BERNHARD LANGER: Played solid, parred the first hole and birdied the second. Made a bogey on 3, which is probably almost a par 5 anyways, and then had a nice run, three birdies in a row on 7, 8 and 9.
So it's playing pretty solid. Gave myself opportunities, I putted pretty decent and then, you know, made a bad 3 putt on 13 and a 6 on 17 after I drove it left and hit the cart path, hit the lady on the shoulder and it went four yards left almost into the tents. I was stuck behind a tree and could only go sideways, so made 6 there.
But then made a great eagle on the last one. I hit driver, 5 wood to about three or four feet. It was a nice finish. Overall, I played pretty decent, hit lots of fairways and a number of greens and gave myself lots of opportunities.
It's a little firmer, the ball is starting to roll a little bit on the fairways, and it's definitely releasing on the greens more, too.
Well, it's difficult to say. You've seen, what, 3 under so far. I can't see it go much deeper.
What threw me off a little bit is they started watering the greens slightly so they don't burn, and that slowed them down just a tad bit. There were two or three holes they seemed to water them right around that time, just before us, so I left a couple of putts short and I wondered whether it was from just that they watered five or ten minutes.
I'm very happy with my 2 under, but I'm sure it won't be leading by the end of the day.
I was out there I think on 13, 14, 15, I saw him once or twice, I don't know if they did all of them, I'm sure they did, but I saw them once or twice just ahead of us, so I actually knew they were going to be a bit slower.
I'm trying to remember all of the holes, they were pretty short putts. No. 9, the par 3, I hit it about six feet there. 8 was about even shorter than that, probably five feet. And 7, I can't remember 7 now, it wasn't a long putt, probably 12, 15 feet, I was on 8 there was only a sand iron in, after a great tee shot. On 7 it was actually an 8 iron after a very good tee shot, as well. I hit that very close, about four or five feet again.
On 9 I got lucky, I actually missed the green on the right and hit a hump and it bounced towards the green and ended up about six, seven feet behind the hole.
Well, I've been playing pretty good. My last two tournaments, I finished fifth in both of them, the British Open and the Deutsche Bank in Europe. So I've been playing good and I've got some confidence with me, and I got a couple of good breaks so I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't be in there by Sunday.
Well, the key is always to hit a great tee shot, that fairway goes left to right as you play it, so you have to really slice your ball and fade it into the fairway. It's quite a ways down there, and hit 8 iron actually, and the last few days I was hitting 5 irons and 4 irons, so it was pretty out there, the tee shot. But I can see where that would be one of the holes that's pretty tough; it's just hard to hit the fairway when the fairway goes across and not straight down.
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