"It's a little bit like cutting yourself with a razor on your wedding day."

You have to feel for AAC super Ken Mangum and crew reading his take on the weird mishap at 14 and 17 Wednesday evening. He kindly came in the press center to answer questions and offered this explanation:

But I've got to tell you, last night we felt like our hearts had been ripped out. Something occurred that I've never seen before, and I, like you, can only speculate what happened. Nothing mechanical. No operator error. It occurred almost simultaneously to two mowers; and we've checked the mowers, we've checked the people, we've checked everything. They've already mowed the rest of the golf course, so it's a little mystery to me why it happened.

We went back and looked at the weather because some guys noticed it got really hot and sticky after such a dry day we had and the wind blowing.

So my only -- the only answer I could come up with was that the humidity changed and the brush grabbed and dug into the green and caused the problem. So that's basically all I know about it.

I wish -- it would have been a lot easier if I could have found something broken that we could say, that's it. That would have been much easier. But everything is fixed, everything is fine. It will not bother the play of the tournament this week.

It's a little bit like cutting yourself with a razor on your wedding day. That's kind of the way we felt. But it'll be fine, and our guys, our team did a great job of repairing it last night, and I've got to tell you, my two people on that golf course, I think I spent as much time consoling them because they've put their heart and soul into this place, and it was tough to watch them suffer.

Regarding the two areas, the PGA is treating them as Ground Under Repair. Kelly Elbin of the PGA, reading a statement from the rules committee:

The areas of repaired turf on the 14th and 17th putting greens will, for the remainder of the championship, be played as ground under repair. That's under rule 25-1.

This will entitle a player free relief from those areas, including intervention on his line of putt when his ball is on the putting green.

In addition, when a player's ball is on or off the putting green, the player may repair these areas under the existing local rule for turf plugs, and we will make this ruling available to media as soon as the press conference ends.