THE AMERICAN EXPRESS

January 22, 2026

Pierceson Coody

PGA WEST Pete Dye Stadium Course

Quick Quotes

Q. 62 in the opening round. Great start to the week. What was working for you, especially on the back nine?

PIERCESON COODY: Yeah, I thought on the front I was hitting my wedges really nice. I missed some 10 or 12-footers. Probably missed with about three or four in that range. They're certainly not outside looks, but they're not gimmes. But I was making good putts and got things going on the back nine. It was really nice to see some good wedges go my way, and knock in some of the nice six and eight foot putts that you have to that are -- yeah, it feels easy when you're playing golf in this kind of weather with the pace the greens are and everything like that, so it was nice to manage my emotions and keep going well.

Q. Is it safe to say that you naturally have a more aggressive approach whenever you play out there?

PIERCESON COODY: I seem to get going hot whenever it kind of snowballs. So I don't know what it is, I'm not thinking anything different. Yeah, I know that I've rattled off a few like this where I made a bunch in a row and it's kind of just the style of this week. You've got to manage your kind of poor holes and then, yeah, you've got to have a hot five or six holes and make at least four, five, six birdies a round. So I thought I did well with that.

Q. Most places you go to the first round, you shoot 10-under, they're saying, Well, have you ever had a four-shot lead or something like that. Here you're only tied for the lead with one guy and maybe two or three others. Is that just, I mean, what's the mindset when you come to a place like this where you know the scoring's going to be crazy?

PIERCESON COODY: It's almost easier knowing that you're playing three courses, you have a lot of time between rounds, playing early, so it feels like you're really kind of staying in a process of like, Okay, now I'm going to go work on my stuff at Stadium. I'm going to putt those greens. It feels like I'm prepping every day for a new round. It's easy to get ahead of yourself when you're playing well. So having kind the breakup of these different rounds, different courses kind of helps that mindset this week.

Q. You say you've done this before, made a bunch of these things. Have you done it in a TOUR event?

PIERCESON COODY: I don't know what my, how many I made in a row. I made six in a row? I know I rattled off seven I think in one of my first Korn Ferry Tour events. So, yeah, I certainly thought about that, oh, it would be nice to roll in that 20-footer on the last. It was a tricky putt. So, yeah, I've done it a few times now. I don't know how many times I rattled off four, five in a row, but I've done it a few times at a TOUR event, I guess.

Q. Last year you made 15 starts on both the TOUR and the Korn Ferry Tour. Do you know the last time a player did that on both tours?

PIERCESON COODY: I truly don't.

Q. It was Darron Stiles in 2006.

PIERCESON COODY: Darron Stiles. He's caddieing, yeah. Yeah, I know Darron. Or, no, he's a rules official.

Q. Are there any grinders out here that you particularly respect or admire just in golf or in any other sport?

PIERCESON COODY: I think longevity, it's really cool. I think, like I played with Adam Scott last Sunday at Sony, and just the fact that the's 20-something years on TOUR is, regardless of how good he was, obviously he was world No. 1 and won the Masters and all this, but mentally still want to work, still want to do the things he does to be as good as he is is really impressive. I definitely look more towards the guys that are in that part of their career that were really top-echelon players, because they could walk away from golf and be completely content, they accomplished a lot. But like that framework of wanting it to last that long starts now with the way you recover and do stuff like that. So, yeah, Adam Scott would be a great example.

Q. What did you do this off-season to get ready for this year?

PIERCESON COODY: Not anything different. I thought I put a little more emphasis on just some putting stroke mechanics, getting on some machines that are kind of like the Trackman for putting, and just getting really confident in my numbers that I'm doing the right things. Then the green reading and pace control is on me. But I wanted to really kind of get mentally in a place where I thought I was starting my ball on line and knew why I was doing it well or wasn't doing it well. So that was really the point of emphasis. Everything else was the same of just some small swing stuff that I tried to engrain and hit a bunch of wedges.