ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 24, 2021

Tony Finau

Cameron Champ

TPC Louisiana

Quick Quotes

Q. Nice playing out there today in some tough conditions. You didn't have your best stuff, but you were there when Tony needed you and Tony was there when you needed him. How big was the challenge out there today?

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, the wind was probably blowing twice as much as it did the last two days. For me I just got a little squirrelly with the driver on a few holes, but like you said, Tony carried me for most of the day and I carried him a few holes, but again, that's team golf, and on a day like today, we just didn't want to take ourselves out of it.

You know, for us, for this being our bad day and still being only one shot back with foursomes tomorrow, alternate-shot, like you said, anything can happen, and we're just going to kind of try and play like we did Friday.

Q. Tony, you guys looked like you were enjoying yourselves out there. That's to me the essence of it is you guys are having fun out there and it kind of allows you to go out there and play some good golf.

TONY FINAU: Yeah, no doubt. That's the beauty of team golf. I've really enjoyed playing team golf with the very limited times that I have, and I've enjoyed my time with Cameron. He's a heck of a player. I've been able to see it up close this week, and we've fed off each other nicely really. We ham-and-egged it the first day, ham-and-egged it today. When I was a little off, he picked me up; when he was a little off, I picked him up. That's the essence of team golf, and we're going to continue to enjoy ourselves tomorrow and see where the chips fall here after 18.

Q. Tony, given the conditions and the fact you're just one back, can you take momentum into Sunday?

TONY FINAU: Yeah, no doubt. That was a big birdie on the last to give ourselves an extra shot going into tomorrow. I think it gives us a lot of confidence. Neither one of us had our best stuff. I made some birdies but made some bogeys. He picked me up when I needed him to. We just kind of hung on today. I think it definitely gives us some confidence and some momentum going into tomorrow.

Q. Cam, this is a weird one, but given the camera angle it looked like the alligator was really close to you on 18.

CAMERON CHAMP: It wasn't that bad. He was maybe 20 feet, but still, he was a little guy. I was kind of making sure he wasn't going to --

TONY FINAU: I think the alligator wanted a piece of him after he hit it in the water.

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, probably so.

Q. Given the fact the format is so different tomorrow, does the fact that you guys seem to have such a good relationship help out in that situation?

TONY FINAU: I think in alternate-shot it does. I think it helps. We're both comfortable around each other, especially playing these first three days together. I missed some putts, Cameron missed some drives today. There's no hard feelings. It's golf. You know it's playing tough.

We know we're both out here to win at the end of the day. If it happens tomorrow, it's great. If it doesn't happen, we keep on moving along. We're great friends and look forward to this challenge. There's a lot of guys that are playing well on that leaderboard tomorrow. We know we're going to have to play well on Sunday no matter what, so it's nice to be in this position and know that something -- if we play a good round tomorrow, it's going to be something.

Q. Cameron, what's the challenge of alternate-shot? And secondly, what do you like about it?

CAMERON CHAMP: I mean, it doesn't -- I don't want to say it wrong. It's not putting extra pressure on yourself, but you also tend to get another gear of focus because obviously you know it's alternate-shot, so I don't want to obviously mess up for Tony and he doesn't want to mess up for me, but in all reality I just think it gets you in a little different mindset. Like Friday we were just cruising. We really didn't make one mistake besides maybe a few errant iron shots, but we left them in good spots to get them up-and-down.

Tomorrow -- like I said, I struggled today off the tee a little bit, but I know what it is. Again, in these conditions you can get off pretty quickly. But again, we played really well the last three days and we kind of ham-and-egged it pretty solidly so far. Tomorrow, like I said, we'll just kind of go out and kind of do what we did on Friday.

Q. Tony, what's the difference of trying to win a tournament on your own as an individual? You've obviously had opportunities this year and other years, versus doing it with a partner?

TONY FINAU: Yeah, there's some different variables when you have a partner, but you know, we're both highly skilled golfers. If we both play well tomorrow, we're going to have a chance to win this, and that's always exciting. We've both been in contention before, and we're both looking forward to this one tomorrow. We're one shot back.

Q. Are you going to flip a coin again on the first tee?

TONY FINAU: Yeah, probably. We haven't talked about who's hitting evens and odds yet, so we probably will.

Q. Would it mean any more or less to win as a team versus as an individual?

TONY FINAU: I think it would be quite special. I don't know too many guys that can say that they've won team events because there's only one out here. So it almost would be I think even more special to win, and to win with this guy would be really special.