Q. How would you assess your round, 3-under for an opening round?
PIERCESON COODY: It was nice. I felt kind of stuck in neutral there for awhile and then rattled off some birdies on my second nine, the front nine, so it was nice to make some putts. You don't have to make a lot of birdies out here to feel really good about yourself, so just kind of limit the mistakes and make a few birdies here and there.
Q. Can you give us your impressions of the golf course? How many times had you played here previously and then your thoughts?
PIERCESON COODY: Yeah, I probably played at least over 20 rounds maybe close to 30 rounds before. It was always great. So, the fact that it's still very similar and just kind of the holes that needed to be, I guess, touched up or worked on, seems like they accomplished what they wanted to, and it's playing really well. I certainly have enjoyed the changes.
Q. Did you have any holes in particular that you like the changes to?
PIERCESON COODY: I mean I think 8 and 12 are probably some of the better changes. 12 making it just a little longer and that green more up against the water makes you think a little bit more. That kind of used to be just, if you hit it in the fairway, it was a flip wedge, so it's nice that there's a few holes that they got some extra length out of.
Q. This is unrelated to the tournament. I want to talk about your recruitment to Texas. I think I know the reason, I think I know what influenced you to go there, but was it -- go ahead.
PIERCESON COODY: Okay, yeah, we committed to Texas our sophomore year of high school. I guess that was before all the rules changed, I guess now you can't commit until later, but that was our sophomore year, and we were being recruited heavily our freshman year between Texas, Oklahoma State and you could say TCU was in the mix, we were kind of looking at it just for granddad, that kind of stuff, but we really wanted to go to Texas or Oklahoma State. And once we both had the option to go to either school, we just happened to both make the decision to go to Texas. We didn't tell each other, and our dad tried to keep us separated as far as talking about which school or whatnot, so we stayed pretty to ourselves about it and we both decided on Texas.
Q. Your dad, I would have thought your dad was going to be the major influence, since he went to Texas, played at Texas?
PIERCESON COODY: We probably were going to go to Oklahoma State and we had a so-so visit in the winter and it was like, oh, this is a little colder than we might expect, and all that stuff. So he said, okay, let's go to Austin one more time. We went and they played North Carolina and we sat like a row behind the court and all that stuff, and they beat the No. 1 team in the country. Played with some of the guys, like Scottie and Doug that are out here now, and so that kind of feeling, and also being from Texas I just kind of that one visit swung my decision into the, yeah, into Texas.
Q. Scheffler, Spieth, were they an influence or not so much?
PIERCESON COODY: No, I mean, it's, no, not really. I feel like Texas in a lot of ways speaks for itself. I just, if you go to Texas and you do the things you're supposed to do, it seems like you have a good chance to end up on the PGA TOUR. So you don't need a lot of convincing from the other guys that it's a good spot to be in.
Q. With this being a Texas event, what's it like having family, friends all out here able to watch and support you?
PIERCESON COODY: Yeah, it's been great. I mean, I love playing in Texas. I'll support all the Texas events as long as I can. Yeah, it's just been incredible to see kind of childhood friends, family friends, aunts, uncles, all that kind of stuff showing up and rooting me on. It's cool, because this is the dream, and it was the dream to be able to kind of share this with them as well, and hopefully I can make this last as long as I can.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports