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BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

September 7, 2018

Justin Rose

Carmel, Indiana

Q. Justin, bogey-free 63. A beautiful round of golf.
JUSTIN ROSE: Delighted with that. No mistakes out there. Actually, no, no mistakes in the scorecard. Still some mistakes out there but saved myself.

Obviously, 15th hole comes to mind, left in the right bunker. Tough. Made that momentum making or momentum keeping putt and obviously birdied the par 5 and kept everything going. Yeah, really smooth front-9.

Went out in 4 and actually every hole on the front-9 I had a birdie look. Really turning in 4 was about as many as I could have turned in. Good day's work. Drove it well. Doing the right things. Put it in the fairway off the tee. Had a lot of good numbers.

Q. Got to ask you this, you win the U.S. Open just down the street at Merion. You've won this here before. What is it, the sauce?
JUSTIN ROSE: Cheese steaks, I guess. Must be something in the water around here for sure. I played well. The crowd latched on to it for sure. I get good support around here.

Nice when they're reminding you all the time that it's your town as well. Obviously I like to come here and play well. It's nice to have the added extra bit of enthusiasm from the crowd.

Q. Guessing you're pulling for Philadelphia in last night's game, right?
JUSTIN ROSE: I got to do it. Every year I pick a team. I think this year I might have to go with the Eagles. I know you were with the Falcons. I'm jumping on the bandwagon while I'm in Philly, for sure.

Q. How do you feel about your round today?
JUSTIN ROSE: Delighted. Obviously bogey-free is always fun to do and when you tag 7 birdies on to it as well it's always fun.

Whenever you play a par 70 golf course makes it look even better. 63 is always a fun score to shoot.

Q. Anything different from the course from yesterday to today?
JUSTIN ROSE: Not really. I think it's out there. It's there for the taking. After the hour rain, heavy rain we had last night, the greens were even softer. Yesterday the greens were soft-ish but there were occasional areas they were getting firm, whereas today I think you could be very confident with your iron play.

Actually today the challenge was not spinning it too much with wedge shots. The pins can be tricky here, they can put them, you know, on to the shelves which is hard to get to with your wedges, also a lot of pins where you can use the sideboards and backboards to feed it to the hole. Mixture of easy and hard pins but it's all about precision iron play. I guess I was on today.

Q. How was your putting today?
JUSTIN ROSE: I putted really well today. I made a really long putt at No. 13 which obviously helps the stats. Someone told me I made 140 feet of putts, which that's good going.

Q. Are you anticipating a shoot-out this weekend given what the scores have been the first two days?
JUSTIN ROSE: You'll have to keep going forward here. Weather is going to change, get cooler, maybe some rain. Not thunder rain but like England rain that we might have to play in.

We'll see how that goes. That might make the course a little longer, little tougher but I think for the most part we're going to have to keep making birdies, yeah.

Q. You kind of solidified the Top-5 spot it seems like right now. Given your track record at East Lake, do you feel like if you can just get in the Top-5 that you got a pretty good shot at the FedExCup?
JUSTIN ROSE: You have to win at East Lake. We all know that. Being in a decent spot going in there I am right now. So, yeah, no one can catch Bryson, he's locked up the No. 1 spot which is great for him. Going in No. 2 is the next best thing. There's so many scenarios in play that you want to just be as high up as you can going into East Lake.

Q. What kind of number will you need to post if you want to win this weekend?
JUSTIN ROSE: Probably going to have to get to 20, I think in that realm. Somewhere in that realm.

Q. Do you know Xander Schauffele?
JUSTIN ROSE: He's a great player. I played a bit of golf with him the last couple seasons. Love the way he plays, love his temperament. Good putter, drives the ball far.

This golf course is suiting him now. It's a golf course that suits a lot of guys if you can fly it 295, 300 in the air, really kind of opens out in certain areas and with the soft conditions guys are having short irons. Comes down to putter. Xander is a very confident and aggressive putter. The greens being slow-ish is probably making that a good thing.

Q. You played very precise like that. How can you hopefully avoid your mindset like Bryson told me last week he was laser focused? How about you?
JUSTIN ROSE: I was tired, running late this morning. Sometimes it's not always -- you don't have to feel perfect to play good golf. I think that's the most important thing I realized today, I was on a little bit -- I didn't have that much sleep, didn't sleep that well so it's knowing that you can compete fine on that.

The trick is now today to recover, not to push myself even more, not to go spend three hours on the range now and really push the system harder.

It's about understanding that yeah, I can compete today but I need to take care of tomorrow with just a few recovery protocols.

Q. You got to know your body.
JUSTIN ROSE: Exactly. Once I got into the round today the adrenaline was there, I was playing well, the confidence was there. You can push through on a day like today.

Q. Did you have to rush to the first tee today or were you in good shape?
JUSTIN ROSE: I was a minute or two to spare. I don't like to be on the first tee long. I like to be there two, three minutes, getting going.

I did everything short and sharp today. I didn't putt before my round, went straight to the range after the gym, went to the range and came to the putting green before teeing off. I normally putt, then range, then come back to putting. I came to the putting green ten minutes earlier just because of the way my timing was this morning.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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