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U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 14, 2018

Scott Piercy

Southampton, New York

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Welcome to the first round of the 2018 U.S. Open Championship at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.

I'm very pleased to welcome this afternoon Scott Piercy, who opened with a 1-under 69, playing in the first group of the day today, going off the first hole.

Scott, can you just talk about your round out there and the conditions today?

SCOTT PIERCY: Yeah, I played really good (laughter). You know, going into today, I actually really struggled with my preparation this week. I walked off the golf course after four holes yesterday frustrated so I didn't really see this coming.

But kind of regrouped. Went home last night, looked over some things to kind of get me back on track with the ball striking anyway.

The putter kind of felt like it's coming around. Warmed up, had a pretty good warmup this morning with some of those thoughts I kind of found last night. I kind of worked my way into the round, hit a couple of shots that were really good that kind of gave me some confidence to kind of build on that.

The biggest key was that I was hitting it solid. Solid with a lot of wind is key. Once I started hitting it solid, I could start flighting the ball down. The more you can flight the ball down and hit it solid, keep it out of the wind, the better. At least that's how I feel.

So I made some good putts. Obviously, the one on 12 was kind of silly. But early on, the first nine holes, being the first group out, the greens are perfect, just perfect. The wind was -- when I warmed up on the range, the wind was probably close to 20 miles an hour.

Once we teed off, the first, probably, eight or nine holes, it dropped to probably seven to ten. So we got a little bit of kind of benign conditions the first nine holes-ish.

So I was able to make the turn at even. I made a good birdie on 10.

I actually hit a really good tee shot on 11, landed it perfect. When it landed, it just went sideways right off the green. So made a bad -- kind of a bad bogey there.

12 kind of saved me with the big putt. I was able just, you know, play smart, leave the ball in good spots.

My two putts, I really wanted to make the birdie putt on 16. I really thought I could get, maybe 16 and 17, get to 3. That was kind of my goal.

At 15, which I didn't drive in the fairway, but it's a wedge if you do. So I thought if I could get to 2 or 3 kind of after 14, I thought that would be doing good.

I hit some really good shots coming in. 17, it's 194 yards, and I just hit a hard, flat 5 iron. It went 170 yards. So just to tell you how much the wind is really pumping out there, I normally hit a 5 iron about 205, and it went about 170. It's playing tough.

So I'm really happy to kind of get out of the wind and get out of here early, and hopefully it's not as windy tomorrow when I've got to play in the afternoon.

I'm excited. I've got some good swing thoughts in my mind. The putter showed up, which I've needed this year. So I'm excited.

THE MODERATOR: This is your sixth U.S. Open. You finished tied for second two years ago at Oakmont so you obviously are familiar with the challenge that The Open presents.

With not feeling so great coming off the course yesterday, how tough is it to sort of reset your mind frame and come out and attack it again this morning?

SCOTT PIERCY: I played early yesterday morning before the rain came, and then I just left the golf course in the rain so I had a lot of time to reset.

Went home, ordered some pizzas, pounded some pizza, and just had some fun hanging around the house. I just needed some time away because it was -- golf's hard enough as it is, and then we're at the U.S. Open, so kind of got to back up.

It's funny because at Oakmont, there was a little bit of similarities. I was a little bit struggling with my golf swing Monday, Tuesday. Kind of found a little bit on Wednesday. Actually, that was the best ball striking week of my life. So a little bit of a parallel.

It's hard to say you hit it great with the wind like this. But I hit it really solid, which is a really good start.

Q. Hi, Scott. A lot of bogeys on the course today, but not from you. Do you think it was just the wind, or was there something else that made other players kind of struggle to keep their scores low different than the wind today at this course?
SCOTT PIERCY: What's tough about the wind here is that it's crosswinds. It's not really down. You don't -- it's more of almost like 3:00s or 9:00s. You don't get a lot of, say, 5:30s or 11:30s.

You're getting a lot of dead crosswinds. You get 25 miles, 20 miles of crosswinds, when you're trying to hit it at an angle to a fairway, it's hard to pick your lines and know how much that ball -- I like to hit a cut. So if I got it off to the left, is that ball going to move 40 yards, 50 yards? Sometimes you're aiming in the hay just to hit it in the fairway.

So understanding how much the ball is going to move, stuff like that. And you've got to remember, if you do miss the fairway, if the ball does curve 40 yards and it goes in the rough, the ball sinks to the bottom, and now you're hitting a flier or hitting a ball that might not fly, but it's going to roll a lot.

You're trying to judge where the ball is landing, how much the ball is going to roll, trying to leave it in the correct spots around the green.

And then the green -- I mean, the greens are big, but the effective greens are really small. So one of the things that I was trying to do was the front of the green, plus five, and just try to kind of hit like a low roller, kind of like a bump and run from however far. That was just land it on the front, kind of chase it in to the middle of the greens.

Then you get on the green, and you're trying to putt with the ball wiggling. So there's a lot of stuff that is difficult. So there's a lot. So it's not just, oh, yeah, it's tough out there. There's every aspect.

Q. Scott, could you talk a little bit more about your list of swing thoughts. Where do you keep it? Is it on paper? On your phone? On your laptop? Are those like thoughts you've compiled over the years, or what are they?
SCOTT PIERCY: You know, actually, I was looking at Instagram last night at some of the stuff I posted. I usually only post if I really like it.

There was a drill I did -- I started out hitting the ball really good in January, and I took a video of me in December right before I went to the Sony, and I put a stick kind of, you know, on a plane kind of behind me that I could swing up and over it and then I could swing -- you know. I knew that I had just flushed it for a couple months doing that.

First thing I came out, I put the stick down, started swinging, started catching the ball solid, and the ball started flying online. Kind of tried to grow from there.

Putting it on the golf course, the first tee shot, I was like, ooh. It was a little sketchy. Then I kind of tugged my next shot.

Then the tee shot on 2 was kind of like a low rider.

Then I hit a really good tee shot on 3 with my drive. That kind of gave me a little bit of confidence that what I'm doing's right. Then I hit a pretty good shot into 3, and then I hit a really good drive on 4.

I just piped it on 4. I'm like, all right, here we go. Then I hit a really good shot on 4, and I actually flew it seven yards farther than I wanted, kind of over the back of the green. I ended up making par.

But I hit two really good shots there that kind of gave me a lot of confidence to know that I was doing the right thing.

Q. Scott, could you describe your qualifier in Columbus? Were you really bummed when you missed it by one? When did you hear you were getting in, and how did you feel about that?
SCOTT PIERCY: Yeah. Any time you have to qualify, that sucks, first of all. But I was in that position, and I needed to qualify. It was 11 guys for three spots and then two alternates. I ended up having to play 42 holes until -- what was that, until Tuesday morning.

It got dark. I wanted to keep playing in the dark just to get it over with so I didn't have to come back on Tuesday. I actually thought about not coming back Tuesday morning. Obviously, I was going to come back.

I think Wednesday or Thursday, we called the USGA and kind of said how does this -- how is this going to pan out as far as people getting in? We knew they had filled 150 spots, so there were six more.

So I want to say Wednesday or kind of Thursday afternoon we had a pretty good idea where we stood, and then I could plan to start looking at houses and flights to get up here.

Nice to be able to prepare and have the mindset that you're in, instead of kind of waiting.

THE MODERATOR: This is a piece of information. That was the Memphis, Tennessee sectional qualifier, right?

SCOTT PIERCY: Yes.

Q. I think you only hit nine greens today, so you must have had a bunch of pretty good saves. Could you kind of go through those, and how long was the putt on 12?
SCOTT PIERCY: On 12, well, the pin's like four off the right, and I was on the left so it had have been 80 feet, 90 feet, I bet.

As far as hitting nine greens, I bet you there was five of those that were putting three or four feet off the green. So I think that's a little bit of a skewed number.

I did make some good -- I made a good save on 7 out of that front bunker, made a good save on 9 from front of the green. I made a really good save on 15 from that front bunker, kind of the down slope. I had the wind helping me.

The wind will stand the ball up when you're chipping it, just make the ball do nothing. So that's some of the key things -- I was in between clubs on 15, had 130 to the front out of the rough. I thought I was going to jump, and I thought I could get wedge there. I just wanted to hit it real hard.

I thought 9 would -- if it jumped and the wind kind of laid for a second, it would be 20, 30 yards over the back. So I'm like, let me just hit this wedge as hard as I can. It actually bounced into the bunker because the wind nailed it, and it didn't jump. But leaving myself kind of the into-the-wind chip shot made it a lot easier there.

Then 16, 17, 18, I hit it on the greens. I'm trying to think of where -- I felt like most of the back nine, except for 11, I pretty much hit on the green. 11 and 15 were the two that I missed, I feel like, unless they were just off the green.

Q. Just wondering if, after walking off yesterday, did you do any drills in the backyard or just look at videos, or what did you kind of do to get back on track?
SCOTT PIERCY: You know, sometimes when you just think about it and you try to like do it in your mind, it helps more than actually hitting the ball because then you don't -- if you hit it a little thin or miss a little right or pull a little left, then you keep the frustration going.

So for me, it was kind of like, all right, calm the mind. Get this crap out of your head. And then, okay, what's some of the stuff that you do? And then I know that that's a key thing that I did, and I was hitting it really good.

So it was kind of a little bit of a test project this morning when I walked on the range. But from where I need to be and want to be, it's where it puts me. So I knew it wouldn't be that far off. It was just getting comfortable with it on the golf course.

THE MODERATOR: Early tee time this morning means you're obviously tomorrow afternoon. How much of the golf will you watch today and tomorrow morning? How do you keep yourself occupied while you're waiting to play with the layover until tomorrow afternoon?

SCOTT PIERCY: It's funny. The house that I'm staying at just had cable installed, and they installed like ten channels. So I don't think I'll have the channel to watch. Hopefully, I'll sleep in tomorrow. I had to get up at 4:00 this morning. So hopefully, I don't watch a ton of it. I'd like to watch it just to see what they're doing and where the ball's going.

I think the wind is pretty much supposed to be the same direction, kind of the west, maybe west/northwest today. And if it keeps getting firmer and if the wind's still up, then it's obviously good to see where the ball is bouncing and stuff like that.

THE MODERATOR: And you can actually watch it on usopen.com.

SCOTT PIERCY: Okay. I'll do that.

THE MODERATOR: Streaming live.

Q. With the different winds and direction, how different did the golf course play today than it did earlier in the week?
SCOTT PIERCY: A lot. No. 1, I hit 4 iron down 115 yards on Monday or Tuesday. Today, I hit 3 wood and had like 157 or something.

No. 9 I hit driver, 3 wood into the green on Monday. Today, I hit 3 wood, 5 iron. So there's a couple instances there.

No. 15, I want to say I hit a hybrid the other day. I did driver today. Hit it the same exact spot as I did the other day.

So it makes a big difference. I think having the wind kind of more out of the west helps with 9 and 18. I'm not going to say it's easier, but I think it makes a few holes easier, makes a few holes harder. But definitely compared to Monday, Tuesday, it was -- the wind is probably a little bit easier. It's not making it easier, but just for those few holes.

Q. As to your frustration, is it self-induced, or is it compounded by the magnitude and desire to win an event like this?
SCOTT PIERCY: No. I've been struggling a lot the last few weeks. Just kind of got out of the groove and just kind of compounded. And then obviously, you're trying to prep, trying to prep, and you're trying to push it, trying to force it. You've just got to kind of back away and get away from it.

I think one of the big things it did for me was it kind of reset my expectations. I hit the ball really good, say, the first three months of the year and felt like I should have won two or three times.

Then started to hit the ball bad and then won with Billy in New Orleans. Then I've kind of been just a little bit on a downward kind of click.

You know, you get your expectations so high for, you know, you're hitting it good, you're putting fairly decent, you feel like you should win. And then you do win, and you're like, all right, I should win all the time. Then you start playing bad.

So there's a little bit of -- I think that's the biggest thing it did for me is just, you know what -- I even told my wife, I'm like, there's a good chance I'll be home on Saturday. Unless I show up a different person in the morning, I'll see you Saturday.

Like I said, it reset my expectations, and I tried to come out here with a good mindset, a good attitude to -- I knew it was going to be tough, especially when I got here and it's blowing 20 in the morning. So everybody's going to have a tough time.

THE MODERATOR: A great start today. Scott Piercy with a 1-under 69, first round at the 118th U.S. Open. Great job. We'll look forward to watching tomorrow.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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