Anirban Lahiri began the Wells Fargo Championship with a steady two-under to be five off the lead at T38. Excerpts from an interview:
Two under today, good start. Just a few comments about the round, what you felt good about?
Anirban: Yeah, I think I’m coming in with some nice momentum, I’m feeling good about my game, most departments are healthy. Got off to a good start. There’s a lot of tough holes out here and I think I kind of navigated my way around pretty good. On my back nine, the front side, I think the wind kind of died down a little bit and felt like I gave up a few scoring opportunities coming in, so a little disappointed with that. Probably could have hit my lines a little bit better, missed a few greens. So yeah, going to go work on that and hopefully keep it going. And hopefully we don’t get hit by that weather that’s supposed to come.
I know we’re removed from THE PLAYERS Championship, but you had such a great week there, all over TV, a lot of people really rooting for you.
Anirban: Yeah.
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Have you gotten more recognizability, people coming up to you? Any reaction to how well you played?
Anirban: Yeah, definitely. I think we were playing the pro-am yesterday and my pro-am partners were very complimentary. Yeah, there was more people recognizing me, of course. But again, it’s nice to just keep playing well, especially when there’s a good field and a good strong event. Like I said, I feel like I’ve been playing decently even after that. Today was an example of that, but yeah, I’d like to keep building on it and just have more events where I give myself legitimate shots on Sunday. Yeah, that’s my goal right now.
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You mentioned THE PLAYERS. Obviously the weather was a storyline there. You just mentioned what we’re expecting here. Having those days and those challenges thrown at you, does it prepare you for something if it does come?
Anirban: Yeah. I mean, as professional golfers, this is something that we deal with. Every year we have two, three events. I remember I think it was the 2017 season we had like seven or eight events in a row where we had lightning delays and restarts and you were playing 30 holes, 28 holes. So this is a part of what we do. Yes, obviously you prepare yourself for the weather, you kind of strategize and you kind of change what you do. You attack some holes and you play slightly more conservative especially when you have golf courses like this that are challenging to begin with. So yeah, I think weather plays a big part, but you just have to prepare for it. I think when it’s — as difficult as, for instance, THE PLAYERS was or this might get, your patience and your acceptance levels are really, really key and I think that’s something that I worked on a little bit. Yeah, that helps.
Biggest lesson today from the competitive round, how the course played and everything that will help you tomorrow?
Anirban: I think it was pretty much in front of me. It’s a big golf course, so you just have to hit the fairways. If you don’t hit fairways, then you have a difficult time controlling the ball. And I think as the winds pick up and, you know, probably plays a little bit harder, you just have to make sure you position yourself on the fairways as much as possible. And when you miss it, it’s more about, okay, where can I get up and down from because there’s a lot of places where if you’re on the wrong side of the pin, you’ve got no chance. You may not even hit the green. I think a lot of it comes down to where do I miss this, where do I position this, where can I get up and down from and you take your medicine and you make your pars. I think pars are going to be very valuable on the weekend.
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