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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

May 12, 2016

Rory McIlroy

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

Q. Kind of a bad break there on 16.
RORY MCILROY: Yeah.

Q. What was the deal there?
RORY MCILROY: I hit a good shot, like right in the middle of the green with a 4-iron and it obviously just caught the back side of the bunker and kicked a little right. But I still thought with the angle that I was hitting in at, I didn't think it had any chance of going in the water. So, a bit of a bad break there.

It was nice to birdie 17 to get the shot back straight away.

Yeah, I felt like I played okay, I don't know what the guys were doing out there this morning, but I don't think we saw the same golf course this afternoon. It was a little firmer, the wind got up a little bit, and those guys made the course look awfully easy this morning.

So, hopefully we get similar conditions tomorrow and I can take advantage of that and obviously try to move up the leaderboard a bit.

Q. When you see those scores in the morning, do you take note and say I got to be more aggressive or do you try not to look?
RORY MCILROY: No, I think it's just more you recognize that the course is yielding a little bit and there are opportunities and chances out there. So, but I don't feel -- it's the first day, you know, so much can happen. You look at, even last week, I really wasn't, I didn't have, I didn't feel like I had a chance to win the tournament until the 16th hole on Sunday. So you play 70 holes not thinking you have a chance and then, boom, you're right there.

So golf tournaments are, they're a bit of a marathon, they're not a sprint. As I said, I just need to go out tomorrow and play good and shoot something in red numbers hopefully in the mid 60s and at least have a, have somewhat of a chance going into the weekend.

Q. Does this place still sort of baffle you? There's the big disparity between the front nine and back nine. You didn't really have as much of that today. Are you still trying to figure this place out?
RORY MCILROY: Yeah, a little bit. I feel with this place, once you have a little bit of momentum, you can really keep it going and get things starting to your way and you can get on a run where you make a few birdies. Today I just didn't get on one of those runs. It was, I made a lot of pars, I made two birdies, two bogeys. It was just one of those days where it was sort of in neutral, I couldn't really get it going much at all.

But you look at the leaderboard, there's a whole array of people up there that have, that aren't, you look at their game styles and they're not very similar. I think that's the great thing about this golf course is you don't have to play a certain way, you can get around in a lot of different ways.

I feel like I've learned enough about the golf course over the past few years and I've started to realize that it is actually a very well designed golf course and you have to play it in the right spots and you have to hit right shots at the right times. I just didn't quite do it today. But I didn't feel like my game was that far off.

Q. Did you catch yourself trying to hit it a little farther when playing with Bubba and Dustin?
RORY MCILROY: No, not really. No, no, not really. I feel like, when I'm driving the ball -- well, Bubba's in a sort of another league in terms of just playing it around and stuff. But when I'm on, I feel like D.J. and I can sort of hit it out there and pretty similar.

But you look at the likes of 9, for example, today where he hits it through the fairway like 380. But you have to just play your own game. There's some times -- sometimes it's nice when you're playing with guys that are a little longer than you or as long as you, because if they hit first off the tee you can see how the hole is playing if you want to hit driver or 3-wood. So sometimes it's actually not a bad thing.

Q. Was there ever a point where you could feel it was going to be a neutral kind of day and is there ever a temptation to do too much to change that?
RORY MCILROY: Yeah, no, exactly, it's one of these courses where you have to stay patient and try to hit fairways and greens and if things aren't quite going your way, just keep plodding along and trying to put it in the right positions and but, no, not really.

I had a few wedges around the middle of the course and I wasn't making birdies from them and I made actually a few good par saves on the back nine. So it was just one of those days trying to keep it tidy enough and if you could sneak in -- as I said to J.P. on 18, if I were able to birdie this, it would be the first time today I got under par, it wouldn't be a bad way to finish and get ready for tomorrow.

But, yeah, sometimes you just know that it's going to be one of those days where you're fighting against the stream a little bit and birdies are going to be hard to come by.

Q. Is your wedge play been kind of what's holding you back a little bit?
RORY MCILROY: Yeah, distance control more than anything else. Yeah, I've been hitting -- yeah. A little bit. Distance control's been off. I've been hitting some short, hitting some long. I feel like there's quite a bit of disparity between a three quarter shot and a full shot and, yeah, probably something I need to work on a little bit.

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