THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 11, 2023

Justin Rose

TPC Sawgrass

Quick Quotes

Q. What was working best for you out there today?

JUSTIN ROSE: I think I put the ball in the fairway, especially for the most part of the day there. That's what you had to do today because the greens were receptive. There were a couple of the classic Sawgrass pins which are sitting in little bowls that if you hit a good tee shot and you could have control of your ball and control the spin, you could work the ball into the flagstick. For the most part I did a good job of that today.

Yeah, just obviously felt like I created quite a few birdie opportunities. Just the finish really. But other than that, I think it was a really good day's work.

Q. How much different was the golf course today from yesterday?

JUSTIN ROSE: Big difference. Obviously I was out there sort of grinding it out. It was a bit breezy. We were still dealing with firmish greens, then obviously the rain made all the difference, I suppose.

This morning you kind of come out and it's quite cold and a little bit of a northerly wind. Even though it was receptive, it was a very wet golf course. Whereas this afternoon obviously all the dew dried up, all of the excess moisture from the rain the night before dried up, and you were left with perfect scoring conditions.

So it was a gorgeous days day, like 70 degrees, tiny bit of wind, blue sky, crowd out in force. It was an awesome day to be out on the golf course today.

Q. Obviously the win this year at Pebble Beach, huge push in the direction you want to go. How excited are you with where your game has been trending over the last couple months?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, for sure. Definitely seeing like little opportunities now even today, I felt like could quite easily may have been 64 today really. That would have given a great opportunity. Still have an outside shot, obviously. But great opportunity going into tomorrow.

That's what you want to do; you want to create those looks against the best fields now. That's obviously what my job is, just to kind of continue to kind of keep pushing and keep improving, and that's what I've always loved to do in my game is just to measure myself against myself and kind of feel like I'm getting better, which I am at the moment, so the good news is I'm playing better. I feel like there's a lot of runway ahead, so that's the exciting thing.

Q. Seems to me from the outside like you're having more fun than I've seen you have out here in a long time. I saw you look at your caddie after that wedge shot and give him a chuckle. Did you get reinvigorated by Pebble? Did that bring some of the fun back to the game?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, I think it took a little heat off for sure. I think I've been definitely in grind mode and kind of feel like I've been on the outside looking in for the last couple of years.

Obviously I've tasted a lot of success out here on TOUR, and yeah, last couple seasons haven't been as easy. You are working as hard if not harder. When you're playing well you kind of, we all sort of -- it feels pretty straightforward, right. But so, yeah, the work ethic's been I think even better the last couple of years, but the results haven't been so you kind of scratch your head at times. I think that leads to possibly a little frustration. So, yeah, hopefully the win's kind of like just taken a little valve off the pressure cooker and you can kind of lean into these types of weeks now and positions where you are kind of going into the final round, let's say in 20th place, you can kind of go into it a little bit more foot down, play a little freer, you're not trying to just make sure you're kind of securing some FedExCup points on the back end. And that's the mindset you need to be in. When you're confident of being on the leaderboard week-in, week-out, you do play in a slightly different fashion.