Travelers Championship
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Xander Schauffele
Quick Quotes
Q. Xander, you obviously got things rolling, as we've heard, with the putter. Once you make one or two lengthy putts, does your confidence sort of go up for the rest of the day when you see putts that kind of distance and you start making them?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Obviously. I think so. It's sort of I made the putts at a pretty decent pace, so I sort of -- all those putts I made were honestly, I think, 18 feet-ish, right around the same range. I was rolling them in, and I kept having 18-footers kind of uphill right to left, so it was almost like I hit the same putt three, four times in a row.
Q. Early morning groups have the benefit of almost no wind and the greens soft and receptive. How much did the course change over the course of your round?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: The greens firmed up a little bit. The wind, just a little bit of wind can make any course hard, so in terms of hitting it really tight, it got a little trickier late in the day, but all those -- from kind of 11 on, 11 to 15 are really important scoring holes, so regardless of the wind we kind of knew what we needed to do, and fortunately we were able to take advantage of it.
Q. When you see Mackenzie go out there and post a 60 and Rory posts a score, you have time I would assume realize guys are taking it deep, this course has yielded a 58 in the past. How much do you sort of feel like, okay, par is not 70, we really need sort of a pretty good score here to keep up?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I mean, the guy who shot 58 also shot 59 or maybe two of them. I don't know what he's at. It was good to see that -- last night I looked at the pins and I knew they were kind of tucked, and with the wind picking up I was a little concerned about shooting a low number, but once I saw those guys do it, it was sort of just follow the leader.
Q. Is it challenging to also at the same time stay patient where if you're not making birdies a little bit -- you got obviously on a really hot run, but it's 72 holes and you're going to go through stretches where that doesn't happen?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, of course, it's kind of typical Thursday golf, trying to position yourself smartly but patiently, and if you can do what I did and make some long putts, it's sort of the easier way to do it versus firing at those tucked pins and giving yourself a lot more stress. It was one of those days where you sort of play to the center of the green or pin high or away from the pin and take your 18-footer, and fortunately I was able to make them.
Q. With the score you were able to post, how much of an opportunity do you think you have here this week with what we assume is going to be the nice time with a late good score and then an early morning tomorrow?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I'm in position to do something nice with hopefully no wind tomorrow, and I got a few good breaks today, which I'll be the first to admit, rattling off a pin on a chip that was going to go 20 feet by, went to three feet. 18 I almost hit it in that left bunker and it ran down to 70 or 80 yards to the pin. With no wind there, I just need to clean it up a little bit, and hopefully we can hit it a little closer tomorrow.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
Rev #1 by #166 at 2020-06-25 21:41:00 GMT
