What they said: Phil Mickelson

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MORE INTERVIEWS: The Greenbrier Classic transcript archive

Q. Phil, talk about today. Up and down, four birdies, four bogeys. How do you assess today?

PHIL MICKELSON: It was a disappointing overall score for me, because I played well enough to score low. I missed six putts inside six feet, and I just can't do that.

I ended up making some longer ones, which was good, to offset it. But I've got to get this turned around for tomorrow.

Q. Talk about playing with Tom for the very first time. That had to be special.

PHIL MICKELSON: Yes, it's great to see him playing in a regular TOUR event. It's great to see him back out here playing. Gosh, he strikes it so well and so solid. He made some great putts early on. Looked like he was going to have a good round. Unfortunately didn't turn out that way.

But he still has so much game.

Q. Is it white water rafting with the kids?

PHIL MICKELSON: That's the game plan, yeah. There are so many fun things to do here at Greenbrier. My family has been taking advantage of it, and I'm fortunately going to be able to join them today.

Q. Talk about your opening round.

PHIL MICKELSON: It's fun to be paired with Tom Watson and Stuart Appleby. We had a great -- well, we had a fun day, but we didn't score the way we wanted to. We got off to some pretty good starts there. Appleby eagled the first par-5 on the back. We had it going there for a little bit, but it kind of went south there around the turn.

Q. Did you get a chance to talk to Stuart and see how he played last year kind of compared to the first round today?

PHIL MICKELSON: We didn't really talk too much about that, no. But he certainly had one of the best rounds of the year last year. That 59 brought a lot of recognition to the club here at Greenbrier.

Q. What do you think about the crowd and all the attention you got?

PHIL MICKELSON: The people here have been terrific. They've been very supportive of the tournament and very nice. This is such a great place here that it's cool to see the people come out here and support pro golf.

Q. Stuart was saying the greens were tricky to get a read on. Did you find that to be true today?

PHIL MICKELSON: I thought they were rolling very true, because we were out early and the greens were really in good shape. The balls were rolling true, and there were a lot of people were making putts.

We made some, too. We made some ourselves. But towards the end there I ended up missing a few short ones that cost me.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports