THE MODERATOR: Keith, what can you tell us about your opening round today?
KEITH HORNE: Yeah, a pretty solid day today. I think the relief of having a wetter and softer golf course out there today was -- yeah, I was very fortunate. I played a practice round on Monday and I was very scared to play the golf course. The greens were hard and fast, and to get out there today and to have them a little bit softer and slower, it was a huge help.
Q. Can you tell us about the eagle on 8?
KEITH HORNE: Yeah. I didn't actually realize how much it sloped from back to front over there, and I hit it about 10 meters past the hole. I had 109 yards, hit gap wedge, pitched it about 8, 10 yards past the hole, and it just spun back into the hole. I was begging for it to get close. I didn't want any short birdie putts. Yeah, I was just chuffed when it went in.
Q. You've been in a position like this recently.
KEITH HORNE: Last week in the Irish Legends I was playing, I was leading by three going into the last round, but certainly nothing as big as this, no.
Q. What's the mindset now?
KEITH HORNE: Well, I was just trying to have a few quiet rounds to start off with, and I think the eagle on No. 8 messed that up a little bit. Just wanted to get into it.
I'll just try and reset, not get ahead of myself. I think not create any expectations and just take tomorrow as a -- just try and put a solid round together tomorrow. The golf course is really tough. It's just hard to get ahead of yourself you can make mistakes out there.
Q. Could you give us just briefly what type of schedule -- you folks play all over the place. Where have you been this year?
KEITH HORNE: Well, we actually haven't played much. I played a lot of events in South Africa. The DP World event come to South Africa in January, February, and I played the South African Open and I played the Johannesburg Open, and then I played a lot of Challenge Tour events, all in South Africa. So I'm fortunate enough to keep busy.
The European seniors, we only start about now. We've only played our third event last week. Then we get really busy from now -- as you say, we travel a lot. We go from everywhere. We go to China in a couple of weeks. We've been to Barbados. We're going to Mexico. We go to India. We go to South Africa. We go everywhere. We keep busy with our traveling schedule.
Q. There's a long stretch when you're not playing golf every year, so what do you do?
KEITH HORNE: Yeah, like I say, I'm fortunate enough to still have playing rights in South Africa and it fits in quite nicely when the DP World Tour is actually having a lot of events there. I manage to fill it in. I think everybody else struggles a little bit with the three-month gap, four-month gap sometimes from the beginning of the year to when we get started.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports