PATRICK REED: There's 71 other holes we have to play in a got. One hole doesn't mean jack, to be honest with you.
Q. To our readers it actually means a little --
PATRICK REED: It was a 3-wood I hit from 287, and it went in.
Q. How about the other 17, how do you feel about --
PATRICK REED: The club that's been giving me issues has been my driver the past couple weeks, and then the driver actually was halfway decent. All my bogeys and mistakes except for the last hole was hybrids and 3-woods off tees. You use something less than driver to put the ball in play and in position, and every time I tried to do that, I decided to mess that up.
Yeah, I need to clean up that, and obviously put myself in a bad spot there on 18 and tried to do the smart play, and I couldn't even get it out of there.
Yeah, it's just one of those, it's frustrating as ever to go and do what you did on the last, but yeah, I mean, hopefully go out, hit some fairways tomorrow -- I played the hard holes except for 18 well. Made the easy holes a mess.
Q. Can you clean up those messes on the range tomorrow morning?
PATRICK REED: Oh, yeah, those have been no issue really for the past month, month and a half. It's just been -- every one of them I could tell what I did in my swing, so it's a pretty easy fix. I think it's just going out and doing it and not sitting there and trying to force certain shots rather than just -- the reason I'm hitting that club is just to hit it straight and not try to do too much with it.
Q. When you hit such a rare shot like that, with the double, how hard is it to follow that the very next hole? How tough is that to kind of live up to a shot like that?
PATRICK REED: Well, after I hit the tee shot on the next hole with a hybrid, I wished I went and hit 3-wood again because obviously that club was working.
Yeah, I mean, it was kind of one of those things that since you didn't really see it go in and all that, this golf course is just go out and make good golf swings. You try to hit your spots. So I didn't really feel like I got too up or down really throughout the day until that last hole, obviously.
No, I mean, it felt like going into there I was swinging it really well. Just happened to be a perfect spot, perfect club. When all you see is a tower, you're trying to hit at the tower. For it to go obviously is a bonus, but really I just have to clean up the other mistakes. Like I said, bogeying hole 2, bogeying hole 5, bogeying 9 from the middle of the fairway, and then obviously having a three-point there on 16 and bogeying 14 after being 90 yards from the green and ending up in a fairway bunker up against a lip, those are just careless mistakes. Those are mistakes you can't make, and unfortunately I made them.
But then good thing I made 2 on that hole because that wiped three of them off. That really just wiped off the last hole.
Q. Can you appreciate that you're only the fourth one to do that in U.S. Open history?
PATRICK REED: Oh, it's awesome. That's great. But I mean, it's kind of one of those things that after you finish with a triple, that's really the last thing you're really thinking about.
Q. I know as upset as you are realizing that you're at even par and you're right in the middle of this --
PATRICK REED: I'm 3-over.
Q. I apologize.
PATRICK REED: I tripled the last.
Q. Even then, do you still feel like you're in this?
PATRICK REED: Yeah, you're still in this got. This golf course is hard. I don't care what anyone else says. It's going to keep on getting firmer and faster. I have yet to see the ball not hold the fairway on 11, and today two of us ended up in the right first cut. 12, we were down there in the first cut after hitting it down the left side of the fairway. 15, I hit a draw down the left side of the fairway and ended up in the right first cut. The fairways are just going to keep on getting firmer and faster, and because of that it's going to be harder to hold it.
If you get in the rough, good luck. But if you hit it in the first cut, it's high enough that everything comes out with very little control, a lot of knuckle golf balls, a lot of trying to figure out how far it's flying, and once the greens keep on getting bouncier and faster and the fairways do, the scores are just going to keep on going up.
Q. Obviously a frustrating round with the way that you played at the end, but do you think about how the course setup is affecting guys out there, and what do you think of it in general?
PATRICK REED: I mean, this is probably the easiest we're going to play this golf course is today. Even though the wind was kind of switching around, when I was watching it earlier on the coverage, guys were spinning balls back up the hills on 1 and 10. That's never going to happen again. The wind was very light, and we're talking maybe affecting it five or six yards max in either direction, whether it's down or in.
Yeah, it's pretty benign this afternoon, so it's the easiest we're going to see this golf course. So you have to go out and take advantage of it, and unfortunately I didn't there at the end. That's the way this golf course is. It's just going to keep on getting harder and harder.
The more you try to press, the more you try and push it, the more it's going to bite you even more.
Q. The way you prepare for majors, is that the same this year as you used to prepare for majors?
PATRICK REED: Yeah, yeah, it's always the same. I try to treat them just like every other normal event because if you try to push too hard and make other events bigger than others, then you're already messing your mind up and you're going to put too much pressure on yourself.
Yeah, no, I'm just going into it treating it like a normal event. Obviously preparation is the same way. The only difference is you're going to take a little bit less aggressive lines on some iron shots and probably a little bit less aggressive lines off tees. Especially at a U.S. Open, you miss it in the rough, you're dead, so you just try to play to the fat spots, hit solid golf shots and try to make the putter work.
Q. How much do you want to beat this course given the last time you were here in 2016 it didn't --
PATRICK REED: I don't even remember 2016. I don't remember it. All I remember is I went home after Friday and thought, man, that golf course was not only impossible but also thought that I couldn't wait to get back to try to get back at it. I was doing pretty well there until the last hole.
Q. Have you ever had an albatross before?
PATRICK REED: Yeah, that was my third. It wasn't my best one. My best one was in Germany. It was in a rain delay on 15 in the middle of the fairway, had par-5, 15; par-5, 16; short par-3, 17; par-5, 18; and we had to come back the next morning and my wife goes, you're in perfect position, you've got 4-iron into the green on a par-5, let's go attack this par-5, get 3-under right into your next round.
All right, so I parred the first par-5 with a 4-iron in. Parred the next one and then missed a birdie putt on the next, and Kess called me off a 4-iron on the last hole and decided to hit cut 5-wood, and right into the hole.
Two hours later she was back at home, and she was like, way to finish on the par-5s. I was like, did you actually click on the scorecard? She's like, no, I just saw you were 3-under. She clicked on it, and she was like, you've got to be kidding me. Hey, she told me to get 3-under, she didn't tell me how to do it. Just got the job done.
Q. Where was the other one?
PATRICK REED: The other one was actually when I was a kid, the Dominion, No. 9, a par-5 there. I was in the basically right side of the fairway, there's some overhanging trees. I decided to hit driver off the deck and the group in front of me was on the green and this thing rolls up and they turn around and look at me and then they all start jumping because they watched the ball roll right past them and disappear.
Q. Have you seen any?
PATRICK REED: That one.
Q. That was the one --
PATRICK REED: The only one I saw was the one I decided to hit into the group in front of me. I didn't know I could get there. Yeah, no, so I didn't see two of the three of my albatrosses. I saw only two of my six aces.
Q. Does that make it better, like you're getting the crowd reaction as opposed to actually seeing the shot, or would you rather it be the other way around?
PATRICK REED: I'd love to see it go in. It's always fun watching the ball disappear. But hey, as long as it disappears, that's all that matters. I don't care if you see it or not. As long as it goes in the hole, that's all I really care about.
Q. Was that BMW in Germany?
PATRICK REED: No, that would have been Porsche.
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