KITCHENAID SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 27, 2021

Gus Ulrich

Quick Quotes

Southern Hills Country Club

JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon, welcome back to the 2021 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, Southern Hills. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Joined by Gus Ulrich who posted a 1-over par 71 today. Gus, pretty good position after one round. You're going to stay dry this afternoon but you also, I see a couple birdies coming in. That has to kind of give you a good feeling and maybe some momentum as we get into Friday.

GUS ULRICH: Yeah, so got off to a little bit of a rough start today. Obviously a little nervous. Don't do this every day. But I couldn't have had a better pairing in Brett and Wes. Brett and I go way back to the Ben Hogan TOUR days and mini-tour days, so it was really awesome playing with Brett. So once I kind of shook the nerves off a little bit and grabbed a couple birdies, I just relaxed quite a bit and those guys are great and so I righted the ship and the birdies coming in felt really good, so a little bit of a squirrely bogey on 15, but other than that I really played solid. I feel really good about my round.

JOHN DEVER: What kind of a golf course does this cater to? I heard ball strikers a little bit, but do you concur with that or what's your observation?

GUS ULRICH: I think it's a second-shot golf course or approach golf course. I mean you really got to know where to put the ball on the greens and where to try not to miss it. Getting it up-and-down is a real challenge on some of these greens when you gets short sided. So it's very demanding as far as placing the ball on to the green in the right spot. Off the tee there's some great tee shots as well. I didn't play here before the redo, but it looks like from what I heard that the fairways have widened quite a bit and they're more generous off the tee. So there's some tee shots that you can go ahead and let it go. And then there's some tee shots you really got to try to hit it right down the middle. But I think overall it's just a really challenging golf course from the second shot in.

JOHN DEVER: A mental toll or a mental grind to this golf course? You got to make the right decision, you got to be patient, I hear patience talked about a lot. Is there a mental component to this that people can't pick up on television necessarily?

GUS ULRICH: There's no question that patience is key. You just, I think par's a good score on a lot of the holes par is a good score. There's some opportunities out there, but you just, I mean you got to be patient, you really do. You can't force anything. If you start trying to go at some of the pins you're going to short side yourself if you mishit it and it's just not the thing to do.

JOHN DEVER: Were there any instances that you can remember from today or throughout your practice rounds where you were like, I'm going to grab the driver, but then you kind of put it back and you say, be prudent about this or even if it's on your second shot where you're kind of like let's dial it back, let's be a smidge conservative here?

GUS ULRICH: Absolutely. So today was a good example. I pulled my 3-wood out today a lot more than I did in the practice rounds and just tried to hit the fairway. And that was key. So no doubt about it.