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ABERDEEN STANDARD INVESTMENTS SCOTTISH OPEN

July 10, 2019

Justin Thomas

North Berwick, Scotland

TOM CARLISLE: Welcome to the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open. This will be your first appearance in this event. How do you feel ahead of this week?

JUSTIN THOMAS: Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Very grateful The European Tour has let me come and play again. I had a great time at The French Open last year. Obviously this event and the French are a little different in terms of your standard field, but a lot of people I played against in junior and amateur golf that are being successful on The European Tour I'm getting to catch up with, and obviously a totally different style of golf than we play on the PGA TOUR. But very excited to be here and hoping to tame whatever conditions Scotland gives me.

TOM CARLISLE: What's your opinion of links golf?

JUSTIN THOMAS: I love it. I really, really do love it. In terms of if I could probably play one golf course every day for the rest of my life it would probably be a links golf course over here because you can play the same course and it can play so different every single day and every week. That part is enjoyable, and you have to hit so many different kind of shots and you have to have a lot of imagination.

But that being said, I haven't been very successful on links golf, for as much as I do enjoy it, and feel that I can play it well. I just obviously haven't figured it out totally. So this is why we felt like it was the best decision to come to the Scottish and to get at least one more round, tournament, under our belt before next week.

TOM CARLISLE: You played North Berwick yesterday. How was that?

JUSTIN THOMAS: It was very enjoyable. We were lucky they let us go out. My dad got to play, too. Always entertaining playing with him. Us three went around, got our trollies, played in about three hours and had a pint after, and it was a pretty nice day.

I would say we all slept pretty well last night because we landed about noon and went straight out to the course. It was a great way to spend our first day here.

Q. How has the wrist been since you came back?
JUSTIN THOMAS: It's been great. I waited as long as I did for that reason. I didn't want to come back and have it linger or have it affect my golf game or just affect my life in general. I felt like I could have -- the PGA would have been a bit of a stretch. I felt like I could have risked it at the -- I guess it would have been Colonial, but it wouldn't have been worth it or at the Wells Fargo, but three tournaments that I love and felt like I could have played well.

It was a long-term thing and I needed to do the right thing. I feel confident in it, but the turf these next few weeks is very firm and very different. I'm anxious to see how it holds up. I've been doing everything I should have been doing and waited that long for that reason. I guess we will see, but there's no reason but it's been great.

Q. Did you have a chance to shore up the wall?
JUSTIN THOMAS: Yeah, yesterday. I didn't make contact with the wall. It was more the golf ball that had the injury, not me.

Q. You said you haven't had the results that you'd like, in The Open, particularly. Any particular reason for that? Is it just a lack of experience? You've presumably only played this style of golf very rarely?
JUSTIN THOMAS: There's a good chance of that. The thing is I've had a good round every open. I've played well the first day and I've been in the Top-10 or 20. I just have every Friday -- well, even Thursday, my first one, I think it was at Troon maybe, I just have had bad -- I mean, everybody has had bad conditions on Friday, and I've had a hard time dealing with it.

It's crazy to think, but entering the Scottish Open, I feel like I'm probably going to have bad conditions a couple days, so just getting used to it a couple more days. I went out and played yesterday. I'm getting more comfortable with it.

For me, I have to learn to alter my game plan when it gets like that. You know, holes where maybe, like I remember 6 last year at Carnoustie, I planned to hit driver because I didn't like the lay up and Friday it was just raining sideways about as hard as it was all day. I stood up there and hit driver because that was my game plan. I hit it in one of those pot bunkers and made 7 and doubled the next two holes.

If I just kind of realise, assess the situation and realise, okay, I'm not going to be able to get in this green in two when it's raining sideways, just try to make sure you make 5 and not 7, kind of thing. Experiences like that unfortunately is what's going to help me going forward.

Again I do really enjoy links golf and I feel like I can be successful, but I've definitely been a long way from it so far. So hopefully it will turn our way.

Q. How frustrating has it been, this injury, and the fact that it's the first season of this condensed major season has not really played into your hands, has it?
JUSTIN THOMAS: The injury was frustrating for the three events I missed, but since then it hasn't been frustrating because it hasn't bothered me.

The way I look at it, I mean, especially I would say just by the way that you said that, but even myself, I was very hard on myself and just thinking I'm having such a bad year and this and that. I mean, I missed three events that I feel like I had a great chance to win. I've had a pretty bad year and I'm 16th in the FedExCup and I'm doing just fine.

I'm in a perfect position. I am where I need to be. Obviously I could be doing a lot better. Obviously I could have played better and won a couple tournaments, but when you look at it as a whole, I had a very, very strong start to the season and even my golf as of late, the results and scores don't show how I feel like I'm playing.

We've been working hard to get back to where it is, but everybody, it doesn't matter who you are; everybody goes through spurts in their career or their season that aren't as good as they would have liked. It's just about minimising that and making sure it's as short as possible and we feel like we're very close to playing very well again and performing really well again.

I'm far from panic mode but I've definitely had a couple moments where I was sitting on the couch with the wrist hurting where it's easy to get down on yourself. But if you look at it in the grand scheme of things, I'm still having a pretty good year.

Q. Going back to North Berwick, how did that come about?
JUSTIN THOMAS: Rick had talked about it a bunch. I know he liked playing out there and I heard it from other guys, too. Most importantly, that first day over here, we have to do something to stay awake, whether it's playing here or playing somewhere or doing something, but I know especially for my dad's sake, but if I sit down, I'm going to fall asleep and it's going to mess up my sleep schedule all week.

To go out and do something and go play is what we need to do for our well being, as funny as it is. But we knew that we could come out here and play. I mean, we can't play these other golf courses. It's not like I'm going to come over from Jupiter, Florida to play North Berwick. So I was here on a Monday that's usually a travel day for all of us, so it's like, let's go play. We heard a lot of great things and I think when you can play more golf courses over here, it's cool.

Martin is great. We got to meet some juniors right of 8, I think it is. They have, it almost looked like an academy type thing, a green and range facility. It was cool. Timing worked out to where I was over there when they were and got to take a picture. They were all working on their chipping and putting, and that was good to see.

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