Daniel Berger spoke to the media ahead of the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches on the PGA Tour, where he hopes to win after taking time off to recover from injury.
Yeah I love this place I’ve played uh a lot of golf tournaments here as a junior golfer as an amateur golfer so it’s always nice to come back and been pretty successful here had a couple chances to win so um yeah it’s nice to sleep in
Your own bed and play in a golf tournament right down the street yeah you know I was thinking looking at the schedule where I wanted to start and uh I don’t think I felt 100% going into the MX and so the next kind of tournament I
Was looking at was the Honda just or excuse me the cognizant it’s kind of been my memory just from years past but uh yeah this was another you know event that I circled on the schedule that I thought I would probably start at but I started to feel a little bit better um
But it’s just you know it’s a great event there’s so many friends and family that come out to watch so um I’m just excited to get the week going it is a lot different yeah I would say uh in the years past there was wake up you know go
To the range hit balls go to the tea and now it’s a lot more process oriented there’s a lot more work that goes into it but uh I feel like there’s a different level of professionalism that I bring to it now than I did you know
Years past but um it’s it’s part of the game it’s part of what it takes to get out there and play and I think you see the guys that are have been out here for a long time those are the guys that are doing those things um you know the
Justin roses the Stewart sinks the padrick harringtons those are the guys that are putting in the work so that they can feel good and and be ready to go and I feel like that’s just that’s part of it now for me and it wasn’t so years ago it’s been a two-year ordal
That was a essentially the start of when I started feeling the stuff in my back and um kind of the last half of the portion that I played in 2022 leading up to the US Open where I stopped playing I never felt great I never felt I mean
When you play a professional sport it’s not like you always feel great but I was in pain all the time and uh and then I got to a point where I was like this is just not worth playing my everyday life sucks and I’m just struggling to play a
Golf tournament and you can’t win a golf tourn when you can only do 25% of what you’re used to doing so that’s where I really made the decision to step back and uh yeah even when I played here whatever that was 2022 I I was at 50%
You know and that’s not a level that you can compete at day in and day out and so that’s where the decision was made to kind of step back and get healthy I have them in my office I’m proud of them I like to look at them every once in a
While and um yeah I mean what’s the point of winning a golf tournament if you can’t look back at it and and be proud of it I honestly did yeah I would sit in my office and look at him and just think back and um try to visualize
The moments of uh the shots that I hit coming down the stretch and and knowing that as far away as you feel from that you’re not as far as you think you are and so that was kind of just a small little Victory here and there to just be
Patient and know that eventually you’ll you’ll be okay you know I think it’s very fair you know the I mean you know this is a big tournament for me I have all my family and all my friends coming out and I want to play well for them and
I and I just I love that you know I’m right here I get to be in my same routine and going to the gym and being in my bed and you know being with my dog and my family and all those things that you miss when you go away for a golf
Tourm and now it’s right here with me so it’s easy to uh to be a little happier when you’re when you’re at this event yeah I did not think it would be that long um I think the the thing was I was chasing like the the Quick Fix like
What’s going to you know what’s going to fix me tomorrow you know and the reality is that’s not how it works it was kind of like what was the straw that broke the camels back we don’t really know but you have to you know adjust and make
Changes and and once I figured out what works for me and you know you just stick to your process and and you do those things and eventually you know you get better and it just took me a longer time and I didn’t want to be one of those
Guys that uh that came back too early and was like hurt three months later I wanted to feel 100% and be able to do everything I wanted to do and that’s R know I yeah I feel perfect
