THE RYDER CUP

September 25, 2021

Tony Finau

Whistling Straits

Quick Quotes

Saturday Afternoon Four-balls

Q. A little bit about the day, you guys grinded, and you know, got to be a lot of positives.

TONY FINAU: No doubt. We played a nice match. Yeah, we played nicely throughout the whole day. It was really tough. A lot of wind. But we fought. For the most part we were in the hole just about every hole and put a lot of pressure on them. They did a great job ham-and-egging it, mostly Shane.

Shane played amazing golf today. When they needed a putt, he made it. So they really did all the right things to just kind of keep it going. And then Tyrrell hit a huge putt on 14 after I made one on 13 to get within one.

Then Harry almost holes out on 14, so now we've just got about two 35-footers to dodge and score the match, and that's where, you know, those putts either go in or they don't. If that doesn't go in, I think we're talking about a whole different situation here. But good on them. They made the putts, and he made the one on the last to go 1-up on us.

Q. Is that a part of The Ryder Cup Matches, just knowing that, hey, sometimes you just get beat?

TONY FINAU: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes your job -- and I don't think it gets talked about enough in The Ryder Cup. Sometimes your job, when you have a healthy lead like this, just wear out some of the great players. They are all going to be energized to play tomorrow, but these guys, where you're extending these matches and emotionally it wears down on them, it's going to count tomorrow.

Good on them again for hitting those big putts and things, but the way I look at it, we've got one heck of a healthy lead. We've got 12 hungry guys to get this thing done tomorrow. They have a really tall task in front of them, a score that's never been overcome. They have run the score up on us before. And if we have the opportunity, we are going to run it up on them tomorrow. We have guys that are hungry to win a point.

Q. Talk about your role for shepherding a new guy along, and were there any moments on the first tee where you looked over at Harris and said, "We got this"? Anything you said to Harris?

TONY FINAU: There wasn't that much to teach him. He's a veteran. He's a multiple-time winner on the PGA TOUR. Amazing golfer, amazing person. It was nice to get to know him better. Amazing player. Very clutch in situations this week.

That's the beauty of these teams is you get to know guys better and you get to play with them, alongside them and fight, and you really start to see how guys are on the golf course.

I think Harry and I played nicely because we are the same. We are very gritty and we want the big moments, and we want to play well in the big moments.

So that's what I've learned there. Wasn't a lot of mentoring out there, even though I was the one that had Ryder Cup experience. I just made sure that his energy was up, and I didn't have to do too much of that. He has amazing energy throughout the whole day. That's kind of how it went. I wouldn't be surprised if we did it again in a couple years.

Q. Is this a rite of passage, where you see each other week-in and week-out, there's more of a bond than when you came in here with?

TONY FINAU: Yeah, without a doubt, 100 percent. He's a guy that, again, I didn't know that well before our practice sessions this past week. Getting to know him a lot better and his wife, my wife, and we've had some dinners together this week. Kind of eating lunch, sitting together all the time. Definitely a relationship that will continue to flourish with these types of experiences together.