RBC CANADIAN OPEN

June 8, 2023

Taylor Pendrith

Oakdale Golf & Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Strong round for you today. What did you see out on the course this afternoon?

TAYLOR PENDRITH: I played pretty solid. Made some birdies on my back nine, which was nice to see. There's a few more wedges on that side. The front nine's pretty tricky if you're not hitting it straight. Stayed patient and made a couple late. Little disappointed not to get the par-5s on the back nine, but yeah, overall it was a decent start.

Q. Really strong showing from Kent State with you, Mac and Corey all in contention. How does that feel to have three Canadians in a really good position at the national championship?

TAYLOR PENDRITH: Yeah, it's awesome. This event is something we look forward to every year. I haven't played in many years since 2015. So I'm extra excited to be back. To have basically everybody on the grounds rooting for you, which is pretty cool. There was tons of support. I played with Mike Weir. Which was super cool for me. Tons of support for him. Yeah, I was able to put together a decent round. So we're off to a good start and hopefully keep going.

Q. Is this basically a course of trying to do as best job you can on the front nine and then making hay on the back nine?

TAYLOR PENDRITH: I think so, yeah. I made the turn at 1-under par. Which I thought was pretty good. 3, 4, 5, 6 are pretty strong holes. You can still play them well if you're hitting quality shots. But if you're a little bit off it's really tricky.

Then the front nine there's a lot of wedges. I think I hit driver on most holes other than 10. Got a few in the fairway. But it's almost better to be in the rough with a lob wedge than laying back and missing the fairway with a pitching wedge because the rough's still pretty thick in spots. So that was kind of our game plan was to just hit a lot of drivers on the back and hit some wedges from the rough.

Q. Did you get a chance to watch any golf this morning? Were you able to watch any?

TAYLOR PENDRITH: I saw a little bit, yeah. I watched Corey's round a bit. So kind of got a feel for it. But like this is my only, this is my, I guess, third full 18-hole round here. So still trying to learn a few things. But we did a decent job managing our game today.

Q. It's only one round, but wondering, given all that's happened in the lead-up to start of play with Tuesday's news, does it feel important for you guys that there's a few Canadians near the top, there's some big names near the top of the leaderboard to kind of really put the focus back on the golf tournament?

TAYLOR PENDRITH: I think so. I mean, obviously there's been some crazy news this week and we still got to go out there and provide a good show. RBC's been a tremendous sponsor to the TOUR for years and it kind of sucks that it happened to them last year as well. So, yeah, the importance now is on golf and providing everybody a great tournament and, yeah.