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THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY NATIONWIDE

June 1, 2019

Tiger Woods

Dublin, Ohio

TIGER WOODS: A lot of momentum going into that back nine. I clipped the lip and up against my footprint and ended up making double there. I'd never seen a round that lipped out more shots than today. Six lip-outs or seven lip-outs today. It was unreal.

Q. What does that do to you mentally when you get those?
TIGER WOODS: It's frustrating, because I was just telling Amanda, that was the highest round I could possibly have shot today. 70 could easily have been nothing today. I had it going, I was playing well. The wind was a little bit tricky, but I was hitting it flush enough where I was getting through the wind. As I said, I got nothing out of the round today.

Q. In a tricky wind, does the cottonwood fluff at all help you gauge it?
TIGER WOODS: It helps at the ball, but I want to know what it's doing at the green more. So that's where I look at the cotton moving or the trees moving or people smoking, looking for something to gauge it. Because you get down in these trees and it swirls all over the place.

Q. Through 7 today did you feel like there was something out there for you?
TIGER WOODS: As I said, this is the highest score I could have shot today. I had it going through the front nine and I just hugged the tee shot enough at 10 and ended up in a bad spot and made double there. And didn't really get anything going. I hit a good wedge into 14 and happened to skip over the back. And I was close to a yard here, a yard there. Look at 14, look at what happened at 17, and those are shots that could have easily been within five, six feet. Next thing you know, I'm in a tough spot.

Q. You mentioned 14. Is that a pin you thought you could get at? It was tucked pretty well?
TIGER WOODS: I was in between sand wedge and wedge, and I went with sand wedge, and just tried to accept my ball being below the hole. And I hit it, I didn't think I could hit it that far, but it snuck up in there and it was the opposite of sitting up.

Q. Do you feel good this week?
TIGER WOODS: I do.

Q. Is there any indication when you know you're not going to be feeling all that great, is it a wake up in the morning or times you can see it coming?
TIGER WOODS: I can feel it in the morning, that's for sure. Yeah, as I said, there's certain days and certain weeks I'm more stiff than others. And this week I feel pretty good.

Q. Compared to the PGA and looking towards Pebble, how close do feel like your game is right now?
TIGER WOODS: My game is right where I feel like it needs to be. I hit a lot of good shots the last three days here and really haven't really scored like I've hit the golf ball. So if I can combine that and get something out of my rounds, this week I could easily have been right in the mix, wasn't that far away.

Q. Working on a drill last night, that's probably standard stuff, but was that specifically due to the driving and is it something you got sorted, or is it just kind of normal you'll do that once in a while?
TIGER WOODS: I'm trying to swing left but also, then again, not swing so far left I rake across and spin it. So trying to get deep enough in the backswing to make sure, when I do swing left, it's not wipey.

Q. Pebble, what is it about that place that makes it great?
TIGER WOODS: I think you have to hit the golf ball well there. There's no two ways about it. The smallest green complexes we play on besides Hilton Head. But they're slopey. And so there's no way to fake it around that golf course. You have to hit the golf ball well.

And the times that I have played well there, whether it's in January or it's in June, I've hit the ball well enough that I've been in good spots. It's going to be a typical U.S. Open. It's going to be hard. It's going to be difficult. And we know that going in.

Q. Still players on the course now, but how do you approach tomorrow?
TIGER WOODS: I'm so far back, and there's too many guys I'm not going to win the golf tournament. But hopefully I go out and play a positive round of golf tomorrow and get something out of my round like I haven't done the first three days and get some positive momentum going into The Open.

Q. Have you ever had a beef with a U.S. Open setup, and if you did, what was it?
TIGER WOODS: I don't know. We all have to play it. And I don't agree with some of the times when they move the tees up and change the golf course. I didn't agree with the setup at 14 and in '08. It was a great par 4, but why move it all the way up there and make it drivable. I think that's what -- there was a time there where it was a brutal test, and then it became kind of a tricky decision you had to make. Trying to bring in more options off the tees or into the greens. And The Open has changed.

Now, I thought it was just narrow fairways, hit it in the fairway or hack out, move on. Then now there's chipping areas around the greens. There's less rough. Graduated rough. They try to make The Open different and strategically different. I just like it when there's high rough and narrow fairways, and go get it, boys.

Q. When did they start doing that?
TIGER WOODS: I believe at Winged Foot they started doing the graduated rough and moving tees around. Probably the biggest example of that was at Chambers. It was 240, 250 downhill and then 190, 200 playing straight up the mountain.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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