Q. How would you characterize that round today?
RORY McILROY: Awful. Yeah, I got off to a bad start. Sort of pieced it together a little bit in the middle of the round and clawed it back to even par. But drove the ball terribly.
Then when you're sort of hitting out of the rough from the fairway bunkers here -- when I hit the fairways, I give myself chances. I need to hit more fairways the next three days.
Q. Is it something you can work on on the range?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, I think a little bit of work on the range, committing to a shot shape maybe a little bit more. Seemed like when I tried to hit the driver left to right today, it was better. Maybe just stick with that over the course of the week and try to dial that in.
But yeah, definitely just hit to hit a few more fairways.
Q. Is it more difficult with committing to shots on the course that you're not as familiar with? Is that part of getting accustomed to it?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, maybe a little bit. But it should be the same. You should be picking your start line and trying to finish it on your finish line.
I feel like I tried to hit too many tee shots today pretty neutral. If I aimed up the left and hit a cut, it seemed to work a little bit better.
Q. Is there anything in particular about these greens that makes them a little tricky? I saw a lot of putts burning edges today. It felt like guys weren't quite matching line and speed?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, they are, they're tricky. There's a lot of slope to them. They're quite fast, and when it's like that, matching line and speed is pretty tricky.
I think you'll see a few with the greens being a little slower and softer here, you'll probably see guys hole a few more putts just because the rain sort of takes the nuance out of the greens a little bit. I'd expect the scoring to be pretty good here for the next couple hours.
Q. Is there a different approach when you don't have to jockey for starting stroke positions for next week?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, not really. I guess it would still be nice to finish second after this week just to get a little bit more cash, I guess. Yeah, again, I guess you're trying your best to win the golf tournament. Yeah, I guess you're just not looking at the leaderboards as much because it obviously doesn't really matter heading into next week where you are.
Q. Being paired with Scottie, does that fuel you as you're going around?
RORY McILROY: I love playing with Scottie. I always have. I like the cadence that he plays the game at. I like his rhythm. He doesn't really take a ton of time.
I feel like there's guys that you like to get paired with, and there's guys -- some guys that you don't. I've always enjoyed playing with Scottie.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports