SHELL HOUSTON OPEN

April 24, 2003

Peter Jacobsen

TODD BUDNICK: Welcome, Peter Jacobsen. As we said, Peter, it's not really fair being a co-designer of the course and you show the guys up like that.

PETER JACOBSEN: No wonder Nicklaus wins so many tournaments because he designed so many of them. If I had known this is how it goes, I would have got involved in golf course design long ago. It felt great.

Obviously, I am very biased, but I think this is a very fair, very traditionally designed, old-fashioned feeling type golf course. It's not a modern golf course at all. Jim Hardy and I, my design partner, we really have been influenced by the old style golf courses Prairie Dunes, Riviera, San Francisco Golf Club, Winged Foot, Colonial, Champions, so we -- our designs reflect those feelings, and when we had a chance, thanks to the Redstone Company, to come here and design this golf course, we wanted to have that, that feel. And to have the PGA TOUR come and to have the players play it, and like it, it's a wonderful feeling.

TODD BUDNICK: Go ahead and talk about the way you played.

PETER JACOBSEN: I played very well. I played consistently all day, drove the ball well 'til the last hole, put it in, played -- put it in the right positions, putted well, it's hard for me to --I will just run through my card. First hole, I hit a good drive in the fairway, hit 5-wood just to the left of the green. I pitched it about ten feet, made the putt.

2nd hole, I hit a driver in the fairway, hit a pitching wedge to about 3 feet, made birdie.

Fifth hole, got my ball -- went over the green, pitched it back about 25 feet. I made a bomb for a par so, that was very, very nice.

Missed about 5-footer for birdie on the next hole, which was No. 6.

No. 7 driver, 5-iron to about a foot. That was a tap-in birdie.

8, I hit 6-iron green 2 putted.

No. 9 driver and long iron, lay-up, hit a wedge about ten feet. I missed that.

So I felt like I made some putts on the front, but I missed a couple as well.

11, made about 20 footer for birdie, hit a good drive, 6-iron on the green, made that putt.

Then the par 5, No. 12, I hit a good driver and good 3-wood, just short -- well, short and right of the green about 15 yards. I pitched it to about eight feet, made the birdie.

Parred the next hole, the par 3.

The next hole which is No. 14, I hit a good drive and a 9-iron to about 15 feet, made the putt.

The next hole par 5, I had about a 6-footer for birdie. I missed it, misread the putt, bad execution. I knew how it was going to break and I misread it.

Parred 16, parred 17, routine. Then 18, I missed my drive just about five yards right of the fairway, and it was under in a tree well in the mulch. There I had a restricted backswing, tried to hit a recovery shot with a 9-iron. It hit the tree and dropped down. I hit a wedge on the green and 2-putted from 25 feet. My only bogey of the day.

Overall, drove the ball -- well, hit a lot of good iron shots. My putting was solid even though I missed a few I made some.

Q. Did either of your playing partners mention to you that you designed a course that fit your game.

PETER JACOBSEN: Put it this way, Bay Hill is designed to fit Tiger's game. There are courses that are built that really suit players. Bay Hill is such a long golf course and there's a lot of forced carries at Bay Hill, a lot of bunkers and water hazards in front so show that if you miss the fairway you can't run the ball onto the green from trouble.

We don't do that here. This really is not suited for anybody's game. I think that you will see some long hitters on the scoreboard but you will see some short hitters also because they can run the ball up on the green. My goal on a Tour golf course would be to have Ernie Els go into a playoff with Corey Pavin or Fred Funk. That would be really seeing something about the type of golf course you had.

Q. Whose idea was it to put that tree on number 18.

PETER JACOBSEN: Obviously my partner Jim Hardy.

(Laughter). We actually added those trees -- exactly what happened to me is exactly what we wanted to have happen. It's the 18th hole of the tournament, we felt that there was a little too much room to blow it to the right. So we planted those trees there to tighten up the 18th hole. Let us face it's the last hole of the tournament, if you come in here with a one-stroke lead or you need a birdie you better hit a good drive. I paid the price.

Q. How many were added over there?

PETER JACOBSEN: 3 or 4, I think.

Q. That was one of them.

PETER JACOBSEN: That was one of them.

Q. When did you add that, recently.

PETER JACOBSEN: No. Last fall.

Q. In the regular design process.

PETER JACOBSEN: Yes. One thing I try to do is we try to play the golf course in all phases of the construction process. We'll come out when it's staked and there's no dirt there's -- we just have stakes. We know where the tees are and where the turn points are and where the greens are. We'll actually come out and we'll hit balls. We'll look to see where we want to place bunkers. You will notice there's absence of fairway bunkers here on this golf course because I believe fairway bunkering should be pretty severe but they should be strategic in nature and not just for decorative purposes. See a lot of golf courses that look pretty on the post card but you played it you go oh, my gosh, it's a maintenance nightmare, got bunkers everywhere. Here we would play the golf course when we first laid it out, after we rough shaped, then when we would final shape it, final grade we played it to make sure we had everything in the right position and we felt 18 needed some trees on the right.

Q. Cutting that one down tonight?

PETER JACOBSEN: Absolutely. I have spikes going in there tonight.

Q. You played that when it was just like nothing there, nothing was cut?

PETER JACOBSEN: Yeah.

Q. Hitting golf balls out of high grass.

PETER JACOBSEN: Yeah, we do that on just about every course we do.

Q. How many site visits did you make here?.

PETER JACOBSEN: 12 to 15, maybe.

Q. Over a year long period.

PETER JACOBSEN: Year and a half. Jim Hardy, my design partner, lives here in Houston so he probably spent 4, 5 days a week -- there's Burt, Burt will tell you, Burt Darden will tell you they got tired of us out here.

BURT DARDEN: They lived out here.

PETER JACOBSEN: There was no snack shack that we could run the bill up on the HGA. (Laughs).

Q. Do you feel like your course knowledge helped you today.

PETER JACOBSEN: Absolutely. One of the things that happens when you come to a new course you don't know it very well. In fact Brian Henninger said to me today he played Monday and he walked around it on Wednesday wasn't in the pro-am and he said, gosh, I am still trying to get a feel for the course. I feel like I have an advantage in that aspect that I know I am very comfortable with the course. It feels like my home course.

Q. More off the tees or off the fairways or on the green?

PETER JACOBSEN: I would say everything.

Q. What is the nicest thing someone said about the course to you this week?

PETER JACOBSEN: Fred Couples said I don't know why we're in such a hurry to move to the new golf course, let us just keep it here. That's what Fred said and I went, I got nothing to do with that. That is up to the HGA and PGA TOUR. We just did our best. We tried to design the best golf course we could, not for the PGA TOUR but for golfers. PGA TOUR comes to a tournament course one week out of 52 and as an architect, taking my golf hat off and putting my architect hat on, and I know I speak for all the architects from Jack Nicklaus to Palmer to Fred Couples, you have got to build a golf course that is good for all levels of golfers. I think we have done that here.

Q. At the end of the day would you said you thought 8 to 12 under might win the tournament.

PETER JACOBSEN: Weather related, yeah. With the rain now it's -- scores are going to go up because the greens are holding and fairways -- when you have a new design the fairways are fast. So a lot of times balls hit in the fairway run into the rough. Now the ball's going to hit and slow down. So I would say probably 15, 16.

Q. Think it will toughen up as we move ---

PETER JACOBSEN: If the weather stays nice and the wind blows and it stays dry it will toughen up, yeah. The greens are in perfect -- rolling perfect. They are not too fast and the rain helped soften the golf course up this morning, the scores are going to go low.

Q. What do you think of Fred at the top of the leaderboard?

PETER JACOBSEN: Fred Couples has always been one of the most talented players on the PGA TOUR, doesn't surprise me that he's on the top of the leaderboard because as Freddie said to me and to you, he needs to be inspired to play good golf because he's done it for so many years and he told me in the locker room, he said, I love this golf course. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see him win this tournament. He is inspired. He loves the course.

Q. How many courses have you done now?

PETER JACOBSEN: Jim Hardy and I? We have done probably 12, two other courses for Redstone up the road, on I290, Black Horse, we built Baylor University golf course in Waco and we built some courses in Oregon and California, Montana and Florida.

Q. What is your favorite course that you built?

PETER JACOBSEN: Well, because the PGA TOUR is here and the Shell Houston Open is here it has to be Redstone because it just shows -- it's just proving itself to be such a fun, interesting test of golf. I would say this golf course.

Q. Can you go over the putt -- you said I think you mentioned you knew it was going to break a different way. You still putt -- was that because of the knowledge you had or just from reading as a golfer or architect?

PETER JACOBSEN: I think I got confused on that because the grain was going -- it was on No. 15, par 5. I knew it was going to break -- going to go to the left but the grain was to the right. I knew it broke left because that's how we drained that green but I didn't play it there. I went with the grain and I missed it left. So I outthought myself.

Q. You were thinking as a golfer?

PETER JACOBSEN: Like a golfer, yeah, I should have just gone with gravity, physics. You drop something from an elevation, it is going it go down.

(Laughter).

Q. What is more impressive Nicklaus designing 250 golf courses or winning 18 majors.

PETER JACOBSEN: I would say winning 18 majors. 250 golf courses is possible if you are a good architect and Jack is a good architect. Winning 18 major you need to be a phenomenally great golfer. You have to be No. 1 in your field designing 250 golf courses, you don't have to be No. 1 in your field you just have to be a busy son of a gun.

Q. You said course knowledge helped you today, but how much of hit could actually be momentum from last week?

PETER JACOBSEN: Good question. I think it probably is. I played really well last week, coming into the tournament swinging well, hitting a lot of good shots, let us face it, the fairways out there and I'd know that you have to hit it in the fairway but so does everybody else in the field. If I hit it in the rough or the bunker or water hazard, I am just going to be having as much trouble as everyone else.

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