THE 154TH OPEN

July 18, 2026

Hennie du Plessis

Mixed Zone

Q. Back-to-back 69s. Thoughts on today's round?

HENNIE DU PLESSIS: There was plenty of good, plenty of average. It's hard. Under par starting off your weekend, you should be happy with it. It stings. I didn't birdie any of the par-5s on the back nine, which I had lovely chances. Yeah, it's a little bit frustrating, but overall I'm 1-under par in the third round of a major. So that's good.

Q. From walking with you in the practice round, how important and key it is for you, especially finding the spots off the tee box. With a little over 40 percent with the accuracy of your driving, how important was that to make it better, especially going into tomorrow?

HENNIE DU PLESSIS: The thing is it's hard to hit these fairways. You have to lay back quite a bit. Yeah, it's hard to put it in words. I think there's a lot of crosswinds, so that makes your target a lot smaller because of the firmness of the fairways. It's just something I need to work on.

I'll spend a couple of minutes now on the driving range with Veenies and try and straighten out that ball flight. Overall, I think the ball striking itself is very good.

Q. Strategy going into tomorrow to try to get up there?

HENNIE DU PLESSIS: I'm going to try and avoid middle green, and I'm going to try to go at a few flags (laughter).

No, I think my strategy is well. I just need to implement better swings, as you said, hit more fairways. If you hit the middle of the green, you definitely have a good chance. The greens aren't impossible. Yeah, just try and hit more fairways.

Q. When you see low scores out there, do you get frustrated or is it positive to know that you can get at them?

HENNIE DU PLESSIS: Yeah, it means there is low scores on the golf course. You just need to hit fairways, hit fairways and hit greens. That's very important.

I think I'm halfway there because I'm putting nice, I'm chipping nice. I just need to give myself a little bit more chances.