PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 14, 2026

Max Greyserman

Aronimink Golf Club

Flash Quotes

THE MODERATOR: Max Greyserman is with us now at the 108th PGA Championship. Solid start for you today. How would you summarize your opening round?

MAX GREYSERMAN: I would say it's a very solid opening round, especially coming off the 1st hole on the first -- the front nine I hit a lot of fairways. That's something you want to do around here. Like any major golf course, you've kind of got to do everything well. So when you don't miss the fairway, you need to scramble well.

But coming out of the gate, hit a lot of fairways, a lot of greens. You can attack the golf course out here on the front nine, I would say. You can get a lot of wedges in your hand if you're hitting driver, where as you start to get to the middle and the back of the course, you don't quite have as many wedges.

So if you can attack, I think, the first, I would say, six, seven holes is where you can really score. Then you almost -- you hang on a little bit. There's birdies everywhere, but it gets really tough.

Q. Max, did you get yourself into any real tricky spots on the greens? There's so much undulation.

MAX GREYSERMAN: Yeah, that's something that you keep an eye on for sure. I would say most days on the PGA TOUR, if the pin's on the right, you're just aiming a little left of it. If the pin's on the left, you're a little right of it, stuff like that. But around here, you have to pay attention to every part of the green.

For example, on 16, the par-5, I hit a poor third shot, and I ended up in an area where I basically couldn't putt it within 10 feet of the hole. So you kind of have to really pay attention on where you leave the ball on and around the greens here. So it requires a little bit -- a little bit more thinking, I would say.

Q. Max, from last week to this week, I'm just curious how your prep went here at Aronimink and what got you in this position to post a good opening round?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Prep was good. I played good in the practice round days. Honestly, I didn't play too dissimilar today than I have in the practice round days. Played well Sunday last week.

I haven't been playing well this year so far, but mostly due to the driver, and I made a nice driver switch Monday afternoon with Callaway. We had some discussions, and I basically changed my shot shape. I went from a fade to a draw off the tee. So I just completely decided to play a different game.

Q. Is that something that was spur of the moment, or had that been a long time in the making for you?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Just a conversation I had with my coach. I was drawing -- obviously we all hit it both ways, but everyone out here has kind of a stock shot. Most of my bag is a draw for the stock shot. So we just like, if we're struggling with driver, why don't we just hit it the way we hit everything else?

It just required a little bit of tuning with the driver in terms of what setting it needed to be in. So we got it in a good spot.

Q. Just to confirm a couple things, who is your coach?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Jeff Smith.

Q. Were you hitting the driver with a fade and you turned it into a draw?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Yeah, it's my predominant shot. I would say, nowadays with modern technology, most people kind of just hit one shot off the tee for the most part because the spin is so low, whereas other parts of your bag, the spin is higher. So you can kind of work the ball both ways and kind of do what you want with it.

So I had been hitting a fade for a while off the tee, and we decided to switch it up and hit a draw.

Q. There's a theory that you can talk to a fade but you can't talk to a draw. Did you find that today?

MAX GREYSERMAN: I would say that is true unless you have enough spin with a draw. When the spin starts to get really low, you can't talk to a draw because it will dive out of the air sideways.

That's why we needed to tune the driver a little bit, right? If you don't have enough spin, it's going to be hard to control a draw, but if you keep the spin up, you can control the draw.

Q. I think talking to you at PLAYERS, that was your issue was the driver. Is that right?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Yeah, it's been kind of the weakness, I would say, most of this year.

Q. Today you felt like you may have accomplished the goal?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Yeah, and it wasn't even today. I feel like yesterday I drove it well, the day before I drove it well. Sunday last week I drove it well. It wasn't just I woke up today and started hitting it good.

I put in some good work and tweaks and stuff, and I feel like it's been trending that direction.

Q. Do you sometimes wonder why you didn't do this sooner?

MAX GREYSERMAN: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, as golfers, we second guess every decision. I probably second guessed myself five times out there today.