Media Center Interviews

March 30, 2023

First Round Interview with Matt Wallace

Q. Just quickly, a couple years ago, I don't remember, top-5 finish, last year missed the cut. Boom or bust here. Is it confidence after winning last week or what's different

MATT WALLACE: Yeah, a little bit of that. This golf course, it tends to lead to the person who's playing well. You can't really mask it around here, especially off the tee. I made a couple bogeys out there from just hitting my tee shots offline, so if you can hit your tee shots well, you'll have a lot of chances and I managed to give myself a bunch of those. But then two sloppy tee shots which cost me bogeys today. Yeah, that's why it is, and I drove it great back in -- two years ago when I came in third and I drove it better as the day went on today.

Q. You were in paradise last week and this was like a day from hell here, you start at 8:00 in the morning. Is this difficult to kind of keep your mental focus on a day like this?

MATT WALLACE: Yeah, 100 percent. We're kind of used to it as golfers when it happens like that, but when you're on, off, on, off and not sure when you're going to really start because of the fog, yeah. I had about four warmups today, so I was definitely ready to go, but mentally it was difficult to get yourself in the frame of mind.

Q. Interesting pairing, Nico, young guy, Matt playing his golf. Was that kind of interesting for you to be kind of the middle guy?

MATT WALLACE: Well, it was nice. Matt at the end there, he said where have you found this length, so I said it was the combination of driver, the confidence, a little bit different in club dynamics for myself. It's always nice when you get that from someone like Matt. Yeah, he's a great player, it's nice to be out there with him. He's fast, plays fast and he obviously played really well today. If I can beat him this week, I know I'll be in a good position.

Q. And my last one, what's it feel like to be here after last week? It's got to be such a great feeling.

MATT WALLACE: It's great, it's really nice. It was difficult to start the week with all the congratulations and stuff like that to really focus, but I managed to hit a poor tee shot on my second hole of the day and I'm dropping out of the cactus and that really got me focused.

Q. Are we supposed to feel bad for you for --

MATT WALLACE: You don't have to feel bad, it was me trying to get focused and I probably wasn't focused on the tee and after having to take a drop, I was.