THE MODERATOR: Let's just start with some opening comments about playing in your hometown here.
DYLAN FRITTELLI: Yeah, obviously two years ago or two editions ago, three years ago was the last time I played, so super excited for some match play golf in front of a home crowd and familiar surroundings. Yeah, it's pretty cool to sleep in my own bed. Last time I played I actually had just bought a place but I was staying with friends, so I wasn't even in my new house. This is the first event that I'm ever playing, sleeping in a house that I own, so it's a pretty cool feeling.
THE MODERATOR: You had a solid top-25 finish a few weeks ago at THE PLAYERS. Can you talk about the state of your game heading into this week.
DYLAN FRITTELLI: My game is trending in the right direction. Haven't had a great year so far, but managed to iron out a few kinks that week at THE PLAYERS, had my coach Chuck Cook over there, he really got my long game sorted out. My short game has been pretty solid this year, but the long game has kind of lagged behind. But yeah, the season hasn't really started in most of our eyes, I guess. We've got the majors and the big tournaments coming up, but PLAYERS was the first one to really kick into gear and that really got my game going, lifted it to a high level, I was happy with my performance there, Saturday round wasn't great. But no, I'm looking pretty good coming up for these big events in the next sort of three, four months.
Q. You mentioned how you're not off to a great start, but you played well at Sawgrass and you played very well at the Masters. Do you find yourself getting more juiced up for these really, really big events and playing better, and do you need that to play well?
DYLAN FRITTELLI: I would say yes, I definitely feel more emphasis and more sort of, I don't know, get the juices flowing in a bigger events. It's kind of a transition of my career, from playing in Europe, then playing in the States over here and then finally playing in the majors and the WGCs. It's now my focus to play well in these bigger tournaments. There's definitely a focus in my gym training, in my practice and basically just everything to try and peak at these events. That's done by design. It's not just a lucky thing that I happen to step up and feel good those weeks.
Some of the -- I don't want to say lesser tournaments, but the other tournaments that aren't as big stature, those ones don't take emphasis. I'm still doing heavy workouts, heavy training loads in some of those smaller events, not to take any emphasis away from the other PGA TOUR events.
Q. The Masters performance, what did that do for your confidence?
DYLAN FRITTELLI: Yeah, that was awesome. That was a concerted effort with my trainer Nic Catterall. We got in the gym, we scheduled everything to peak at the Masters, and to get that right is amazing. I played well that week, I felt great, so it's cool to see that the sort of scientific way of doing things and trying to peak in specific periods and tailoring everything to certain events actually pays off. Maybe we got lucky, maybe it was the system we had in place, but either way we know it worked in that situation and we're going to keep trying to apply that to the future.
Q. When we talked right before you guys restarted, you talked about the hard training you had done, putting on the weight, adding a few pounds. Where do you stand on that now? Do you think that worked? Do you like the way that worked out? Do you want to add more weight? Are you comfortable where you are?
DYLAN FRITTELLI: I'm pretty comfortable where I am right now. There's no real concerted -- there's always an effort to eat a lot. I am trying to keep weight on. I struggle to maintain weight. I went from basically a year and three, four months ago I was at 173 pounds and about 18 percent body fat and now I'm at 181 and about 13 percent body fat. Put on about 10 pounds of lean mass in that time and I'm constant now at 180, 181. That's a solid place to be. I won't really have much time to do a bunch of strength training in the next seven, eight months so I've got a month planned out in the middle of the summer to try and get one more strength session in. But if I can put on maybe two pounds or three pounds in that four-week period I'll be super happy. But it's not the focus right now. The focus is on performance and trying to get the schedule right to play well in the majors and the big events coming up.
Q. You've played ACC so many times, but what did you learn specifically from the match play experience that you had a couple years ago as you come back into this year?
DYLAN FRITTELLI: I mean, I haven't actually thought about it, now that you've asked me the question. I may need some time to reflect on it. For me the major thing was sort of the nerves of playing at a place that I'm familiar with, but it's not under a sort of relaxed atmosphere. I mean, it's tense everywhere. The course looks different, the setup is different. You're playing against the best players in the world. I felt really nervous and sort of didn't -- I don't think I handled myself that well in the group stages last year. I went down the 18th hole three times and only came away with one point. So I managed to perform to some level, I mean, I had Xander Schauffele and Sergio Garcia in my group, two top players. But I think this year I'll feel a whole lot more relaxed, I'll be able to execute more and play my own game and not have those sort of weird stressful feelings of playing holes and feeling under the gun. I know that will happen in general if the match is close coming down the stretch, but I think the last two years' experience playing in majors, doing well at the Masters and having those big-time events under my belt, that should really -- it should give me those advantages that hometown, playing a course I know, end up translating to better results. Last time I feel like it didn't really help me being the local guy. This year hopefully it will.
Q. Did you think you were going to get in?
DYLAN FRITTELLI: I mean, it's been my focus this whole year since I got back from South Africa in January, it's like, okay, I need just to get safely inside the top 60 to make sure I was going to be. Obviously everyone I see in Austin, friends, family, like when I come out here and see the pros, they're like, hey, we're rooting for you, we want you to make the field. And in the end it was a last-ditch effort on Sunday, I shot, I think, 5-under at THE PLAYERS Championship to move up and earn some extra World Ranking points, but Talor Gooch ended up jumping ahead of me, so I went to 69th in the World Rankings, I was 68, so I was like, oh, that's probably not going to be good enough. But then you hear rumblings of guys getting injured and maybe pulling out. So I was optimistic and luckily on Tuesday I got the call last week that Brooks had pulled out. Yeah, that was a really nice surprise.
Q. I'm just curious your thoughts on how this whole season has gone. I know you got hit with COVID and all the restrictions and all the things you guys have had to deal with. We're kind of on the tail end of it. Can you kind of reflect on how difficult this last part of the season has been?
DYLAN FRITTELLI: Yeah, I mean, it was tricky coming out of COVID. I'd say the June through August time was a little strange for us. Travel was weird and the TOUR had private flights set up for us between events. But looking back at it, for me, I think in relation to my peers, I've done better than most guys. I took that time off and got stronger, got better, and my World Ranking has improved since we've come back in June, so I definitely think I've taken advantage of this time.
Looking at it from a structural point of view, the PGA TOUR has done such a good job. If you compare it to the next biggest Tour in the world, the European Tour, they've struggled. Obviously they have international markets and stuff to worry about, going to different countries. But the protocols they've put in place for COVID have been awesome. I picked it up, but nobody, as far as I know, has ever contracted it and passed it on to someone within the bubble. All the stuff that they have within the bubble has managed to contain anything. So that's an awesome achievement by the PGA TOUR. I don't know if there are any awards out there for stuff like that, but I feel like the PGA TOUR should get something, between the NCAA, NFL, NBA, I feel like we've performed the best out of all these major sporting organizations.
And then yeah, is there any other angle to that question? My performance, the way the TOUR has handled it. I think the coolest thing for me recently is seeing fans, like seeing fans back on the course, that's so cool to see. Like THE PLAYERS we had 20,000 out there, whatever it was, the week before at Bay Hill 10,000. It's just way better for us to perform in front of people. That's what we are at the end of the day, we're performers. For us to just be playing a random round with two other buddies on the course and playing for a million bucks for the winner, it's fun, but it's not nearly as fun as having those fans out there and feeling those juices flowing.
Q. I guess it's one of those you don't know what you have until it's gone type things.
DYLAN FRITTELLI: No, exactly. There was an adjustment period the first sort of month or two, and then we got used to that, but now it's an adjustment period to having the fans again. I know a lot of guys are obviously antsy now when guys and people are moving and distracting, and it's something to obviously get used to.
THE MODERATOR: Dylan, thanks so much for your time, and good luck this week.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports