FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, June 17th, 2016

NOTABLE QUOTES: GOLF CENTRAL LIVE FROM THE U.S. OPEN (FRIDAY PRIMETIME)

Golf Channel Notable Quotes
Golf Central Live From the U.S. Open
Friday, June 17, 2016 (primetime show)
Oakmont Country Club, Oakmont, Pa.

**Golf Central Live From the U.S. Open continues Saturday at 6 a.m. ET, and additionally will follow the conclusion of play tomorrow evening.**

On Dustin Johnson (4-under, T-1st)
Brandel Chamblee – “As talented as he is, as long a driver as he is, he is now the best wedge player on the PGA TOUR and you cannot help but feel some awe looking forward at what he can do if he continues to hit his wedges as good as he is.”
David Duval – “He has the opportunity to really just bury this field right now the way he’s playing golf if he makes a couple of putts. And he is a good putter… He could run away [with it].”
Frank Nobilo – “Across the board, when he hits it in the fairway it’s not a fair fight… If you go back to last year, the way in which he played on the weekend… Something has to hold together on Saturday and Sunday. This is a better Dustin Johnson.”
Chamblee – “When you hit it as long as he does, and you hit his wedges as well as he does, and you get to a golf course like this where you cannot get away with driving the ball poorly, it’s a whole different ball of wax.”
Duval – “His talent is second to none and it surprises me in no way that he’s doing what he’s done… It’s hard to understand exactly how it’s going to shake out because we’re still not done with the second round, but it’s hard to imagine that he’s not the leader.”

On Lee Westwood (3-under, 3rd) and Sergio Garcia (2-under, T-4th)
Nobilo – “It seems like a redemption major with Dustin Johnson sort of back on top. And you’ve got Sergio Garcia, could he possibly win a major? And Lee Westwood. It’s almost too much like a fairytale. With Lee and Sergio, they’ve just been around and you wonder if golf is just not going to give them what they deserve.”
Duval – “It just seems like it’s stacking up that somebody is going to break through this week. That it’s going to be somebody who we talk about as ‘the best player never to have won a major.’ I just have the feeling it’s going to happen. And why not Sergio? Why not Lee? Those guys have been knocking on the door for a long, long time. They’re always in those positions, so they know what the feeling is like.”

On adjusting to current course conditions in contrast to preparations early in the week
Duval – “All the players, the prep they spent out on the golf course was not the course they saw out there… This is the easiest Oakmont will ever play. However, all the preparation was getting your golf ball into a place where you want to come into these greens from. In a lot of instances, some of these players were hitting irons in those positions. You have to pull out the bigger clubs at this point, you have to be pliable in your game plan when you have such dramatically different conditions.”
Nobilo – “What we saw this afternoon, you could start to see the greens speeding up. And all of a sudden, you could start to see the conundrum that we’re going to see over the next few days.”

On Andrew Landry (4-under, T-1st)
Duval – “I can assure you he wants more than just that moment. He slept on it, he saw all the news, read all the papers and he knew if he made that putt he had the lowest opening score ever at Oakmont. And that’s an incredible thing to do.”
Nobilo – “To be in the record books as the lowest-ever opening round score [in a U.S. Open] at Oakmont is something special.”

-NBC Sports Group-