MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 10, 2026

Ryan Gerard

Quick Quotes

Q. Ryan, even par today. How would you assess today's round and your overall 36-hole performance?

RYAN GERARD: I played a lot better golf today, so I'm pretty happy with the way that I'm playing golf. I just made a lot less putts today, and I felt like I was hitting good ones. They were just kind of running out of speed a little bit towards the end and kind of wiggling offline a little bit.

When you get late in the afternoon and the greens get pretty glassy, it's hard to convince yourself that you can whack it sometimes. I was almost playing defense from 8 to 15 feet for a little bit of the round.

I'd say that's kind of the one little bit of a sticking point, but overall I'm pleased with the 36 holes. Some mistakes. A lot of good shots. A couple of bad ones. But, you know, the course isn't playing easy, and you know, hopefully we'll get a little bit of a break tomorrow going out a little bit earlier than some of the guys and be able to chase down a good one early and kind of see how it stands.

But it's going to be a grind. This place is going to get firm. It's already purple in spots, so it's going to be a lot of fun.

Q. Where do you find your mind going? Are you proud of making the cut, or are you just more focused on where the lead is?

RYAN GERARD: I think making the cut is a good step. I wasn't necessarily really worried about the cut. I was kind of just trying to grind my way back into it. But if you get within one or two of the cut with, like, four or five holes to play, you're definitely thinking about it. Thankfully I wasn't quite in that spot.

But, yeah, I think Rory is playing really good. You know, Tommy made an eagle on 15. We heard of it. So there's guys doing -- there's really good players making really big moves out there. I'm going to be a little bit behind the 8-ball going into this weekend, so hopefully they maybe work their way back to the field a little bit.

But at the end of the day, I need to step up and play some really good golf this weekend if I want to have a chance coming down the second nine on Sunday.

Q. What's the best shot you hit today?

RYAN GERARD: You know, I knew you were going to ask this, and I was thinking about it when I hit it. I hit the nastiest little punch cut 9-iron from 125 yards on seven and landed it, two-hopped it through the gap to, like, 10 feet. I just didn't even sniff making the putt. I felt so bad about that effort, but that was an awesome shot.

Yeah, I think that was probably my personal highlight of the round. I've been trying to hit that gap that's, like, 8 feet wide on seven two days in a row, and I hit it both times. So, you know, maybe I just need to play for that gap the entire week.

Q. The green firmness, huge story right now. Can you describe how firm they are? Is there more room to push them? How much more could they be pushed?

RYAN GERARD: It's not unplayable. It's not even close to unplayable. They have room to push it, but it's going to get to a point where the morning wave -- it's going to be hot tomorrow. They're going to have to water them. It's going to get to the point where a morning wave is going to have an advantage, and the afternoon guys are going to be kind of stuck out there, like, kicking their teeth in.

When you talk about green firmness at a place like this, it's not like a Memorial or somewhere elsewhere there's a lot of kind of, like, areas that you can maybe use to your advantage. Like, there's very, very tight windows where you have to land your approach shots, and there's not really places that you can really run balls up. There's a lot of false fronts. There's a lot of side slopes.

They do a good job of hiding pin placements where it's not exactly easy to get to unless you hit a really, really good approach in there. So I think the test that you're going to see is -- I mean, honestly, like, who is comfortable just sending it into the air and spinning it.

But, also, when you're talking about where can I land a golf ball, who has got their distance control really, really dialed with pitching wedge through 7-iron, because you're going to end up with a lot of awkward lies, awkward numbers, swirling winds to tight windows that you have to control flight and spin and try and land it on, like, a table top in order to have a good, quality look at birdie.

Q. What's your best guess on what a good score is tomorrow? Nothing spectacular. Just a good, solid score.

RYAN GERARD: If you shoot anything under 70 tomorrow, it would be very impressive. You can see where some of the dots are. They're not even dots. They're like pencil marks that they filled in with fertilizer that mark where the holes are for the next day. Where some of those are, it's going to take a lot from all facets of your game to shoot a score in the 60s.

So anything in the 60s would be great. Anything better than 72, you're not losing ground in any way, shape, or form. I mean, if Rory gets in the house around 8-under, I mean, I'd be surprised if the lead was better than that tomorrow.