Q. You said yesterday your strategy was to hit driver, bomb it, and then figure it out from there. How do you think that worked out today?
RORY MCILROY: I think it worked out fine. I drove the ball pretty well. I missed it in a couple of spots but was sort of able to get away with it. The mistakes I made mostly were from around the greens, the three-putt on 12 and then making 6 at 15.
Apart from that, I played pretty good. I felt like I was a little rusty out there, just hadn't played in a week and I hadn't really done a ton of practice, especially like on and around the greens.
I certainly can tidy a few things up, but overall a decent day.
Q. Do you change anything when scores are this low and it's going to take a real low number to get up on the leaderboard?
RORY MCILROY: Not really. You can't really pay attention to that either. We'll see what the weather is like tomorrow and see what that brings.
But yeah, at this point you sort of know that -- I feel like I've played enough golf tournaments to know roughly what the winning score might be. So you sort of try to -- obviously Keith got the 9-under today, but you try to put that out of your head and plug along and stay in your own little world.
Q. I saw the Congrats Rory sign off the 9th fairway. How was the energy and support out there for you?
RORY MCILROY: It was amazing. It was really nice. We got a really nice crowd out there.
No, look, it's been an amazing few weeks, and nice to come somewhere and people are excited for you and doing stuff like that. It's really nice.
Q. You don't get the opportunity to play much in Northeast America. Is the energy from the crowd different? I know it's only the first round, but you've played majors up here obviously.
RORY MCILROY: I think any time we do come to Philly, it's a great sports town obviously, and people do get behind obviously their teams, but also the events that are brought here.
I feel like any time that I have played around here, whether it be Merion or Aronimink or here, the energy has always been great.
Q. Rory, maybe you answered this question already, but I heard you speak in Augusta and again in New Orleans about how you're chasing a feel when you're out on the golf course. What is the feeling, if you can describe it?
RORY MCILROY: I guess the best way to describe it is it's like a combination of trust, commitment, acceptance, and joy, all sort of mangled together. That's sort of the easiest way to describe it.
Q. And what would you say is like the -- oh, so the last ten years it feels like a lot of the conversation has been about your major history and everything that's gone on. Now, as you said after the Masters, what are we going to talk about now? So turn the question on you. What are we going to talk about in golf now that the major question is out of the way?
RORY MCILROY: Hopefully in two weeks time you're talking about me being a six-time major champion instead of a five-time major champion.
I mean, I don't know. I was really referencing like that specific tournament and sort of what we talk about in that building every year for the last ten years.
There's enough great story lines in golf, whether it be like Scottie won by a million last week and seems to be playing back to his best. You've got Jordan Spieth going for the career grand slam next week. You've got a lot of exciting stuff happening in the women's game.
There's always great story lines in golf, and it certainly doesn't just have to be about me.
Q. You mentioned there being a little bit of rust. Does that change your approach this week with the PGA next week and how you view your result here?
RORY MCILROY: Look, to me, this is -- I don't want to diminish this tournament and this championship, but to me, with everything that's happened over the past couple of weeks, this was always going to be a great prep week for me to see where my game was and sort of refine a few things.
I still want to play well, and I still want to have a chance to win the tournament, but I'll have a really -- a much better gauge of where my game is going into next week after these four days than I would have had if I hadn't had played or if I just spent the week at home practicing. So it's an important week for me.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports