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THE 145TH OPENJuly 14, 2016Patrick ReedTroon, South Ayrshire, Scotland MIKE WOODCOCK: We're joined by the clubhouse leader, Patrick Reed. Patrick, great start for you, obviously, 5-under par, 66 in your first round. You eagled the third, a great way to get going in your round. How important was that for you in giving you momentum? PATRICK REED: Yeah, I think it was key. I felt like on the range I was hitting the ball decent. I felt like everything was just kind of hanging a little bit right, and I step up on the first tee and I was like, all right, instead of hitting drive, let's hit a nice little 4-iron down there, and I snap-hook it left. From there I had 139 and hit a really solid 51 to pin high and I felt like that right there, that one shot kind of got me going, because I haven't hit a single shot left all day, and also that first tee shot goes straight left. To have the exact same number on 3 from the fairway, I already kind of knew what to do because I had it two holes ago and I happened to hit it right at the flag, and I didn't see how it went in. But after watching the screens, I think it two- or three-hopped into the hole and it's always good to get you going. Q. Obviously you've had a great round today, but tomorrow the rain is supposed to be coming down pretty hard and the winds are supposed to be whipping in at almost 25, 30 miles an hour. Do you plan to approach the course a little differently or have any sort of game plan change or are you just going to play the way that you've been trying to play today? PATRICK REED: Well, I hope the wind's from the other direction, so I hope the back nine's downwind, because I can only imagine having the back nine blowing 30, 35 miles an hour into the wind. But really, my game plan has kind of played in spots, so whatever the wind or rain or if it's cold or hot, it's not really going to make a difference to me. My game plan is to play to certain areas on each hole. I'm not really going to stray too far away from that, and it's just going to probably determine what club off the tee. Some holes today might have been a 4-iron, but if the wind is howling, it might be a 2-iron, it might be 6-iron. You just never know. It's playing to certain spots. Q. You came over here obviously from last week, had a decent round and tournament at Castle Stuart. How important was that in getting acclimatised to the links conditions? PATRICK REED: I think it was really important. I wanted to come over and play, and I love playing over here. So when I came over it was one of those things that I felt like it was normal Scotland weather. This is not normal. It was cold, windy, rainy, and I didn't see sun once while I was over there the whole entire time at Inverness. So to come over here and see the sun, I felt like today was a lot easier than what I've had to deal with all last week. So it kind of allowed me to be a little more aggressive on lines with iron shots into the greens, because I wasn't trying to play too much of wind or trying to really shape a ball or trying to hole it into things because really the wind was only blowing five or ten out there today. Q. Patrick, along those lines, is it a fair assessment to say that you've embraced links golf and playing over here, and when and how did that happen for you? PATRICK REED: Yeah, I mean, I've always wanted to play around the world. Coming over, playing when I was younger, I played in the Junior British Open, which was the year Tiger won at Hoylake and it was the week before, and I was able to come over right after the tournament. We were able to come over on Wednesday and watch Wednesday and Thursday practise rounds and first round. Just watching the different shots that other players were hitting, I always thought it would be fun because I love to create shots and hit the funny things. At home, we can't do that. It's too soft. So you can't hit the stinger 2-iron and let it run, or the low hook chip shot and watch it bounce up a hill and kind of trickle over. Those aren't things we can do at home. It's more thick rough, take the ball in the air and try to stop it. So I feel like my creative side has been able to come out. Q. What are your other remembrances that week from the Junior Open? PATRICK REED: It was really hot. I mean, it was scorching, and it seemed like when I went over and watched -- not only when I played, the ball seemed to never stop, but when I went over and watched, I don't think Tiger really hit a driver. It was nothing but irons. To watch somebody hit an iron 320 or 330 yards yet the ball is only flying 240, 230 and just watching it run, it just showed that it would probably be a pretty cool, pretty fun place to play to be able to do different things. I think the key is just to have fun with it and you know you're going to get some bad breaks here and there, but at the same time you're going to get some good breaks and you just have to know how to handle it mentally. Q. It's been well documented that the last six Opens at Royal Troon have been won by Americans. The first two players in here today are Americans. Is that providing you guys with extra motivation? PATRICK REED: Yep, I've heard that stat as well, but honestly with how competition is these days, it doesn't really matter where you're from or anything like that. To me you have to be on your game, you have to stick to your game plan. I think the main thing is to stay with my game plan because the odds of me going out and eagling 3 right out of the gates again, to go and hole out, it's rare. So what I can't do is all of a sudden if I go out and throw the first three tomorrow, I'm even par, I can't try to go away from my game plan and get aggressive. I need to stick to my game plan. I know it works. For me, it's more of a mental thing really than anything else. Q. Speaking of the American collective, do you feel you've maybe been a bit overlooked in comparison to your peers Jordan and Rickie in terms of the attention that gets placed on you? PATRICK REED: It doesn't really matter to me. I'm not the one that's writing the articles or doing anything. That's you all. So at the end of the day all I can control is what I do and how I play the game. Honestly, for me, I don't mind flying underneath the radar. But at the same time I'm just out there to play golf and try to play the best and hopefully continue playing the way I am. Q. Does it almost suit you to fly under the radar a little bit more? PATRICK REED: No, there are pros and cons to it. Of course if you're playing well you want to be noticed, but at the same time you could still be playing well, but if someone else comes and plays pretty solid as well, you might only have interviews for say five minutes or maybe none at all. Some of those other guys might be getting a lot of attention and a lot of that. So sometimes you could say, well, that means I get to leave the golf course earlier. I get to rest more or just kind of depends on how people look at it. To me, honestly, it is what it is. I'll just go out and continue playing golf. I know if I do that pretty well, at the end of the day I'll be happy. Q. Monty was in here earlier and I think he described the conditions as a 3 out of 10. I was curious how you saw it today? What is the best way of describing the difference between the outward 9 and the inward 9? PATRICK REED: David versus Goliath on that last one. The inward nine, especially with how benign the winds were today, they weren't blowing very hard. I think the difference it seems like over here is when you get that wind off that water, even if it's only blowing five, it's a really thick and heavy wind. So five miles an hour at home is three to five yards max. Over here, it seems like it's still 10, 15 yards you have to adjust for. But it played pretty easy it felt like, especially on that front nine, as long as you hit some good tee shots. It doesn't matter if the wind's blowing or not blowing, that back nine is tough. Every hole seems to be over 470 yards and then the par 3s you think, all right, I have a breather. Then you get to the par 3, and it's 220. On 17 you have -- 16 you have -- not 16 but where they put that first par 3 where they put it front left, which is right between the two bunkers. That's really narrow. I mean, you miss a golf shot by a yard left of the flag, and you have a chance to go in the bunker and you hit a great bunker shot there, you're 15 feet. It's one of these golf courses that it allows you to get off to a quick start and allows you to get almost overconfident and cocky. Then you get too careless on the back nine. You could go shoot 31, 41. It's one of those kind of golf courses. You have to stay humbled on it, and you have to take your medicine if you hit a wayward shot on strategising to at least salvage bogey. Q. You talk about loving to hit shots around here and this style. Today, can you give a couple of examples of shots that you hit that you wouldn't hit anywhere else. PATRICK REED: Yeah, I had one on 4 to the left -- yeah, 4. I hit an awful drive. I mean, it was so far right that I ended up almost where the people were walking. Hit a 5-iron up there just short middle of the green, and I had about 35 or 36 yards to the front. And at home, there's enough green so I could go over the bunker, even though I was laying on the down slope. There was enough where if it's soft, I could spin it and stop it. But instead I had to pull out a lob wedge and hit this rolling-over hook shot with my hands where it lands and kicks left, and I was able to -- at best all you're going to do is hit it to 15 feet. I got it pin high to 15 feet, had a pretty easy putt. I had another one on 10. I'm sitting over there and normally you're thinking about putting it to the left. Unfortunately I made bogey because I felt like I hit a good put that didn't go in. But I was able to cut the chip shot rather than my normal square because there was a bank that I knew I could feed it off of. It was just working the hands a little bit more and seeing different shots and using ridges to your advantage. Q. Where do you feel like you're at game-wise right now coming into this tournament? How did you feel about what the year has been like? Also, just where you are in the path of your career? PATRICK REED: The year hasn't been quite how I wanted it to be yet. I've had a lot of top 10's, but I don't go to play golf tournaments to finish top 10. I try to go and win golf tournaments. I feel like the game has been really close. Ball striking has been there, and then next thing you know, when I'm hitting the ball well, the putter's not there. And then I'm putting well and the ball striking is not there. So if I keep putting three of the four things together, and I need to get all four of them going. I feel like I've gone a long way with how I've hit the ball the past two weeks, especially over here, because I knew it was going to be tough on me being able to control not only the height but the speed through the golf ball, because if you start slashing at it and hitting it hard to try keep it low, you're adding spin, so the ball's going to go even more sideways. So I brought my coach these past two weeks and I feel like it's really helped and we've got some things dialled down. I just need to get off to a better start tomorrow on ball striking. I felt like the tee shots, I wasn't hitting many fairways and you don't want to play out of this rough and wispy stuff all day. Q. You've talked about enjoying the style of golf over here. Is there anything else that you've learned to like over here, food or drink-wise or culturally? PATRICK REED: I would say the simplicity. You come over here and like last week when I was over, when we were driving from the golf course from the hotel there's just a lot of farmland, a lot of sceneries, you see the water to the left, the farms to the right and it's just a two-lane road going in and out. So you literally just have that kind of relaxed feeling that you have golf and then relaxing time. Yet at home it's golf, sit in traffic, traffic lights, a thousand cars, people honking at you, and then you get home and you're trying to go through a busy hotel, so it's still stressful off the golf course. Here it seems like it's just golf and then just kind of relax, have some fun. It's definitely a way different pace than back home. It's nice. It's a great change of pace. Q. You just talked about your hands for the chipping, this is what caused the shot. Do you know about the driving, why your shot was right? Did you figure out on the golf course straightaway what causes this or right now you don't know why? PATRICK REED: Yeah, I know why: It's just one of these things I've always gotten pretty long with my golf swing, and because of that the club kind of sags behind me at the top. So I'd have to actually really flip it hard to release the club. I'm trying to take my hands a little bit more out of the full swing. If I don't time it correctly, it's going to most likely go high right. That drive I hit on 4 today, I would say probably on most golf courses it's probably out of bounds. I got lucky that it wasn't. And I think that drive, that one tee shot and the 4-iron on number 1, and the drive on 13 were really the only bad drives I hit today. Even the one on 13 was actually five yards right at my target, it's just with the wind in the face and how much that fairway kind of the angles. If you go five yards farther right of your target, it's a 30-yard more carry. I only missed the fairway by a foot. So the game is really close. I just need to keep going and hopefully the wind blows even more, because it would be more exciting to hit some lower shots and make it tough. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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