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DEAN & DELUCA INVITATIONAL

May 24, 2017

Phil Mickelson

Fort Worth, Texas

Q. Two-time Dean & Deluca Invitational champion, Phil Mikelson joins us. Phil, welcome back. If we can get some comments.
PHIL MICKELSON: It's nice to be back. Nice day today. Although it's supposed to get warm this week, we had a nice day today and it was fun to be back.

Q. What caused you to add this back in this year?
PHIL MICKELSON: Nothing real specific. Just, you know, I'm excited to be back here and playing. No real specific reason.

Q. Can I ask a U.S. Open preview question. Going to a first-time venue at Erin Hills, talk about the unique challenges of that, what you might've done at Chambers Bay to get ready for a first-time venue.
PHIL MICKELSON: I haven't been to Erin Hills. I don't know a lot about it. I know there is a lot of versatility, a lot ability to play a lot of different tee boxes and different angles into greens and moves tees up and back and so forth.

Rather than try to -- I'm taking a whole different approach to Erin Hills, and that is I'm not going to do anything. I think that let them overthink it and I just work on in I game and try to be sharp and go from there.

Q. So you won't go in for a couple practice rounds?
PHIL MICKELSON: Very likely not.

Q. Course come back to you quickly today when you were going around?
PHIL MICKELSON: A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. You know, I haven't played here in a while, so I still remember the course prior to it going under some renovation.

It still always kind of surprises me. Like no bunker on 13 caught me off guard. Like, Wow, I thought there was a bunker behind the green.

Or the bunker on 14 used to be on the right side of the hole and now it's on the left, and I guess it's been that way for seven years, I just haven't picked really up on it.

So little nuances I still remember it the way it was before. It's in great shape; it's going to be a fun week.

Q. Ryan Palmer was talking the other day, he's a member here, about maybe playing a little bit more aggressively. Would you play this golf course aggressively in your opinion, or do you have to kind of dial it back?
PHIL MICKELSON: I think that's kind of a momentary question, or answer, because I think it changes. I think it changes with the wind, with the pin position each hole. I think it changes with how you feel, what you feel more comfortable with off the tee.

I think that you have to attack this golf course to win. I mean, I think the years that I won I ended up shooting low scores at some point. I know I shot 63 the first time I won it.

You have to kind of get after this course and make birdies. The greens are beautiful. They're in perfect shape. They have one full contours and you can make a lot of putts.

So to win here you're going to have to make birdies, but you also have to kind of pick and choose when to get aggressive.

Q. Did you feel comfortable out there with what you saw with some of the things that were fresh and new?
PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the day. We had great weather. I had a good group. I was just trying to take in how I was going to play the course this week given certain pins and what I want to hit off certain tees and so forth.

I played here a lot over the years and it comes back pretty quick.

Q. Feel like your game now fits this course better than, say, five years ago? Obviously won twice so fit it well then.
PHIL MICKELSON: It's hard to say. I think if you're playing well you can play just about any golf course. The thing about Colonial is that you can't overpower Colonial. There are only two par-5s. You're not going to -- there are no given birdie holes.

But you can be rewarded. You can birdie just about every hole if you hit a good shot, so there a lot of reward about well-struck shots here.

I think that's my favorite thing about this course is that very rarely is a well-struck shot penalized.

Q. Can you reveal anything about what Tom Brady might have told you, the swing tip he talked to about you?
PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, overload, underload. It's about how to create speed, how to retrain and reprogram your governor for speed. Absolutely.

I've been doing a lot of the same stuff, and he just kind of explained how he applied it to football and throwing and arm velocity.

We've been doing it - I say we - Sean Cochran and myself -- have been doing it for a few years. Sean worked with Tom years ago, back in the early 2000s, and is familiar with a lot of those techniques. I think they've been refined over the years. I think Tom has really refined it and applied it to other sports other than baseball and other than just throwing, to golf. So it's overload, underload.

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