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DEUTSCHE BANK CHAMPIONSHIP

September 4, 2015

Rory McIlroy

Norton, Massachusetts

Q. I know the finish, the last two holes really was disappointed. But solid, solid golf for the whole day, wasn't it?
RORY McILROY: It was. Tee to green was very good. Yeah, disappointed with the way I finished. But I felt tee to green, the way I drove the ball, hit my irons for the most part it was very good. I just need to -- I had a couple of good up-and-downs, as well. But I just need to tidy up around the greens a little bit. I had two three-putts out there, obviously not very nice to finish with a three-putt.

It was tricky today. The wind was swirling, it was making it hard to pull a club and trust it. So I think anything under par is a pretty good score.

Q. When you have not played very much in a stretch, people talk about your game getting rusty, but your confidence, I would imagine, can get rusty, too. How do you get your confidence back?
RORY McILROY: I think the more that you see good shots and you have committed, solid shots to your targets, that builds confidence in itself.

I took quite a lot of positives from the PGA a couple of weeks ago. And I've kept going here. I felt like I hit the ball very well. These greens are probably the fastest I've putted on in a while. The greens at Whistling weren't too quick, and before that I was putting on -- I don't know if you call them greens at Chambers Bay. So these are a bit of an adjustment. I was hitting the ball a little bit too hard at times and under reading them, which you can do on fast greens. The more pace the green has the more it's going to swing. I just need to adjust to that.

Q. In your confidence on the greens does it matter that you're hitting it on the right line or that it goes in however?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I felt like I hit a lot of good putts today that didn't go in, and that was probably to do with the speed. And then more just the reading of the putts than anything else. So I feel I'm hitting good putts, I'm hitting them where I want to start them it's just a matter of getting the speed a little bit better, and trying to read them a little bit better.

Q. Over the years there have been a lot of low scores here. Not so far today, is it because of the wind?
RORY McILROY: I think it's mostly to do with the wind. I think some of the pin positions are pretty tricky, as well, today. They put a few up on the knobs and they were hard to get to. I think a combination of both of those things. It was tricky.

Q. Jason's name was up on the leaderboard fairly quickly, he hit three straight birdies to start. Can you look at the leaderboards, scoreboards out there, see them up there and take some motivation from that?
RORY McILROY: Not really, not when it's the first round. I obviously saw that he got off to a great start. But it really doesn't change how I play or how I think out there. At that point I think it was 1-over par, so I was just trying to get it back into red numbers for the day and finish there. It would have been nice to play the last few holes a little better. But it's still a solid score in these conditions, and I don't think I'll be too far behind at the end of the day.

Q. Because we run out of things to write and say a lot, we write a lot about the World Golf Rankings and the horse race and how close it is. Do you think about it at all?
RORY McILROY: Of course you do. You don't think about it when you're out there. But you do think about it. From the start of this year when I had quite a big lead to all of a sudden there's three guys that have a chance to do it. I'm not going to say it's always on your mind, but you do think about it a little. I think I said yesterday in the press conference I felt like I've got out there the most experience to be in this position. And you are trying to get to or keep the No. 1 in the world spot for the last sort of three years. So it's a nice position to be in. I'm glad to be a part of the conversation. But it really hasn't -- doesn't make a difference to how I play out there. I go out there and try to play any best. If I can do that I know I'll be somewhere up in the top.

Q. Tee to green which part of your game are you the happiest with, and which part of your game do you feel you need the most improvement with?
RORY McILROY: I think my driving the ball, I think my short irons are pretty good, I think my mid to long irons, especially my long irons, I had a couple of iffy ones out there today. I can sharpen that up a little bit. And obviously on the greens.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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