Q. Rory, tougher conditions than what we're used to seeing here at the Earth Course. How pleased are you to open with a round like that?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, very pleased. As you said, it was tricky. Windier than it usually is. And then I think with the golf course setup this week, with the more punishing rough, especially off the tee, some of the crosswinds off tees, I felt like I did well to hit most of the fairways, but once you start missing fairways here, you really make it difficult for yourself.
So, yeah, anything in the 60s today I felt was a good score. And sort of held it together nicely when I needed to. It was nice to finish with a birdie at the last, and obviously in a pretty good position going into the next few days.
Q. You spoke earlier in the week about how special the first of your Race to Divide titles was to you. 14 years on, you're in the race once more, and of course there's history, a lot of it on the line this week. But what do you credit that longevity to?
RORY McILROY: I don't know. I mean, I've never lost my enthusiasm for the game. This game can sort of beat you down at times and make you quite cynical, and I've never let it get to me like that, and I've seen maybe some others throughout the years where it has gotten to them a little bit.
I've always tried to be grateful that I get to play this game for a living. And yeah, I think that gratitude and that enthusiasm to go to the golf course and compete every day, I've never lost that. And hopefully I never will lose that until I decide to hang 'em up.
Q. It feeds a little, your answer there, into the next question, which is about your composure, because you've always carried yourself in a very calm way, a very composed way on the golf course. And there's been quite a lot of chat about that in the last week or so. Chacarra is speaking about how much he's been learning from you, even in this last week, about the way you react to things on the golf course. If you think back to your early days, your young days as a professional, was there someone that you looked up to in terms of the way they carried themselves out there on the golf course?
RORY McILROY: Not necessarily. I probably looked at other sports to see how some people carried themselves. I'm a massive tennis fan, and the way Roger and Rafa both carried themselves on the tennis court, you know, Rafa's never broken a racket in his life. Roger was a bit of a hothead early on in his career but learned how to harness that energy and turn it into positive things for him on the court.
I think those two in particular, just watching as a fan over the years, they've had a big impact on how I have tried to approach my sport and my game and my attitude whenever I'm playing.
Q. Is it still something that you work on regularly? I know you've spoken in the past about certain venues that you go to, putting in extra work with your psychologist. Is that something you still work on?
RORY McILROY: Yeah, 100%. It's a never-ending process. Even if Bob and I talk, he could say the same thing to me 50 times throughout the course of a year, and maybe sometimes I'll pick up on something a little different because of that or it can relate to something else.
Yeah, you're really just trying to do the same things over and over, but you try to implement them. There are different scenarios and situations.
But it's a never-ending process. You're always just trying to get a little bit better, keep learning, keep improving, and keep moving forward.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports