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BARRACUDA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 5, 2018

William McGirt

Reno, Nevada

Q. Nice golfing out there. Some comments on your day.
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Pretty darned good day. D.J. and I, we just kind of fed off each other. We both birdied 1, he birdied 2, we both bogeyed 3. To tell you what kind of day it was, we figured out we shot 15-under best ball with a bogey. So we made some birdies and I made an eagle on 13.

But all in all it was a really solid day. Hit a bunch of good shots, a bunch of good putts. And there's two of them that I'm still trying to figure out how they missed. But I'll take it.

Q. Where were those?
WILLIAM MCGIRT: 9 and 15. 15, it was dead center, a foot short. And it kind of bounced and missed completely left and it was breaking left to right. But it was nice to come in and play well today and not have to go into Greensboro with pressure trying to make enough points to get in the playoffs.

So nice to kind of get that done. And I figure about the end of the day it's probably going to be somewhere around 10th or 12th, but I think that will be enough to get me in the playoffs.

Q. Projected in the top 90 now. And you'll drop a few spots from there. But still, like you say, you got done what you needed to get done this week.
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Yeah, and it's nice to actually have next week off. This was five in a row for me, and I'm getting a little old to be playing five, six in a row. So solid day all around.

Q. 20 points today. Pretty incredible. That's a great round.
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Yeah, eagles help. I was sitting there looking at the leaderboard all week and going through looking at scorecards at how many guys I was beating score-wise but they had made an eagle or they go out and make eight birdies and three bogeys, whatever. So it was nice to go ahead and play a good round and really just the one bogey. I was pretty pleased with that.

Q. Take this week off and carry that momentum into --
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Try to carry it into Greensboro and the playoffs. I love Sedgefield. It's two and a half hours from where I grew up. It's two and a half hours from where I live now. So played well there in the past. So hopefully keep that momentum going.

Q. How would you sum up 2018 for you? Has it been frustrating?
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Well, it's been frustrating, but it's been frustrating for a whole lot of reasons. My golf hasn't been that great. But honestly the last three months I've played -- this round today was indicative of how I played the last three months. Even though the scores haven't reflected it. I played really well tee to green. I've hit a bunch of putts but just haven't gone in.

And so it's kind of hard to sit there and say, you're playing terrible. Your scoring is a little off, but you're playing great. And that's the thing. Brandon kept preaching to me: Patience, patience, patience. And it finally paid off today.

Q. How much was the fact (indiscernible) weighing on your mind entering into the tournament? (Indiscernible) position?
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Honestly, that's the only reason I came here was to try to get more points to lock up the spot. But it's been a hard year. Hadn't really told many people this, but I'm going to end up having hip surgery after playoffs. I'm probably going to miss next year.

That's been the hardest thing. My body just won't let me hit the shots that I need to hit. Like the shot I had on 18. If I get a ball that's below my feet or a lie that's severely uphill where my left foot is above my right it's bone on bone. And I just I run out of room. My hips can't rotate anymore. So they push back, and then I either hold on to it or I flip it.

And that one on 18, I just flipped it. That has been part of the frustration from this year is the fact that my body won't let me do what it needs to do.

Q. How exactly -- what --
WILLIAM MCGIRT: I have a torn labrum, but I also have what they call femoroacetabular impingement, which is basically a growth on the bone. It's like a bone spur. So when the ball and socket rotate and move around, when I turn into my left side, the internal rotation, it turns into bone on bone. So every time it just kind of tears the labrum. And it's not -- it's not that painful. It's just that it restricts what I'm able to do. That's the worst part.

Q. When did that come up? When did you get --
WILLIAM MCGIRT: I flew Monday to New Orleans. I went to Nashville to see Tom Byrd, and he looked at the X-ray and he said you've got a torn labrum. I thought you had to have an MRI to tell that. He said, you do. He said, we're going to do it, but I'm going to circle this on the screen here.

When we took that MRI in and pulled it up he said it's going to be right there. Sure enough, right where he circled it. And it's just a guy that's seen that over and over and over.

And it sucks, but life. It's part of getting older. And the thing was he asked me -- we were talking and he said, okay, tell me about your sports history growing up. I said I played baseball for 10 years. He said, okay, what position. I said catcher. He said, for 10 years? I said, yeah. He said, no wonder. He said, I'm kind of surprised you made it this long without this happening.

It's one of those things that really it had been bothering me all year, and it just got -- in San Antonio it was very painful to walk. And so I decided to go have it checked out. He basically said short of breaking a bone I couldn't do much more damage to it that he couldn't repair with surgery. So we're going to do that.

Q. You have it scheduled?
WILLIAM MCGIRT: I don't. I'm waiting on the playoffs to see. But probably a week or two after the playoffs I'll go in and have it done.

Q. And it knocks you out for how long?
WILLIAM MCGIRT: He said to expect four months without even hitting a ball. Two months on crutches. So it's probably going to be a year.

Q. With that uncertainty, that made this week even more important for you.
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Heck, yeah. Obviously we want to make the playoffs, and, knock on wood, I've been fortunate enough to get to at least two playoff events every year. So I've still got some work to do to get two playoff events in this year, but I should get one in now for sure.

And that's big for a lot of reasons. I mean, obviously retirement and stuff like that. But there's a whole lot of other stuff that it means a lot for, too. So it's nice to come out here play a round like that, especially on Sunday.

Q. Does it hurt you when you walk? I mean, this is a tough course.
WILLIAM MCGIRT: Not as bad. This is a tough walk. It wasn't terribly bad. But it starts to lead to other problems. That's the thing. You don't realize how much you favor something like that. And one of the tests they put me through is they'd have me just walk in the office. And they're all standing behind me. I literally took five steps and they started laughing. I'm like, what? And they said, you just have to watch it. And they had it on video. I'm like, okay. That's when I knew it's time.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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