Q. How would you characterize the round today?
SCOTT STALLINGS: Much better than yesterday. Short game was still good. I drove it a lot better. I had a lot more opportunities. I missed a couple short ones on par-5s, but kind of get a little bit across the grain with a little bit of wind, it kind of can be tricky, especially on some of the downgrain putts.
But happy the way I hung in there. Had pretty low expectations coming into this week. Had a long week last week in Nashville with our junior event.
But I did a lot of chipping and putting with the kids, so I guess it paid off.
Q. You spoke about the driving; is that kind of the biggest thing out here? You've got to put the ball in the fairway or you're being a little defensive?
SCOTT STALLINGS: Very much so. The rough can be very penal and make you look very silly. Unfortunately, I had all my woods broken a couple weeks ago on a flight from LaGuardia back to Knoxville, so this is a new set, so so far, so good, I think. Driver was a lot better today than yesterday, and hopefully we'll continue to do that for two more days.
Q. What have you been doing since the end of the TOUR Championship?
SCOTT STALLINGS: Lifted a lot of weight. I kind of had a very short amount of time, so Adam, my trainer and I, so to say I had even lower expectations because I didn't play a lot of golf -- I probably played three or four rounds, but I played a lot and hit a lot of balls last week.
We had a junior event, a couple Kids Play Free charity events in and throughout the state, so I was kind of around it, not necessarily playing full rounds but hitting shots and kind of getting my feet back under me a little bit.
Excited to be back out here. I love this course. Sanderson does a great job with the event, and happy to be where I am today.
Q. When you talk about lifting a lot of weights in a short amount of time, what are you and Adam trying to do with your training regimen?
SCOTT STALLINGS: Mostly just change it up because towards the end of the season it can kind of not necessarily go through the motions, but sort of you don't really have an opportunity to go through like a strength hypertrophy phase so you kind of fast track it. So the workouts were a little bit longer, not as much cardio.
I'm definitely carrying more, I guess, just overall weight than I normally do, but a couple weeks of being back to work and kind of getting back into it, it's just kind of the way that the season goes and kind of understanding you have to pick your spots. I had never been in that situation making the TOUR Championship before, so it gave me a little bit more time and a little bit less time, if that kind of makes sense.
But happy with the team I have around me, but got to try some things we haven't done in a while, and I feel pretty good, and look forward to the weekend.
Q. How much confidence did making the TOUR Championship bring you to this season?
SCOTT STALLINGS: A lot of confidence. Just continually to carry on. I had a lot of really good people around me to help me get there. It was by no means -- I was the one hitting the shots, but there was a lot of people behind the scenes that put me in that position to do that, and happy to pick up where we left off.
TOUR Championship was very -- like happy to be there but disappointed in how I played, just in the fact of man, I just drove it in the rough on every role. That was a hard place to play. You don't really know what you're missing until you have a chance to experience it, but now you kind of felt like you got to dip your toe in the water a little bit, and it's like, let's figure out how to do this more often and put myself in spots to hopefully have a chance to be there a few more times in my career.
Q. You're a couple back heading into the weekend. What are your main focuses going into the weekend and staying in contention?
SCOTT STALLINGS: I mean, the weather is going to be great. The course is firm and fast. Try to continue with the game plan that we have and try to take care of the par-5s, put myself in position, and keep trying to hit it out of the middle of the face. Yesterday was not that.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports