PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 18, 2023

Ryan Fox

Oak Hill Country Club

Flash Quotes

THE MODERATOR: Ryan Fox joins us now at the 105th PGA Championship. Ryan shot a 2-under 68 today in the opening round. Can you maybe summarize your round a little bit for us and maybe some things you liked? Is.

RYAN FOX: First of all, it's probably pretty surprising as I didn't have a lot of prep coming in and had four weeks off in the lead-up to this with a few things going on, but, yeah, I played -- for the most part played pretty solid. There were some pretty scruffy iron shots and my short game saved me. I road a pretty hot putter today, which was nice.

Had a couple of really good wedge shots on 2 and 16. Didn't convert the one on 16. For the most part when I was in trouble today, I was generally in trouble in the right place and managed to get it up and down or get myself out of trouble pretty nicely.

Q. Ryan, can you take us through your last two weeks? I think there's a baby involved. There's bad weather. There's all kinds of things.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, it's been an interesting, probably last month. At the Masters, I was pretty sick on the weekend. Tried to play Hilton Head. Withdrew from there after nine holes, just feeling awful. Got home and got told I caught pneumonia, which pretty much explained why I felt so bad.

I had a couple of weeks off just being Dad and trying to recover from that. That took a fair while on antibiotics to get over that. Basically as soon as I got over that, our daughter was born, which was just over two weeks ago now. Our second daughter was born, Margot. So I had a few sleepless nights and not a lot of practice.

One of the days I was supposed to go to practice, Auckland flooded for the third time this year. So I think I drive around Auckland 27 kilometers in four hours in chaos. It wasn't quite the ideal preparation for a major, but I was kind of hoping the fact I needed a break after a busy start to the year and being mentally fresh would have been important this week.

So far it's sort of shown that you need to be pretty patient around this golf course and accept that you are going to have a couple of bad bounces, you're going to get a few bad lies. Yes, sort of nice to come here fresh ask just be able to accept that.

Q. Follow-up on being fresh. I understand this morning, too, you missed the e-mail about the frost delay, and you were here at 5:00 a.m.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, I left my hotel at 5:30 just before I got the e-mail. I was due to see my physio at 6:00, and I was going to have breakfast beforehand. Yeah, just as I got to the golf course, I got the text. I certainly would have liked another hour and a bit in bed, but I can go and have a pretty nice nap this afternoon, I think.

Q. When did you regain your strength after the pneumonia? Maybe after not playing for a month, is there something to be said for having lighter expectations?

RYAN FOX: Yeah, to be honest I still don't feel like I've got it back completely. My speed is down a little bit on what it normally is.

Probably took two weeks at home just to get any energy back. I would go and do something with my daughter and then feel like I could sit on the couch all afternoon, which I guess is not a bad thing anyway.

Yeah, coming in this week was just -- obviously, I was going to travel to a major. If there had been another event, I might have spent another week at home with the family. But it was just coming and going.

Well, the golf game was pretty good a month ago. It can't have disappeared that far, and as I said, I needed a break. I think I played -- I had been away for 11 of 13 weeks at the start of the year. Yeah, almost pneumonia was a benefit in a way that I just got home and knew I could do nothing and just relax.

Yeah, coming in this week fresh has been pretty good so far.

Q. You look like you scrambled really well. What was your with best save out there?

RYAN FOX: Probably the best save was on 7. I had an awful iron shot from the middle of the fairway. Short run on the bunker on the downslope. It's one of those where you go I'm going to make 5 and get away with it. I hit one to about 20 feet behind it and holed it, and sort of walked off and gone, I'm not going to make too many better pars than that today.

There was a couple of nice bunker shots as well and on the par-3, 3 and 11, they're two tricky holes out there. Nice to make par on those as well.

Q. What can you say was going on on the 1st and 14th tees when your group was on 14? It seemed like there was a lot of action there at that time.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, it was just horrendously slow. I think we got there, and there were two groups waiting on the 14th tee, and our group had just teed off 1. You kind of know it's going to back up there with the two tees, but I didn't quite expect it to be quite as bad as it was.

I thought they were playing as a caught-up hole originally, but everyone was calling everyone up. It's just one of those where it's a bottleneck there. It's a short par-4. I think it was a little tricky pin today as well on 14. Yeah, just slowed up big-time.

It kind of felt like almost a new round started on 14 tee for us.

Q. I think you were there for about 20 minutes or so. What do you do in that time, and how do you -- you ended up birdieing the hole, so...

RYAN FOX: I mean, just talked crap with everybody on the tee. There was enough people to talk to.

I got up and whaled one way right and hit a pretty awful tee shot, pretty stiff and hit an amazing chip shot and holed a 20-footer from off the green.

It wasn't a normal birdie, but it was kind of nice. It would have been really easy to make bogey from where I was. It really kept the round going there.

Q. I was going to ask about that birdie at 14, which is pretty special, actually. I'm curious, when did you get back to the United States? How much practice did you have out here?

RYAN FOX: I flew Auckland-Chicago on Sunday night. I think I got into Chicago at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m., stayed in the hotel, flew out to Rochester at 7:00 a.m. on Monday morning and came out here and played nine holes Monday afternoon.

So, yeah, there's probably still a little bit of jet lag in there, but as I said earlier, but I think having uninterrupted sleep has been quite good this week.

Q. Did you play more than the nine holes on Monday?

RYAN FOX: I played nine Monday, 18 Tuesday, early Tuesday morning, and then played nine yesterday when it warmed up. So I've had a decent amount of prep in that regard, so I just hope I don't sort of waste all my energy on that for the rest of the week.

Q. Given that, when you started your round, did you feel like you were about as prepared as you would have been for any other event that you played in this year?

RYAN FOX: Yes and no. I generally like playing the week before a major, and I've always been after a decent break always been a little rusty coming back. I did expect that.

But I also thought this is kind of a golf course you don't have to shoot 20-under around. If you can shoot around par this week, you're going to be there or thereabouts. I kind of had that in the back of my head and just go, well, if you make bogeys, it doesn't really matter. Just limit your mistakes.

I managed to hit a few good shots out there and ride a really hot putter. I'm standing here talking to you guys now, so it's not bad.