Q. How would you characterize the week overall?

COLLIN MORIKAWA: Just a grind. I talked about it kind of this past month, month and a half, of just putting scores together. I think for a long time I wasn't putting scores together and I cared too much about making it look pretty, so it's nice. Look, didn't have my best and still put together a third our fourth place for the week. It's coming together and that's what's great. It would be nice to be able to hit my iron shots like I did yesterday on that back nine and just take a little bit of the stress off.

Q. During this stretch does it seem like there's one aspect of the game that's not fully there each round?

COLLIN MORIKAWA: It's got to be the approach shots. The bad putts are more just because of the stress that I don't have as many birdie opportunities. So, if I continue to hit it to 15 to 25 feet it's like, that's fine, but I haven't been doing that. So, I think it's put more stress on all other aspects of my golf game, so if I can just dial in just small increments. It's a lot better than where it was at the beginning of the year, and we're getting there, I just -- obviously you want it sooner rather than later, and with two more majors to go, you know, I really want it.

Q. Does that make you feel good to know that you made small incremental gains or are you still no, hey, there's still more to go, I need to keep working at it?

COLLIN MORIKAWA: I'm definitely going to look at this as a positive aspect. Look, the beginning of the year was a struggle and I had to get out of that and I did. It's just motivating to see all these other guys play well, these guys winning tournaments to be just like, okay, this is a big little stretch of golf coming up before playoffs and heading into playoffs, and we want to make a good run for it and start finishing at the end on top of the leaderboard on Sunday.

Q. How much of a better mental place are you than maybe at the start of the year?

COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, much better. I owe a lot of that to Rick. Obviously joining back up with him, it's been awesome. It's not like we've done anything new, it's just being able to talk. What happened yesterday with Grayson is obviously very saddening, and it's nice to have people to talk to and just be able to let things out and just be who you are.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

144519-1-1044 2024-05-26 21:53:00 GMT

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