JACK RYAN: We'd like to welcome Jordan Spieth into the interview room here at the genesis Scottish Open. Jordan, ahead of your second start here at the event, after a tie for 10th last year, if we can get an opening comment on your return to slapped.
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I felt like it was really good prep for The Open Championship. I also really enjoyed this tournament last year. I thought we had the wind blowing significantly last year all four days including a tough final round where I had a chance to win and certainly something about the golf course fit my eye so I'm just trying to pick up where I left off here.
I really enjoy coming to Scotland. Scottish links, or this country, it's one of my favourite places in the world to play golf. You can't even count on two hound how many phenomenal golf courses there are. There's four or five in a file five-mail radius here in this part of the country, so I went out last night and played North Berwick just trying to have a lot of fun while we're in the middle of working.
Q. Coming into the week, 30th in the FedExCup, your first start since the U.S. Open. What are you looking to accomplish this week and as we head into the rest of the season?
JORDAN SPIETH: Just get my feet back under me. I went through a good stretch of the season and then I kind of paused and said there's a couple things I want to work on. I think I would have won a few different events had I had this shot.
So I went through some trial and error, I looked at, call it a six-week period, where I was doing some trial and error on some feels to develop a couple shots that I wish I had and had some mixed results, missed cuts or top 5s or anywhere in between. I felt like that was a good time to do that and I felt comfortable with the fact that I wouldn't necessarily have great results every week and then going into this last three-week stretch, rest some and then build up what was probably the best of the feels and fine-tune it as best as I could, and you can just do more at home in a week than you can in a tournament week.
So yeah, I didn't play a lot of golf, which I normally do, so in the past couple days, I've tried to do a lot of that, and certainly some playing conditions shots that I've got to knock a little bit of the rust off but all in all I'm excited about the plan that the last ten weeks has been, and I've got a really exciting stretch of golf coming up.
Q. Can you talk about your experience at North Berwick?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, ten years ago, I walked it when the Open was at Muirfield, my brother and dad and friends were playing, Michael, he's my friend, too, they were all playing one of the evenings and I didn't want an open week. I didn't want to go out and play another round and I walked the last four holes and thought they were just stunning, really impressive holes. I know the history of North Berwick and I didn't play it last year and so this year, when Cameron and my coach and his son were going to go out and play, I thought I would just go out there maybe with a few clubs and chip-and-putt and walk with them. I ended up taking my bag and played all 18 holes. Played the first few and was like, I can't really quit on nine after links like you can in the States and I know that the last five, six holes are just incredible. I went out there and we were with Justin and his dad as well. It was just a fun evening to play golf. We don't really get a lot of run, random rounds on the road, and that was one to take advantage of.
Q. Did you do anything like this anywhere else?
JORDAN SPIETH: No. I've never played 27 holes on a Tuesday of a tournament week. But I knew this morning would be nine holes in the morning and plenty of time to rest. No. It's highly unlikely. After like a missed the cut or something, if you're not traveling home, you look to maybe play somewhere different or cool on a Saturday or a Sunday but that would be it.
Q. Any favourite holes?
JORDAN SPIETH: Take your pick. 14 is drivable with a wall going by it. I think it's the 13th. 15 and 16 were pretty incredible.
Q. How long did it take to find the 16th green with your chip shots?
JORDAN SPIETH: Once, but it was down the wrong side of the green. We were just messing around with some shots. We had some time to kill and nobody behind us. So yeah, it was just fun. We hit a 90-foot putt on the green. We hit some pitches, different clubs.
Q. Any advice?
JORDAN SPIETH: I would say take out the Texas wedge.
Q. It's obviously not the only course you've played this week. You played Sunningdale and then Lahinch last year. Is this becoming a tradition for you to play courses that you might not already normally get the chance to?
JORDAN SPIETH: I think just the last two years, coming over sooner, the JP McManus Pro-Am last year, I thought playing Irish links would be more fun than practice rounds since we would playa Adare twice and he set that up to make that happen. We were just planning this trip to London and thought it would be a good idea to mix one day of golf and not take five days off right before you play two weeks. That's also unusual to take more than one day off before a couple-week stretch.
We were fortunate that we were able to get hosted out at Sunningdale and that was just a treat. The only parkland course I've played in the UK was Gleneagles before Sunningdale, and it was just an unbelievable golf course. I would love to see the other one, as well. We played the Old Course. It's as good as advertised.
Q. Obviously a lot going on with LIV and the Senate hearings, which you unfortunately missed yesterday playing North Berwick apparently. What are your thoughts on where the TOUR is with this framework and what part of it concerns you, if any?
JORDAN SPIETH: I guess I'm not exactly sure because it seems like you see reports, you hear things, and then you see reports, and then some things have changed and then other things have changed. Then there's disagreements on a couple items. I think if there's any disagreements, it won't work. Honestly we're very much in the dark on it. I don't sit on the board and I'm not on the PAC either. I'm on the in.
You talk to a lot of other players, it's been quite a shock from the get-go. I wouldn't say that there's enough details to be able to really comment much on any concerns because like if I -- if you ask me about something specifically, I could say I saw that somewhere and I saw that somewhere else that it wasn't part of it.
So I really don't know. I'm sure, I guess Jay is returning Monday and I'm sure as he starts to speak with you guys, maybe things have gone further. Clearly I think we would probably liked to have seen him at the Senate hearing if he was able to do so, just as a representative of the Tour. But I don't know if there's anything that concerns me. I just hear, if you name one factor of it, I've probably heard yes and no on either side of it on about every piece of it.
Q. What find of trust issues do you think Jay is going to have to navigate given everything that's been said about players and players directors been left in the dark in a member organisation?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, quite a bit, just based on conversations I've had with players, and I think he realises that. I'm sure he's preparing for a plan to try and build it back.
Q. Can you just talk more about the feels? You were saying what kind of shots you were trying to hit and what inspired those tweaks?
JORDAN SPIETH: I would say Bay Hill, Tampa, there's another one I'm not thinking of where I had a good chance on Sunday where I hit a little too much fro and not too much lean to the shaft coming out on top creating more hands and less body and less easy way to play. I would say that there were a couple tee balls at Bay Hill and then a couple tee balls in Tampa, Hilton Head, where I got things exactly where I want them, which I still haven't in six years. Seems crazy, right. Then had that happened, then no doubt I would have been able to win one or two or three of those events. They are mechanical issues that caused the mistakes that I made. Trying to do the good I did those weeks with developing an extra piece to allow for a little more consistency. It's a crazy game. You're doing the same thing three different ways on tempo and timing and where you feel it, and so just playing around a little with a few options of tempo, timing and where I feel what I want to do is coming from.
And what I did at Jack's event is really, really good. I kind of went into the U.S. Open trying to do something a little different and that didn't work very well but it was close. So kind of a combination. I feel like I can make swings that are essentially mapping my DNA at this point, especially on the range, and then transfer them on to the golf course the past few days. It's just getting more consistent.
Q. You've had some time as a player director on the board. Given all the upheaval, would you have enjoyed being a player rep right now or you thankful?
JORDAN SPIETH: COVID was enough for me. That was enough time for me. I feel involved more than I was on the board before COVID, anyways, right now.
So no, I can't say that I'm jealous of not being on the board right now.
Q. PGA TOUR players like to know everything in great detail. Is it weird not knowing much at all?
JORDAN SPIETH: I don't necessarily think that's accurate. I think in your profession, if somebody was making decisions that was affecting you that you had no control over, and I'm sure that happens in places, but you're not in a member-owned organisation, nonprofit organisation.
I think that anybody in that situation would like to have maybe a little bit more communication prior to massive changes and decisions being done.
Q. You played on a traditional links course, North Berwick last night, and a modern links here. Do you think there's a difference in the tests?
JORDAN SPIETH: I think the traditional links have less -- they are more raw but have less craziness, less path dependence. They are more authentic. They are more -- I prefer authentic links like the older -- what can you call it, sorry? Traditional, sorry. Yeah, traditional links.
I've also really enjoyed playing this golf course. But this event, like Royal St George's, which is also pretty traditional, you can hit some shots that end up in places where you are this far off and the width could be significantly different. So there's some balance, but we get 72 holes to play and the ones that are playing best end up in the best spot.
Q. You've got The Open next week and then it's just been announced it's going back to Birkdale. Did you hear about that?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, I think Birkdale is a highly rated golf course, and also rated as one of the better Open venues. I mentioned it, I think going into that week, and after that week, the list of the winners at Birkdale are phenomenal, and I was pleased to join that list. Any time you go back to a place where you have those kind of memories, or like Augusta, or the U.S. Open goes back to Chambers, that's the only similarities. But that's different because we see it every year.
Yeah, next week, I played with Rory the first two rounds in 2014 and saw that wildly impressive display of golf. I played with Tiger for the first time in a major on Saturday. So I've had some really cool experiences around there and there's been some changes to the last couple holes and I look forward to -- I remember some of the golf course and not all that I remember. I look forward to getting back out there. It's one of the better, fair and very cool Opens venues to play with internal out-of-bounds and things that you want to see over here. It might be easy; it might be hard; it might be carnage, we'll see.
Q. I take it based being on the board, you knew Randall Stephenson. What did you make of his resignation?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, very close with Randall for almost ten years now. I think that it's a bummer because I think it was 12 or 13 years he served on the board of the PGA TOUR, and it's a voluntary board looking out for the players best interests and the future of PGA TOUR golf. I think he did as much as anybody to help put that in the right place. I think it's a huge asset that we lost.
At the same time as he retired from AT&T, I know he's been looking to spend real retirement life and maybe do a little bit less and do other things. But I think his letter says how he feels and makes a lot of sense to me on where he's at regarding the entire situation.
Q. Have you had any correspondence with him during this process?
JORDAN SPIETH: Yeah, we can use him for advice. He sits on this board, or he sat on this board. So that's what he's there for. I've used him at times for sure over the years and more recently.
Q. A couple of things were said yesterday that were quite jaw-dropping; the sheer numbers and the amount of money that's available in comparison with the PGA TOUR, 700 billion, as opposed to the assets of the PGA TOUR, 3 1/2 billion. I think it was Jimmy Dunne that said that there's a real fear if they don't do something about LIV they are going to overtake. How does it make you feel that the Tour that you played on is at threat?
JORDAN SPIETH: It's not a great feeling. I don't necessarily believe that just the differences in finances would create a threat to go through -- to not look to just having options or at least communicating on why things would get done when they get done. I think as I mentioned to you, I mean, you know, it's a member-run organisation with a voluntary board that's supposed to look out for the interests of the PGA TOUR players on the board. I don't believe that these decisions had to be made without involving, call it players on the board and other board members. But that's my opinion on the matter, and maybe there's a reason. Again, I just don't know, otherwise I could probably answer your question better.
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