THE 154TH OPEN

July 17, 2026

Eric Cole

Mixed Zone

ERIC COLE: I'm a Yankees fan. I'm not that big of a fan to be honest. I tell people I am, but I'm really not.

Q. How long have you had the deal?

ERIC COLE: Two years, I think. 2 1/2 years.

Q. I think Malnati had that a couple years ago.

ERIC COLE: Yeah, there are some nice perks to it, but almost everybody who has it is connected to Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, in some way. Cam Young wears it because he grew up at Sleepy Hollow, which is their family's club up in New York.

I've gotten to know the Manfred family. I've played golf with Rob a few times, some of the pro-member stuff. His son Mike, who I'm really good friends with, has a Florida house about 200 yards from my house.

Q. Did you think we were going to talk baseball or golf when you came by?

ERIC COLE: I'll do whatever.

Q. What are you thinking when you -- you start 6-over. Are you one who thinks cut or thinks just do the best I can today?

ERIC COLE: Well, it definitely is out there. It's in my mind a little bit. Yeah, I was just trying to -- I mean, first group today. There's nobody in front of us. The weather's great. I was just trying to kind of have a good day and relax and enjoy The Open Championship.

Then started playing good and tried to keep it going pretty much.

Q. That stretch from 10 through 13, I think, everybody felt like it was tight, didn't it?

ERIC COLE: Yeah, I played well for sure. Hit a lot of good shots, didn't get any weird bounces, and the ball kind of -- hitting into the fairway, the ball kind of rolled about as far as we thought. So that helps too.

Yeah, it was good. Hit some good shots and didn't get any weird bounces.

Q. Were you thinking anything really, really special when you got through 13?

ERIC COLE: I was thinking about that actually because I -- there's two par-5s, and I was like, you know, if I could just get those two, then all of a sudden I could go really low, but that didn't work out. By the time I got to 18, I just wanted to hit two good shots and make a par.

Q. I missed the last play. How did you -- it's a delicate putt, is it not?

ERIC COLE: It was very weird. I was up against it, and I thought I could have -- chipping it would probably been easier, but it was so close to the lip, and it was kind of raised behind it that, if I hit behind it at all, I would have not gotten to the ball. So I figured that would be a little safer.

Q. What's the difference -- what happened yesterday?

ERIC COLE: Yesterday was a very interesting day for me. I actually didn't play that badly yesterday. I felt like I played kind of good honestly, but I hit the wrong club on one of the tees and went up under the lip of a bunker, made a double.

Then my tee shot on 11, my right foot completely slipped, and I fell down, and I hit my tee shot from here to the end of this tent with a driver. And we never found the ball. It just rolled into this gunch. So I had to re-tee. That was another double.

Then 17 I drove it, I thought a good drive, and it ended up just in the left rough. I went to hit an iron shot, and it caught a weed and shut the face, and I shanked it about 130 yards right into these trees and had to hit that shot again, and I didn't make any putts.

Tee to green yesterday, I felt like I played great. I know that's weird to say, but I really did feel like I was hitting the ball where I was aiming and stuff and the swing felt good. I'm just chalking it up to random outlier.

Q. We talk about how decent the crowds are at The Open. I'm just curious what the reaction was on the right foot slippage 30-yard tee shot.

ERIC COLE: I think there might have been a couple of "oohs," like "oh," that type of reaction. They were probably worried if I was okay.

Yeah, I don't know. It's the first time I've slipped over here.

Q. Did you actually fall down?

ERIC COLE: I didn't fall down, but I was about to fall down. I went like this, like an ugly version of Scottie Scheffler's.

Q. I take you you've never heard of Richard Boxall?

ERIC COLE: Why would I have heard of that?

Q. He broke his leg hitting a tee shot. He hit a tee shot on No. 9.

ERIC COLE: Oh, over here? I have heard that story.

Q. Took him off on a stretcher.

ERIC COLE: Yeah.

Q. How much did your dad talk about playing here?

ERIC COLE: He talked about it a lot. He obviously had success here, so I got to hear a lot of stories from him growing up, and I've asked him a few questions about just the different shots that you could hit and how the wind can blow different directions, which it seems to do here.

Q. A, what was his best advice or his best story?

ERIC COLE: Best story, I'm probably not going to say on a mic, but best advice would be to -- best advice is the bounce. So the ground is so firm here that irons that I would use, or he would use even back in the day in the United States have a little bit more bounce than would be ideal over here. So I grind a little bit of the bounce off my irons when I come over here. That's the best advice.

Q. Wow, you have --

ERIC COLE: It's somewhat -- I wouldn't say it's common, but I think there's several guys that do it.

Q. Just to confirm, it's not you personally doing it?

ERIC COLE: No, no, PXG takes care of that for me.

Q. Are you married?

ERIC COLE: I am.

Q. So when you had the conversation with your wife last night about after the round, what are you talking about?

ERIC COLE: Flights home is what I was talking about. We were looking at different flights home (laughter).

Q. What did you find?

ERIC COLE: Tomorrow morning there's a flight, yeah.

Q. Where do you go back, Florida?

ERIC COLE: Yeah, Manchester straight to Orlando, which I live in Jupiter, but I'd rather drive than connect.

Q. I want to ask you a generic question because you mentioned it earlier. It's funny you don't hit a par-5 here until the 14th. Two gettable ones, but they frankly don't seem all that gettable. They've seen a lot of 5s, some 6s.

ERIC COLE: I think -- so the wind plays a big factor in that. They don't go opposite ways, but one's going to be potentially a little bit downwind and the other would be a little bit into the wind, and the fairways are kind of hard to hit. Once you miss the fairway, I think there's an element of luck to the lie you get.

A lot of times out here for me, I feel like it looks like you can get more out of the lies than you actually can. So it looks like let's say you could hit a 6-iron when I should be hitting a 9-iron just because of that longer wispy stuff tends to play a bigger role than I think.

Q. Were you surprised how long it took to play this place yesterday?

ERIC COLE: Well, we had an interesting thing. We were the first group of the afternoon wave technically, even though we were a.m., so there's like a little like extra time in there in the wave. So we had like an extra 10 minutes. So we played the first six holes, and it was great, we didn't wait.

After that, it was crazy slow. Yeah, I think there's just a lot going on. There's a lot of people. There's some weird stuff that happens in links golf, so guys get rulings or have to, like I did, go back and hit the shot again. Stuff like that happens.

Q. Let's just be clear, when was the original flight home, Monday morning?

ERIC COLE: Yes.