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TRAVELERS CHAMPIONSHIP

June 20, 2018

Patrick Reed

Cromwell, Connecticut

THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome reigning Masters champion Patrick Reed. Thanks for joining us for a few minutes prior to the start of the Travelers Championship. You're making your seventh start in the event this week, an event that you've had some success in, most recently a fifth-place finish last year and then barely outside the top 10 in 2016. Obviously a place that you like coming back to. Just if we could just start off with a couple comments on being back here this week.

PATRICK REED: You know, it's always great being back. It's one of my favorite spots to be. We love coming here. We love the area. We think the golf course is great. It's always in really good, almost perfect shape every year we come, and the fans and the people, Travelers and everybody who's helping with the event has always been very kind, very generous and very nice to all of us and very supportive, and what better way to repay that than by always coming to their event?

THE MODERATOR: I mentioned the Masters victory and you obviously had an incredible week last week, put yourself right in the mix. That, too, I would imagine has got to make you feel good as you're starting the week here?

PATRICK REED: Yeah, you know, any time you get in contention at a major and put together a solid and good performance, it always gives you confidence and makes you feel good and makes you feel like what you're doing is the right thing, and you're going in the right direction. We feel good, just making sure the energy level stays up and just looking forward to the week and getting out and playing some good golf.

Q. About last week, what's the balance for you between being pleased about getting into contention in the final round and frustration with letting it slip away over the last few holes?
PATRICK REED: Hey, you know, if you would have told me that I had a chance to win it coming down Sunday, I would have been pleased. You know, yeah, I felt like I just made too many careless mistakes towards the end, and because of that, you're not going to win at a major making careless mistakes, especially on Sunday. The good thing is I knew I had to get off to a fast start. I knew I had to go out and put some pressure on the leaders, and to be able to flip that switch and just be able to go 5-under through the first seven and still think I left one out there on 4, which was a seven-footer for birdie that I missed, just to think that and know that I'm able to kind of flip the switch like that on a Sunday at a major, it just gives me confidence, really, more than anything. Of course I would have loved to have close it out and win, but it was a great week all in all, and there's a lot of stuff I can take from it moving forward. That's how I'm looking at it. Last week was last week, and take the positives from it, and the things that I didn't do as well are things that I'm just going to work on yesterday and today to get ready for this week.

Q. You mentioned that energy level; how do you come off a grueling week like last week and then sort of get up for this one this week?
PATRICK REED: Well, I mean, any time I'm in competition and competitiveness, it's very easy for me to get up and get going. That's not really the issue. It's more on because of how long of a week last week was, when I get here, don't overwork early in the week and tire yourself out physically and mentally. You know, you can really perform and be high energy for Thursday through Sunday.

Q. Is that something you've done?
PATRICK REED: I cut back a little bit. Not too much, but I really managed my time a lot better, and I felt like that's what happened when I won Augusta. It really takes a toll on you on figuring out how to manage your time, how to get the most out of every minute of every day that you have. That goes with practice, with at the house, anything you're doing, you need to manage it really well. I feel good. I feel like I'm in a better spot now with managing everything. I feel like my energy level is getting back up, and I should be ready to go by tomorrow.

Q. Overall it seemed like you were fairly resistant to a lot of the criticisms that went on last week at the Open. Is that like a conscious part of you that you don't want to put yourself in a negative frame of mind when you're out there, you just want to play and not be distracted by that? Is that a philosophy of yours to play that way?
PATRICK REED: No, you know, honestly I thought the golf course played fair. It's tough. It's hard. It's supposed to be. It's a U.S. Open. You're not supposed to shoot 20-under par to win the golf tournament. I mean, on Saturday the wind picked up and they had two pin placements there. They had the one on 13 that if you hit a good putt with good speed that doesn't go more than three feet past the hole, the ball is going to be fine. It's going to stop. But if you hit it harder than that, then you're dealing with some issues. Ball might roll off the green, ball might go in the bunker. You just don't know. But then the only pin that they could have moved maybe just a yard was the one on 15. But at the same time, when they placed the pins, the wind wasn't supposed to be that high, and that pin would have been fine if it was only blowing 10, but it blew hard.

Even with the pin on 15, you had guys hit good iron shots in there and ended up 10, 12, eight feet from the hole. You had guys that made birdie there. If you hit it past the flag and it ended up going over the green from the fairway, it's the most basic chip or putt back up the hill straight into the wind. Us, professionals, we're licking our chops because those are the ones we can make. All in all, I thought it was a very hard, fun and fair test of golf. You know, it was a great golf course. It was long, and it was a good week.

Q. You mentioned 20-under; you probably won't have to shoot that this week but you'll probably have to shoot something in double digits. Do you feel like the shackles are off a little bit this week in terms of scoring, coming off last week?
PATRICK REED: Well, they're both completely different. I mean, last week being 7,500 yards, more kind of linksey style, firm, fast fairways, windy. If you miss the fairway, you're basically hacking out sideways. It can be nasty. And here you have a shorter golf course, you have a little bit more demanding off the tee. So if you're hitting your tee ball well and you're getting in the fairway, you're going to have a lot of short irons and be able to attack the golf course. Last week you had six holes probably that you had 8-iron or less into the green. Here I think you might have five holes, four holes that are more than 8-iron into the green on par-4s and par-5s. So it's kind of one of those things. You go into this golf course and you think about it completely different than you did last week. This week it's kind of in attack mode. Last week was, okay, how can I manage myself around here where I have the hard holes you can make pars on and the easy holes I can attack to make birdie.

Q. Is it a different kind of fun then?
PATRICK REED: It is, yeah, it's definitely different. This week it's guns blazing. Everyone is going to be firing at flags and going, and last week it's more like, all right, let's try to survive the week.

Q. Phil came out this morning and issued an apology, said that anger and frustration got the best of him on Saturday at the 13th green. I wonder your thoughts on what he did and the storm of controversy that came afterwards?
PATRICK REED: It was interesting. You know, I mean, when you watch something like that, it's hard to kind of see what's all going on, what's kind of going through someone's head. Knowing Phil and knowing the USGA, knowing all the guys and everything, I mean, it's just kind of one of those things that sometimes you make a mistake. It's just kind of one of those things that I'm glad I wasn't in that situation where I didn't have to do something like that or didn't have to make the call of what happened afterwards.

I felt like it was handled the best way that the USGA could handle the situation, and honestly, we just need Phil not to hit his putts over next time.

Q. You talked about being able to attack the course this week. What are some of the challenges that TPC River Highlands presents, and how are you preparing for that?
PATRICK REED: There's multiple challenges here. You know, with going on attack mode, if you get a little too aggressive you can miss some greens in the wrong spots, it makes it very hard to get the ball up-and-down. And also, with all just kind of the subtleties of the slopes and the tree-lined fairways and water areas and trees, it just seems like the wind will swirl a little bit here, and you just have to make sure you know exactly what you're trying to do with the winds. The biggest thing is I think the biggest challenge here is if you get off to a slow start when you're just making four, five, six pars in a row, guys feel like they have to go ahead and press and try to get it going, and when that happens, when you start pressing is when more mistakes happen. Patience is always key for me, but at the same time, I'm probably going to let the reins down a little bit and fire at some flags.

Q. There are some guys in college that are making starts here this week. What are some recollections from when you first turned pro and started coming out with some exemptions?
PATRICK REED: You know, the biggest thing I remember is when I started playing, when I played my first event, I was watching the guys I was playing with who were on the PGA TOUR and all of a sudden I started trying to change my game plan, trying to mold my game after other players rather than just playing golf how I know how to play golf. They all got here by playing the golf that they know how to play, and that's one thing that all of them just need to remember is, hey, you got here for what you did and how hard you have worked, so because of that, you need -- stay on your path because your path will lead you to this level.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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