Q. Jordan, you've always felt comfortable at this course. Talk about this round and these conditions. I think you matched your career best here.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, it's hard to go any lower. Made some putts, got started on the first hole today, that one goes in, and that's what I talked about before the tournament. If I could get a couple to go in early in the first round and the confidence and the work I've been doing on my stroke the last few days, which is a somewhat significant change in a stroke feel, I thought that would exude just a little bit of confidence into the rest of the round on greens where I've been very successful on before.
Q. How were the conditions out there? Obviously you're used to the wind, but it's been wet out here.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I think the course drains really well for a flatter golf course. The fairways seem and greens seem to be up higher than the rough areas, so the rough areas are where you had more of the mud and more kind of the wet ground, but if you're in the fairways it's still -- it's not bouncing and rolling, but they're not sticking. I want to say I had mud on the ball one hole, which is pretty incredible for the amount of rain the last couple weeks.
I thought coming out knowing it was going to be windy, I thought shooting somewhere around 4-under would have been a great round, so I got a bonus few.
Q. Obviously Daniel the defending champion and Phil coming off what he did, the dynamics today, talk about what you felt in the group. Daniel played solid and you had a great round.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, it's always fun playing with Phil. I very much enjoyed that. Just watching him but also talking with him. And then Boog has been a close friend of mine for 10 plus -- 15 years now, and him having -- knowing how to navigate this golf course is always something you can maybe learn that somebody who's won here, you can learn a little bit from, how they play it. He plays it very aggressively and I did that today and it was very successful for both of us.
Q. Did you sense anything different from Phil today coming off last week?
JORDAN SPIETH: Not really, no. He was pretty much the same. He wanted to show as low as he could and he was grinding and he was upset when it wasn't going well, and he was very similar. You wouldn't have known.
Q. What was it that you changed on your putting specifically?
JORDAN SPIETH: I just needed to do a bit of adjustment in my stroke feel on some bad tendencies I got into. Cameron did some really good research with some of the devices he has to do that with, some of the technology, and was able to really pinpoint a way to get a stroke feel that left me just a little more comfortable over it, to feel like I could flush it through, but I was maybe a foot short on speed the last couple weeks on a lot of putts and hit a lot of lips because of that, and it wasn't just adjusting to speed, a lot of that was in the actual stroke confidence. It was closer today. I got some to go in that lipped in that kind of the wind helped blow in, and I'd like to continue to progress in what we're doing.
Q. You always seem to play well here; how does it feel to have the fans back and so many of them pulling for you?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, this was a special one last year even without fans just because it was our first one, and we had a three plus-month layoff, and with no fans -- this golf course, it's normally a very educated fan base here in Fort Worth, too. It's a very golf loving fan base, not as much like -- 13 can be a bit of a party scene and obviously people are having fun, but it's a very educated crowd every year here, and to have them back and to have that hometown support obviously is fantastic for me but then being with Phil, as well, who's always going to get that support. Everywhere he goes is hometown support, so that combination was nice early in the morning today. I imagine it'll be pretty crowded and pretty loud tomorrow afternoon.
Q. Players take motivation a lot of different ways. In a sense was it good for you to be paired with Phil today, because last week you go in to Kiawah as the favorite and Phil is not, you wind up not winning, Phil winds up winning and then you guys were paired together today. Was that any kind of motivation for you?
JORDAN SPIETH: Not really. I didn't need any motivation. I don't need any motivation any week. I didn't feel the favorite last week. I felt in form with certainly expecting myself to have a chance on the weekend because I had in most of the events over the last few months.
And then it was really just with the putter, I just didn't give myself enough chances last week, just missed too many putts, and so for me coming into this week it didn't really matter pairing, tee time. It was let's pinpoint what's going on in the stroke, let's start to make some adjustments and literally stay on course with everything else.
Yeah, I don't think about it that way at all. There's 140 something of the best in the world here, and on any given day every single one of them has shot a 63, 64, 65. First round was a success, and at this point it's go rest and get ready for hopefully a long next three days.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
107888-1-1002 2021-05-27 18:11:00 GMT
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