Q. Scottie, nice playing today, 66 to move into the mix. How do you feel about how your game has been through two days?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I feel much better about how I played today than yesterday. I felt like both days could have gotten more out of my rounds, but overall did a lot more good things out on the course and looking forward to the weekend. We'll see how the leaderboard shakes out, but I have an outside chance going into the weekend.
Q. Yesterday hole 5, your third shot, what goes through your mind and how are you able to recalibrate to quickly?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Just got too cute with a bunker shot there and don't want to turn one bad shot into another, so I hit a nice pitch up there to save bogey.
Q. Is it true that you never won an AJGA event?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I never won an official AJGA event. I won, I think, the Player of the Year was an award that I won, but I did it without ever winning an actual AJGA tournament. I won some tournaments that counted towards the rankings like the U.S. Junior and the Junior Invitational, but I never actually won on the AJGA circuit.
Q. I saw a transcript after winning the U.S. Junior, you're like, I never win. That was the quote. Is there something about that that you think has served you well in your career, some sort of chip of coming up short at that level?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I wouldn't necessarily say that I came up short because I won what I think I felt at the time were the two biggest tournaments that we played as juniors. The U.S. Junior was like our U.S. Open, and I would say Sage Valley was kind of like our Masters.
At the time I wouldn't say that I failed as a junior. I think I was a pretty good junior player. But I think you're always learning. I think you can learn from winning and you can learn from losing, as well. I was always a really consistent player, but I wasn't consistently winning when I was a junior.
I think I was continuing to learn and refine my game and my process as I got out here on TOUR. I think my first couple years on TOUR you could describe it as the same way where I played a lot of consistent golf but I wasn't consistently winning, and I feel like he learned a lot from that, as well.
Q. I want to ask you about the fan experience and how it's unique compared to other tournaments that you play.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, it's definitely very unique. The crowd is a bit more of a factor this week than it is other weeks, especially when you get to some of the holes where there's a lot of people, and a lot of people tend to stay on the same hole.
I think of yesterday, we were on No. 6 and Max has a putt from 12 or 15 feet, and a guy in the crowd yells out, it's dead straight. And then Max starts reading the putt, and he's like, stop reading it, Max, it's dead straight, and he's yelling at him. So like you can't not hear it.
So sometimes you have to make a conscious effort to be like, I'm either going to totally ignore that person or maybe he's sitting here all day, maybe he knows something.
So it's a tough balancing act out there on the course where sometimes you listen and sometimes you don't. But a lot of it you can't avoid hearing so you do your best to block it out over the shot.
Q. (Indiscernible.)
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think overall it's a positive effect. I think the crowds here are great. It's fun to get to play in front of so many people. Stuff like that -- I remember in Memphis last year I had an instance like that where a guy was yelling in the crowd, everybody is leaving is short; hit it a little harder than you think, and he yelled it a bunch of times, and sure enough, two guys on a similar line left it short, and I was like, I guess I'd better hit it a little harder, and ended up hitting it a little harder and making it.
I think sometimes there can be definitely good aspects to it, but overall there's still pretty few holes out here where people are actually yelling stuff that you'll actually listen to. I think when you get the crowd on 16 they're probably having a few beverages so I'm not really going to trust what they have to say. But maybe No. 6 was a little less rowdy.
Q. You played with Max and Tom today, and I saw you talking a lot with Max. Are those mid-round conversations more just what's going on with the golf game, or what do those look like for you?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Just random stuff. Max is typically a guy that's a bit chatty on the course. He's a guy that I get along with really well, and so it's always fun getting to catch up with him. Some of it's golf stuff. Other stuff is about other sports, about our families, just random stuff that -- same conversations I'd say we'd have over lunch.
Q. Do you think that kind of loose conversation contributes to your golf game at all, or do you just lock in?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I typically don't talk a lot on the course. Honestly, I don't think it really has much of an effect on the golf. I think it's good sometimes when you're not playing your best if you've got friend out there that you can chat with and kind of relax things because it can be really frustrating out here.
Max is a guy who he didn't have his best stuff this week, but his attitude is always great. So it's great being around guys like that where they're still fighting for every shot, especially on the back nine today when it was fairly obvious he wasn't going to be able to make the cut, especially the last four or five holes, and to watch him still grind it out and continue to work on his game, that's the stuff that when he looks back and he kind of gets out of this little rut that he's in, that's the stuff I think he'll look back on is fighting for every shot, no matter the situation.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports