a short birdie putt.

12, I got up-and-down, missed the green there.

13, hit a 3-wood and a pitching wedge I guess about three and a half feet, birdie.

16, I hit a drive and a 9-iron to about three, three and a half feet.

18, I got up-and-down from the front bunker, long bunker shot, made I guess about an eight, ten-footer.

No. 2, I hit a good drive, just a little right in the fairway so had to punch it kind of through the trees and just left of the green, chipped it up to about two feet.

3, I had a good up-and-down, missed my second shot way to the left on the upslope of the bunker and chipped it to about eight feet past the hole and got it up-and-down.

I think that helped with the next putt because on the next hole, the par 3, I hit a 6-iron that was I guess about 18, 20 feet left of the hole pin high and I made the putt.

7, I hit a bad iron shot there, hit it way left. I hit a pretty good bunker shot and missed the putt. It was about six, seven feet.

Birdied 9, hit a good 2-iron down the middle, hit a pitching wedge, had to kind of hook it around the trees there but the wind was helping the shot, so I just kind of laid it up about 30 feet right of the hole and it turned in there pretty good and hit pin high and just spun by the hole. I made about a 10, 12-footer.

Q. You said a wedge?

MARCO DAWSON: A pitching wedge.

Q. And the other thing we didn't get is the bogey at 14.

MARCO DAWSON: I hit a pretty good iron shot. The wind kind of fooled us so I was well short, some 50 feet short, and I hit a pretty good putt but I didn't read the break right and I had about a three-and-a-half, four-footer, and I just missed it, misread the next putt.

Q. Can you tell us a little bit about your -- you're playing on a medical extension this year?

MARCO DAWSON: Correct.

Q. Can you tell us about the nature of your injury and how you're doing with that?

MARCO DAWSON: It was a pretty bad rupture last year at The PLAYERS, and it just so happened there was a neurosurgeon at the convention that week, and I had several look at the MRI. I had an MRI done that Tuesday, and Wednesday I was convinced it was in bad shape where I needed surgery, but the doctors there at the Mayo Clinic, they were on the safe side and elected to let me try and have it heal in three weeks by itself, and then it just didn't happen, so three weeks later I had the surgery.

But as they went in there in the surgery they found that it was really in bad shape. It had blown out pretty bad, so the scar was bigger, they had to go in and clean up a little higher than they expected, so the scar was bigger which means it takes longer to heal.

So for four months I didn't do anything, just did the minor therapy, walking a lot, and once we got -- after four months we went aggressively on the therapy, and when I'm home, I'm still three days a week for three hours a day. So it's eight months of pretty heavy therapy, probably nine hours a week at the therapist's, and then another six on my own during the rest of the week.

Q. What all does therapy entail?

MARCO DAWSON: Well, the therapists had to figure out what was causing the problem. You just don't get a bad break. There was contributing factors, poor muscle structure or maybe -- like in a golfer's case and tennis players, one side is more dominant than the other so it gets a lot stronger, so what we had to do was I was compensating so much for my mid-back and my hamstrings being tight that my back was taking most of the load, and it just finally snapped one day and couldn't take it anymore.

So what I had to do was I had to work from about my shoulders down to my knees and really get flexible and strength at the same time, so that's what we've been doing for eight months, a lot of core exercise, a lot of flexibility, a lot of strengthening, so one part doesn't have to work harder than the other; we just equally distribute the load to everything. It's working out pretty good.

Q. Marco, not to relive painful memories, but did you blow it out on a swing or something, and did you feel it and did you know something serious had happened?

MARCO DAWSON: Thinking back when the doctor asked me what happened, if I had done anything, the only thing I can think of was two months earlier, two months prior to the problem there at The PLAYERS last year, we had just gotten a new motor home, and the very first shower that I had taken, when I walked out of the shower I slipped, and I guess my wife told me for two days I was holding my back kind of funny, walking kind of funny, and I didn't remember it that much, I just remember slipping and then it kind of jolted my back, and the doctor thought immediately, well, even two months after that, that's probably what happened, something simple.

Q. How long did you lay off the golf clubs and when did you take them back up?

MARCO DAWSON: Probably at least five months. About a month after, we went aggressively on the therapy and I started chipping and putting and I finally got comfortable with that, so it was probably five months.

Q. Were you able to basically return to an old swing or do you feel like you're kind of having to re-learn parts of your golf swing?

MARCO DAWSON: No, I did, I came back to the swing I wanted and the way I was swinging before. I'm not compensating in any way for the injury.

Q. What do you have to do on the road like while you're here this week? What can you do to --

MARCO DAWSON: Just a lot of my stretching exercise, a lot of back exercises, bending forward, bending backwards, sideways, cardio, just anything to get the blood flow in that area and strengthen that area, stretch it and strengthen it at the same time. Just a lot of ball exercises, laying on the ball, and just a lot of exercise. No weights but just a lot of exercises. It probably takes an hour, hour and a half to do, like yesterday we spent an hour and a half in the fitness trailer.

Q. Where exactly in the back is it?

MARCO DAWSON: The low back. It was L5-S1. That's where the most load bearing -- that's the last part of your back that's going to take the most load.

Q. Was it tough to get yourself to turn it loose with a driver again when you first started back mentally?

MARCO DAWSON: Not really because I had worked so hard to get to that point where I could start swinging hard that it wasn't as if I was tiptoeing around. I had worked hard enough at that point that I could have probably hit a month prior.

Q. You knew that your back was ready?

MARCO DAWSON: Yeah, I knew it was ready. I didn't really want to start practicing yet. I wanted to make sure there were certain things that I could do before -- I didn't want to go and start practicing and find out that I still had to do some work here and there and it was going to affect my swing or my swing was going to affect my therapy.

Q. How do you feel your game is right now? Do you feel like you're maybe close to where you want to be?

MARCO DAWSON: Yeah, I'm pretty close. I'm putting better. My driving is better. You know, this week it's kind of hard to tell because of the weather, but when I'm home and I'm playing, I'm playing really well, so I feel good about that. I feel good about the rest of the year.

Q. Does the weather cause it to tighten up at all?

MARCO DAWSON: It didn't today. It surprised me because the cold weather you would think would nag the first problem that you have, and I thought it would, but it didn't, didn't bother my back at all. I didn't think about it at all, and that's one of the things the therapists and the doctors say, we want you to be able to go out and play and not ever think about your back. We don't want you to question whether or not you can make a certain swing because is your back going to blow out or is it going to pull a muscle, so we've gotten way beyond that point where I don't even think about it anymore. Now I'm just trying to keep my hands warm out there or my head warm or whatever (laughter).

Q. Talk about the weather conditions a little bit. Obviously the TOUR guys have had a bad run of weather this year. You've played two --

MARCO DAWSON: I've played Doral and Honda and they were perfect weather. As far as I'm concerned, the TOUR has been great this year as far as weather.

Q. How about from your past experience here? How much different does it play on a day like today and do you think it's going to play differently over the weekend when the forecast --

MARCO DAWSON: It might play just a little bit easier because the balls aren't rolling so much out of the fairway like that, like I remember them doing. You could hit good shots and all of a sudden it's still rolling and now you've gone too far and you've got to work it around a tree because you've gone ten yards too far and you were trying to debate whether to hit a 3-wood. Today was pretty much all drivers, a few 3-woods.

But being soft, the fairways tend to seem like they're wider. The greens are a little bit bigger, and the greens may be just a hair slower than what they were expecting on a dry day. Other than the wind, if it wasn't windy, I think you'd see some really good scores.

Q. Was there ever a point where you questioned you'd make it back and did you started looking at other occupations at any point?

MARCO DAWSON: Yeah, that four months before I had gone through the aggressive therapy because I hadn't started it yet and I didn't know exactly where I was as far as the condition of my back, whether it was going to take me a year or two years or maybe never. But I was going to give it everything I had, go to the therapy and do all the exercises and make sure I at least gave it a chance, and if it didn't work out, it didn't work out, but somehow it did.

But the four months, you know, you can't do anything but what they tell you to do, and that was just to walk and just try and keep it loose and not do anything damaging. So that four months before the aggressive therapy started, you know, you're just kind of wondering, well, I wonder how the therapy is going to go; am I going to be able to come back and play, and if I do, am I going to be able to get my game back that I had before? I may be able to swing okay but I may pick up some bad habits. Am I going to be able to putt the same?

My biggest question was not am I going to be able to play, but am I going to be able to walk around the course, be able to withstand the walking and standing that it takes out here? The walking and standing, we were out there today, took us three hours to play the front nine. That's a long time to be on your feet, and we still had another nine to go.

Q. What would you do --

MARCO DAWSON: I wasn't thinking about one yet (laughter).

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Thanks very much.

End of FastScripts.

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