DUBAI DUTY FREE IRISH OPEN

July 2, 2021

Lucas Herbert

Mount Juliet Estate

Quick Quotes

Q. Lucas, 17 birdies in two rounds, 13-under par, a three-shot lead. Give us your thoughts on today's 67?

LUCAS HERBERT: Yeah, it was a little frustrating but also felt like I did pretty well to scrap 67 out of that. Yeah, I holed some really nice putts and missed some that I thought was a good chance to make; obviously the double on 3.

For a round that hopefully is not the better one of the week, I felt like I did really well to get a lot out of it and put myself into a very good position going into the weekend.

Q. A couple Top-20s on the PGA TOUR recently and now this. What's clicked in the game?

LUCAS HERBERT: I'm going to give a lot of credit to my new physio. Luke is really good; Rex as he's more commonly known. Just been able to keep my body consistent out there on Tour. I felt like early this year, I would turn up one day and body felt great. It would move the way I wanted to, and come back the next day and it didn't move the same.

So he's been really good and making sure we sort of kept a good base level each day and felt like I can move the way I want to and the ball sort of comes out where you want it to.

Yeah, that's been probably the biggest change in recent results. I can't take too much of the credit. I have to give some to him.

Q. I understand you're setting up a base in America?

LUCAS HERBERT: Yeah, this year is pretty crazy -- well, the last 18 months have been pretty crazy. And I did the quarantine going back to Australia once and it was pretty brutal. As a golf pro, there's not a lot you can do sitting inside for two weeks. If you're a businessman or something like that, you can maybe do some work on a computer. But I felt so useless sitting in there. I felt like I was wasting a lot of time if I was going to go back and forth to Australia to do that.

I went to America to play the WGC at Concession and was in Orlando for 12 hours and said, "Yeah, this is where I need to be," and decided to set up base there. Been around a lot of other Australians, as well, which has been good. Got a good Australian contingent there and I feel like we have that camaraderie will as well as good players to practise with and play money games against.

Been fortunate to get some starts on the U.S. tour, as well, which has really improved my game and taken it I think to a bit of another level. It's been a really productive year from that respect and I'm really glad that I did it.

Q. It's not always easy to follow a low round with another really low round but how satisfied are you with that round today?

LUCAS HERBERT: It was good. I felt like I was frustrated out there, couldn't get the ball to do what I wanted it to do with the irons and missed a couple putts I should have made. For a day that's frustrating to get 5-under out of it, I was very happy with that.

Q. Having won on The European Tour as recently as last year, what do you take from that to bring to the weekend?

LUCAS HERBERT: I think it's definitely something that comes with a win where you know you've proved to yourself that you can win, you can hit shots under pressure and actually win. So I'll be taking a lot of experience from that into the weekend and try and draw on that confidence, as well.