U.S JUNIOR AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

July 22, 2021

Luke Clanton

The Country Club of North Carolina

Quick Quotes

Q. Down one going into 16, what are you telling yourself?

LUKE CLANTON: I mean, I've been playing like really good golf these past couple days, and I kind of knew that my game was there, and I knew on 16 that's kind of a perfect club, and when Kelly hit his first tee shot, it kind of gave me a little more comfort to hit it up there, and hit it to like six feet and won the hole.

17, God is just -- I'm still pretty stressed out right now, but it was an unbelievable match. 17 we both made birdie, and then 18, to be honest with you, I kind of wanted to go extra holes because it was too good of a match end off like that. All respect to Kelly Chinn. Unbelievable player, unbelievable guy, great person. I thought I had a great match yesterday, and today was even better.

My game feels awesome right now. I'm excited for the afternoon, and we'll see what happens.

Q. You've been playing well all week; do you think that today was your best day?

LUKE CLANTON: Yeah, a hundred percent because I knew going against Kelly Chinn, the No. 1 seed, and we're really good buddies and had one of my closest friends on the bag, so it was kind of cool to just get off to a good start, end off with a good start, and that's basically it.

Q. What was your mindset going into the day? You're friends with Kelly, you know he's the No. 1 seed, he's played well all week. What were you telling yourself?

LUKE CLANTON: I knew I had to really not make any mistakes to kind of be up there. We were both bogey free until he went to 16 and I went to 13. It was just a really good round, and I'm really excited for today.

Q. How do you feel going into the afternoon match? You're going to be playing Jackson Van Paris. He's going to have a big crowd. How do you think that's going to affect your game?

LUKE CLANTON: He's a good buddy of mine. We'll see what happens. I'm going to just try to take like 30 minutes or 40 minutes to reset and then go back out there with the mindset that he's an awesome player and a great player, so I'm going to just see what happens.