THE 152ND OPEN

July 20, 2024

Justin Thomas

Mixed Zone

Q. How would you sum up today?

JUSTIN THOMAS: It was a great Saturday. I played really, really well, made some great putts. It's hard to not put too much pressure on yourself, I think, going out early on a Saturday in an Open. You know it can be gettable sometimes. With the wind being calmer, I just -- I felt good enough about my game where I could be aggressive off the tees like I was, but I also capitalised on them. So it was nice.

Q. When you look up and you see I'm in this, does it change anything in your head? Do you get even more greedy and push more?

JUSTIN THOMAS: Not on this back nine. Although the wind was very calm, it did switch and go more northwest, and you could feel it getting cold. You could smell the rain coming. It was quite bizarre.

Once I made birdie on 12, although I obviously would have loved a couple more, I knew if I got in the house at 6-under, it would have been a really great round.

Of course I'm bummed to make two bogeys coming in, but 4-under is still a great day.

Q. Those last four holes in particular, was it a war of attrition to get through those?

JUSTIN THOMAS: Yeah, that was kind of my thinking is -- I think they did a great job of the golf course and setting it up in terms of the rough. You can get out of it. It's patchy in places. But when it gets wet, it plays completely different.

I just was really focusing on trying to get the ball in the fairway, which I had done well before that. But just trying to get it in the fairway and making sure that I can really just get it on the greens and try to make pars. Then if I got an opportunity like 16 or 17 where I had a birdie look, obviously I wanted to make it, but it's just not really the time to be greedy.

Q. 68 to 78 that you shot today; how do you sum that up?

JUSTIN THOMAS: Golf. Golf is how I would sum it up. It's a crazy sport and a lot of things can happen in a lot of conditions. But that's what I signed up for, I guess.

Q. We've seen erratic swings; is there any difference in your general feel, or is it just kind of the breaks or whatever? Do you sense any actual difference?

JUSTIN THOMAS: From today and yesterday?

Q. When you are playing really well and playing really poorly, for lack of a better term --

JUSTIN THOMAS: For sure. You're in a lot better place mentally. You have a lot more confidence of where the ball is going to go, of things that's going to happen. It's a very, very fine line in terms of the score and the actual shots that you hit.

I would say it's just more in your head and your thought process on everything is definitely different.

Q. How will you spend this afternoon? Do you think you can still be in this?

JUSTIN THOMAS: For sure. If I'm being perfectly honest, I hope it continues to rain and gets windy. I think I'd be crazy if I said otherwise.

The biggest thing is just going to be even if I am five, six, seven back, it's just the amount of people that are ahead of me -- like at Southern Hills I was seven back but I only had five people ahead of me. That's a big difference of -- even very different than being four back but there's 15 people ahead of me.

But I can't do anything about what those guys do about the conditions. I did my part and I just gotta hope for the best, and hopefully we have a chance tomorrow.

Q. You said the rough is dramatically different when it's wet. Can you expand on that for the layman?

JUSTIN THOMAS: I mean, when it's dry, it's wispy and you can play some fliers and you can get the ball to jump or you can just gauge how the club is going to go through, but when it's wet, it basically never comes out hot. It's either going to come out dead or come out nowhere.

The moisture, it's hard to explain, but it changes everything. Especially first cut, the ball spins way more with longer clubs. It spins less with shorter clubs. But we're all used to that, and it's just kind of something you get used to over time.