KEN TANIGAWA: Ken Tanigawa.
Q. Let's start out, you set a U.S. Open record with six consecutive birdies.
KEN TANIGAWA: I did?
Q. Yes.
KEN TANIGAWA: Really? Wow, I had no idea.
Q. So can you walk me through a little bit with that run.
KEN TANIGAWA: Yeah, it started on 7. Right, you just hit the fairways, you hit the greens, and I had good looks at them.
7, I holed a nice putt.
8, I hit a great wedge in there to around six feet, seven feet, made that one.
9, that was kind of unexpected. That was like 15 feet of the hole breaking left to right. But that went in, hit a great putt there.
10, the tees are up so you go for it, right? I hit driver. Actually, I fanned it right. I figured the pin is way left, so if I'm going to miss, I got to miss it right, right?
I had kind of a nasty lie in the rough, but I had the whole green to work with. That was my saving grace. If I could get it 10, 15 yards onto the green, it should run out there, which I did, and it got up there to around two feet.
11 was a massive bonus where that pin was. In practice rounds I didn't know how -- I knew the pin was going to be there, but I didn't know a ball could stay there. I hit a 5-iron up there, kind of hit it high with a little cut, and it landed -- you can't see it from the tee where it ends up.
I got the applause and thought, oh, it must be all right. I got up there and it was probably 5, 5 1/2 feet, but it was just an icky putt. It's down and breaking hard right to left quick. I just got the speed and line right and it went right in there. I was probably the best putt I hit all day.
Then the par-5, yeah. Just hit two good ones down there just right in front of that bunker. I had 70 yards to the hole. Hit a decent wedge. It was a hard wedge shot with a tier -- all these tiers where the pins are, they're hard.
Hit it to around seven, eight feet and rolled that one in. So it was a great run. I didn't know that was a U.S. Senior Open record. That was pretty cool.
Yeah, it was a fun run. Then I came back to reality and made some bogeys. Hit it in the rough, and that's easy to do. Here you hit it in the rough you kind of make a bogey, so...
Q. You played back here in 2014 in the Mid-Am.
KEN TANIGAWA: I did.
Q. Tell me how things are different on the course.
KEN TANIGAWA: I don't know if it's a whole lot different. I remember the rough then was actually really thick. It was just like this. It was wedging out kind of scenarios. If you got a bad lie, you couldn't get it out.
It was in great shape then and it's in great shape now. I don't see a whole lot of difference. The routing was obviously different. This here was 18, so I kind of had to remember, oh, this hole, and I come back here and it's a little bit right, a little bit different.
But, boy, what a venue. It's a great Senior Open course. It's a great USGA venue course.
Q. 2014 propelled your career a little bit. Talk about how that played a role to where you are now.
KEN TANIGAWA: Well, I think any time foe me playing in competition at a national level against wonderful players it just helps you get better. You just try to learn. Every time I try to go out there and play, learn something, take something away from it.
Back there when I played and played here on such a hard venue where you've got to really perform. You can't fake it around here.
When you play on these wonderful golf courses, it just teaches you where your weaknesses are and where you've got to improve. So much of that's really between the ears. Yeah, it's a great experience. Just happy to be here.
Q. The difference on playing Thursday to playing Saturday, and what you're looking for from the course on Sunday?
KEN TANIGAWA: Thursday, starting out, we got the better end of the draw obviously. You're a little anxious starting out. You don't quite know. You're trying to get your feel out there.
The way the course is, it's hard to get anything back. You get a little anxious and all of a sudden you hit it in the rough, and it's a bogey kind of a scenario. It's hard on a U.S. Open setup to get something back because it's kind of relentless.
Then yesterday, I hit it really, really nice yesterday. I missed -- it could have been a really, really good round.
So I just really tried to stay where I was, where my feet were at the time when I'm in the shot, and not worry about the cut at all and just really just try to stay in the moment and just play.
Whatever happens, kind of say, hey, if you're a really, really good player, how would you go about this? What a really good player, that demeanor would be, and how would you behave and think?
That's kind of my mindset for yesterday because I didn't know where the cut was and you sure don't want to think about it, but you know it's there.
I played nicely yesterday and today. Boy, it was good in stretches and then kind of hiccups along the way. It's the course and setup. It doesn't take much. You just kind of hit it a little bit into the rough all of a sudden.
You've got to get up and down, and it's easy to make bogeys. The greens are really challenging. Kind of over these little knolls.
Fun, great. Tomorrow look forward to it.
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