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WGC DELL TECHNOLOGIES MATCH PLAY

March 27, 2019

Tiger Woods

Austin, Texas

Q. Overall thoughts?
TIGER WOODS: Well, I won the match. It wasn't exactly the best of golf out there from both of us. We gave a few holes away with bogeys and three-putts, and we won a few holes with some good birdies. But I was alluding to Sandsie out there, it was an emotional round because there weren't a lot of halved holes. We were up and down, I was up, the next thing I'm down in the match. Looked like I was about ready to go 2-down through 11. All of a sudden I'm all square. I'm up and a throw away a hell of a three-putt. It's one of those weird matches.

Q. Did you feel the match play juices flowing again?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, it wasn't that long ago playing against Rahm. So I just haven't done it in this event. So this event has been a while. But it felt good to be out there. The way we were playing today, we're very thankful it's not stroke play (laughter).

Q. Was experience a factor?
TIGER WOODS: You know, I don't know if it was. I was just trying to beat the guy in front of me. It was tough out there. It was tricky and the wind was blowing all over the place. I think the Tour staff did an interesting job of setting the pins probably a half a step harder towards the mounds because it is match play. So if you ever short-sided yourself, you're pretty much done. There wasn't a whole lot of room around the holes if you made a mistake. And that's where you have to set up a golf course for match play and they did that.

Q. What was your stroke play score today?
TIGER WOODS: Not very good. Not very good. I broke 80.

Q. How different was the course compared to your practice round?
TIGER WOODS: For Joey this was the wind that he walked. So that was helpful for me, because I hadn't played it with this strength out of this direction, out of the south, southeast. So having Joey see this golf course under these conditions when he walked it, it helped. He said some of the holes be careful on the run-out. We need to back down a club, you might want to hold it against the wind a little bit. Don't ride it like you have been, when I played the practice rounds. So that was helpful.

Q. Do you feel good about any part of your game?
TIGER WOODS: I drove it well and I felt like I putted well. Probably the only thing is I kept hitting the ball -- Joey says it's a nice problem to have, but I was hitting my irons flush and hitting through the the wind. But I said this is not the time to be encouraging me like this right now, I just hit it over the back of three greens in a row. So I probably have to dial that down a little bit and figure that out.

Q. What's been an improvement for you?
TIGER WOODS: I just worked on it and just stick with it. I feel like I'm physically feeling better now that I'm able -- my neck has been freed up a little bit, and I'm able to get into a better posture and that helps. And because of that, I'm able to log in a little bit of practice time, which is nice.

Q. What kind of feeling do you take out of this by not playing your best but still winning?
TIGER WOODS: I remember some of the matches at La Costa, one of the guys won with an 81 because it was wet and rainy and crappy out, but who cares? You move on. There's no scorecard except for whether you won the match or not.

I'm trying to still wrap my head around the fact that it's a round-robin thing. I thought it was either win or go home. But we're here for a couple more days.

Q. You played today before 90 percent of the people who have never seen you play before other than on TV. Did you notice any kind of special electricity?
TIGER WOODS: Yeah, these people here, they're fired up and they're excited. They're into it. That front nine, the people who walked it, I mean, good on them, because you're not going to see much. But the back nine, it was a lot louder and I just -- I'm amazed -- the guys who have played this event have said that this is one of the more exciting events with the people and then the scenarios you have on the back nine. And it was like that today. It was electric on that back nine.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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