THE MODERATOR: Let's welcome Tyrrell Hatton from Legion XIII. Tyrrell, you shot 6-under today. You are one off the lead. Tell us a little bit about your round.
TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, overall it was a good day. For the most part, drove the ball pretty well. But the big thing that I was most pleased with today was just the putter. Feel like I holed out really well from inside 10 feet. Had a slight little adjustment on my setup, just made me feel more comfortable, and it was nice to see some putts go in. Hopefully that continues over the weekend.
Q. We obviously had very big crowds out there today. Can you talk about your experience with the Nashville fans and the party hole?
TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, it was good fun. Had a good atmosphere around the golf course. Yesterday I was meant to play the back nine in the pro-am with Luke Combs, which would have been really cool. I actually met him in October last year in Dublin, so he came over to me yesterday morning at breakfast and we sat and chatted for half an hour, and then when I saw him again on the 10th tee, it was like, I'm so sorry but I'm done.
Continuation of Tyrrell Hatton I'm going to go back. He's like, no worries. But just one question. The party hole this week, what's the song choice? What song do I need to have? He said, beer never broke my heart. So I was thinking of that one before I had asked the question, so I think that worked out pretty well, and I think it went down well with the crowd.
Q. How was the party hole experience?
TYRRELL HATTON: It was good, yeah. It was nice to make a 2 there and gave it a little fist pump. We had a good reaction when the putt went in. So I was having a bit of fun with the crowd. I'm not really one to fist pump on a Friday. That's for sure.
Q. What is your reaction to the course, to The Grove?
TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, I've enjoyed it so far. It's in nice condition. If you drive the ball well, you're going to go into greens with some short irons. You're going to have a lot of opportunities if you can put yourself in the right positions.
Hopefully I'm able to do that this weekend, and it would be nice if the putter stays hot, and it should be good fun.
Q. This adjustment that you made, you made it since Sunday?
TYRRELL HATTON: Yes.
Q. Why did you feel -- because of Sunday? Is that why you made it?
TYRRELL HATTON: No. To be honest, Saturday last week was probably the best round of golf I've played for a really long time. Even though I was 3-under through 5, I ended up shooting level par, which was, I would say a kick in the teeth rather than the other expression, and then I putted horribly again on Sunday. Just wasn't really hitting my start lines on a lot of tricky little putts. So I just sort of narrowed my stance a little bit and just pushed the ball a little bit further forward because I was missing a lot of putts right.
They were bad putts, so I just wanted to maybe give myself a little bit more time to square the face up. I tried it in the pro-am yesterday and putted really nicely. Obviously rolled with it today, and it was nice to see.
I had a few tricky putts inside five feet that were quick that you're just sort of nudging, and hitting the start line there was really nice. As I said, it was good to see those go in.
Q. I wanted to ask you about the situation on the 5th in the bunker. Probably haven't seen that much before.
TYRRELL HATTON: No. I mean, it's not ideal. There's too much sand up in the face. You could argue there's potentially not enough sand in the middle, so I don't know if there's a slight adjustment that needs to be made there, but yeah, you're not going to often see two guys plugging a 5-iron within three inches of each other.
Ultimately I feel like I did well to sort of walk out of there with just a bogey, but it is what it is.
Q. In this city all the sporting events are so hyped. Since you've started playing on the LIV Tour, where would you rate the Nashville crowd for day one?
TYRRELL HATTON: It was really good. I don't feel like you're going to quite top what we had in Adelaide, but I think the numbers that we had down there were like three times as much.
I don't know what the true number of fans was today, but I think there's more tickets sold for the weekend. I would say the atmosphere out there was brilliant today, and I think for the guys that were playing in the final groups over the weekend are going to enjoy playing in front of a good crowd.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports