MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 6, 2022

Abraham Ancer

Quick Quotes

Q. What's going well for you so far this week, and how did you feel today?

ABRAHAM ANCER: Very good. The course is in fantastic shape. With the amount of rain we got all of yesterday, it was crazy.

So I thought it was going to be playing a lot softer, especially the fairways, and they were in great shape.

A little bit of mud ball here and there, but for the amount of rain, I think it's in fantastic shape. Looking forward to the challenge of Augusta again.

Q. You played well here already. Why do you feel that is? And how do you feel you can take your past experience and play well this week?

ABRAHAM ANCER: I just love this place. I feel like it's so challenging and you have to have just a good imagination around the greens and be extremely accurate with your iron play. Obviously, you've got to be in the fairway first, and I feel like the holes really fit my eye off the tee.

I like target golf. I like to hit my spots. Sometimes I love not even looking at the pin and playing some of the slopes out here. So I just enjoy this kind of golf.

Q. You've been in contention here before. What did you take from that experience coming into this week that you feel may benefit you?

ABRAHAM ANCER: I just learned a lot, just mainly the golf course. There's some putts on that Sunday on my first Masters where I was playing in the final group that I just misread.

Obviously, I was a little bit nervous, but I feel like I felt pretty good for being my first Masters and being in the final group. I just didn't really make any putts that kind of gave you momentum to have a good round.

Yeah, I learned a lot. I feel very comfortable out here. It's going to be really nice to see a full crowd out here for the first time. Obviously, the first one, there was nobody out here. Then we got a little bit more in April.

So this year's going to be exciting. Tiger's back, so that's going to bring even more people out here. It's shaping up to be a great week.

Q. From a player's perspective with Tiger coming here, how much do you guys talk about that amongst yourselves, and how does that change just everything about the Masters having him here?

ABRAHAM ANCER: I haven't really talked to anybody about it that much. You just know when Tiger comes to an event, it's a big deal. It brings more people. It brings more people also to the TV to watch, and we all benefit from that.

I think we're all pretty thankful he's around, and hopefully we'll get to play alongside him for a long time.

Definitely excited to see him back and healthy.

Q. How challenging is it for a golfer to come back from an injury? You said the back and the leg injuries. What is your experience with that as far as being able to come here and perform with the pain as well as trying to maybe adjust?

ABRAHAM ANCER: It's tough. With the stuff he's been through, all the injuries and surgeries, that's tough. Not only just to play golf with, but just day in and day out, not being able to be pain free, after a while it gets old quickly and it's very annoying.

So a lot of props to him for all the hard work he's put in to rehab and be healthy and be able to compete out here and hit the ball the way he's hitting it. I saw a couple of videos. It looked like he's hitting it really, really good. I think a lot of us are in trouble out here if he's in the field.

It's just good to see him healthy, you know. That's really the main and most important thing.

Q. When you're playing a major, every round's important. How important is it to get off to a good start in this tournament?

ABRAHAM ANCER: Yeah, well, absolutely. Definitely here you want to have just a good solid first day. You can definitely lose the tournament the first day, can't really win it. It's definitely a tournament where you just want to have a solid first start.

It's hard to really climb back off a bad round here especially, especially if Friday it looks like it's going to be a little bit of a tough day with the wind and a little bit of cold.

So, yeah, Thursday's going to be important.