Q. It wasn't just the fact you were making birdies. I thought you played with more confidence, more patience, and you weren't trying to guide any shots, you were just letting it go.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I think there's, Pebble presents, obviously, a lot of precision and you got to really trust what you're doing. Early in that round you really got to take advantage. When the conditions were going to be easier today, you needed to kind of shoot a low round and make sure you're in this tournament because it's going to be a grind the next few days with the weather that we have coming in.
So I think you're right. I didn't try and go force those birdies. I just kind of tried to hit to the right spots early in the round and just kind of get settled into the round and then I was kind of rewarded on number 10 with a hole-out eagle from just kind of playing the right style of golf before that.
Q. As long as you brought it up, I had you 113 yards, landed beyond the hole and backed it up.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I needed to cover 107 on the false front and it hit. I fixed the pitch mark maybe two short of the hole and I think it bounced past it and then spun back. In the air I thought it just needed to make, it needed to go far enough. Once I saw where it landed I knew it would be close. It was a bonus for it to obviously go in.
Q. You had just 61 feet or so in putts. I think that's a good sign that you can shoot 7-under and not have to have 130 feet in putts.
JORDAN SPIETH: Maybe the best sign. Yeah, maybe the best sign of good things to come of any stat. It's also hard to have a lot of feet of putts at Pebble. I mean you don't really have a lot of long putts, the greens are so small. But I hit a lot of greens in regulation, only really got into trouble on one hole, and other than that I would still like things to feel better than they do, but I know I'm able to kind of play a shot that, kind of a punch draw if I need to have it, and it's nice to kind of feel that you can always go to a shot if you get a little bit uncomfortable. And I think this is what you were talking about about not guiding, being able to club down and just kind of play a couple 4-irons off tees on some holes to make sure I'm able to get into birdie range in two.
Q. Talk about the reaction when you hole out like that. Not just from the fairway but on 10. That's a tough hole.
JORDAN SPIETH: The tees were up and the wind was down. So they're the normal tees that we play in this tournament, but we played the pro-am from that U.S. Open tee. So I walked back from 9 thinking that was going to be one of the more difficult tee shots and than I saw the tee boxes were up, and so I kind of got a little juiced about that. And then held it down the right side, kind of a little bit on accident, just kind of leaned it a little and luckily I felt comfortable enough carrying the hazard on that side anyways that it left me with just a great angle.
So it's odd, I mean, I saw it drop and then there was three people on the balcony of the house in the distance and a couple people near the green, volunteers where his hands went up. But it's still weird having a moment like that where you're used to kind of a loud roar and it's just so kind of calm and quiet.
But, yeah, I mean, 10 can be a difficult hole. Today, as long as you hit the fairway, it wasn't so. And it was nice to take advantage.
Q. What did you say the number was to the hole?
JORDAN SPIETH: I had 113 adjusted and down breeze and like had to carry 107. Just a sand wedge.
Q. You're used to not playing in front of spectators. But here without amateurs, obviously you saw that coming. When you're out there did it just seem odd?
JORDAN SPIETH: A little bit. It almost -- having played the U.S. Open recently here, that was threesomes the first two days, the golf course is obviously quite a bit different, but just having had that in the last year or so it's almost like we have played -- we have played as many rounds with three PGA TOUR players as we have in the pro-am in the last couple years.
So it was odd, I certainly miss how much fun we have with Jake and Dustin and Wayne every year. So I'll shoot Jake a note saying that I could have used his help for another couple strokes, but all in all very pleased with the start.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports