U.S. SENIOR OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 29, 2023

Rod Pampling

SentryWorld

Flash Interview

Q. 3-under par, leader in the clubhouse. Can you talk us through the round.

ROD PAMPLING: It was obviously a fun day. I'd been playing well for the last month or so. To get here and see the course, it felt good.

I drove it really well and made a lot of birdies out there. Just the one hole made a little mistake on, tried to get a little too aggressive.

On the whole, I putted it really well, which was nice to see the balls going in. It's nice to get a good view of the greens and can pick the breaks early on.

Q. You said you putted well. Would you say that's the best part of your round today?

ROD PAMPLING: Yeah, there was a lot of good things, but yes, the putting was really solid. It's been good for a month or so. Not a surprise, but just to be able to actually see the lines as well as I was today was good.

Q. Nice round. Talking about the 9th hole, you made a good par there. Can you talk about the par to end the round? And how do you feel about that hole?

ROD PAMPLING: It was a great momentum mover to keep things traveling along. It's a tough hole. I hit a great tee shot, which I thought was fine. It took -- I guess you could see the bounce there. That's right where our landing zone is; it's kind of crowned.

So to hit the fairway, I would imagine it would be the least amount of fairways hit on that hole this week, I think. It's tough. You've just got to work out where to try to hit your second shot and give yourself a good number for your third.

When you see there's so many great holes out here, it certainly is an interesting one, put it that way. I'll take four 4s every day.

Q. Any experiences in the rough, and what do you think of how that's playing this week?

ROD PAMPLING: I had a couple in there, but yeah. Especially when you get closer to the green, if you lay up and you don't lay up well, it's very difficult. The rough kind of lays back into you so you really can't get the club on the ball. It's quite difficult to judge.

Hopefully won't be doing that too many times.

Q. Did you see much of a difference in terms of the difficulty of the front and the back nine? It seems like overall the back nine --

ROD PAMPLING: The back nine is definitely a lot easier, if you can say that. The front's just got a little bit longer. Yeah, definitely back nine is where you can post a pretty solid number.

Q. Can you talk about the state of your game coming in here? Is after playing practice rounds, did you sort of meet or exceed your expectations today?

ROD PAMPLING: As I said, the game had been good for a month. We just hadn't -- just little mistakes here and there and hadn't quite made all the putts that I think I should have been making.

No, no surprises. I said to our caddie, we've just got to be patient. The way we're playing it, very simple on the range, just working with the coach, and just keeping it as simple as we can. Just hitting a lot of short wedges. Not trying to stress too much and just play the golf course as it comes to you.