THE 154TH OPEN

July 16, 2026

Sepp Straka

Mixed Zone

Q. How was it out there? Well played.

SEPP STRAKA: Thank you. It was good. I felt like I hit the ball pretty well for the most part. A few pretty terrible shots in there too, but recovered pretty well.

Q. According to the range tracker, you hit just as many balls as anyone else in the field?

SEPP STRAKA: That tracks, yeah.

Q. What was the thinking there?

SEPP STRAKA: I just hadn't been hitting it very good. Just trying to kind of find a feel to play with this week. Yeah, just got a lot of stuff I'm kind of trying to work on right now.

Q. What's the feel that you're going with? It must be working.

SEPP STRAKA: Sometimes, sometimes not. I hit plenty of bad shots out there too, but I was great off the tee today. That was really nice. I was able to hit a lot of fairways with the crosswinds. So that was very helpful.

Q. When you're on the fairways, how difficult is it playing off the grass that's obviously quite brown? It doesn't seem like there's much grass underneath the ball. How difficult is that?

SEPP STRAKA: When you're hitting it well, you don't even think about it. It's great because you can lean on it and mash it a little bit. It's pretty nice when you're hitting it well. I'm kind of struggling with my low point a little bit, so it's a little sketchy at times, especially when you get on a downslope. Yeah, it's definitely unique.

Q. Is it just harder to stop the ball coming into these greens? Obviously they're quite firm as well. It looks like the ball is not going to come out as high as it usually would.

SEPP STRAKA: Yeah, you can get it up pretty high, but yeah, it is pretty firm. I would say off the tee it's really hard to get the ball to slow down. You're always trying to figure out a way to slow it down. Working the ball against the wind a lot out there, especially off the tees, because the fairways are really firm and really fast. It's easy to kind of run into some of those bunkers out there.

Q. What about when you're in the rough? From walking around, it's really trampled down and not typical rough you'd get in a links course. What difference does that make to approach shots?

SEPP STRAKA: You're trying to figure out if it's going to be a flier or not. That's the number one thing. There's some spots out there, especially far off the fairway, where there's a pretty good bit of rough. For the most part, if you're just off the fairway, a lot of flier lies. It's going to be hard to control coming into the green.

Q. When you're working on your game and competing at the same time, especially in a major, what is the mental struggle? How do you find the trust?

SEPP STRAKA: It's kind of tough. You don't want to get stuck out there playing golf swing, that's for sure, especially on a day like today where you have a lot of crosswinds. If anything, that helped a little bit. Just trying to shape the ball a little bit off the tee, trying to hold it up against the wind a lot, and it worked out pretty good today.

Q. At the same time, a good feeling you score, okay, and things are starting to come together.

SEPP STRAKA: It's definitely -- it's not terribly far off. It probably feels a little worse than it actually is, I would say. My wife always tells me when things are going bad, it always seems worse than it is. When they're going good, it always seems better than it is too. So, yeah, trying to find the middle ground out there.