Valspar Championship

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Palm Harbor, Florida, USA

Innisbrook Resort (Copperhead)

Dustin Johnson

Quick Quotes


Q. What did you think of the day? It was a nice one.

DUSTIN JOHNSON: Yeah. Had nice weather. It's warm. Yeah. Played okay.

Q. Did you shoot about what you deserved?

DUSTIN JOHNSON: I don't know. Close. It could have been a couple better. I hit it really nicely, drove it pretty good, just, I don't know, I struggled with the speed on the greens.

Obviously they're good. They're rolling good. It's just they're a little bit a lot slower than normal, I guess, for here. Just some of the downhill, just lost a little bit of speed. Hit some good putts. It just didn't go in just because of lack of speed.

Q. Did you find something on Sunday with your game -- sorry, Monday?

DUSTIN JOHNSON: No. I mean, I went and practiced after the, my finish, which was awful, Monday morning. Just made some really bad swings with irons from middle of the fairway.

So I went and got a couple hours of practice in between the rounds and obviously it paid off a little bit. But, yeah, I mean, I just, if anything's been struggling a little bit, I wasn't rolling it that great early in the year, but then lately I haven't been hitting my irons that good, so I went and worked on that, and then hit some okay shots. But I made a lot of putts on Monday on the final round.

Q. Do you have any idea how many course records you hold?

DUSTIN JOHNSON: I do not. A few.

Q. What's your favorite?

DUSTIN JOHNSON: They're all good.

Q. The first time you played Augusta to now what do you think you know now that you didn't know then? What's something that's taken some time to figure out?

DUSTIN JOHNSON: That's a good question. Obviously the golf course. There's a lot of things around the golf course that you learn. I mean, you learn stuff every time you play, kind of.

But just being comfortable on the holes, where to hit it I think is probably the biggest thing. It's more about the misses there. Where can you miss it and still have a chance to make a par or just to be able to get up-and-down because there's a lot of holes and a lot of flags where even if you hit a great shot and it goes just a little bit too far or if you come up a hair short or something, you don't have any chance to get up-and-down.

So it's all about knowing the flags, knowing where you can hit it, I think is the biggest key.

Q. Do you think it's impossible to garner that knowledge early on? Like, it just takes a little while.

DUSTIN JOHNSON: For some things maybe, but you can learn, the course is pretty much right there in front of you, so you can learn it if you spend enough time out there.

But, yeah, I mean, for a first time, I don't know the stats, but I can't imagine there's too many first-time winners there, just because you do need to know and understand the golf course a good bit to have a chance.

But until the first time you play there, you know, definitely a little nervous.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
118073-1-1044 2022-03-17 17:35:00 GMT

ASAP sports

tech 129