THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY WORKDAY

June 1, 2023

Danny Willett

Muirfield Village

Quick Quotes

Q. How would you assess the round today?

DANNY WILLETT: It was good. Real good off the tee. Which kind of helps around here. The rough is really thick if you're not hitting off the fairway. Which kind of helps around here, the rough's really thick. Felt like we were in play a good bit and if we weren't in play we managed it pretty well and gave ourselves a chance. This golf course, if you're out of position, you go for it and you keep getting yourself out of the position. It's really tricky. Where, if you can take your medicine and leave yourself a reasonable opportunity to get up-and-down the hope is that you're not going to do anything stupid. Putted real well. It was nice to, after getting up really, really early this morning, it was nice we got the best of the weather. Golf course was beautiful. With how things have been the last few weeks it was nice to kind of get in front of the 8-ball.

Q. 15th, the eagle. Second shot, obviously great shot. What did you use there?

DANNY WILLETT: 4-iron from 247. Downwind. Yeah, it was touch and go whether it was going to get there. Wind was --it was getting hot, the wind was messing around a little bit. But, yeah, right out of the screws. Thought it was going to be a bit closer actually, but, no it was nice to -- haven't had an eagle for awhile. It's nice to get a few good shots and hole a few nice putts after the last few weeks of kind of not really seeing anything going in.

Q. What was going on with your game the last few weeks?

DANNY WILLETT: It's golf, isn't it. It's hard. I think things just haven't been quite going our way. Last few weeks have been a hell of a lot of divots in the middle of the fairway and just silly things. And you beat yourself up, you have a few lipouts. Today kind of the hole seems to have gotten a little bit bigger and made a few. Kept the momentum going when we needed to. Just nice to get kind of get a good round under belt because you know this place is probably going to get more difficult as the week goes on. So nice to get out of the blocks quick.

Q. We're used to seeing rain here and temperatures not quite this hot in early June. How is the course playing?

DANNY WILLETT: Playing really good. Especially this morning you could still, if you were in the fairway, you could still stop it the quite nicely with a mid iron. And you could spin back a wedge if you caught it real good. Most of that is due to the slopes around the flags. Really fair. You hit good shots you can make birdie. You hit bad shots and you're really struggling to kind of make par. So I assume, as every year when we come back to Jack's place, that it just kind of gets progressively tougher as the week goes on. The forecast is really good for this week. So I think the superintendent and Jack and the TOUR will probably want this place playing, for the first time in a while, probably exactly how they want it to all week because they have kind of got the run of the place if the weather is going to stay as it is.

Q. When you miss three cuts in a row and you start getting -- did you get any good breaks today? Did you find you got on a roll?

DANNY WILLETT: It's just, we just hit some -- I think today the difference is, because you know this place is difficult, I think the difference is, if you're out of position you don't do anything silly. You kind of play to a bigger area potentially which kind of, you don't give yourself, you give yourself a little more angle to play with for a chip and the chip might be a little easier, you might hit it a couple of feet closer and all of a sudden that makes a world of difference when you add it up over the round. I wouldn't have said we kind of got lucky anywhere, necessarily. We just had a couple of really key up-and-downs and a couple of really nice holed putts.

Like I said, to birdie 14, eagle 15, all of a sudden, the last couple of weeks you might have gone par, birdie there even with the same great shots you hit in but just didn't quite take advantage. Yeah, just nice to see a few go in the middle of the hole and can kind of sit back now and kind of look on what we need to do for the rest of the week.

Q. On the leaderboard it's your self, it's Matt Wallace, Shane Lowry and Seamus Power all playing well. Anything to U.K. guys playing well here?

DANNY WILLETT: I think the grass potentially is similar to back home. Any time I come up north, obviously with practicing on Bermuda in Florida, and the grass is a little bit more similar to back home up here. Potentially you kind of see things a little bit on the greens when it's that kind of way. But it's one of them things. I think the guys, I think the European lads, British lads now this year have all been playing really, really well. So I don't think any week it's really a surprise to see any of them on the leaderboard.