RBC CANADIAN OPEN

June 5, 2025

Nick Taylor

TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley (North Course)

Quick Quotes

Q. Nick, congrats on a strong start to the tournament. How much were the three of you feeding off of each other and the energy from the spectators?

NICK TAYLOR: I thought the crowd was great. They built over time, once the rain kind of went away. I don't blame them. So that was fun. I felt like we all got off to a decent start, and kind of making the turn is where we kind of picked it up.

Yeah, it was fun to feed off each other. It's better than going the other way obviously. Everyone played well. Mack probably could have made a couple more putts where he normally does. But for all of us to be under par, it was a good start.

Q. I'm not sure you reflected on this, but obviously all three of you first played this tournament as amateurs, and were sort of like the last groups of the day, and now you're one of the featured marquee groups. Have you thought about what that means for your career and how far the three of you have come?

NICK TAYLOR: Yeah, it's cool to look back on. I think 2008 might have been my first Canadian Open, and I teed off, I think, at 7:30 at night because we had a long rain delay, and that was kind of my unique first start.

Fast forward 17 years being the featured group, it's cool. It's what we dreamed about. To play a practice round with a couple buddies -- excuse me, tournament round. It felt like a practice round is what I'm trying to say. It was a lot of fun. We kept it loose. It was nice to see a few birdies go in.

Q. What is the difference between playing with two guys you know well versus two guys you're maybe meeting for the first time?

NICK TAYLOR: I think there's not obviously the small talk stuff, where are you from, how's your family type stuff. We see each other every day on the road. It was keeping it loose. All the caddies are tight, along with all of us.

Everything was just -- it was a fun, kind of calm energy all day, which was nice.

Q. So you do buy into the theory that you naturally feel more relaxed out there when you're playing with good buddies?

NICK TAYLOR: No doubt. I'm sure all of us obviously want to play well, but to cap some momentum going and feed off each other, it can only help that we're in a pretty good state of mind.

Q. There was some chatter early in the week about whether the course might be torn up like super low. It seemed like it's held its own. How would you describe the teeth of the course and the challenge it presents?

NICK TAYLOR: I think there's four or five really strong par-4s. I think the difficulty today was the softness of the greens with the short irons. There was a lot of spin. So some of the back pins, you couldn't hit your normal stock wedges because they were going to spin back 20 feet. That was probably the biggest challenge of the day of managing how much spin, taking some off with shots.

Both par-5s are relatively gettable. For us, we teed off in the back, so we had back-to-back par-5s, which is pretty unique. It's out there. There's still enough rough and long holes that I don't think anyone is necessarily going to run away with. 5-, 6-under is a great round. So, yeah, I'm happy with the start.

Q. I just wonder how the weather played at all. Any implications from that drizzle that was in the air all day?

NICK TAYLOR: It was more of an annoyance, I think. It was umbrella up-and-down. It wasn't one of those where it was affecting the ball like sliding off the face and all with the woods. It was fine. It was more of an annoyance.

I had a jacket on, rain pants, taking it on and off. I felt bad for Dave because the bag was probably 60 pounds. Other than it being a nuisance, it didn't affect the play too much. It was the overnight rain that made the course really soft.

Q. Talk about how soft the golf course was today. How much of an emphasis did that put on driving accuracy, not trying to play out of that rough that had taken so much water?

NICK TAYLOR: The rough's thick with the rain. Like I said, the challenge was more so in the fairway with wedges, controlling your spin. There was a lot of -- they were so soft, it was spinning back 15, 20 feet. Some of the back pins, you had to take it on. If you try to land it past the hole, it could go over the green.

Fairways are certainly key, but the challenge also was trying to hit it close with wedges because the greens were spinning so much.