RBC CANADIAN OPEN

June 8, 2023

Aaron Rai

Oakdale Golf & Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Good playing. Can we get an opening comment on your round?

AARON RAI: Thank you. I played really nicely overall. Really difficult patch of holes there. Holes 3 to 6 would be the hardest holes on the course and they're all kind of back-to-back, which makes it difficult. But very pleased with how we finished off the round after that, how we played. Very pleased with the score. So, yeah, great start.

Q. New course every year with this event it seems. What did you think of this course?

AARON RAI: I really like it. It's in amazing condition. The fairways are perfect. The greens are rolling very true. The rough is very healthy. So the condition of it is very, very good. I think the course is good too. It's interesting, there were some patches which are scorable. There are other patches which are very difficult. And I think that's part of the nature of this course. But I think the layout is good. Maybe on a couple of holes if the greens were a little flatter in certain spots you could have more pin positions. But other than that I think it's good. It will be a good challenge this week. You've got to play some real solid golf to score and perform well here.

Q. What did you think of 18 in particular?

AARON RAI: I really like it. Me and my caddie were talking about this as we were walking down the fairway. You don't have many par-5s now which are underneath 500 yards. And it's also downhill so it plays shorter. But it gives you so many options off the tee. You can be aggressive and hit it down the left which opens up the green. You can kind of be conservative and hit it down the right and then, even though you've got a 4-iron or hybrid in, it's actually quite difficult to hit the green. Even though it's big, just with the amount of slope on there it's tricky. So I think it's a very good finishing hole. I think a lot can happen as well on that last hole and on the last few holes. So I think it's a good finish.

Q. Things haven't quite gone your way the last four, five tournaments or so. When you play as well as you did today how do you make sure you can replicate that going into the weekend?

AARON RAI: Really pleased with how today went. I think golf is a funny game. It's very different on a day-to-day basis. We as people feel very different on a day-to-day basis. So there are a lot of good things that went into today that hopefully we can take moving forward. But it's funny, the more you try and force it and impose it on coming days, the less it seems to happen. So we'll definitely take the positives and just try and approach the rounds with the right kind of mindset. Stay patient. Just see what happens, really.

Q. To pull you back to Tuesday morning for an instant. Curious how you found out of the news where you were and maybe what the next couple hours were like for you?

AARON RAI: We were playing a practice round, actually on the 9th green, when one of the caddies showed me and my caddie just the headline of an article. Then we were only playing nine holes anyway and then came in to get some food and obviously read a little bit more about it. So, yeah, it was a surprise, I'm sure it's a surprise to everyone. No one saw that coming in the works. So, yeah. That was pretty much it.