|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
BMW CHAMPIONSHIPSeptember 17, 2015Jason DayLake Forest, Illinois JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Jason Day into the interview room at the rain-delayed BMW Championship. He's currently 10-under par. If we can get some comments on your round up to this point. JASON DAY: Yeah, it was nice to get off to a good start. I knew that we were going to have some pretty tough conditions with the wind today. I didn't expect us to have a weather day until a little bit later on, but we kind of got it early. You know, it's nice to be on 9 somewhere around the green, especially because we've got to come back and be in position at 7:30, which is pretty early, but overall I think getting off to a good start with 10 and 11, which will be my first two holes, getting birdies there, and then playing good, steady golf, I was just saying earlier that I had a practice round yesterday at the pro-am with the new M1 driver and put it into play just to kind of see how it went. One shot comes to mind which was down 8, being able to hit it like 320, 330 yards down there. I wouldn't have been able to hit it with my R15. Being able to be aggressive, more aggressive with my drives off the tee boxes here has definitely paid off coming in with shorter clubs, so yeah, I'm just trying to -- just rolling with it right now, and it's worked out because you can play this golf course in so many different ways by hitting irons and 3-woods off tee boxes because there are some carries out there, but if you want to be aggressive and try and get it down closer to the green, even if you are in the rough, it is kind of thick, but you're still coming out with a wedge. For me personally I'm just trying to get it down there as far as possible. Q. You've got 44 yards to the green on the 9th hole there for a decent number to post. How much will you be thinking about that tonight? JASON DAY: Jordan, as we're walking up after the horn blew, said that I was going to hole out, and I said back to him, now I'm not going to do it because you said that. To be honest, I thought it was par-72, so I'm sitting there going, 10-under, there's no chance at all I can get it, but if it goes in, it goes in. Right now I'm just trying to play the best I can. I'm just trying to get off to a good start. The big thing with this golf course is that if you let your foot off the pedal a little bit, even though it is tough conditions, it can -- the guys can catch up quickly. Obviously I want to hole it. 7 and 8 were close to chipping in for eagles, and unfortunately they didn't go in, but I was definitely trying to push forward as much as possible. I wasn't really thinking about shooting 59. I obviously got an opportunity tomorrow to do it, so that's pretty neat. Q. Daniel Berger holed out on 9 to finish his round. Maybe go talk to him. JASON DAY: I need to. Where was he? Q. He was on the left side, 67 yards out. JASON DAY: See, we've got two totally different shots. After bloody Jordan holed out on I think 3, it was at 3, and I hit my drive up there, and I hit it just right of the pin, he chips in and he goes, you know, Jase, next time when you're there you've just got to aim a little bit further left because it goes down from left to right. I definitely know what I've got to do next time. Yeah, I saw that on the boards that he holed out for eagle, so that's good, but since I have a different shot, I can't really get any information out of him. Q. Are there any times where you're stunned at what's happening with what you're producing? JASON DAY: I mean, right now I'm playing good golf, but I mean, I'm not trying to think about it because the moment that I start attaching myself to a number, I start thinking about the outcome instead of just trying to get out there and try and rip my driver as far as possible down the fairway. I'm stunned by -- just sitting there now thinking everyone -- I'm walking through the locker room and people are going, you're playing off the ladies' tees, or you're playing a different golf course, or every time you stand up there and hit a drive it's downwind for you. I'd like to say all of those things are true, but they're not. It's good to see that the guys are recognizing that I'm playing good. Obviously it's a good round. I'm not thinking about it too much. I don't want to get too high or too low. Q. Can you walk us through the hole-out, your hole-out? JASON DAY: Yeah, yeah. Well, it was 77 yards to the pin, and we tried to land it at least 75 yards. It was kind of across from the left, a little bit down. I was on the upslope of the bunker, and the main key there was just to try and trap the ball or catch the ball, trap the ball first and get it started on the right line. Cole wrote in his book, if you go left you can hit it up the left side of the pin and it'll spin back down towards it. But it just landed perfect. And knowing that when it landed -- I thought I actually hit it long, but once it bounced up and started spinning, I just knew it was going to go in. From where I was standing it looked perfect, and I'm like just waiting for it and then it went in, which is good, so that got everything started for me again on the back side. Q. This traditionally is a time when players start talking about how tired they are and maybe worn out a little bit. To what do you credit the bounce in your step here? JASON DAY: Just being able to have a good week off last week, just being able to rest up as much as possible last week was huge for us. It's different because the Presidents Cup years we normally play two, week off, two, so we get that week off in the middle, which is great, but then Ryder Cup year is brutal. You play four straight, and for me, two is my kind of max, and then I start making mental errors. I'd like to see the stat how well I played during the Ryder Cup years compared to the Presidents Cup years in the Playoffs because I feel like I play a lot better when I'm fresh and I've only got two in a row. Yeah, I mean, that's just -- the rest that I had last week, I didn't start practicing until Saturday, but we did finish kind of early on the week. But I'm just ready. I feel good about how I feel mentally, physically, the golf game feels nice, excited about putting the driver in play, the new driver. I feel good. Q. Since you seemed to have a lot of back-and-forth chatter with Jordan, can you enlighten us on what, if anything, happened after the hole-in-one? JASON DAY: Oh, you know what, I was just -- anyone that holes out for a hole-in-one, it's exciting. I mean, even holing out for eagle is exciting. But I wasn't expecting it. He hit a shot and got a nice little bounce. I think it was just -- landed maybe just in the rough or just on the fringe, got a nice little bounce, and when you hit that shot, you're just immediately looking, okay, because you can't really see what it's doing on the green from where you are on the tee box. So we're just sitting there waiting, I'm looking at the crowd just seeing what they do, and everyone starts quickly getting up one by one, and once it goes in, then he yells out and then I'm running over there, high fiving each other. I said to him when walking up to the second green, whenever you watch someone hole that or you hole that, it's exciting no matter who it is. It's kind of neat to see that. Q. I think you hit your drive on 9 23 yards longer than anybody, so is this new driver seriously that good, or what are you doing? JASON DAY: I think it is. To be honest, I'm hitting it longer than my R15, which is fantastic. Just the whole setup, the whole makeup of the driver, with it being a little bit lighter, with the carbon insert on top, so I can get a little -- the swing speeds are up because of that. But then on top of it, I'm launching it the same angle, but the down angle coming down to the ground is a lot lower. The spin is a lot lower than my old driver, as well. When you've got the same launch angle, carrying a little bit further with a lower down angle and less spin, it's going to bounce and roll. It's just a perfect makeup right now. It's kind of like that honeymoon stage of putting something new in the bag. I'm excited about it. Hopefully I can keep it going over the next few days. Q. When exactly did you find out it was par-71? JASON DAY: Jordan told me that it was par-71 on 9. I probably should have known that because there's three par-5s, but I wasn't paying attention. I didn't think I'd have an opportunity of shooting 59. Yeah, that's kind of when he told me. He was keeping count for me. Q. Have you ever had an opportunity to do it in a recreational round, shoot 59? JASON DAY: The only time that I had a chance was Mount Morgan Country Club. It's kind of like in the middle of nowhere. It's not a country club, it's in the middle of the country, and it's sand greens. I shot 60. I shot 10-under, and it was a 27-hole event, so it was kind of like -- I put my second nine with my third nine, and it wasn't actually official, but that's how I put it. I believe that I shot 60, 10-under. And I was 13 at the time. Yeah, it was obviously on sand greens, so that was kind of the closest. Q. Does this feel like you're on the way to shooting the best round of your life? JASON DAY: Yeah -- um, actually, Hyundai earlier this year when I think I shot 10-under, I've never shot any -- I've never shot double digits under par before in my life until Hyundai earlier this week. I've always got to it and kind of got around that number and then kind of self-sabotaged myself because I felt uncomfortable. But just the way I'm playing, hitting the greens and putting and just how everything is kind of going, hitting it long and straight and then hitting a lot of greens and then putting on top of that is good thing for success out there. But I feel like this is one of the best rounds I've ever played, especially with how the wind is. The wind is very -- it's tough out there because it can be blowing 25 miles at one point and then it'll stop and go down to 15. It was one of those rounds where I never really had an in-between shot. I always had a full club where I could just go at it because you know how you have some rounds where you're just like -- you're hitting it good but you've got a lot of in-between touch shots that you just kind of got to somehow get it close to the pin. Today I've just been hitting full shots, where I have good numbers into the pins, and that's for me being able to stay aggressive that way, having numbers like that. Q. When Stuart Appleby shot 59, he described it as like when you drive to the shops you jump into your car and you might make 15 turns -- JASON DAY: That sounds like Stuart Appleby. Q. He said you do all these things without actually knowing you've done them, but you execute them all perfectly. What's it like or what does it feel like to you to play golf when you're free of any thought other than just executing a shot? JASON DAY: It feels like a practice round, like it doesn't really matter. And no matter what you do, even if you hit a bad shot, it's going to be all right. That's kind of the way it feels. I mean, it's hard to explain because I'm just out there and I'm not really paying attention to the score and I'm hitting it down the middle and hitting it on the greens and holing putts, but I'm not really -- it's almost like you're -- I don't know, it's hard to -- I'm trying to vision in my head or explain it in a way that it's -- I mean, it is what it is. I'm just going out there trying to -- you asked me this bloody question; I can't answer it. Yeah, I mean, I'm just playing golf. I'm excited about playing golf. I'm enjoying myself on the golf course. This is kind of really, over the last summer, this is kind of the first time, ever since as a professional, I've just really enjoyed and really loved getting out and playing no matter what it is, no matter if I play bad or play good, I just love getting out there. Q. It was all very bloky and friendly out there no doubt with Jordan and Rickie and everything, but to me the big moment was actually after he aced it, you made that long birdie, and that was your competitive juices I feel like coming back at him. How important was it for you to say, okay, you've just put a little statement and done something but I'm going to go birdie-birdie on top of you, as well? JASON DAY: It's something -- you always enjoy the time out there. You enjoy your partners and you have fun, but you know when to have fun and you know, okay, now I need to focus on what I need to do to get the ball in the hole. And that's kind of what happened. I hit my shot into the middle of the green, he holed out, Rickie hit a good shot, and once that happened, we were talking and talking and talking, and I knew once I started getting close to the green, I knew I needed to focus and start getting back into the mode of what can I possibly do to give this 100 percent on this shot now, and then once I holed it, then I'm back to normal, talking to the guys, and then the next tee shot, I'm back to walking up to give myself a good chance of hitting this down the middle as hard as I can. It's kind of like you know how to turn it on and turn it off, and that's just how I'm feeling. Q. At that moment he might have been thinking, I'm finally going to get something going, and you kind of just squished him a bit? JASON DAY: Yeah, I was 6-under at the time, so kind of going through 10 holes at 6-under is a pretty good score at that point. I was just trying to -- like I said earlier, I'm just trying to get as many birdies as I can and I'm just trying to get -- because I'm trying to push as forward as much as possible. I'm trying to just really get as many birdies as I can and just keep going because I don't want to stop. I'm enjoying it so much that I wish I could play another 18 holes today, but obviously we've got to come back tomorrow morning at 7:30. No, it's going to be fun. These next few days are going to be exciting. JOHN BUSH: Thanks for your time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|