Quotes of the Week: May 15, 2016

“Coming back down to reality was literally the first day you get back home, you open the door, (wife) Nicole’s there, and the dog jumps up and licks you and you’ve got your little man to change. That was straight back down to reality, just being a dad and a husband.” – on life after winning the Masters

“I was obviously very happy for him, and he 100 percent earned his Masters win. It really bugs me when people are trying to take that maybe away from him or shoot it down. The questions have been asked to him, ‘do you think this will go down as you winning or him losing,’ and that’s absolute bull, because he won and he earned it.” – on his respect for Danny Willett winning the Masters

“I’ve played well on the back nine, and the front nine hasn’t been too good. I was speaking with J.P. about it last night, maybe taking a few different clubs off tees on the front nine and trying to play it a little bit more conservatively. If that means I leave myself a couple of clubs more into some of these greens, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.” – McIlroy, on the disparaging difference in scores between how he plays the front nine and the back nine at TPC Sawgrass.

“I told him I would at least go look for it. I didn’t want to take the penalty. We could see a couple balls, but we didn’t know which one it was. I kind of just put my hand down there and it was the first one I picked up, luckily.” – Dustin Johnson’s brother, on going into the lake to retrieve his brother’s golf ball, after it slipped out of DJ’s hand upon marking and tossing to Austin to clean. Had they not retrieved Dustin’s ball, it would have been a two-shot penalty.

“I was just, I almost wasn’t looking forward to the week. I just, I was losing the head. I was like almost thinking, what’s the point of being here, because I felt like I was playing poorly and I was struggling on the greens.” – Lowry who shot a tournament back-nine record 29 in his opening round at TPC Sawgrass en route to a 65.

“I’ve seen so many Tour players make hole-in-ones and hole shots, and they’re just like, nothing. Like, what’s wrong with you? I get pumped up. I came in 15th in New Orleans and I acted like I just won the Masters, and if I come in 38th here, then I’m going to party on Sunday night.” – on making an ace on 17 at TPC Sawgrass and going nuts.

“It’s tough when you’re getting shellacked by 15 shots in the same group, you know? When someone’s birdieing almost every single hole, every other hole, you start to wonder why in the world you aren’t making any of them. A lot of times it’s good to play with, if you can feed off it. But for me it was tough this week, without my putting being on, it just led to a lack of patience for me seeing every hole being birdied and not being able to do much about it.” – on having a front-row seat to Jason Day’s brilliant 36 holes at The Players where he went 15 under to set the new 36-hole scoring record.

“That was an epic fail.” – on rinsing three balls at 17 on Saturday, carding a sextuple bogey 9.

“I mean, it’s like a U.S. Open out there. I can’t really describe it any other way. I just found I had a really difficult time adjusting to them. I stood up here yesterday and I said it’s amazing how differently the course plays from morning to afternoon, but I didn’t expect it to be like that out there this afternoon. That was borderline unfair on a few holes.” – on how firm, fast and vastly different the greens were on Saturday than they had been the previous two days.

“What course was Ken Duke playing today? Can anyone tell me? Was he playing across the road? I mean it was just, to be able to shoot that score is better – I think that should be the course record. It was just an absolute joke.” – on Duke’s third-round 65, that was 11 shots better than the field average on Saturday.