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THE 148TH OPEN

July 21, 2019

Rickie Fowler

Portrush, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

RICKIE FOWLER: I didn't know until afterwards. That sucks.

Q. Who told you?
RICKIE FOWLER: Sam, my agent, afterwards. So, yeah. Good thing I didn't know, because I probably would have been a little more pissed.

Q. All day, right?
RICKIE FOWLER: There's nothing you can do about it, obviously. You get good breaks, you get bad breaks. Pardon my French, that's a shitty one. But it is what it is.

It was nice to come back, par the next three and got things rolling. Obviously it wasn't easy out there, I'm sure you guys saw some interesting scores and shots kind of the second half of the day. Certain holes were just hanging on tight and try not to do anything really bad.

Q. (Inaudible.)
RICKIE FOWLER: Yes, definitely. I love playing over here. I love the different conditions and hitting shots. Other than kind of two tee balls that got me in trouble today, probably one, I just was -- ended up taking a bad line. And one was the wrong club off the tee.

Other than that we posted even, if not something under par, which would have been a pretty solid round of golf in these conditions.

So, yes, keeping ourselves in position. It was obviously going to be tough to catch Shane out there today. He went out and played some damn good golf over the weekend. Not over yet, but I'm assuming he's going to get it done.

Q. What was maybe the most interesting shot you've had today or thing you're most proud of under these conditions?
RICKIE FOWLER: I would say proud of the second tee ball off 1. It's never fun hitting another after -- yeah. So I was proud about the two shots that followed, right? I hit the 3-wood in the fairway, like I was planning to. And then hit a great 5-iron up the hill. Had a good chance to make bogey.

And then I'd say -- so probably 16. In off the left. It was 215 to the hole. I hit my, I call it my hot 4-iron. It's kind of a -- it's a 5-wood replacement. It's a full iron from our game improvement line with Cobra. It goes a long ways. I normally hit it 245, 250 at home.

I just tried to hit a low bullet at the left side of the green. It was pretty amazing to see what the wind was doing with the ball out there today. For that ball to end up right of the hole with where I started it and how hard I hit it.

Q. A look at birdie.
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I had a really good look. About 15 feet. It was a good shot.

Q. You've obviously played in conditions similar to this before. When you explain to the people you know back in California about what this is like, what do you tell them to play golf in this?
RICKIE FOWLER: This is probably one of the hardest tests as far as with this condition, just because this golf course, how penal it is on both sides of the fairways. You have a lot of doglegs and forced carries. It's not like you can scoot one out on the fairway. A lot of elevated tee shots or holes that are up on very exposed areas.

Maybe not blowing as hard as I've seen it blow in an Open Championship, but probably some of the hardest conditions I've seen, just because of the golf course and the way it is.

Yeah, it's hard to explain to people back home. I don't spend a lot of time in California anymore. I live in Florida, we get some windy conditions where I'm at. But it always seems to surprise people their first time over to see how much more the wind does affect the ball here versus at home. It doesn't matter where you're at. 10 to 15 miles an hour here is a lot more than 10 or 15 at home.

Q. Given the testing nature of this course, the suggestion it might be coming back soon. Would you like to see it back here?
RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I'd love to have to be back. I think this golf course is a great test. It's very different from what I've seen from a lot of kind of traditional links golf courses. There's a lot of more forced carries and doglegs. It does force you to play the ball in the air a bit more and test your ball-striking. You can't just get away with scooting one out there or running one into a green.

To score well you have to fly balls on to the green in a lot of areas. And when it's windy like this, it's hard to control the ball through the air.

It's a great test. We got over here on Saturday, had a great time hanging in the town of Portrush Saturday night, Sunday night, had some dinner down there. Really good people. The fans have been amazing here. They've been super excited to have The Open here.

I don't see any downfall, other than -- actually, I think the weather turned out to be better every day than it was supposed to be. I don't see any negative of it being back here.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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