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U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 21, 2015

Charl Schwartzel

UNIVERSITY PLACE, WASHINGTON

Q. That was a hell of a fight back?
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: Yeah, I played well the first day, pretty much similar golf as I did the last -- these last three rounds. And this sort of golf course could do it to you. I had a bit of bad luck, which I'm sure a lot of people will have out there, but never got it going the first day. I was very happy with the way I was playing before the tournament. I really thought this golf course can suit me. I did more preparation than I did in most courses, and I felt comfortable.

Q. Slow start today as well as a momentum shift coming back to the --
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: Yeah, just a momentum shift on the second hole. I had a putt from maybe two feet for birdie to get off to a really good start. The putt came back at me, and then bogeyed the next two holes. I was thinking this is not the way I wanted to start. But my brother was caddying to me, I said to him, we're playing well, I've just got to -- it looked like the way they set the course up, there's a few birdies, and if I can somehow use them. And I really did, I put the ball in play the whole time. If you play like that, you feel like you left a lot of shots out there, which I feel like.

Q. The South Africans have really come to play this week, and making a lot of noise on the top of the leaderboard, anything that you can correlate with what you guys played in South Africa to here, any particular reasons?
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: No, there's not these slopes in Africa. You don't get them. The courses are a lot flatter. I don't know, maybe just -- for myself I feel like the tougher the golf course, the better feel on it, you know, when you really have to grind it out. It feels like it's not really a putting contest. So maybe it's the same for the other guys, when they're playing well, Louis plays really good golf. And Branden, I think he's new to you guys, but he's won a few -- quite a few tournaments. He's used to winning. He has a great attitude when he plays and he's very good with keeping the ball down, sort of rolling shots, which is great for here.

Q. Not surprise to you what he's doing this week?
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: Not really. I mean, of course, his first time in contention, he's handling it really well in a major. But he's won a lot of golf tournaments. I feel -- that's what I took when I won the Masters is I took the confidence out of how I was winning other golf tournaments, that's all you've got. And maybe that's the same what he's doing.

Q. You were all junior golfers, you and Thomas and Louis were juniors, could you ever see you playing on this stage, at the same time, in a major championship, when you were all kids playing in South Africa?
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: If I could see that far in the future, I think I would be very rich. Probably not. Those are sort of dreams. You maybe talk about it, you putt against each others as juniors on the putting green. You say we're playing at the Masters and this is for that. I think that's for all the kids. All the dreams don't always come true, but these seem to have.

Q. When you started like you did, where did you focus to try to keep things from tumbling to even worse places than you even were?
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: I think on a golf course like this, it's maybe a little easier because you're not going to be the only one making mistakes, hitting good shots, getting penalized. And pretty much that's all you've got, and you keep playing. Keep trying to give yourself chances, trying to hit the ball on the right sides of these pins. You get on the wrong sides, you've got no chance. It's just basically stick to the game plan and it worked out well today.

Q. A lot of talk about the course conditions this week, especially the greens, what's your take?
CHARL SCHWARTZEL: The golf course, the more I've played it, the more you get used to it. You get used to a little more the slopes. But I feel like for a U.S. Open, the greens are not up to standard. I think they're pretty terrible. But if they just made them a little slower or a little bit more grass cover, I think they would be more playable. But there's quite a few of them that are just dust. And then there's a lot of luck that's involved. It's not nice to play when you feel you're playing well and you still need to be bargaining on lots of luck.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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