LIV GOLF ADELAIDE

April 21, 2023

Richard Bland

Graeme McDowell

The Grange

Cleeks GC

Quick Quotes

Q. Tell us how you did today.

GRAEME MCDOWELL: Yeah, great day. Blandy played fantastic. I kind of feel like we ended up just trying to keep up with him in the end. Played great.

Obviously fun to kind of all play together for the first time in the first round. I feel like we kind of pushed each other along and had a good time.

Q. What do you have to do to keep it up tomorrow?

RICHARD BLAND: We've just got to keep doing the same thing. This is a golf course you've got to focus on every single shot. Even the holes that you think are pretty straightforward, they're kind of sleeper holes. I kind of got a little aggressive on the third hole there trying to hit driver and ended up under a bush. It's that kind of course. We've been around them enough. We know what we've got to do. Long way to go yet, but no, the guys played great. Kinda Bernd sort of leaded us out and I managed to sort of get it on through the middle, and these guys came strong at the end, which was really cool. I started running out of gas, but these guys picked up the thread and carried on. No, really proud of the team today. Yeah, we're looking forward to tomorrow.

GRAEME MCDOWELL: Nice to get off to a fast start. A lot of golf to play. This golf course is all about fairways and greens. We liked it from the word go when we saw it, and nice to get off to a fast start, but a lot of work to do.

Q. How would you describe the fans out there?

GRAEME MCDOWELL: Yeah, boisterous, fan, kind of exactly what I expected. I think we've both played down here a few times before, and the fans are great. They tell you what they think, and great atmosphere. I wasn't sure what to expect on 12. We got the Watering Hole after they'd been pretty well watered, and it was a lot of fun.

I just wish the hole was about 20 yards shorter because trying to stand up with a 7-iron in there today, I'd rather be hitting 9-iron with that amount of noise and that amount of fun going on. It's a great hole. This is what LIV is all about. It's golf, and this is very loud this week. It's good fun.

Q. Did you feel during practice rounds that you might have a round like this today?

RICHARD BLAND: You know, we've all had it where you really like a course and you feel good about it and it doesn't open for you.

I was talking to my coach in the week off there that my two best results on LIV are probably the two courses you wouldn't expect me to do well on where it suits the really long hitter. But when you come to Oz, it's much more old school kind of golf. They're not sort of 7,500 yards, so yeah, it kind of plays into mine and G's hands. We're not the longest, but we keep it in play, we think our way around, play to our strengths, and we've just got to keep doing it.

The scoring is going to get hot over the weekend, and we've got to go after it.

Q. Nice to see the Cleeks up at the top of the leaderboard.

GRAEME MCDOWELL: Yeah, absolutely. We were kind of getting a little frustrated the first couple events. We finished fifth or sixth in Orlando. This guy has been playing great. I feel like I'm trending in the right direction. Bernd is a great player. We'll get Martin back this week, which obviously he didn't play the way he wants to, but I think just having the band back together again, getting that little bit of consistency, getting that nice kind of -- we feel like we can compete on weeks like this, and Martin will be fired up tomorrow and hopefully we can all continue to play well.