U.S. Open Championship 2017

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Brandt Snedeker

Flash Interview

Q. Do you ever feel guilty making birdies at the U.S. Open?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: I did feel guilty. I made a birdie out of the first cut of rough today. This is never going to happen again, I might as well enjoy it. Next year it won't be the same because it was very playable. We had enough room to drive it. And if you're driving good, you can make birdies, because the greens were rolling perfectly.

I think you'll see over the course of the week guys making lots of putts. The greens are the best I've seen in a long time. Rolling the perfect speed. I thought it was very, very fair. Almost more so than I was expecting for a U.S. Open.

Q. How much can it dry out by Sunday?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: Quite a little bit. If we don't get any rain and they don't put my water on it it will get brown by Sunday. I'll be curious to see. I think we all want to see it get that way, see the ball bounce, and start separating the field a little bit and find out who is playing good. So I think hopefully forecast could get pretty firm by Sunday.

Q. How exactly did you incur this latest injury and how does it feel right now?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: It feels really good. Saw a bunch of specialists, called trigger finger, for lack of a better term, is what they call it. And no idea. It just creeps up on people that use their hands a lot. Happens to guitar players all the time, and people that use their hands.

For whatever reason mine just flared up on me. And kind of bad timing. It happened the week of the Masters. We were going to play through the two weeks and I take some time off. And had a couple of injections into it.

Took a long time to get my strength back, didn't use it for about four weeks, because I had kind of a cast. You don't realize how much strength you lose in your hand. The pain is gone.

Q. Are you resigned to this is your lot?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: No, no, still good. Might be the healthiest ten years of my career you've ever seen.

Q. Were there any flags on the tee boxes that surprised you because they were kind of kind?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: No. I will say the pins were difficult, for these greens, because the greens aren't overly undulating. They put them on some edges and kind of on slopes. The pins were not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

But, no, I just thought that the wind direction we had today was very favorable for the golf course. You got right-to-left winds for right-hand players, and got a sense of comfort. Difficult holes that were left-to-right into were holes that were not overly long or had wider fairways. It wasn't much of an issue. So got lucky with the wind direction. It made this golf course play a little easier than it probably should be playing.

Q. Did you see the blimp go down at all?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: Was that the puff of smoke I saw? Is everybody okay?

Q. Yeah.
BRANDT SNEDEKER: Yeah. My caddie made a comment on the 9th hole. He said the blimp is not looking good. I guess it was nose down. I saw a puff of black smoke. I didn't know it was the blimp. It's not good. Glad everybody is okay.

Q. They always talk about the golf course changing from a Wednesday to a Thursday, was that case today?
BRANDT SNEDEKER: You know, the greens were a little bit faster, but for the most part it dried out a little bit and the greens were still soft. The fairways are firmer. It was absolutely ideal, it really was, especially at this golf course player-wise. USGA-wise, it might be a nightmare because the course played easy.

Q. Talk about hitting the driver. (Inaudible.)
BRANDT SNEDEKER: One time. I didn't hit driver off the tee. It was on 14. I hit 3-wood -- 15, the short par-4, I hit 3-wood. The rest of the time I hit driver. There's room to do it. You can hit anything you want. You can hit 3-wood if you want to. It's in the long grass it will add on certain holes.

Q. (Inaudible.)
BRANDT SNEDEKER: It's good for any greens, I'm putting good. It doesn't matter. I prefer to be on poa annua, because I have better history. If you get it rolling good, you can make a lot of putts.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
Rev #1 by #178 at 2017-06-15 18:11:00 GMT

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