Aaron Rai reflects on his steady 3-under round at TPC Southwind with BMW Championship qualification hanging in the balance. From the unique pressure of playing for FedExCup points instead of the trophy, to narrowly missing a clutch putt on 18, Rai shares the fine margins that can define a PGA TOUR season.
Thank you, Aaron. Um, it’s still not determined, but a strong finish there. How do you feel about just the day in general and your play, especially down the stretch? Yeah, really, really positive overall. Played really nicely today. Um, I was pretty aware that I needed I needed a good one to give myself a chance today. And, uh, I did think it’d have to be a little bit better than three, which is what I shot today. But, um, we’ve still got a a chance. There’s still a lot of golf to play. Um, so we’ll we’ll see which way it goes. Do you watch do you refresh the leaderboard or do you just kind of go back to the hotel and what happens happens? Uh, probably a little bit of both. Um, I’ll try not to look at it too much, but I think I probably will have another look over the next hour or so. Um, and then probably towards the end of play. Um, but so much can change, especially with um, how many FedEx cup points there are this week and uh, one position can make can make quite a big difference and it’s pretty tight I think around that 50 spot. So, um, yeah, we’ll just have to wait and see. What are the what are the emotions like of trying to play around like this with all those bubble implications kind of floating in the background. I tried not to really look at it too much for for most of that round. Um, but I felt towards the end it was good to know um roughly where we were at. So, um it’s definitely a strange scenario because um we were not in contention to to really win the tournament, but still in contention to obviously um have a chance at advancing to next week, which is um which is really important. So, it was kind of a little strange even when looking at the leaderboard and kind of figuring out how to approach it, what to do in terms of strategy and um yeah, quite a unique situation really. That last putt there looked like it was had a chance. Um, did you think was there a chance at the moment where you thought maybe it was going in or did it seem like it it had a chance to go in? Um, it felt nice off the face. Thought halfway it was kind of going to gather speed and move a little to the right. Um, but it just kind of straight and lost a bit of speed and ended up missing just short left. So, I think once it got probably 8 ft away from the hole, it didn’t look like it was going to go in, but um hit a good putt and uh yeah, played a nice hole there on on number 18. And uh people who aren’t professional golfers, what does it say about it as a career that you know, just inches can make such a big difference to a player’s season and his next season? Yeah, I think there’s always something to to play for and um even when you’re not in contention, I think kind of sticking in there and finishing 30th instead of 35th doesn’t feel like a massive win when you come off the course on the Sunday. But if you do that three, four times during the year, um it can really add up. Whether that’s in the FedEx Cup, whether that’s in the race to Dubai, in in whichever order of merit of professional golf, all of those little things are really really important and I think um it’s it’s a yeah, it’s a great skill to try and continue to improve. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers, guys.
