THE 149TH OPEN

July 15, 2021

Joe Long

Mixed Zone

OLIVIA McMILLAN: Joe, thanks for joining us. Playing In the Open Championship for the first time. Can you reflect on your round?

JOE LONG: Yeah, it was some nerves on the first tee, excitement, and a mixture of emotions. Got off to obviously a nice start. Drove the ball exceptionally well apart from one tee shot really. Just the putter let me down today I felt. Just really couldn't get the speed of the greens and started to get in my head a little bit, and that was kind of it really.

Great round. Really enjoyed it and it was awesome.

Q. Playing with Darren Clarke, what was it like to play with a champion golfer of the year?

OLIVIA McMILLAN: Yeah, it was awesome. I think it made it so nice for me because he was so friendly, gave me some great bits of advice and was picking his brains on some things.

Just a real down to earth guy, and made my experience a lot more enjoyable out there as well and settled me a bit, which was good.

Q. What was it like playing in front of such a big crowd?

JOE LONG: Yeah, it was great to play in front of a home crowd. It's obviously the first time for a while. When I won the British Am last year there were no crowds. To go out in front of a home crowd, my family are all there watching me for support, and yeah, it definitely is an amazing feeling and I just loved every second of it.

Q. You just mentioned winning the amateur championship there. There is obviously a lot of benefits that went with that win. How significant has that been and how has the experience been of being the amateur champion?

OLIVIA McMILLAN: Yeah, it's -- at first it was quite overwhelming with obviously all the other kind of noise surrounding the win, but it was then great to kind of go away, go and play the Masters, the U.S. Open, the Memorial, and get some massive experience overseas.

I kind of was on my own out there. Had my dad come with me, but I gained invaluable experience. What it's about is just trying to get better as a golfer every day and think about the bigger picture.

It's quite easy sometimes to get tied into the moment, and at the end of the day hopefully it's going to be one major championship out of hundreds to come, who knows.

So I just got to keep on getting better as a golfer and as an athlete and enjoy the ride.