Sony Open in Hawaii

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Waialae Country Club

Denny McCarthy

Quick Quotes


Q. Bogey-free 64, excellent start. If we can get some comments on your round.

DENNY McCARTHY: I don't know what kind of round it was, really. I didn't feel like I really played that great. I definitely hit some good shots, some poor shots, and I managed my game really well. Felt like I scored the ball really well. Put a new putter in play and paid dividends today for sure. Made some really nice putts, a couple nice par saves, a couple bonus birdie putts. Yeah, kind of just held it together and let my putting and kind of scoring the ball do most of the work today.

Q. As good a putter as you are, we don't usually hear you talking about changing putters. What led to that?

DENNY McCARTHY: I really struggled last week on the greens. I find those greens really tricky to read last week. For some reason I like my gamer putter on fast Bermuda greens, but I struggle with them on slow Bermuda greens. These are a little slower again this week.

I've just kind of been struggling looking down at my putter. It just hasn't felt right lately. I don't know what's been going on, but it just hasn't looked great to my eye the last couple months. I've been fighting it.

So after last week, I kind of had determined that I wanted to change this week, just something different to look at, and I really liked how this one felt. I went through a couple different putters trying them on the green, and landed on this one and it feels pretty good.

Q. Three straight birdies on 16, 17, 18. Which of those stand out?

DENNY McCARTHY: The one on 17 just because it was a really tough pin. They moved the tee up for us, but it was really tucked over the false front and the bunker, and I hit a really nice kind of floaty 8-iron downwind, hit it really high and spun up and hit it to about five, six feet and made a nice little downhill left-to-right curler.

Missed a bunch of opportunities early on, missed a bunch of putts, but hit it close on 16, didn't have to putt, and then 17 kind of got some confidence with that putter going.

It feels good on the practice green. You never know how it's going to be when you take it into tournament play. So that little downhill little left-to-right six-footer got my day going, and just kind of felt comfortable from there on out.

Q. You're in a logjam with a lot of guys at 64. What was the defense of the course out there today?

DENNY McCARTHY: I think the softness in the greens. The fairways are really firm, so you can drive it very far. You can drive it very far and leave yourself some short clubs in, and the greens are somewhat soft. Obviously the wind picked up in the middle of the round for us today. It's still hard to hold some fairways, though, just the angles. You've really got to be precise with how you're hitting into some of these angled fairways. 18 is nearly impossible to hit. I hit what I thought was a perfect drive, and it raced through the fairway five yards and I had a really scratchy lie in the rough.

The rough is still up, but the softness in the greens allows for you to even if you do hit it in the rough, you can potentially fly something on the green and it will still hold. But I thought the course played -- it was fun. It was a challenge. I thought it was a really good test still. Even though you see a bunch of guys at 6-under, I didn't feel like it played maybe quite that easy. But it's just such a fun golf course to play.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
151853-1-1002 2025-01-09 23:33:00 GMT

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