PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 19, 2022

Lucas Herbert

Southern Hills Country Club

Flash Quotes

JOHN DEVER: Welcome back to the 2022 PGA Championship here at Southern Hills. We are with Lucas Herbert, who put forth a first-round 68. He is 2-under par for the championship. Really solid round, especially with the conditions out there. You might have signed up ahead of time. But maybe take us through your round today and how you feel hereafter one round.

LUCAS HERBERT: Yeah, definitely would have taken 2-under at the start of the day. This place is not easy. Obviously it can get pretty squirrelly out there with the wind. Yeah, I mean, I feel kind of comfortable here. This reminds me of some golf back home on the Sand Belt, Peninsula Kingswood for the guys in Australia listening. Has that very similar feel about it with the run-offs around the greens and just the bunkering that the hole sort of -- how open a lot of the golf course is. You've got fairways that kind of blend into other fairways and bunkers that kind of come into play on multiple holes.

It has that Australian feel about it in a way, even though the grass is a little different.

You know, yeah, it's just made me comfortable. I've played enough of these major championships now where I feel like I know what it is that I need to do to play well. I haven't been able to play the way I would have liked in the majors I've played so far, but feel like I've got more of an understanding of what I need to do to have a chance to compete on Sunday.

Q. Do you like playing in the wind? Are you one that easily adjusted his ball flight, or how did you attack today as the winds kicked up a little bit?

LUCAS HERBERT: Yeah, obviously played a lot of golf in the wind growing up, and then I've come through the European Tour, the DP World Tour now, so we just play in a lot of wind over there, as well, playing links golf and whatnot.

Yeah, I've probably developed a game where I feel quite comfortable when it gets windy. I can move the ball flight around as I need to and take spin out of it fairly comfortably. I don't mind it when the wind gets up like this. It's definitely challenging, but I feel like I'm pretty well equipped to be able to deal with it.

Q. There's a few Australians here this week, I think seven or eight, and you kind of went unnoticed at the beginning of the week but now two of you are in the top 10. How does it feel having Cam, having you up there for the Australians?

LUCAS HERBERT: It's pretty cool. I saw Cam shot 2-under. I don't know what anyone else has shot. Yeah, it's cool when we have all the Australians here. Obviously sort of almost a bit of a cult following back in Australia. It's not as big a sport as it probably is around some spots in the world. But Aussie golf fans are pretty passionate, and it's good to sort of throw up some good results for them and give them something to watch going into the weekend hopefully.

Q. In connection with that, were you practicing together? Were you working together for this week?

LUCAS HERBERT: No, I'm not practicing or hanging out really with any of the other boys, but yeah, we see each other around and say g'day and see what's up. The last two years has been chatting about when we can go home next. That's always a good topic for conversation.

Q. It looks like the wind might be different every day. The conditions will get tougher. Do you have to change the whole strategy every day? What are you going to do for planning?

LUCAS HERBERT: Yeah, I mean, you've got to change your strategy with the different wind directions and whatnot, but it's also -- the forecast can say one thing and then you stand on the tee and it's the complete opposite wind. It's great to have a plan, but I think a lot of the time it gets thrown out the window when you actually do get out there because the wind can just swirl so much.

I've found over here in America it kind of funnels through trees a lot more than it does through the rest of the world. The rest of the world it tends to be like a pretty consistent wind once you get up above the shrubs and the trees, but here in America the trees are so big that it tends to channel through and the forecast might say the wind should be out of the right but sometimes it can just feel straight into because that's the way the gap in the trees are.

It's tricky to kind of deal with, but I think we've all looked at the weather forecast earlier in the week and made sort of plans on each hole as to what we're going to do with different wind directions and whatnot, but at the end of the day you've kind of got to get up there on the tee and be pretty good at making it up on the fly, too, if you get something that's not what you expect.

Q. This has been described as a second-shot golf course, and you had six birdies today. Do you adhere to that description of the golf course? There's some accessible holes out there, are there not?

LUCAS HERBERT: Yeah, a lot of the greens you don't really have a lot of pin positions, so you can kind of use a lot of the slopes to get your ball close. It's almost like a tale of two stories, this golf course. If you hit it in the fairway, you've got a great look at an approach shot that generally the pin is going to be in some sort of catcher's mitt because a lot of these greens are just so slopey and you can get pretty aggressive and make some birdies, but then on the flipside if you miss the fairway or you're in that rough or you're in amongst the trees, you can have some serious guesswork with the yardage as to how it's going to come out of that rough. That changes a lot of how aggressive you can be coming into the green.

I hit one in the right rough on 16, and from about 170 was hitting sand wedge because you couldn't go over the green, so 30 yards short of the green was better than two feet over the green.

Yeah, if you can drive the ball well and get it in the fairway, then yeah, you can be aggressive with your second shots. Yeah, you get it in the rough, and you're kind of guessing a lot.