THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 9, 2023

Jordan Spieth

TPC Sawgrass

Quick Quotes

Q. How did the golf course play today?

JORDAN SPIETH: I thought that wind died down. I'm really surprised how low the scores were this morning, and then the scoring average being I think significantly lower this morning, which I thought we were going to kind of get. I think we'll get it pretty good tomorrow.

After looking at this morning, it's like, all right, maybe we'll get a chance to go at it maybe a little bit more tomorrow. But it still was playable, you just have to be in the fairway. It's that simple. If you're out of position off the tee here, it's really, really a difficult golf course.

You need some precision on approach shots, and I felt like I did a pretty good job of that, and I putted and chipped really well today.

Q. How did those putts on 3 and 4 get you going?

JORDAN SPIETH: 2, I made a nice long one.

Yeah, 3 and 4, the par saves, those are -- the one on 3 is a really tricky one because you just get a lot of those straight crowns out here, and I really don't like those. I like feel putts that break more like No. 4.

So it was really nice to -- 2, 3, 4, feel like I was 1-under when I could have been 1-over.

Then from there, put the ball in the fairway on 5, and after that, you feel like you can maybe go out and get a few, and I did around the turn.

Then played 17 and 18 the way I needed to, and that's always high-stress, just to finish off a round. It was nice to go green, fairway, green, and shoot a good score, and try and do that three more times.

Q. How good was your round?

JORDAN SPIETH: I mean, it's just one of those places where I felt like the way I played was really good a lot of times, and then I look at the board here, and I'm like, huh, I'm not even in the top 10. That's just the way this tournament has been for me. I'm not going to try and do anything differently, try and force anything more, it's just I felt like I played what would have been at least that last week, and for some reason it doesn't yield a lower score out here.

If I can limit mistakes -- I played smart when I was out of position today, and limit mistakes, the rest of my game feels really solid and should be able to make enough birdies to work my way into contention.

Q. What is it about this tournament that the feel doesn't always match up with the score?

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I don't know. But it's just one really good round away from it not being the case.

Q. Is that rare, though, throughout the --

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, there's some places. Doral was like that for me. Whereas, some places I feel like, oh, I didn't play very well, but it held up a lot better against the field. As you get out here for a decade, you kind of get a feel for that.

Hopefully just trying to turn around the next 10 years of my history at this tournament from the last 10. I have had a chance to win a couple times, and that's the goal is just try and shoot a good score tomorrow and then progress through the weekend.

Q. Do you feel like you made any adjustments compared to your time here last year?

JORDAN SPIETH: No, last year we just got hit with a disaster of a weather storm. I think Justin played really well out of our wave. I'm not sure if there was many guys who had much of a chance. Sometimes that happens. We just got smoked on that, I think Friday afternoon into Saturday morning situation.

I'm playing better now, but I didn't play it any differently. This course, you don't have a lot of like risk-reward opportunities. You just have to hit it to here, then you have to hit it to there, and you've got to be precise with multiple shots in a row.

Q. Those bunker shots on 11 and 16, very variant shots. What is it with you and the feel on those, and how big were those?

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I think bunker shots, especially long bunker shots, are a strength of my game. I played a really nice one to get it all the way back there close on 11, but I didn't feel uncomfortable on that at all. I just took a 52-degree and hit a pretty standard shot, landed it on the downgrain and it skipped up.

And then the one on 16 was a little -- you just have to miss it short if you're going to miss it, accept that you might make par, even though I had an iron in. It was kind of a tough stance to have, and it came out luckily just over that lip and all it needed to go was get over that lip and it was going to get all the way to the hole.

Capping those off with making birdies on those holes when I'm in a position where it could have been easy to bail out of them and make par, that's the difference in being at 3-under and having to worry about more stress tomorrow.