Q. Start with the hole-out on 9.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, 127, tried to land it 125. Came off weird off the face. It almost came off knuckly. I know it wasn't, but just with a breath of wind behind you, it just looked like it was diving out of the air. When it landed it looked great, and always a nice sigh of relief when you see it go in.
Q. The ball-striking stats are good. You only have one bogey this week. Where do you feel like you're at?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: I feel good. Today the body wasn't feeling as good so I kind of stuck to not hitting like 100 percent shots, and honestly, I think the way the numbers worked out, it was in my favor. I didn't have to try and back-of-the-stance trap a 7-iron, just kind of swing smooth, and that's my game. That's what I've been working on, to be able to hit those smooth cuts, and it's nice to see those over the first two days.
Q. How are you handling hydrating, stretching, shutting things down when you're not playing?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, it's tough. Trying to hop underneath tents but also not get too cool, just keeping the body as level as it can be. It's hard, but it doesn't just stop out there. It continues after today, continues into the night, into the mornings. But it's a lot of hydration packets, make sure you eat, and just try and stay in that shade when you can.
Q. 18 new greens, you have a new caddie. How do you balance who's reading the greens, when you bring them in, when you say, I got it?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Well, I'm a veteran at this. Mark came out last week into Vegas and we got a lot of the little small details I'm figuring out: Hey, do we do this, how do we say this. It's as simple as, like, who's going to fill up the water bottle, things that people don't think about that just add up over time that you say, hey, it's just energy put out on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday if it was going to start fresh like that.
We had it down. We knew what we were going to do. We've been working really well. He's a very detail-oriented guy. I am as well. It's nice to have that by my side.
Q. How would you describe you felt about your game leaving Northern Ireland, and what have you done the last two weeks to turn things around?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: It wasn't good. You get very exposed out there, and you're up in -- not just in Europe but just over the past two months, the game -- you can look at my stats all you want. It comes down to being able to hit my iron shots how I want. I hate missing them 30 feet left. I want to be able to take a 7-iron, choke down on it and hit a nice spinny cut 155 yards or 160 yards.
It wasn't good. I went back to the drawing board, had to figure it out, had to really look at it from another perspective and say, okay, I look at my swing, looks like this, how do I just get down to the nitty-gritty and say maybe I need to be in this position, maybe I need to look at some setup stuff. You just keep trial-and-error stuff.
We found some key points compared to my older swings when I was coming out here as a pro. It's hard not to try and mimic it exactly, but there's pieces of my swing that I've got to make sure I have.
Q. It looked like out there you were rehearsing a little bit from waist high going up. Is there a feel you're going for in the backswing?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: It started with driver, and it always bleeds into irons. For me I take it out, my club head is always kind of at this waist high position, club head tends to get too far outside. So when I started this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, my club head with driver was so far outside, I could not time it up to where I had to get it down, and they were just block rights.
So it's trying to sync it up a little bit better and then get it back on the path, which it ends up being a very feel thing, and it's just trying to, hey, how do I feel that in the practice swing to when I go step into my shot, I just swing it and just little tendencies here and there get me to where I need to be.
Q. You've talked about the iron play and how that is the key for the rest of your game. How much are you seeing that little cut that you're known for?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, I started seeing it the last couple days at home. Shoot, I was putting a lot of work in over the two weeks I had off. Sometimes you just keep grinding. That's trial and error. I have so much self-belief that it's hard because you believe you know you can do it, and you know at a certain point you have to go and play golf, but for me to go out and be myself, there's one thing that I had to go find.
I saw it the last couple days at home. You never know how it's going to translate when you come out to a tournament. I started seeing it, and it's been really nice because now I just need the reps in tournaments to say, okay, I can aim left and just swing down that line and know it's not going left. It's going to take a little bit of time, but it's nice to see a couple rounds like this, and hopefully we continue that into the next two days.
Q. Would you say today was just mostly swinging less than 100 percent, kind of more controlled shots?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, just those controlled cuts. I think for a long time, you just swing so hard because I'm not being able to hit those cuts, and two, that's not just my game, and it's hard because it's kind of translated into my game where I've been swinging harder and harder, not on purpose but just because that's the shot that's felt comfortable and I know where it's going to go.
But when we start building those cuts that I don't have to hit it back of stance, hands forward, leaning shaft. It's more of just smooth cut, see it spinning left to right.
Q. That self-belief you talked about, how did that help turn things around fairly quickly from where you were overseas until now?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Well, even when I was overseas and not playing well, that self-belief that I can go out and win is always there. It's just hard when you don't know in your swing what's happening, and then that bleeds into everything else and you start practicing other things.
It's tough, but the self-belief when I tee it up is always there. It's just a hard game. Every day you don't know what to expect. You don't know what you're going to get. But when you're able to kind of see some shots that you say, okay, I know what I can do with this, it then bleeds in in a good way.
Q. Kurt is playing really well. I don't know how much you've played or practiced with him at home or even on the road, but what have you seen different in his game?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Honestly, he's been on this other schedule. I've been playing a lot of Signature Events, he hasn't. I think I've only seen him at home once this year.
I'm so happy for him. I think he's just figured out how to hit his irons cleaner. Obviously he's got to be putting well. But same thing, I think for a lot of us when you're able to clean up a lot of your irons and say, man, I can just aim at the left center of the green, hit it there, or right center of the green, hit there, it just frees up a lot of people's games and I don't think people realize that as much. That's how I kind of live, especially with my game.
Q. Did you say your body wasn't quite feeling 100 percent? Is that just --
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, just felt a little stiffer this morning. Yesterday felt great. This morning after my warm-ups just kind of felt a little stiffer. You just work with what you got, and it was nice.
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