THE 149TH OPEN

July 16, 2021

Laird Shepherd

Mixed Zone

Q. Laird, good afternoon. Thanks for talking to us to straight off the course. 1-under for today's round. Can you sum up your first Open experience?

LAIRD SHEPHERD: Yeah, brilliant. I mean, I had it all today in terms of getting off to a really poor start and feeling a bit shaky and managing to play a little bit better.

It was really fun to sort of put myself in a position where I could have made it for the weekend. Unfortunately just didn't quite work out.

But no, I mean, yeah, fantastic. The biggest thing really is probably just learning from the guys. Danny and Dean played great today, and learn from what they do, and hopefully I'll be able to improve myself and one day be able to compete to contend in one of those tournaments.

Q. And obviously over the course of the two days you've had your girlfriend following you around. You got members from Rye Golf Club. What's that meant for you to have the local support?

LAIRD SHEPHERD: Yes, it's been great. You know, been a lot of people cheering for me which is obviously very nice and a different experience.

So, yeah, no, I'm great to have people closest to me be able to be here and experience it with me and enjoy it and watch it. To be able to give them a little bit of good golf was my main sort of concern really. I didn't want to sort of not give them some quality golf to watch.

So I'm just happy that I was able to play relatively decent over the last few holes today and just make it entertaining for them to watch.

Q. I guess one final one from me. Amateur champion last month now playing The Open. Other things to come in terms of major tournaments. Can you sum up, can you take that in? What does that mean for you personally?

LAIRD SHEPHERD: I mean, for me I think this week has been, as I said, really good to learn where my game starts and what needs to improve.

For me, I need to improve certain areas to be able to compete, and I don't want to, you know, be playing in events and missing cuts regardless of what level it is.

So looking forward to getting away and working on those weaknesses and just trying, at the same time, to enjoy it basically. So really looking forward to the opportunities I've got coming up.

Yeah, just couldn't be any more pleased with the schedule that's upcoming.