THE 151ST OPEN

July 20, 2023

Danny Willett

Mixed Zone

DANNY WILLETT: Tough kind of middle stretch 11 through 14 with the crosswinds in and out of the left with the flags that were out there. Hit some decent ones, hit some poor ones, but yeah, kind of probably about what it should have been really.

Q. Did you get the worst of the wind today?

DANNY WILLETT: I don't really know. I've not seen bits. It was more where the flags were. Every flag that you want to try and get at seemed like it was on the side where the wind was at. Flag on the left, wind out of the left. Flag on the right, wind out of the right.

Always makes it tricky. Just a good setup of the golf course this week. It's a great Open test and you can see you play well, there's some scores out there. If you don't play well, you can go pretty high.

Just a real good fair test.

Q. A lot has been made of 17, that short par-3. What did you make of it?

DANNY WILLETT: It's good. We pitch up so often these days when they've extended a par-3 to 240, 250. It's quite nice for a change for them take off 80-odd yards.

The best par-3s in the world in my opinion are the short ones, especially when you get wind. With where it is right on peninsula right, you get that in out the right, you can't quite feel it because you're sheltered on the tee box, but you know it's out there and you either trust it and whatever else and you'll see birdies, you'll see pars, you'll see bogeys, you'll see some pretty big numbers if anyone gets themselves into trouble down the right-hand side on the bunker. I think it's a really nice change.

Q. Quite an eventful 18th for you.

DANNY WILLETT: Yeah. One of them things, yeah. Hit a good tee shot, laid up nicely into a divot. What you want when you're downwind to a tight flag.

But yeah, never mind. It was good fun out there with J.D. and try and give ourselves reasonable position on the weekend.

Q. Where do you assess where you are in the bigger picture?

DANNY WILLETT: Eh, we've not been good for three or four months unfortunately. I had a really nice kind of run early Jan, Feb, March, and then had three, four weeks off after THE PLAYERS, and yeah, just couldn't quite get back a few of the feelings that I was having, and we've kind of struggled since.

We had a couple of reasonable finishes, nothing great, and then, yeah, it's not been amazing.

Still working pretty hard, and obviously came to the UK. Moved back to the UK 10 days ago for the summer stuff, so there's a lot going on.

But nice to be at home, and really nice out there today to have the British crowd. Yeah, we'll see if we can hopefully build on a little bit. There's a few nice feelings and build on it a bit and see if we can take it through this year.

Q. It's obviously been done a lot. (Indiscernible).

DANNY WILLETT: Yeah, I despise not playing good golf. I despise having people beat me. Yeah, it never leaves a good taste in your mouth. Yeah, we want to kind of achieve -- still achieve a lot more in the game. In order to do that, we're going to have to pull this finger out and start playing better.

Q. And the Liverpool head covers? Just a one-off for this week?

DANNY WILLETT: Depends. Sometimes they might let you keep them. But no, Callaway do a great job keeping the theme in and around where The Opens are at. Another great example this week.

Q. Looking ahead obviously to the Ryder Cup, not that you're focused on it this week, but tell me about 2016 and your thoughts and feelings over that first tee shot that you hit.

DANNY WILLETT: Yeah, the lads will be nervous. It's always a nerve-racking tee shot, especially in America. I can't comment on a European one. I imagine the vibe is pretty different if they're heavily in your favour.

Yeah, it's a very different experience to what most guys are used to. You've played well to obviously get into the Ryder Cup, but it doesn't always necessarily mean that you're playing well that week, which was the case for us that year.

But yeah, all in all, you get some different nerves that you're probably not going to ever experience again, so hopefully the lads enjoy it.

Q. Is it something you're thinking about at all?

DANNY WILLETT: I'm thinking about watching it on TV right now. I don't think I'll be that close to playing in it again. So yeah, we'll see.