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AT&T PEBBLE BEACH PRO-AM

February 7, 2019

Jason Day

Pebble Beach, California

Q. 6-under par today. How would you assess your round?
JASON DAY: It was good. Obviously I had one 3-putt bogey but other than that I played pretty well. I love this golf course here. The greens were running very nicely out there, even though we have had a lot of rain. The next few days after today is going to be interesting to see how the golf courses hold up and as the week progresses I think it's going to be a little cooler, a little bit more windier. And on top of it we're going to get some rain. So just try and get something low today to try and propel yourself up there. And overall I'm very happy with how everything went.

Q. How important was that knowing that weather was coming?
JASON DAY: Yeah, it's just coming around. Obviously it's imperative to get off to a good start. When you have four or five layers on, over the next few days with a lot of wind and rain, that's very hard to play some good golf because obviously the balls start right because of the water and things get a little bit tougher that way. But I think today with pretty benign winds out there I'm assuming that a lot of guys are going to go deep.

Q. You said you like this golf course. What, how does it fit your eye?
JASON DAY: Yeah, it definitely fits my eye, just off the tee. I hit a lot of good quality drives off the tee today that set me up to, I hit a lot of position-wise. I wasn't just hitting it down the middle, I was actually being able to pick which side I was going to hit down the fairways. Obviously with how soft the fairways are you can kind of pick either left or right side, get yourself the correct angle coming in the green. Today just really patient with it.

Q. How big is like the mental approach the next few days with the weather?
JASON DAY: Yeah, that's the toughest part is just really not trying to push too hard, even though with softer conditions you want to. You just got to try and be as patient as possible. That's a big thing is I don't know when the rain's going to come tomorrow. At some point it will and who knows how hard it's going to come down, but you just got to be patient with your self.

Q. Traditionally Monterey Peninsula Country Club has been the most scorable of the three courses in the rotation. You start here. How important was it to put up a good number here in the opening round?
JASON DAY: Yeah, it's important. With the conditions, I mean the par-5s are all pretty much reachable, and with the exception of a couple today. But where the pin locations are and how receptive the greens are you actually have to kind of underplay them, to be honest. I hit 9-iron from 130 just to stop the ball from spinning. If you got good control over your golf ball out there you give yourself a lot of opportunities. But the one concerning thing is obviously the footprints on the greens. And the greens out there were really nice, they ran very true, I thought. And if you can do that, give yourself the opportunities, you're going to shoot a low one.

Q. Obviously with the wet weather the fairways are playing wider. That really fits your game right now.
JASON DAY: Yeah, well, and that's the thing is it's going to be cooler and there's going to be rain so you just got to try and hit it as far as you can down the fairway. It's not going to run anywhere. You won't miss too many fairways if you're somewhere down the left or right, which is great because you're going to get ball in hand and from there you got a semi-clean lie with a clean ball. So, yeah, driver is very important this week.

Q. I would think Spyglass, while it's a hard golf course, if you could be a little bit more protected there in rain and wind may be an advantage.
JASON DAY: Yeah, it definitely is an advantage once you get through the first five or six holes. But we got Spyglass tomorrow. I think the wind is going to be somewhere in the 10 mile-an-hour mark. But obviously Pebble on the Saturday is going to be interesting. I think we're going to get a lot of -- and Saturday, Sunday -- we're going to get a lot of wind on Sunday and it's going to be cool. So the ball's not going to go very far. The course is going to play very long. And with the amount of people that are obviously, the traffic walking all over the greens, that's going to make it very interesting to putt.

Q. Maybe a little bit windier than that tomorrow.
JASON DAY: Well, I hope not.

(Laughter.)

Q. As you referred to there, how different is it today, knowing what you know about what's coming that changes the way you think, right?
JASON DAY: Yeah, I've typically play pretty well on this golf course in the past and I've always got off to a good start here, so if you can shoot somewhere 5-under and below, you're on to a good start there. I think with what average win here is like 16 to 17-under. Granted, obviously, a lot of that is due to the weather. So if we're getting 20, 25 miles-an-hour winds tomorrow with rain that's going to be brutal. But the good thing about that is I'm playing Spyglass, so hopefully I can get through the open holes and get into the trees and hopefully the ball's won't be affected as much.

Q. Is there anything special about your reset for this new year? Anything special about your approach or goals or anything?
JASON DAY: No, I just got a clearer head. When you don't have any distractions and you got a clearer mind and you can focus on golf and focus on what you're trying to do and accomplish, I think things start to align and get, they become more balanced. I think if you have more balance in your life it definitely yields good play. So I'm, I've got nothing else in my life, other than my family and my golf, so that's all I'm trying to focus on right now. And I feel like I'm very close to getting back to where I need to be and hopefully, if that's the case, then I'm going to compete and play well and win.

Q. Spyglass plays long even when it's sunny. How much different, how much longer and more difficult does it play?
JASON DAY: Well the par-5s probably won't be as reachable as some of them, so you got to lay up on some of them. I played there yesterday, actually, just nine holes and 7, I couldn't even reach, so I just went, typically when it's nice and dry you're hitting driver, 6-iron into it, driver, 5-iron. So that's one. The opportunities that you typically have slowly kind of diminish just because of the weather. So that's why I said earlier, just got to be very patient and just creep your way up the leaderboard.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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