THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY NATIONWIDE

June 3, 2021

Rickie Fowler

Muirfield Village

Quick Quotes

Q. Can you rehash what you did over there with Xander. What's with the glasses and why are you wearing them?

RICKIE FOWLER: I always struggled with seeing more than say 150 yards and little things far away. Yeah, I mean being able to see Steve walking up, before it was kind of like a hazy shadow -- he's got my credential now, I'll sneak it back from him.

So, no, I tried, it's not enough to where like I really wanted to try going to like Lasik or anything like that. I've always been able to see up close fine, I don't have any problem with that. The only time I start to struggle with some depth perception is in low light situations, so like early morning or as the sun's going down. And so I just wanted to try another option before going to Lasik down the road.

Tried wearing some just standard sunglasses at home, because I always felt that with the nose piece, with how much I move sometimes in the swing it would get in the way and I would lose sight of the ball, so I didn't like glasses forever.

Now that things have been cleaned up and I swing a little bit more just within myself, that gave me the opportunity in just standard sunglasses without prescription I saw that I wasn't squinting as much, I wasn't stressing my eyes as much, especially with it being bright out too, especially in Florida. So I said, shoot, why don't we try prescription. So now, yeah, I can actually see the ball land.

Q. I know you got a couple more days before Monday, but did you have to sort of wrap your arms around the idea of having to do that and obviously it's been a long time since you would have tried to qualify for the U.S. Open in that manner.

RICKIE FOWLER: No, not really. I've done it before, been there a handful of times, yeah, it's been a quite a few years, but no, it wasn't something I was like necessarily bummed out about, I put myself in this position. So we got a tee time on Monday, let's go qualify and get our spot at Torrey Pines.

And so, no, it wasn't anything like -- yeah, I would like to just be in the U.S. Open, but we have been in this position before, so go take care of it.

Q. What was it like back in the day when you did it? What do you remember about it? Obviously you would have been in college and --

RICKIE FOWLER: Yeah, I was, I think one time as a pro, which would have been in 2010, but prior to that was always an amateur. I mean, the biggest thing that I learned from those 36-hole days is really not, don't try and press it. Kind of you're playing a little bit more conservatively and just kind of keep moving forward. I was talking with a couple of these guys yesterday, just kind of saying, don't trip over your shoe laces, you don't have to do anything super special, just go play golf and keep moving forward.