WORKDAY CHARITY OPEN

July 11, 2020

MJ Daffue

MJ DAFFUE: Well, pretty much up and down I would say, but yeah, it's been pretty good. There was times today where I had to grind out a par and my caddie kept telling me, we were one swing away from not having a grind at all. It's been pretty crazy. I mean, obviously I knew that I had to just hit a lot more fairways because my iron play has been pretty good. If you keep judging it out of the rough, eventually it's going to catch up with you.

It's been pretty good.

Q. When you woke up this morning, how many holes did you have to play?

MJ DAFFUE: I had to play four. I'm not going to lie; I knew that I was on the number and kind of nervous because we got to 6 tee and it was straight into the wind. It was pretty tough. I just kept trying to stay in the moment, whichever shot was right in front of me.

Q. When you get to the 9th hole and you know you have to birdie it, how do you approach that, and what was the feeling like when you did? You hadn't made a cut here other than the one at the Puerto Rico, I think, right?

MJ DAFFUE: Well, it was my only one, so I've made all the cuts. Yeah, so sometimes it's like -- golf is so weird. If you have a flop shot over a bunker, you only have one way to do it, so sometimes you hit a great shot, and it's like there. You know you've got to make birdie, you look at the number and you just hit a shot, and it ended up close. I got a little lucky because the guy hit in front of me and changed my mind a little bit on the wind direction.

Q. And then your round this afternoon, to go bogey-free, even though you said you kind of had your ups and downs --

MJ DAFFUE: Yeah, I mean, I think I got everything out of my round I could. I had a chip-in and made some par putts, but I've been seeing the lines very good. I've been working on the putting, and I think I'm like second in strokes gained putting or something. Obviously I'm rolling it really well. So I feel like if I can just give myself a good look at it. Yeah, going around here bogey-free, that's -- I guess it's quite impressive.

Q. Just kind of your journey, I read the transcript this morning about your mother-in-law. It sounds like you probably bounced around a bunch of different tours trying to establish yourself?

MJ DAFFUE: Yeah, obviously it's been a long journey. Not what I thought it was going to be coming out of college. But you know, sometimes you feel like -- I'll take where I'm standing right now even though all this stuff happened. It happens for a reason, and I feel like I just needed to do a better job of learning and understanding what happens in life so I could translate it better to the golf course. So yeah, it's been long. Obviously I've been -- the last two years played really good golf.

Q. Where have you played primarily?

MJ DAFFUE: Last year I played nine events on the Korn Ferry and Monday qualified there, too, five times. You know, just Korn Ferry. The year before I had Korn Ferry status. And this year obviously with corona it's been all over the place. I had a few starts that got canceled. Just trying to make the most of when I am playing.

Q. You're in line for your biggest payday tomorrow, right?

MJ DAFFUE: Yeah, I mean, it's -- I haven't really thought about the money, to be honest. I'm trying to get top 10 so I can go play in Minnesota. You know, all I can do is just hit a lot of greens in regulation and see where I end up, I guess.

Q. How exciting has this day been overall?

MJ DAFFUE: It's great. I mean, I'm pretty tired. Our wave, we had to sit around the whole day yesterday and played all the holes until 9:00, go home, sleep, wake up, finish, get back at it. So it will be nice to be able to grab a decent dinner and relax.

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