2023 Arnold Palmer Invitational

Quotes

Yeah, for sure. It's exactly what you think of when you think of a U.S. Open -- firm, fast, thick rough. If you're not in the fairway, more often than not, you're not able to knock on the green. You've got to kind of pitch out. So it's going to expose any weak shot, plain and simple. - Talor Gooch (2022)

It's one of these courses that I don't feel like I have to do anything special to compete. I can play within myself. You take care of the par-5s here. You play conservatively the rest of the way, especially how the golf course here has been set up the past few years. You play for your pars, and then you try to pick off birdies on the par-5s and some of the easier holes. If you just keep doing that day after day, you're going to find yourself around the top of the leaderboard. - Rory McIlroy (2022)

I would say they were very similar today. It didn't play that way the first three days, considering the rain yesterday, but today definitely played like a U.S. Open. You could see that not very many people were under par. I don't know how many people were under par. There were three people under par? Yeah, and so you could definitely note how difficult the golf course conditions were. And I took a lot of pride in knowing the fact that in these difficult conditions I can persevere and win a golf tournament, like I did at the U.S. Open. So I took a lot from that tournament and played it into this knowing that there are going to be weird things that come about, and just make sure that you are focused on hitting as many fairways and as many greens and having good speed control on the putting green. - Bryson DeChambeau (2021)

Well, enjoy is -- yeah, it was not fun, but it's the right test. Like today was better than yesterday afternoon. Yesterday afternoon was pushing crazy. But it's fun. I mean, I played with a guy who's one of the best players in the world, and he played a really good round of golf and made it look pretty easy. If you're out of position, you have no chance, but you put yourself out of position. So I think it's quality that's going to separate the field into who played really well, who played well, who played okay, and who didn't play well. I think that's the way golf should be, obviously weather dependent. I love how the course is playing today. But yeah, I short-sided myself last two holes and I had kind of no chance, and that's how it should be. I hit a bad golf shot. So obviously, if you have good shots, you can make birdies. I watched Scottie do it all day. - Max Homa (2022)

I would kind of say the opposite, to be honest with you. Obviously, if you hit fairways and greens, it's always going to help. But I think the firmer the course gets means that a lot of good shots that you hit, they land on the green and roll over the green, and now I've got to chip the same as the other guy's got to chip. I would say there's a balance. If it's hard, ball strikers get an advantage, but if it's too hard, it just becomes a scrambling competition. We'll see how hard it ends up getting. - Viktor Hovland (2022)