U.S. MID-AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

September 29, 2021

Hayes Brown

Sankaty Head Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Still hitting the ball great here.

HAYES BROWN: Yeah, hitting it great, taking good targets. Swing feels really good. Compared to yesterday, I finally made some putts today, which was kind of the difference.

Q. Tell me about a couple of those birdies. You said you had some long putts.

HAYES BROWN: Yeah, so I had a couple -- hit some really good shots on a couple holes where I was five, six feet early on for birdies, which was nice, but made one on 7 from about 20 feet and made another one on 9. Hit a below-average bunker shot but had a really easy putt, in my opinion, kind of straight up the hill into the wind. I knew if I hit it hard enough it was going to go.

Q. So you tried to drive the green at 9.

HAYES BROWN: I did, yeah. I put it in the front bunker.

Q. Then you went 5-up on 11 with another birdie.

HAYES BROWN: Yeah, hit a phenomenal little wedge there, dead downwind, I was just trying to make sure I kept it short so I didn't hit it over the green, nipped it nicely, caught a couple hots and stopped. I was in there four or five feet and he was over the green, so I knew I was in a good spot.

Q. You talked to me earlier about how some of your friends showed up. Who are they, and did you ever find out how they got here?

HAYES BROWN: Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how they got here, but they told me that they were on like a 9:00 p.m. flight, they were on a 5:00 a.m. ferry this morning. They found a random guy that happened to be on their ferry that they friended, and told him what they were here for, and they're like, man, I want to root for that guy. So they got some random guy to come join them that had a work event and just bailed on it and showed up anyway. I don't know where they're staying. I don't know what they're up to. But yeah, two of my best friends showed up today.

Q. Are they college friends or local --

HAYES BROWN: They're college friends, yeah.

Q. Have you heard from anybody at the Carolina Golf Club?

HAYES BROWN: I've heard from a lot. My phone pretty much blows up every day with more texts than I can count. It's been a lot of support, and it's a lot of fun. I try to get back to everyone, but I feel like we're not done quite yet.

Q. Most of the mid-amateurs have real jobs and so do you, which leads me to you picked up golf again competitively about a year ago. What made you do that?

HAYES BROWN: Yeah, I was pretty burned out after college. I would say that my college career wasn't great, and I was kind of over golf, to be honest. Took a couple years to get away from it, came back and realized that it was a great hobby to have and I loved it. Being able to play with my dad on golf trips and when I went home, it's just one thing I wanted to get back to.

I started having a little bit of success getting back, so it was nice to like, hey, you're good enough to keep doing this if you try. So I started spending a little more time doing it. It's one of those things that it's fine if it doesn't work out because I still have a day job and I can go home and I still get paid. All is fine.

Q. About a year ago did you up your practice time, and what kind of things did you do?

HAYES BROWN: Yeah, I went from probably playing one day a week to trying to dedicate two to three days a week, at least, definitely play the weekends and try to spend one,two days during the week at least after work at night dedicating time. So yeah, that was really the change. Still nowhere near what it was in college, but I feel like I do enough to stay in it.

Q. Are there certain technical things that you're doing with the swing or putting that maybe you didn't do three, four, five years ago?

HAYES BROWN: Not really. I feel like I really -- I kind of work with a guy out of Greenville named Bradley Hughes, but those are two, three times a year. They're honestly very few and far between. A lot of it is just trying to stay in it, and I would say it's been more mentality of my mind of realizing that it's not the end of the world, you still get paid at the end of the week, and just kind of let it go and realize it's all for fun, and it's not the end of the world if you play bad.

Q. Are you having fun so far?

HAYES BROWN: I'm having a hell of a time. This is a blast.