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June 12, 2014
PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA
Q. Could you talk about the round?
RORY McILROY: It's been too long since I finished, I can't really remember. The golf course was set up pretty scorable today, I felt. There was a few pin positions on the front of the greens. There was still some moisture in the greens. A few tees were moved up. What we saw this morning out there on that golf course is probably the most scorable it's going to be all week. I played well. I hit 14 greens. I think I only missed one fairway. I struggled with my speed on the greens. That was the only thing that really let me down today. But I played to my spots, stayed patient and was rewarded with a nice birdie at the last. It was a grind out there at times, but I think to shoot plus 1 is a solid day.
Q. Graeme said he thought you were pretty aggressive out there, taking a pretty aggressive approach?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, off the tee, I guess. These fairways are pretty generous, and even I only missed -- I guess I only missed one fairway. You can sort of get away with it. You can get some decent lies out there and advance it up towards the green. But, yeah, I played beautifully from tee-to-green and really happy with that. I'm just going to work a little bit on my speed on the greens and if I can get that dialed in then pretty confident going into the next three days.
Q. Are you fairly content?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, fairly content. Definitely. I'm only three off the lead, and the course is only going to get firmer this afternoon. If guys want to shoot under par, they're going to have to play some really good golf.
Q. (Inaudible.)
RORY McILROY: Yeah, definitely. Of the three of us, we started pretty solid. G-Mac didn't start the best and made that eagle on 5. And then, yeah, he gets the most out of it and misses it in the right places, has a really good short game, holes big momentum putts to keep his run going. He always seems to be able to make those. Yeah, this is his ideal sort of tournament, you know, grinding it out, and the winning score not being too much under par and he knows how to do that well.
Q. He felt the winner would only may 10 or 12 birdies, would you agree with that?
RORY McILROY: My goal coming into this week was somewhere around 15, like maybe four a day. I made two today. It's sort of looking at past U.S. Open winners at similar courses, where the winning score has been around winning par. I think Justin Rose made 14 or 15 birdies last year at Merion. So somewhere around there is a good amount of birdies. But it all depends. It's inevitable that you're going to make some bogeys and make some mistakes out here. You have to limit those as much as you can.
Q. (Inaudible.)
RORY McILROY: Not at all, because, you know, that's just the way that the U.S. Open is, the way this golf course is. Hitting really good drives and going in with shorter irons than some of the guys and still not really going at pins, going to the middle of greens. If you're hitting it to 20 feet, it's not like you're going to hole that many of them. And if you get hot, you might hole a few. No, not frustrated. The only thing I was frustrated on was more the speed of how I hit the putts. It wasn't so much they missed, even if they had of missed, but if they were a better speed I would be a bit more happy with that. As I said, just work on that for tomorrow. And if I can get the speed dialed in a little bit more then hopefully I'll be right there over the weekend.
Q. Do you think that you're in that fame of mind where you can keep on an even keel?
RORY McILROY: I think so. I kind of let it sort of get away from me today. I bogeyed 6 and 7 and missed the green left and managed to get that up and down and that sort of steadied the ship, and was able to birdie 9. When it looked like the run could have gotten away from me, I was able to come back a little bit, which was nice, and played a solid back nine.
Q. Anything Jack said to you (inaudible)?
RORY McILROY: I had three-putted 16. The first thing I thought of was him because he always says he hates three putting. As I look at it, it's inevitable that you're going to make mistakes out here. It's just how you deal with it, accept it and move on. I felt like I did that pretty well today.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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