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U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP

June 16, 2019

Brandon Wu

Pebble Beach, California

Q A great U.S. Open for you, topped off by getting your diploma. Was that a surprise for you?

BRANDON WU: Yeah, I mean, there was obviously a little bit of talk about it happening, but honestly I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't thinking about it. The crowds was yelling at me all day about graduation, so it was pretty cool to get this kind of ceremony at the end here.

Q What were the kind of things you heard from the crowd?

BRANDON WU: They asked me if I walked today, how's your graduation going and all that crazy stuff. It was fun.

Q Fun day play alongside Dustin Johnson?

BRANDON WU: Yeah, yeah, definitely a day to remember. It's a good ending to my first U.S. Open.

Q What's your schedule like after this?

BRANDON WU: I think first off, couple weeks off from golf. And then I think I'm going to British Open qualifying and then a couple amateur tournaments, hopefully make the Walker Cup team.

Q In terms of not collecting a payday and staying amateur, any regrets on that decision?

BRANDON WU: No, not really. I think -- for me, I think pro golf is always going to be there. So I'm not is super -- I'm not in a huge rush to go turn pro. So I think I'm happy with my decision. I'm playing a good amateur schedule, so I'm excited for that.

Q What was it like playing with D.J.?

BRANDON WU: Pretty cool. He's someone I've grown up watching sort of. So it's cool to get to play alongside him and get to talk to him. It was a fun day.

Q Is it your plan to go pro after the Walker Cup?

BRANDON WU: Yeah.

Q Okay. So we will see you next year.

BRANDON WU: Hopefully, yeah.

Q Your expectations heading into today? Was there any nerves? How was it out there?

BRANDON WU: Obviously, haven't been really nervous all week. Obviously the crowd makes everything a little more jumpy. But I've just tried to -- it's just golf out there. I'm just trying to play my game and stick to my game plan and just play.

Q How many times did you hit the driver today?

BRANDON WU: I hit on -- this might take a second. Hit on 2, hit it on 9, 10, and then 13, 14. And that was it, I think. So four or five times.

Q Can you talk about the excitement over the last couple weeks, Stanford National Championship, qualifying for the Open, coming here for the Open?

BRANDON WU: Yeah, it's been a crazy two, three weeks. I didn't really envision this, how to end my college career, just I thought I'd be taking exams and walking at graduation.

So I've haven't been to school for a couple weeks now, but it's been surreal, for sure. Starting with that national championship, I could not have thought of a better way to end my Stanford career. That's something you only dream of.

Really happy we got to go out like that. And then five days later I qualified to play the Open at Pebble Beach, which is an hour and a half from Stanford. So it's been an awesome few weeks and something I'll remember for a while.

Q Did you ever think you'd get your Stanford diploma next to the ocean?

BRANDON WU: No, I did not. This is a nice backdrop. Stanford Stadium is pretty cool, but this is also pretty cool.

Q How hard was that decision to pass on graduation?

BRANDON WU: I mean, I definitely think I'll regret it maybe a little bit, but it's -- I don't know. It's -- both were good things, so I couldn't go wrong. I'm happy I played today.

Q What were your expectations in terms of today? How hard it was to score out there?

BRANDON WU: I didn't think it was playing that difficult, like more difficult than earlier in the week, but I kept hitting it in the rough. If you get unlucky with some lies out there, it becomes really tough to be able to score. That was kind of what I felt today.

Q Had you played in any rough like that previously?

BRANDON WU: Not really. It was kind of a learning process this whole week, getting some of those lies, talking to my caddie, Andy, and trying to figure out what exactly we're doing, how the ball is going to react. Especially in college and amateur golf, we usually don't see U.S. Open rough.

Q You said you were going to try to qualify for The Open. Have you played over there?

BRANDON WU: Not really. So we took -- Stanford took a trip to Scotland couple years ago, so we got to play 10 courses in 10 days, which was a really fun experience. But I've never really played tournament golf over there.

Q What's the toughest class you took at Stanford?

BRANDON WU: A couple of the engineering ones for sure. I took one electrical engineering class. That was pretty brutal, with circuits. And then a couple of my -- this one mechanics of materials class, which was engineering, that was also tough.

Q If you weren't going to turn pro, what would you be doing with that degree?

BRANDON WU: Yeah, I like to tell people that product design, it's about problem solving and working in groups together to do that. So I've looked at maybe trying to do some type of consulting. There's design consulting, which is popular for product design majors, and then management consulting as well. I really like working with people and solving problems.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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