PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 19, 2022

Xander Schauffele

Southern Hills Country Club

Flash Quotes

JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon, and welcome back to the 2022 PGA Championship here at Southern Hills. We are pleased to be joined by Xander Schauffele, who posted a 2-under par 68 today. Xander, a little choppy on the front but no big harm, but really some consistent golf reminiscent of a major on your back nine. Talk about your round today if you could.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, it was solid. 2-under is a score I would take starting the day. I felt like I kept the holes in front of me, was in most of the fairways.

Haven't seen the stats but I felt like I was hitting out of the fairway most of the time. Still no easy task coming into the greens, but overall I felt like the course was set up pretty fair. The greens were even -- the greens were firmer and kind of rolling faster with the wind.

I feel like it may have gotten away from us. I feel like everything was really fair out there.

Q. I saw in the early part of your round you were rolling some nice putts for birdies. Making so many birdies last week did that unlock something with the putter?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Maybe it freed me up with a couple scoring clubs coming into the greens, but for the most part there were a few pins that were accessible if you were in the fairway with a wedge, but as soon as you're in the rough you're in trouble.

The only way to really make birdie is you've got to start from the fairway.

Q. Going into Thursday there was some chatter about how the cross tees could play out maybe slow play. Did you encounter any of that today?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: You know what, it was nice. It was very fluid. Our flow of the round was awesome. I personally thought it was going to be a lot slower just with how hard the course is playing.

There was plenty of space. No one was behind us. No one was really in front of us. We just kind of played our round.

Q. When you found out you were coming to Southern Hills this year, how do you mentally prepare for yourself and is it playing exactly how you expected it to play throughout the practice rounds and today?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I think you take the mentality of -- I was here a long time ago at Southern Hills. I didn't really remember much. Take the mentality of every major, which is coming in with a lot of patience, try to work and every part of your game, and yeah, I think Southern Hills is playing kind of to what we all expected.

Q. Talk a little bit about the wind today; did it start lower and then increase as you went on? How was that?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, it picked up a little bit. I don't know what it got up to, but supposed to pick up more apparently, and I felt like we managed it for the most part. But yeah, I felt like it was -- it made some of those fairways really hard to hit.

You had to hit some really nice tee balls just to get in the fairway, which was something we did well today.