Q. Sum up the day. It was pretty entertaining.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, it didn't feel like as much as maybe -- like, I saw the scorecard, when I was just signing it, I saw it on the tape delay. I saw the broadcast. And I was like, it didn't feel like that. You know, I had a lot of controllable situations, par-3s or shots from the fairway where I was just really close and then from where I was really close, I ended up leaving the ball in a spot where even though it was inside 10 feet, you got to play 3 feet of break, and they're just hard putts. I hit some lips on those, missed some high, low, in between.
So it just felt like it was close to really good. Yesterday was the day where I could have gone really low. Yeah, I mean, it didn't feel like a roller coaster. It's nice to have the firepower, the amount of birdies today, on day like today. The game's feeling better and better. I feel like I'm hitting my positions on -- call it half or 75 percent of the swings when I was searching for one or two in a round even as recent as a month or two ago. It's trending the right direction. I'm able to be a little more outward-focused instead of just trying to make swings and that's making a difference.
A course like this, no matter what happens tomorrow, I know if I'm able to play consistent golf on a course like this, then I'm heading the right direction, and I just need to stay the course. It's going to take a little time. I'm not only coming off a surgery, but I'm coming off a poor year for me last year. So I'm trying to, you know, obviously get healthy, but also get things moving the right direction and it's really fun when they are because then I enjoy going to work and that's what's happening right now.
Today, I felt like I was in the mix on the weekend in pretty much a major championship, a top-5, top-8 tournament that we play in the world. So that was fun. Hopefully, make a few early tomorrow and it's just going to be -- the bummer for me is Scottie's at 7 or 8, and he just -- you know, you can't count on him shooting even tomorrow, so it would take something special, but all in all, just trying to shoot a few under each day out here.
Q. What's your confidence level?
JORDAN SPIETH: Maybe 7 out of 10. And that number's just continuing to go up. I wouldn't say it's been any higher at any point this year yet.
Q. Than 7?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple -- I know how to get it to a 10 and it's just more work. It's more of what I'm doing. It's just things move slowly.
Q. You mentioned Scottie. What impresses you most about him and do you remember when you were in that zone?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I can't even -- I'm not going to sit here and say that I've ever had the kind of ball striking or consistency that he's had. But certainly all of us have had weeks or months or half a year or whatever where we feel that kind of control.
What impresses me the most is his club face control is elite. It's maybe the best there's ever been as far as club face control. So his consistency is ridiculous. And then that just leads to his distance control being phenomenal. There's a shot in and the worst he's going to do is 15 feet, and most guys are going to hit a good there, but for him that was, like, the worst shot he probably -- he's probably, like, all right, yeah, I played that safe and cast a putt out and go to tomorrow.
So it's elite consistency and it's because of his tempo and club face control yields these kind of results.
Q. I know you didn't finish the way you wanted, but it looked like you had a lot of fun coming in.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I'm trying to react less, trying to understand that in a place like this that you're going to hit good shots that just end up a yard off and they're just dead, and then you're going to hit some that feed right into the hole. Today I just -- I want a comeback where, not that I wanted to redo 'em to hit 'em close, I just wanted to miss them in the other place. I just wasn't tight enough in missing in the correct location, which is, which is, I am in a place where I could do that, I just got a little bit maybe too looking at the pin or whatever it may be. I'm driving it well enough to give myself enough chances tomorrow to play safe where I need to and take advantage where I can. That's the important thing out here, you got to be in the fairway first off, otherwise you got no chance.
Q. What was the big challenge out there today course-wise? Wind?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah.
Q. Mud?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, honestly, the mud it's almost -- you're going to play so safe that the mud doesn't frustrated you as much.
Q. (No Microphone.)
JORDAN SPIETH: Just because par's even a better score than when there's no wind. So you can kind of get over the mud. It wasn't, I thought it was worse the first two days somehow. I thought today was going to be a disaster with it. It was at least for us, maybe earlier today it was worse, but I thought it was decently manageable, and it's got a chance to maybe only have a few holes tomorrow. But it was the wind.
Q. How much did the course change from the beginning of your round to the end of your round?
JORDAN SPIETH: Not a ton. The very end of the round here, as you can see, the flags aren't moving. So the wind, it died down, but it also shifted a little bit to the north from northwest, which makes 16, 17 play almost straight off the left. And me and Tom we both came up short on both holes because it just, it happened out of nowhere, and you can't go over the green. So that's the thing out here is, it's like you can't trust it, because if it's doing what it's doing all day, you're dead meat over on both those holes. And we ended up just short and -- but it died down, which made the last four, five holes definitely a little more manageable. But those holes were down wind anyways.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports