TRAVELERS CHAMPIONSHIP

June 23, 2022

Martin Laird

TPC River Highlands

Quick Quotes

Q. Bogey-free, great start, 63. Just kind of assess the round, bring us up to speed on how you feel about it.

MARTIN LAIRD: Yeah, obviously very happy with that. Putted very nicely. Got off to an average start. Pretty much flat-out chunked an 8-iron from the middle of the fairway on the first hole short of the green and hit a nice pitch up there to about eight feet and made the putt, which even early in the round to see that putt go in and not make bogey from the middle of the fairway was nice, and then after that played good.

Didn't really -- it's hard to hit some of these greens out here when it gets windy like it is this afternoon, or later in my round, but anytime I missed the green I pitched it really nicely and was pretty low stress for pars, which is always nice.

Q. I saw your approach into the last hole here. Obviously going to make lunch taste a lot better. Real receptive in the rain we got yesterday?

MARTIN LAIRD: Yeah, a little more. The greens are kind of perfect receptiveness right now. They're not soft enough where they're spinning back. That was just a nice full sand wedge on the last hole. Took one little hop and stopped.

Normally hitting full sand wedges you've got to worry about it zipping back maybe 15 feet down the green, and right now that's why scores are good. It doesn't matter if it's an 8-iron or sand wedge; they're just hitting and stopping within a couple yards, and that makes a lot of the pins accessible that maybe sometimes around here when the greens get firm are not.

Q. How were you feeling coming into the week? Have you been confident, feeling good about where things are heading and this is kind of the payoff for how --

MARTIN LAIRD: Yeah, I've been hitting the ball great pretty much all year, struggling with my putting. Just been inconsistent. Feel like I've been putting pretty good and just not seeing anything go in, and it's been frustrating for a couple months. When you keep getting told oh, it's close, it's like, well, I want to see them go in finally. Today, as I said, from that first hole I made about eight-footer for par and then after that I rolled it really nicely, made some nice putts, a couple medium-length ones which are always nice.

But yeah, no, everything was good, and it's been the same case for a while. I go home and play well when I'm off weeks and come out here and hit it well and then just don't make the putts. It is nice to finally kind of see a result of -- that's closer to how I feel like I've been playing than how my scores have been recently.