THE 150TH OPEN

July 17, 2022

David Carey

Mixed Zone

DAVID CAREY: It was nice to play with Padraig on Wednesday. He was in touch pretty soon after I qualified and offered. It was nice to -- never actually, hadn't actually played with him before. We'd met different times and chatted at different times, but we never actually got to play on Tour.

It was nice to get that chance, and again he was very nice to give his time. And certainly if not the best, one of the best that Ireland has ever produced, particularly southern Ireland. It's an honour to get to play with him anytime and get to learn from him, see what he's doing, and I couldn't speak highly enough of him.

So that's going to be one of my highlights of the week, I'd say.

Q. He was just saying you've got all the bits and pieces of the game that you need, but maybe you're a bit too hard on yourself. Perhaps you need to -- shaking off the bad shots.

DAVID CAREY: I think the difficulty is when you know the level you can produce, that when you don't -- I mean, it's one thing if you hit one bad shot. I generally do quite well with one bad shot or two bad shots. But when you just repeatedly don't produce what you're trying to do or you're not hitting that level.

I mean, I know what I can do. And when you don't, it's just very, very frustrating. And I think maybe some of the frustration from yesterday crept in today as well. Particularly yesterday's finish because it felt I should have been 3 or 4 better yesterday.

So to then not produce that straightaway, and like even after the first I hit a decent shot and walked down with the wrong club (indiscernible), and it's not the most straightforward easy day I've had.

Q. Major setups?

DAVID CAREY: The fairways are 120 yards wide as long as you don't run out of it. All you have to do is hit the right clubs, I was with the wrong club.

And I missed club on 17 yesterday, and had 8-iron in my hands and went back and hit 9 and went in the bunker.

Q. What was 17?

DAVID CAREY: I was just under off to the left and just pulled it. I was trying to run it up on the front right, two-putt. And both days I just was absolutely dead in that bunker. If you're a little back from the lip you can maybe do something. Yesterday's came to the left side of the bunker and today's was underneath the lip as well.

I still should have got out of there with two bogeys. But yesterday, in particular, I mean, you can hit it 40 yards over the back and not have that hard a pitch. You just cannot hit it in that bunker. I know that. I knew that before today. I knew it after the first practise day. When you make mistake like that, it's really disappointing.

Q. You gotta come back and play that hole again.

DAVID CAREY: Yes, that has normally been right (indiscernible). There's a course in Florida that I just kept not having good scores on. So I went back in February and had a top ten there, it was in my head I have to go back and do better. I knew I could do better on it. I'm quite stubborn in that way. I'm going to have to come back and do better like you said.

Q. (No microphone).

DAVID CAREY: Yeah, that would be enjoyable. Isn't the Hero in a couple of weeks in Fairmont where I won? That wouldn't be too bad either. So we'll just have to see where I go from here. It would be nice to get into another big event soon and try push on from this experience.