CHARLES SCHWAB CHALLENGE

May 24, 2024

Ryan Fox

Colonial CC

Quick Quotes

Q. 3-under par today. Nice round. Some comments on your play.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, today was really, really good to be honest. I made a couple of bogeys a little sloppy one at the end. Actually turned out to be a good bogey, hit it in the water. Felt like a day that could have been anything. I made four birdies in the first five and holed a couple of putts and the putter kind of went cold for the rest of it. Hit a lot of shots in to sort of 10, 15 foot, which with how firm these greens are, you feel like that's pretty close. I burned a lot of edges. Very happy with 3-under, but felt like I probably had a few more out there.

Q. You mentioned the stretch on your front nine, the four in a row. Take us through that stretch.

RYAN FOX: Yeah, I drove it in the bunker on 11. Laid up nicely. Hit a good sand wedge in there to about five feet.

Hit a great tee shot down 12, and then hit a gap wedge in there to about eight feet and made that.

Then hit a really good shot into 13, ended up about 15, 20 feet past it, and holed a nice one down the slope.

Drove it in the rough on 14, just in the left rough, sort of just ran it into the back fringe and I holed a nice 30-footer up and over there. At that point it sort of felt like it was really getting going.

Then it sort of stalled a little bit. I missed the next two greens still hitting pretty good shots and got them up-and-down and then the putter went cold for the rest of the day.

Q. Curious what specifically started to click for you at the Masters?

RYAN FOX: I just started to hit my start lines again. The first part of this year I tend to like hitting a fade and I tend to get the right going right or the left going left. That's not really good way to play golf. It makes golf pretty hard. I started to actually get those start lines back at the Masters and I put a couple of good results on the board since then. Had a couple of weeks where I felt like I played a bit better than I scored. Especially last week at the PGA, I felt like tee to green I actually played pretty solid and just couldn't get the ball in the hole. I was quite excited to come back here. I played pretty decent last year around here and feel like it's a golf course that you've got do everything well, and so far for the first two days I've managed to do every part of the game's been pretty solid.

Q. Getting those start lines correct again, was there anything specific you did drill-wise or kind of the same stuff?

RYAN FOX: Just the same stuff, really. I've been working with my coach in the U.K., Jamie Gough, for the last three years, and I probably got away from a couple of the things we were doing. For me it was just get a little closer to the ball, get the shoulder alignment correct, and then just get back to trusting it. I did that on the range, and it was really good the first few days at the Masters, and then actually started to do it on the golf course, which was nice. Started to get some confidence back and as I said I've had a couple of decent results, hit some good shots down the stretch, and maybe not in contention but at least with a chance for a good result, and it felt like I hit some good shots when it mattered. Yeah, it's nice to do that over two days here this week as well.

Q. How excited are you over for these next two days being right up there in contention again?

RYAN FOX: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I haven't been in contention too much this year. There's a lot of good players up here, obviously Scottie had a good round today, Sungjae, and I think Keegan is leading at the moment, so going to require a couple good rounds over the weekend, but I feel like my game's in good shape and I can certainly give it a run.

Q. It's really hot. Is that something that you like, do you like playing in the heat, or how do you adjust and cope out there?

RYAN FOX: I don't mind the heat too much. I think it's going to be oppressively hot over the weekend though. I think the biggest thing is to stay hydrated. I always find that it becomes a bit of a guess with how far the ball goes. Once it gets over sort of 30 celsius -- I still don't know my conversions very well -- but once it gets over that the ball starts sort of flying exponentially further. There's going to be a little bit of that with my caddie tomorrow, trying to work out -- well, over the weekend -- trying to work out how far the ball's going. It's almost like playing at a little bit of altitude at times, it just goes through the wind and goes a little further, and hopefully we can figure that out over the weekend.