ARNOLD PALMER INVITATIONAL

March 6, 2021

Tyrrell Hatton

Bay Hill Club and Lodge

Quick Quotes

Q. Another wonderful round of golf for you, the strong finish yesterday, you continued it today and you shoot 6-under, 66. And I'm looking at your birdie putts and they're all inside six feet. So I'm thinking the iron play had to be one of keys today.

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, I played really good today, obviously after round one the goal was to try and make the weekend, birdieing four of the last five yesterday was really important, and just kind of thankful to actually have a chance to go out and give myself a chance at playing well this weekend.

And to hoot 66 today is great. Just felt like I slowed my takeaway down a little bit and that was the key to kind of hitting a lot more good shots today.

Q. Did having preferred lies today, did that help? I guess we really didn't get the bad weather we were expecting.

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, I guess it helped a little bit. I mean, at certain times that you can make the most of preferred lies. I mean, I'm not sure if we have got lucky yet, I haven't seen what the forecast is going to be like this afternoon, but I'm just quite happy with how I managed to play today.

Q. So you're 4-over with five to go yesterday and now when you look at the leaderboard you got a chance to possibly win this golf tournament tomorrow. That's amazing.

TYRRELL HATTON: Well I don't know about that, it depends what weather the guys get this afternoon. The greens are still firming up quite a bit and if they get some bad weather and conditions get tough, then we'll see where we sort of stand at the end of play today.

But if it stays like this, I imagine the guys are going to go out and shoot some decent scores and that kind of puts me too far back. But at the end of the day I'm really happy that I'm here playing the weekend. I would have been really disappointed to be defending this week and miss the cut. So hopefully I can go out there and shoot another good score tomorrow and put up a good defense.

Q. I heard you say that you don't think you'll probably have much of a chance to win tomorrow. Is there a certain amount of shots back you think that you would have to be to have a shot to win?

TYRRELL HATTON: That's kind of hard to say. I mean obviously if there's one guy that runs away from it and I'm not too far from the guys that are like tied second or whatnot, then there's always a slight chance. But as it stands and I think if the weather stays as it is I genuinely don't think that I'll have a chance to win tomorrow. But that's okay. The damage was done on Thursday and I'm just, I'm quite happy to be playing the weekend, to be honest.

Q. When you do miss a cut, how long does it take you to get over it? I mean do you go home and does it sit with you for a couple days or are you pretty quick to get over it, just kind of talking about how big it was to actually rally this week.

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, I mean I think this week's kind of more important, obviously defending you kind of want to put up a solid defense.

Thursday I didn't actually play that bad, I just couldn't hole a putt. So 5-over was probably a bit harsh. But like I said, it was good to have a great finish yesterday afternoon and have a chance to play the weekend. Really happy with how I played today. The only difference was probably from the previous two days is I slowed my takeaway down and it allowed me to just hit better golf shots, stroke the ball a lot better and thankfully the putter cooperated again.

Q. What was the sense of accomplishment, I mean you guys win tournaments around the globe, but when you rally like you did with your back against the wall, what's the sense of accomplishment last night when you earned your way into the weekend?

TYRRELL HATTON: The beer certainly tasted better. What did I have last night? It was Lagunitas -- is it Hazy Wonder?

Q. IPA?

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, I love a hazy IPA. So I had a beer and then a couple of glasses of red. But, yeah, obviously you always sort of feel good going home when you've had a good finish to get through to the weekend. No one likes missing cuts, although we're all going to miss cuts throughout your career, it's just part of what we do. Yeah, so always good to finish strong and make the weekend.

Q. How does that play into like next week, I would think that's a great course for you, how does this play just having these two week end days to build more momentum?

TYRRELL HATTON: We had the WGC last week, so I had four days there. Albeit the course was a little bit different to here. Actually felt on Sunday that I played really good. So I was kind of took some confidence from that going into this week. So Thursday was a little bit of a low blow to start that way. But happy with how I've responded since.

Q. I saw some screen shot from Thursday, it looked like you were doing like a somersault or something.

TYRRELL HATTON: I've seen the picture. It's not flattering. I was actually checking for mud on the ball because there was actually quite a lot of mud on the sort of under side and to the left. So, yeah, I was just kind of trying to see how much mud like there was, because obviously that affects how the ball's going to fly.

Q. It kind of looked like you fell out of like a moving car.

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, it looks like I've absolutely battered and I've kind of slipped and gone down like that. That wasn't the case, I was just checking for mud.

Q. You've defended before, but with the COVID restrictions did it seem a little different? I mean with things you did defending and pretournament stuff?

TYRRELL HATTON: No -- well, I guess it's a little different. I think this week it is nice to have some fans back, just a bit of atmosphere out there again, which is nice. Obviously we haven't really had that since we restarted, was it June, last year. So it's been nice to have that and feel like you're playing a tournament again. Yeah, hopefully we kind of can bring more and more in gradually when it's safe to do so.

Q. As far as today, just a couple of highlights, what did you hit into 16 and were there any other highlight holes?

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, so normally fairway bunker shots for me are miserable, but somehow this year I've actually managed to find golf ball first, which is nice. Yeah, we hit 6-iron on 16 today and I said to Mick, I surprised myself with that one. So, yeah, obviously nice to have a five, six foot birdie putt and nice to keep momentum going by knocking that one in.