ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 22, 2022

Jay Haas

Bill Haas

TPC Louisiana

Quick Quotes

Q. Just some comments about how special these past two days have been.

JAY HAAS: Well, the whole week, being here this week, hitting balls on the range, playing the pro-am, hanging with all the stars of today, it was an amazing thrill for me. Brought back a lot of memories.

To have a chance to make the cut and hopefully we can play the weekend, I think ultimately that was my main goal. I won't say it was a dream because I think that we're -- the ball goes right where you hit it. If you hit good shots, it's fine. We were pretty solid up until about 14 and we got a little shaky coming down the stretch. But it's a tough format, and somehow we got it to the house 8-under, and again, hopefully that's good enough.

Q. When y'all got to 18, did you know what the cut number was? And did you leave that last putt a little short just to see if he still had it?

BILL HAAS: Yeah, just wanted to put him on it. No, I told myself walking up, I said, let's just get this thing down close and let's tap it in and hopefully that'll be good enough. I knew the cut was going to be close. I'm hoping it doesn't go to nine, but I know the finish is tough. 9 and 17 are very difficult holes. Probably not a lot of birdies there if you're on the cut line. 18 is maybe birdieable if you hit two great shots.

No, I certainly wasn't putting it on him. I was grinding. 14, he hit an unbelievable hybrid in there on that par-3 and I ran it by five feet and we three-putted, and then the next hole he hit a beautiful 6-iron and I left that three feet short.

It's just hard when you're trying so hard. It's one of the hardest things to do in golf is to let that go and quit trying so hard and just execute. I was struggling out there to execute.

But fun to hang on, fun for him to make that last putt. I'd feel stick to my stomach if I would have left it short there and we missed, especially hitting it in the water on 17, you just feel like you want to take all the blame if something doesn't go right. I know if he'd have missed it I wouldn't have cared, and if I'd have missed it I would have felt horrible. I'm just glad he made it and we don't have those feelings.

Q. Mr. Haas, how many of those have you stood over in your lifetime?

JAY HAAS: Way too many. I know that. That was probably as nervous as I've ever been over a putt of that length certainly. It sounds silly just to have a chance to make the cut. However, there's a lot of circumstances here that it kind of made it doubly important in my mind.

Again, we were right there. We had a big -- not a big cushion but a cushion, and it didn't feel like we had it made by any means, but to somehow shake that putt in on the last hole was something I'll never forget. But just the whole week, playing with Bill, getting texts from all my kids, it's just been a real charge.

Q. One of those circumstances being you're going to be the oldest player to make a PGA TOUR cut --

BILL HAAS: Quit saying that because it's not done yet. I want to make the cut. I don't want to get bad juju.

JAY HAAS: I heard them say that, and I don't think it should be because Sam Snead did it on his own and all that, but anything that I'm even remotely close to Sam Snead on would be very special.

But I'm not saying it's easy with a partner and all that, but I don't know that that would be -- I should take full credit for that. But again, let's hold on here and not get too excited yet.

Q. I'm curious, it's probably 500, 600 yards longer than a typical Champions Tour course, what kind of strategies you had to employ for alternate-shot shot today?

JAY HAAS: We talked about it. There were really no cut-and-dried options it seemed like. Three of the par-3s are the odd holes, so that's ultimately what we decided, that Bill was going to be hitting an iron to where I was probably going to be hitting hybrids to. That was probably our deciding factor.

Then 4 is a long par-4, 6, 12, all long par-4s that I'm hitting driver, 3-wood to, so he's still hitting a long shot into the green if I hit a really good drive, but ultimately that was what decided it, I think.

Q. How much are you looking forward to playing the weekend?

BILL HAAS: I want to make the cut so bad. Again, I don't think we showed up just to try -- we wouldn't have been so nervous if we just didn't care. But he can shoot a good score. The ball doesn't know who's hitting it, and he played amazing yesterday. I was getting stretched this morning, and Charley Hoffman was raving about how good he played yesterday, and I just kind of said, well, I see it all the time at home. This isn't anything new.

It is long; that's the big challenge I think for myself but definitely for my dad is it's a very long course, and he's hitting woods. We joked that he hit six par-5s in two yesterday, because he's hitting a lot of woods and hybrids in and he's hitting them inside our 7-irons and 6-irons.

Again, if you hit a good shot, which he did all day yesterday and today, it doesn't matter how old you are.