THE MODERATOR: Jon Rahm is with us now at the 108th PGA Championship. We'll go ahead and jump right into questions.
Q. As you look at the leaderboard there, what do you make of how it's unfolded and your position on it at the moment?
JON RAHM: I didn't get much of a chance to look at the whole thing. Yeah, not overly surprised. It's an extremely difficult golf course. Today is probably the easiest setup of the three, but still with the wind the way it's going and the greens right now, you have to play really good golf to give yourself a chance out there.
So not surprised the scores are a little bit harder to accomplish in the afternoon, especially the later tee times.
As far as me is concerned, that was a fantastic round of golf and thrilled to be in a good position for tomorrow.
Q. When you see some of the low scores that were going in this morning, how important is it to kind of balance the need with obviously to put a good round together with not kind of over- attacking, if you know what I mean?
JON RAHM: I was watching the broadcast this morning, and there was a little bit of wind but it wasn't excessive, then you have a little bit more moisture on the greens. So it would be a little bit easier -- a little bit easier to hit the fairways and greens.
So it's to be expected for people to go out there and shoot some scores. But it was apparent early on for us that with the bounces I saw on the first few holes, that you have scoring opportunities, but you still have to be very, very cautious of the pins and the situation, how difficult -- and how easily you can make mistakes out there.
This golf course makes you think a lot and makes you think where you want to leave the ball on the green to give yourself the best chance. No matter how many birdies you see ahead of yourself, you still need to hit some great golf shots to give yourself a chance.
Q. You mentioned how quickly you can kind of find yourself in trouble here. What does that mentally -- as you're navigating your way through a whole week, and especially on a day like today where you feel like there are opportunities, and striking that balance between patience and understanding, where there's the danger and where you could run into some real trouble?
JON RAHM: I mean, there's some opportunities. Like I would say the 5th hole was a little bit easier today, and you're hitting from, what was it, like around 150 at 25 miles an hour straight into the wind where if you're short, you're dead. So a little bit easier.
The bigger changes would be 6 with the pin. The last two locations with 6 were extremely difficult. Today was quite a bit easier on a hole that was playing downwind. So 6, 9 being downwind, 16 being downwind, and the biggest obviously change 13 being drivable. So I think with those differences, three, four holes, that makes a big difference.
So I feel like you can be fairly aggressive on some of those, but for the most part, as the round goes on, you almost take it a shot at a time. Hit the fairway, great. If you hit the fairway, then you need to find a spot on the green to give yourself the best chance and move on.
It's a battle out there. You can get it done, but there's a lot of holes where, if we hit it to 20 feet and then you have a tap-in for par, you're going to be very happy because that's just how hard it is.
Q. After the first round, you were ranked 122nd in strokes gained putting. Obviously the last two rounds, much better. What have you learned about the greens through 54 holes now?
JON RAHM: They're hard. The best way I can describe it is you're going to be -- you're going to see very few major championship golf courses where, if you're in the middle of the green, you're going to have as hard a time to two-putt as you can on some of the holes out here, especially with the pin locations. Usually being in the middle is a safe haven. This week you need to think about where you're going to leave the ball because the middle isn't always the best option with how sloped those greens are.
I think a little bit is where I leave myself, what putts I'm leaving myself, for those statistics to change. I didn't feel like I putted badly on the first day. They just didn't go in. Obviously the next two days I made a few more. But they're tricky. The amount of putts that you're hitting from 15, 20 feet with 4 or 5, 6 feet of break with the elevation change being up and then down, it's quite a few, and it's not easy to give yourself makable putts and then make them as well. So it's difficult greens.
Q. If you win this, that gives LIV Golf a big boost in the marketplace. How meaningful would it be for you to deliver for all your colleagues?
JON RAHM: Honestly, in a week like this, one, I'm thinking more about myself. I'm not going to take on anything outside what I can control when it comes to competing tomorrow.
If I do get it done and I sit here again tomorrow, then you can ask me the same question, and I'll give you an answer. But what it would mean for Spain as well in the grand slam tally and being the last leg of the grand slam for us as well, there's a lot of things that would mean a lot, but too much of it is out of my control.
So hopefully I can keep doing what I've done so far this week, especially today, and I get the chance to answer that tomorrow.
Q. Except for maybe one round at the Masters this year, you've pretty much been at the top every tournament you've played. You've been in contention or played a lot of good golf. Is it the best you've played since you won the Masters in '23 and had that hot start to the year? Do you think your level of play is at that point?
JON RAHM: You know, sometimes it's a tricky balance between how I feel like I'm hitting the ball and how well you can score, right? I think early in 2023 I scored really, really well, and it perhaps felt a little bit worse than I would have liked.
I would say so far this week it's felt really, really good, and so far this year, I would say at times perhaps better than in '23. But the feeling of how you're playing and actually getting it done are two different things. So feeling-wise it's really up there.
The only year I would say that has felt better than so far this year would be 2021. I had only one win last year, being the U.S. Open obviously, but I think as a whole, you take the whole year into account. The best my swing has felt in my game was '21, and I feel pretty good about that as well.
Q. The scoring this week seems like it's taken some players by surprise, or maybe on the outside there was a sense that it might be kind of low. Obviously it was a lot different the first two days. Do you like it this way?
JON RAHM: I would like to know who came up with that, by the way. Honestly, when I heard people talking about 20-under par, it made me question my ability to read a golf course, because I was looking at the greens and where they could put pin locations and possible wind, I just -- my mind was never -- I actually got worried. I'm like if somebody shoots 20-under, the amount of records they're going to break this week would be unheard of.
You know why I think that can happen is also the fairways up here by the numbers are probably wide. They don't play as wide as they really are. Holes like 7, 10, 15, with how much slope you have to the fairway, you have to hit a very accurate golf shot to be in it. Like that, you can add too 2, 4 -- maybe not on 6, but like I said, 10, 12, 15, 16, right?
You need to hit -- with the slope of the fairway and the wind going with the slope of the fairway, it plays a lot more difficult than I think a lot of people would have foreseen at first with how much they're rolling out.
And credit to the PGA for the setup. They found some incredible hard pin locations out there. Usually when we're practicing, we put our disks out, and there's definitely quite a few that I would have told Adam, man, there's no way they're going to put a pin there, and they did. So we found a way to keep it all close together.
As hard as it is to play, the challenge can also be kind of fun if you do well. That's probably the reason why the leaderboard is so bunched up and it's going to be such a good Sunday tomorrow. So in that sense, showmanship-wise, they've done a great job.
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