COGNIZANT CLASSIC

February 27, 2025

Jordan Spieth

PGA National Champion Course

Quick Quotes

Q. I'm sure if I told you your score before you round, you would have felt like maybe you were in the lead. What did you see out of the golf course and how you played today?

JORDAN SPIETH: I thought after playing the first three holes and what I had, I was even par, but they were kind of more bold pins. I thought from a course setup they weren't many of the hardest pins on the golf course. A lot of them were in gettable locations, and then we didn't have any wind, so it was a beautiful morning. The hardest part was trying to figure out where it was coming from because it flipped all over the place. At 5 miles an hour that's not going to do a whole lot to it.

It was about trying to find the fairway and then you should have a lot of looks from that 8 to 18 range, and then Bermuda throughout the day is just always going to be a better surface to roll those in on.

Obviously guys were doing that, but like you mentioned, I would have certainly signed for 6. I still would every round, and by the end of the tournament, I was thinking it was going to be like 14 or 15 this week, and now you've got to readjust and think it's going to be more like 20.

Q. You changed balls recently?

JORDAN SPIETH: I just did today.

Q. What was the thought process?

JORDAN SPIETH: Well, I cracked my driver, and I've been trying to get into a driver since Pebble. So Phoenix I was in a driver and then San Diego I was in a driver. Adjusted settings to try and get the launch and spin right. What ended up happening was the newer ball, the 25x, the window it goes into is a little closer to the one I was playing, and if anything it spins a little bit less, is a little lower, but it has the correct spin rates on my 4-, 5-, 6-irons, and then from there was just going to be better with the driver. A lot of it was matching the driver and making sure it held up and the long irons.

Q. So you're in the new 25x now?

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah.

Q. How many holes did you get to play going into today, and did you have any sense the course was going to change like what everyone is used to seeing?

JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I think just arriving on property, I didn't realize that it was overseeded, and the fairways being overseeded changes it a lot because it'll make the fairways softer which makes them wider, and then around the greens it's significantly easier than the dormant Bermuda. You're looking at easily a stroke a round on just the change in the grass types in the fairway.

Then I hit a couple in the rough on Tuesday and I could advantage a 3-wood up by the green on 10. Right away, just compared to what I had seen, I thought it would be playing easier than it typically does --

Q. But not like this?

JORDAN SPIETH: No, not necessarily like this, but again, the pins were in very gettable locations today. If you give the four locations on the green and you asked which one is the easiest, I would say probably half of them were on the easiest location today instead of just a quarter of them.

The mixture was a little different, so it's going to be harder just off of hole locations, let alone with some wind picking up as the week goes on and everything firming up a little bit.