PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 19, 2022

Joaquin Niemann

Southern Hills Country Club

Flash Quotes

JOHN DEVER: Good evening, and welcome back to the 2022 PGA Championship here at Southern Hills Golf Club, Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are with Joaquin Niemann, who put up a 2-under par 68 today. Joaquin, really solid play on your back nine today. 2-under par, conditions kind of getting worse as it goes. You must feel good about the position you're in today.

JOAQUIN NIEMANN: Yeah, it was a pretty slow start at the beginning. I wasn't hitting the ball great. I missed a couple fairways where I should have been on the fairway on the par-5s.

Then I was able to make good putts to bring the round back, and being able to finish with a good back nine, so pretty happy the way I finished.

Q. Tell us about a couple of your birdies on the back nine, on 10 and 13.

JOAQUIN NIEMANN: Yeah, No. 10 I had a great number. It was like -- we were playing like a 110 shot with the wind and everything. I was trying to land it a little behind the pin to get the slope and I hit it a little thin. It came out a little shorter, and it just didn't spin back, which I was pretty happy that it stayed close to the hole.

Q. Two years ago did you think there would be two Chileans in the top 10 of a major?

JOAQUIN NIEMANN: I wanted to say something about it. It's nice to see on the first page two Chilean flags and a Mexican flag, too.

Q. It looks like this course and what you did today here, you have to play shot by shot here and you have many options on every shot. So by default, what is your choice?

JOAQUIN NIEMANN: I think there's a lot of holes you can be really aggressive and have a good chance to the green with wedge, where you can also take the safest way and hit an iron off the tee and hit a farther shot to the green.

But today I was feeling great with my driver, hitting it both ways pretty good, and yeah, I was able to hit good tee shots and good shots to the green, too.

Q. In the wind do you keep the ball lower or do you just make subtle adjustments? How do you go about it?

JOAQUIN NIEMANN: I think it really depends on the shot. Sometimes in this wind, when there's a lot of wind, you want to hit it pretty high, too, and I've been working a lot the last two, three days with my coach of trying to get both trajectories, the low one that tries to not get much wind and then the high one so we can land on some greens that are pretty hard.