Q. You just said that you've been executing, at least on the greens, and they just haven't been falling. Why do you think they fall here because it seems to happen at this golf course for you.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: I don't know, I'm glad they do. I hope they continue. I think out here, even a year in now, seeing grain sometimes helps. I didn't grow up playing on grain, but I think as I've played and matured a little bit more, grain almost helps in a way because it just kind of tells you where everything is going.
Not that I haven't -- I obviously haven't been reading them well, but I've matched up speed well out here, and that's a bit thing I been working on the last few days, three days essentially, is how do I putt on 18, how do I get away with a two-putt and not be all worried that you could three-putt essentially.
Q. The setup this year was supposed to be a little bit harder coming into this event, maybe a little more risk-reward. Did you see any examples of that?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Definitely a couple pins that were a little more towards corners. If you compare to last year, just with conditions right now, flags barely moving and it's rained a lot over the last day, so things that you can't control. It's just Mother Nature. When conditions are like that, we're going to be firing at pins. That's just the nature of what we do.
Lift, clean and place, you've got a lot of wedges on this golf course. Can't really do much to tuck them away because even if you do tuck them in corners, we're firing away with a wedge.
Q. You won this last year but didn't win it. Would that mean that you're good with the way they've gone with this and the way they changed it?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, look, I don't know if this is the end-all, be-all solution, but it's very different. I think last year rewarded great play throughout the regular season into our essentially Super Bowl of what we're playing as the finale, our TOUR Championship, and this year it rewarded just making the top 30. Payouts aside, push that away, if you make the top 30 you have an equal chance.
I'm for it this way now and I've got to do what I've got to do but last year I knew my challenge as well, I had shots to make up. Different mindset that way, so it's nice that I would have started this week if I was, whatever, 1-under, 2-under, I still would have been pretty far behind.
So yeah, you just kind of take what you get.
Q. Doing that, shooting below 72 as you did, did it make you feel a lot better coming in this time and feeling like you'd had some success around here even if you didn't get a trophy?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, yeah, look, I've put together quality rounds out here, and that's what's been nice. It's just now doing it on the correct four rounds in the correct year, right?
So the guys are going to continue to make birdies. Hopefully I'm within a few at the end of the day, and we go in with 54 more holes left.
Q. How did you assess your Ryder Cup position coming in this week? Were you quite comfortable and relaxed or feel like you had stuff to do?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: You're never comfortable. I don't think you're ever comfortable until you get that call and you're on the team. At the end of the day, this is a different type of event. I would say after qualifying, it's been two years' work, and the Ryder Cup is still a month away.
Look, I hope I've done enough. We'll have to wait and see. But I think, yeah, my focus right now is to try and go out and win this golf tournament. I think if I do that, then hopefully that's enough, and we'll see how everything plays out.
Q. What do you credit your better putting to today?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Speed. A lot of speed. It's tough because I look back at the last two weeks and I made nothing. But I look at this week and the last two days, I've worked so much on trying to match up my speed to my feel. It's so interesting, when I palm my putter, my speed is impeccable, yet I lose a little bit of control. And I'm not going to palm my putter to go and putt out there, just because I felt like if I pushed or pulled a putt it would kind of lose that.
Soit was just how do I match that speed to what I'm seeing. It's just being able to look at the putt in maybe a slightly different view, but grain helps out here a lot for me, which is really nice.
Q. Do you feel like you've already won this tournament?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: No, no. No, I definitely don't have TOUR Championship trophy and the FedExCup, so unfortunately not. But try again this year.
Q. What did you think of the 18th in competition, either the first two shots or the first one? Is it fair? Some of the comments I heard earlier in the week --
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, Mark and I, my caddie, we talked about it where obviously there's the big grandstand down the left, I think, when you have a hole where guys are looking different ways and how do you play it differently, it maybe is a unique hole and maybe not the best designed.
I think the greens being a little bit softer this year helped that. Viktor took it all the way down, and last year if you took it all the way down you still were trying to put it in that front bunker. You just couldn't stop it. I think this year you can stop a 4-iron or a 5-wood if you land it on the front edge.
It's just a tough hole because if you miss -- I got lucky with where my first shot ended up in the rough, like having a shot over the water, but I could just end up chipping it 15 yards in front of me, it rolls all the way down, and then I have 4-iron.
Q. Why did you hit it in the right rough?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Just didn't want to hit it in the fairway. I'll try again tomorrow.
Q. Given the cant of that fairway, are you trying to bounce it off the hill?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: No, I have a wider margin with 3-wood. If I hit driver, it would have been farther right, but it's just tough because now the fairways aren't as firm, so with -- like 3-wood last year would have rolled easily comfortably down. Now if I hit a spinny 3-wood it could stop up top, yet I could hit 3-wood into the front bunker.
Q. With where you are in the Ryder Cup conversation right now, how much discussion is there with Keegan and with the rest of the team? I'm curious what the level of communication is.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: There's definitely discussion I would say pre-playoffs. Keegan has been one of -- I'm not on the team, but Keegan has been one of the best captains, even not being on the team, where he's been open to talking to everyone. I'm not saying that's been a negative to other captains, but I think just him being a lot younger and a lot closer to all of us, he's been open to hearing a lot of things, talking to him.
But yeah, at the end of the day, it's like for me, I've got to go play good golf and put that forward, and hopefully the two years' work was good enough.
Q. Do you have an opinion right now on whether Keegan should put himself in the position to play?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: I think he's got one of the most difficult decisions anyone has ever had to make. Like I said, he's put more hours than we could even ask and know about into this Ryder Cup, and he still has played great golf. He is one of the best Americans as of right now.
But I truly do not know where his head sits, and I don't want to be in that position.
Q. Would you take him?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Hypothetical, honestly, I don't -- I'm not going to get roped into that.
Q. It seems like you guys have to win either way.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: That's for sure.
Q. I think you agree with that. But if he plays and you don't win, he shouldn't have picked himself, and if he doesn't play and you don't win, then he should have played. Could you see that scenario?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: If you lose, every reason is going to come up. At the end of the day, we lost in Rome because we played bad golf and they played great golf. That's what it comes down to.
Q. No one wants to hear that, though.
COLLIN MORIKAWA: No, but that's as simple as it gets, is we are very good at managing distractions and managing everything else in our life when we go tee it up to play good golf. Every single one of us who has a TOUR card is able to do that. Maybe not every week, but for the majority of us we are able to do that, and that's what it comes down to.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports