	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

THE HONDA CLASSIC

March 1, 2019

Rickie Fowler

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Q. The whole group started bizarrely with the ball in the tree. Just talk about that -- there were just a lot of things happening.
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I thought it was almost playing tougher this morning than yesterday. You know, it was very calm. It's a heavy cooler air in the morning. Ball doesn't go very far, and it was kind of moving around. So it makes it a little tough. I didn't really get any mud balls this morning, which was nice, but it was just tough getting numbers right, getting the ball close. You know, with the firm greens, they still -- when they had a little bit of moisture on them still, the ball skipped. It was hard to stop them. I feel like we all did -- Billy and I did a good job of kind of getting through that. J.T. had a couple rough stretches, and it's tough to see. I know he was trying to battle through it. But yeah, it was tough out there. I feel like it starts to play -- I like it to play with at least 5, 10 miles an hour wind, that way you know exactly where it's add, and sometimes you can use the wind to your advantage to stop shots other than downwind. Some guys may like it calm. That's just my preference. So happy to obviously have a tee time for tomorrow and we'll see if we can go move up the board.

Q. Justin said he felt like he was just playing with a dead arm all day. Did you know he was hurting?
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, you could tell, and like I said, he was trying to battle through it. Just couldn't really get it to feel any better.

He did a great job of, like I said, fighting through it. He may still have a chance of getting a tee time tomorrow. We'll see. Like I said, this course is never easy, whether it's calm, windy, whatever it may be. You never know what's going to happen out there, and obviously if you play well here, being defending champ, just give him a tee time and he can go shoot 65-65 on the weekend and be right back in the mix. It's a fine line between having a tee time on Saturday and sitting at home.

Q. What was your vantage point on his chip-in?
RICKIE FOWLER: I felt like I had a pretty good view. I was on his left. I couldn't see when he actually made contact, but I could see the ball once it was about 10 yards off the face. It looked pretty good the whole day. He clipped it nicely. It was tough getting good contact in the pine straw area because it's kind of sandy, muddy pine straw. It sounded good, got some spin on it, and went right in the middle.

Q. You and Billy both made a pretty good save on 8 --
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I ended up making bogey. I three-putted there. But yeah, I at least got the ball out on the green. It was not an easy shot being up against one of the kind of palm trees or palmettos there. Happy with how I kind of fought through today.

Q. When you guys actually face issues like the ball is near a tree or something the score could be affected by, how do you look at it in terms of how much risk you're willing to take?
RICKIE FOWLER: You're talking about kind of like J.T.'s yesterday?

Q. Yeah.
RICKIE FOWLER: It kind of depends where it's at in the tournament. I mean, for the most part, if there's a clean shot, we're taking it, as far as clean contact. Doesn't matter what happens to the club after that. Sometimes you hope the club breaks because like in that case, J.T., like he said, it rattles in your hands when the club doesn't break. When it breaks, at least all that force is released. In his case, it hits the tree and all that force goes into your hands.

Q. Is there any way you can practice -- not that you're going to want to do it over and over again, but to kind of learn how to hit that shot?
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily learning, it's more of a mental thing, just committing to it and basically not backing out of it, commit to the swing and what happens after impact happens. Control everything you can up until that point and see what happens from there.

Q. You made a 4 on 6 today. When you can make a par there -- I know the hole has not been very friendly do you in the past. Do you almost take that as a win there?
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, 4 is a great score on the 6th. I mean, it's a hard hole. There's never necessarily an easy wind there, especially with the greens being as firm as they are. I don't think the hole has been good to anyone. It's just a hard hole. A lot of guys have made numbers there through the years. It's going to happen. You try and make the best swings that you can, and today I was aiming at the bunker and I hit it right there. Yesterday I was aiming just left of it and kind of pulled it. No, it's just a hard hole. It's one of those ones you just try and get through, make 4 and move on to 7.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297