THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Very pleased to welcome Bryson DeChambeau to the interview room.
Bryson, put together a very impressive second round today, firing a 68 which currently puts you in second place.
Could you please take us through some of the highlights of your day.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, I was hitting it a lot better today, and there's just a few moments where, like on 10, I kind of got out of whack, and I was able to save this round with my wedges and some huge key putts.
Getting up-and-down on 10 was one of the better up-and-downs of my life. Hit a great shot in on 9. Just didn't control the spin like I'd wanted to. Spun that off the green.
But overall, today was a fantastic day of golf in some testing conditions.
Q. Last night you went to the range after your round --
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Surprise.
Q. Yeah, very surprised. What did you work on and how long did you spend there?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, it was just my iron play, trying to get my stock draw in there. Felt like I was leaving the face open a little bit. So worked on some sequencing stuff, some face angle stuff, and actually found the golf swing more on the golf course today. So I don't think I will be practicing as much tonight, but I'll put a little bit of effort in, like normal.
Q. When you made your run here last year, that was before Pinehurst, sort of when you restored your image, so to speak.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Sure.
Q. Do you recall how the Patrons treated you here last year and if you've noticed a stark difference over the first two days?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, I think the Patrons have always been great here, first off. Even when I was in my trying times, I feel like there was still a lot of support.
Now it just feels like a bolster of energy everywhere. It's quite different, and it's a lot of fun.
Q. How do you balance out here being conservative and being aggressive? Do you feel like you need to be more conservative here than other places or vice versa?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, it's a daily battle. It's not easy to try and be more conservative when you know the leaders are starting to run away from it and you get these little shelves in certain areas and these little fingers that you've got to hit the ball into, and you've got to hit a cut or a draw. You have to have every shot in the bag.
It's just difficult to try to accomplish, I would say, just the goal of just being patient and being understanding. I feel like I've done that better over the course of time. But how do I balance it? Man, that's a great question. I'd say only God knows.
Q. I saw you on the range doing this kind of uppercut move.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah.
Q. What is it that? What's going on there?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Oh, it's just like trying to side bend up and turn the handle over. It's like a -- a little bit of an uppercut or like a topspin shot in ping-pong. That's just what I want to feel in my golf swing.
It's the same thing I've been doing for years now. I just, I'd say, need to be a little bit more consistent with it.
Q. I wanted to ask you, similar question but not identical. Obviously this is a major. This is maybe, to many golfers, the major they want to win more than anything else. How do you try not to want it too badly? Because that can affect maybe your game, and you have to do it in a careful way, not to want something so badly that impacts you judging things incorrectly. Can you talk about being balanced in that sense?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It definitely can be tough at times when you're thinking about it. I think grounding yourself is super important, realizing where you're at, knowing how many holes you have left, knowing there's a lot of golf left. Not getting too far ahead of yourself is important, and that's something that you have to learn over the course of time with a lot of experience.
You have to put yourself in position. You have to fail. You have to lose. You have to win. You have to come from behind. You have to hold the lead. All those expectations and feelings have to get conquered in your mind. That's why this game is played between -- between your ears.
Q. Do you feel that as more of a veteran player, obviously, as each year goes by, you understand that more?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I'm learning. A little more wisdom than the last year and hopefully the year before. So continuing to grow.
Q. You said you kind of found your golf swing on the course today. Can you tell us where that was? And also, statistically, you probably were not as good today as you were yesterday except with your score. Could you kind of explain that maybe?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: No. (Laughs.) Alex, you always ask great questions.
For me, I'd say I found it on 5 on the tee shot. I hit a pull on 4 into the left bunker and holed out, which is an unbelievable bonus for me.
On the 5th hole, I said to myself, I've got to feel something that's a little different. And lo and behold, I think I just started to integrate more of an up-and-down motion. And that just felt more comfortable to me, and I started doing it, and it got more comfortable till the 9th hole.
I hit best drive I hit all week on 9. It was a perfect shot shape, exactly the way I saw it in my head, exactly what I practiced on the range. I was like, there it is. From there I felt comfortable, even though I played better on the front nine. That's the way golf is. It sometimes doesn't play out the way you statistically think it should. That's why this game is so great. But I actually found it and felt more comfortable on the back nine than I did on the front nine.
Q. I think your quote after the third round last year was something to the effect, I'm going to look back on this and try to figure out how to putt well. So far, so far so good.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah.
Q. And what have you learned?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, besides 16 -- and I knew how hard to hit that putt on 16. I just gave it a little bit more. I don't know why I did it.
18, felt like I hit a good putt. Just slowed up with that slope. I thought it was going to be a little flatter. But I really took it to heart to practice my speed control because out here, it's all about speed control, 2-putting from a 40-, 50-foot place over a big mound and whatnot.
So I took it to heart, go practice a lot of 50-, 60-footers in the past couple months and work on my long putting and make sure I'm starting it on my line. That was a big problem I had last year in the third round was just not starting on the line, and this week I found something to help start on the line a little more consistently for me.
Q. How do you -- how do you play a reachable par 5 differently than a long par 4? It's sort of one of the interesting things about this course. The par 4s are really hard. Scoring average on the par 5s is a little bit lower. But mentally how do you approach those differently?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I really don't. I try to take every hole based on the wind and how it's playing and hit my most comfortable shot out there. Like on 11, bombed a drive out there. Had a little pitching wedge in, and hit a good little pitching wedge. Just the wind flipped on me. So my mentality there was still attack mode.
On 13, I hit a great drive, just the wind took it to the right a little bit. Got into the pine straw, and it was situational. I couldn't go for the green because there was so much pine straw around there. And so I laid up, and I was a little more cautious there because I said, you know what, I can still get up-and-down for birdie if I hit a good third shot.
15, I went for it. I tried to play out to the right, not that far right. The wind kind of flipped and went off the left when I hit. I was trying to get to that right-hand side, back right-hand side.
So it's very situational, I would say. I can't give you an exact like, oh, on the long par 4s what's my mentality. It's attack mode until I have to, you know, settle back in and go, okay, let's be a little bit more conservative.
For the most part, I go for everything.
Q. Par is just a number, basically?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, yeah, you could say that. (Laughs.)
Q. How would you describe the way you've been putting most of the season and the change you've found? Could you give us a little more detail, and was it you or somebody else who clicked on that?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: For me, I had not been putting great this season. A little streaky for me. Just not starting it on my line, feeling that same pull like I did last year.
This week on the putting green, I was just really focusing on how do I start it more consistently on line. I found something for a week at Pinehurst last year, and I did really well with it. And then it kind of started to go away again.
So I've been struggling with the pulls from then, and come to this week, even all the way up till this week, I was like, man, why am I pulling it? I can't figure out why I'm pulling it. Tried everything in the book. And then Connor, my manager, and I were just talking about it, and he goes, Why don't you just feel like you open the face but take it down the line more and don't let it go inside?
Because I tried to open the face before, and it just felt weird. But once I went down the line and opened the face more straight back, straight through, it just worked. Felt like I wasn't pulling it anymore. So sometimes it's just one little thing.
Q. Patience is a word that you've used a lot this week. Is it as simple as trying to be patient, or are using techniques, I don't know if it's meditation or breathing exercise? How are you getting into that mindset before and during the rounds?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I think it's staying grounded. Like I think of myself as just being here in the present. I know it's so cliché to say, but patience is built on understanding where you're at.
And I feel like I'm doing a really good job of just staying in the moment, not thinking about the next hole, not thinking about the putt, not thinking about anything else. Just saying, hey, I'm right here, right now. What do I need to do give myself the best chance to make birdie or par out there, whatever it is.
When I get a little nervous, I go, Okay, it's just a golf shot. Come on, focus, do it like you've always done it. And that's kind of what I say to myself.
Q. A lot of players talk about this being a grueling physical test, and yet you've hit exponentially more golf balls than anyone else in the practice area. How do you manage that?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Being a little different, I guess. Something's not right up here, I guess, I don't know.
For me, all that matters is me being able to execute the shot the way I want to hit it. If I don't see it come out of a window with the right curvature, I'm going to continue to work until I figure that out and feel that my perception meets reality. If the perception and the reality don't meet up, then I keep working to match those.
That's just kind of what I focus on. So it doesn't really matter how much of a test it is. I'm still going to work as hard as I can to get it going through that window every time, with the toughest test, which I believe it is, physically out here. But I'll keep going. I don't stop. That's why I did Long Drive, as well. Just put myself through a tough test, and it's kind of paid off in that regard from a mentality perspective.
Q. Curious, seeing some of the stuff on the YouTube channels --
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Thank you.
Q. -- and looks like you're having a blast out there.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It's great.
Q. How much has that maybe restored your, I don't know, I don't want to say love for the game, but enjoyment and that the game can be fun, as well, and has that carried over to tournaments?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It has. It's a great question. YouTube golf has made me feel like a kid again. When I started out, I was like, man, this is going to be a lot of work. And once we started putting in challenges that were fun and interesting and different, it kind of made me feel like I was that, you know, 11-, 12-year-old going out with your friends and just trying to play as good as you can and do something crazy and different.
It really makes you think, as well, when you get a different set of golf clubs in your hand, as a kid you get another club if your hand, okay, maybe it's not perfect, but you have to figure out a way to get it done. So that kind of brought out that aspect of me, and I do feel like it's aided in that.
When I am doing the course record series, it's focusing my brain up to the maximum extent. So it's not like it's costing me a lot of energy and I'm not gaining much out of it. I'm actually focusing myself and saying, hey, you're on camera, you have to execute. There's nothing else you can do besides play your absolute best. So it gets me in a really cool mentality, as well. It's been a great benefit.
Q. You're a science guy. Talk about the science of the committee here and their ability to script a different challenge on every hole on every day, and is it different than any other major in their ability to do that?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I'm not going to speak for them, but every day we come out here, it's a new test.
And a great example is, even the first hole today, just dead into the wind. They moved the tee box up a little bit. So it was fair.
You know, I hit 3-wood and I still had a huge number in.
Second hole, a little more favorable.
Third hole, diabolical. Made you think. And I laid up off that tee box.
Fourth hole, you've got to play a cut in there off into the wind. I think they know the wind and they see the wind, and they react to that quite well probably. I'm just assuming at this point. I'm not stating any facts or anything, but that's what I assume they probably do. And they do a great job every single year of it.
So they know what they are doing.
Q. With the ping-pong paddle thought that you were talking about, how many different swing thoughts like that will you cycle through in a week?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: If I'm really trying to find my golf swing, I can go through a hundred pretty easily. I'm telling you, like 15 to 20 on a range session, easily. Maybe more sometimes, if I'm really trying to find something. I've got a lot going on up in there.
You wouldn't want to be in there (chuckles).
Q. When you look at the top of the leaderboard, there's a lot of class and quality and star power there. Still 36 holes to play, but as you look at that, what's your impression of being in the mix of that, and how energizing is that as you go into tomorrow?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I'm going to keep it simple. I'm excited. Very excited for the weekend. This is what golf is about. Got a lot of great names up there, and looking forward to an unbelievable test of golf.
Q. The lay-up on 3, a hole traditionally most long hitters hit it up in the valley. What was the decision to lay up there? And then in terms of your strategy, how has it evolved through the years in your different eras as a golfer?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: To answer the first question, I felt like hitting driver up there, I have a 70-yard shot into the wind, which is fine. I wouldn't have been able to get the right spin on it to get it close. It would have bounced by the flag and gone 15, 20 feet by.
So I felt like laying up would have given me a better chance to land it softer and spin it next to the hole, which I did. I just pulled it a little bit. I felt like that was something I've learned over the course of my career. And I'll continue to learn; depending on wind conditions and firmness and all that, the type of grass, the way it's laying and how -- with the ball sitting down. All that stuff has certainly developed my experience over the course of time.
Just going through it, getting experience in different conditions, different situations for me. So that's the reason why I did it, and I learned from past experience, hitting it up there and having this tight 75-yard shot that I can't really control. I'd rather have a little 10:30 9-iron in for me.
Q. You were in this position last year. How much more confident are you that you can complete the job this year at this course than last year?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I'd always say, to win it takes a little bit of luck and a great amount of skill set. I feel like my skill set is the same, if not a little bit better in certain aspects.
So I'm just going to give it my absolute best, and whatever happens, happens. And I'm okay with whatever does happen. Because ultimately, it's not -- it's not everything but it would be amazing to win. It's just more, continue to keep putting myself in positions like this.
So that's really all I can say.
Q. Do you feel more prepared for the challenge because you are in this position last year and you also won the U.S. Open?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Experience always helps. Winning the U.S. Open gives you a lot of confidence. You just have to hit the right shots under the right conditions at the right moment in time, and that's what allows you to win.
You know, a couple things at the U.S. Open last year that doesn't go my way, I don't win, right. And it went my way.
You've got to have a couple things go your way this week, but I'm going to give myself as much of a possibility as I can to play my best golf. So we'll see.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you for your time today, and have a great weekend.
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