Ernie After Round 1

Q. Given the benign conditions, the fact that there's 20,000 people at 4 under and no one has shot a huge number, what about this course has allowed that and can we expect that to continue on through the week?

ERNIE ELS: First of all, it's a major championship and it's the first round of the major championship and you definitely don't want to shoot yourself out of it the first day. So you're not taking as many chances on the first day. You basically are trying to play a solid round of golf. That's what I try to do, anyways. And you really try to keep big numbers off the card.

I think as the week goes on we'll see how the golf course progresses. If it stays soft there will be a couple of 64's out there. There's enough par 5s where you can score. We're not even halfway through the day and there's already good scoring.

But it's not the hardest course we've ever played because of the weather, but there's enough trouble out there where it makes you really think on every hole.

And God knows, that's not nearly as important as keeping the scoring from getting too low!