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JOHN DEERE CLASSIC

July 10, 2009

Paul Grogan

SILVIS, ILLINOIS

DOUG MILNE: Thanks for coming in during a long, crazy day. We've talked to Clair and we've talked to Arvin, and now to complete the trifecta we have you in. From a course standpoint, from your end of things, just bring us up to speed.
PAUL GROGAN: I think Thursday we talked about the inch and a half that we had on Wednesday, and today we had 1.8 inches from about, oh, 7:30 to whenever it quit around 2:00, a little bit after 2:00. It would have been all right except that we had 1.5 on Wednesday and we had six tenths last Saturday, so we got to the point that there was no place for the water to go. Fairways are just basically super saturated. We tried to squeegee a lot of fairways, and the water just came right back in where we were squeegeeing.
I know it's sunny and the wind is blowing and it's beautiful and it hasn't been this nice all week. But it would have been an awful tough play. There's places where the players would have to move the ball who knows how many feet just to get a dry lie.
I think that was the best decision from Arvin to just delay until tomorrow. I know we had a lot of people here that have probably spent all day here. I know my staff spent -- we've been here since 4:30 this morning, and some of them will be here until about 8:00, 8:30 tonight. It's a long day. So I would have just as soon we played, but to be fair to all the competitors, it's probably the best thing we could do.

Q. Talk about what you guys do now for the rest of the day to try to get the course ready for tomorrow.
PAUL GROGAN: You know, we squeegeed most of the stuff off. We fixed all the runoffs in the bunkers that we had. You've got to remember two years ago if we had a rain event like this, we wouldn't even be sitting here discussing it. We would not have played golf. I mean, we had a chance to play today; two years ago we might not have even played tomorrow.
I think everything will play like it did on Thursday. I think we'll play golf. We won't be picking the ball up and moving it around, so I think everything will firm up tonight. We'll do some minor cosmetic stuff on greens tonight just to keep green speed up. We're having a difficult time keeping it at an even keel just because the weather has not cooperated.
We're probably going to try to mow greens later this evening and then maybe roll them depending on how they come through the mow.
We want to try to keep the green speeds consistent for the tournament, and the more rain we get, the harder that is.

Q. How optimistic were you when the rain stopped about 2:00? Clair came in and said that you had relayed to Arvin that you thought you guys would be able to get things ready for 4:00.
PAUL GROGAN: Well, originally we thought. We knew greens and tees would not be a problem. But when we started squeegeeing fairways, we knew it was a lost cause. There was so much moisture coming up basically everywhere. You know, half your shots are hit out of fairways and roughs, and it would have been a struggle.

Q. Can the course take any more water?
PAUL GROGAN: Well, we'll be in the same scenario again. It couldn't take a lot more. It didn't take what we got today after the one and a half, so I'm sure that if we catch another event, which who knows, this time of year we could. It could go to 90 tomorrow and heat up and get a thunder boomer in the afternoon. We don't need more rain; how's that?

Q. You said you had some bunkers that you needed --
PAUL GROGAN: Minimal. I mean, just some small -- some of the design stuff, we might have some drainage issues, some drainage water or runoff water that runs into a bunker slope. Some of those will put little rivulets in it. We probably fixed half a dozen bunkers, maybe a dozen, in probably less than half an hour. It wasn't a big deal. We knew it was going to half. We knew it was going to half after the inch and then it went to the seven tenth on top of that.

Q. When you woke up this morning did you think that the day could play out like this?
PAUL GROGAN: Heck, no, I was ready to go. This is easy. Then we get here, and all of a sudden we do three and a half hours of work in two hours and 10 minutes thinking, all right, we're ahead of it. So if it does rain, we're fine. Greens are cut, cups are set, bunkers are raked. It's all playable. And then once it started, that was the end of it. I mean, --

Q. Did your heart kind of sink at that point?
PAUL GROGAN: Nah. Like I said earlier, it is what it is. We adjust. You know, it's tough for -- it's more tough for the tournament people than it is for my staff. They know that if it's a rain event they've got to work. We've got a lot of volunteers. We've got people that this is their whole thing to do. We have volunteers sitting in our building from 7:00 o'clock this morning until they called it at 4:00. I felt sorry for those people. But they all sat there and had a good time. I think they had a good time (laughter).
So you know, those are the people I feel sorry for. It's tough. You're volunteering, you're here all day, and all you do is get wet and you sit around and wait and wait and wait and wait. I've been in the golf business to know when it rains, it rains. There's nothing you can do about it.

Q. That said, though, is there some twinge of disappointment knowing you've had this course as good as ever on Monday and Tuesday and then to sit here and have two big rains?
PAUL GROGAN: Yeah, but I mean, you just deal with it. I mean, I think the golf course would have played perfectly if we hadn't had the rain events. But I think the comments so far have been pretty good. I don't think that Thursday's rounds were affected a lot by the inch and a half of rain. I mean, the ball didn't roll as far as they wanted to, and No. 9 played pretty tough, I guess. 9 and 18 were the two toughest holes, I think, from what I heard on the radio this morning, which is -- we know No. 9 is a tough hole. But it was a little tougher. And then 18 has always played a little bit difficult when it's wet.
Yeah, I'd like to see it hard and fast and if we could get green speeds up, but we'll adjust. They're the best players in the world; they'll adjust.

Q. Will you guys have to do any work after dark tonight?
PAUL GROGAN: I hope not. It's kind of counterproductive because by that time they're just beat after being here all day. I think they need their sleep more than what they can produce in that dark time hour.

Q. Was it the usual suspect holes that were problematic this afternoon?
PAUL GROGAN: Yeah, there were about 18 of them, I think (laughter).
On the front, 2 was very wet; 4 was wet; 10, 15, 17, 18 were pretty wet. We had some drier holes, but they were all -- I mean, you can walk around here with tennis shoes on and you'd be soaking wet walking down one fairway. It was a good decision.

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