Q. What was the best part of your round today?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Just scrambling, finding ways to make birdie and not getting ahead of myself. Days like this where you don't hit it as well, sometimes you think ahead and sometimes you kind of wait for the next hole and you wait for the next shot.
But still have a lot of trust in the swing, so every shot I had that opportunity. Whether it went right or wrong, I was able to kind of accept the fact and move on.
Q. Is that different than two or three months ago?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, two or three months ago or even two weeks ago. If it I saw a couple bad shots, it was like, what do I fix, what do I try, what do I do on this shot. You start to get ahead of yourself, and you forget that you have to hit every shot and you have to put yourself in those positions to even hit those approach shots.
It was nice the last few holes. Hit some pretty good ones. Just kind of figure out a little tempo and rhythm on the range, and I think I'll be just fine.
Q. How would you compare how comfortable you feel over the ball now compared to three weeks ago?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Way better. I kind of roughly know where the ball is going, and even when I'm missing it, still everything is a little bit tighter, so that's all you can really ask for.
Q. Pretty significant building blocks it sounds like just based on your comments yesterday of putting four or five days --
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, 100 percent, and seriously, like last Monday was a real big steppingstone. Look at today, I hit it poorly, but the misses weren't as bad, and the misses don't put me in spots that cause me a lot of strokes. That's what it's about is kind of minimizing those mistakes.
Q. Were any of the misses a surprise?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: You know, yeah. I had a little stretch today, I chunked a 5-wood on the par-5, 5, and then hit one left on 6, and that was when I really had to tell myself, okay, slow it down a little bit. Those were kind of the shots I was seeing. It's not like I'm never going to hit those again. But I've got to remember, okay, what are the pieces of this little puzzle that I'm putting together that got me to what I did last week and got me through this week so far.
Q. Is it safe to assume you're trying to put the puzzle back together?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Yeah, I'm not really adding any new pieces. I've learned a lot over the past year, year and a half of just golf in general. Even if I didn't go through this, I think just time you learn a lot. But I know the pieces that I have and the whole puzzle let's call it, I can play really, really great golf. Sometimes you don't need all those pieces, and today I didn't have it, but that's kind of old-school golf. I look back when I first turned pro, today was one of those days, didn't feel great, didn't hit it great, whatever, still posted a number and move on to the next couple days.
Q. Was last Monday a "Eureka" moment or was it like searching for your car keys like I've got them again?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: No, J.J. and I were pretty happy when we found it. It's not like we created something new in the golf swing. It just all made sense. We tried to make a lot of things make sense for the past while, but sometimes things click, and it's obviously clicked because it's lasted more than a day.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports