THE AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

June 13, 2022

James Hydes

Quick Quotes

Q. James, a nice start for you here in The Amateur Championship, 3-under in the first round of stroke-play qualifying. That's a nice position to be?

JAMES HYDES: That's really nice. I nice to get off to a good start. I know might be a little tougher tomorrow so nice to have a little bit of a buffer. It's nice going into tomorrow.

Q. Does that ease the pressure to make that all-important match-play stage?

JAMES HYDES: A little bit. Ideally I want to try to finish as far up on the leaderboard before the match play and maybe see myself with a bit of a better draw for the match play.

It feels good.

Q. Talk to us about your round. What were the highlights?

JAMES HYDES: I didn't start off great. I birdied the first, which was good but then I was kind of rough for the next four or five holes. Kind of hung in there for a bit but finished with a nice birdie on the last which was.

Q. Tell us about your goals at the start of week, and are you on track?

JAMES HYDES: Yeah, I was pretty much just hoping to make the match play and I know that if I do make the match play, I think I can win from there. Try and go and win the thing.

Q. Do you play quite a bit of match play in New Zealand?

JAMES HYDES: Yeah, we do a big teams event end of the year with match play and we do our New Zealand Amateur Match Play as well. I love match play, so yeah, it's awesome.

Q. And links golf, have you had much experience?

JAMES HYDES: There's hardly any links courses in New Zealand, so this is really different. Luckily I played the St. Andrews Links Trophy last week and the Scottish Am, I feel like I've got a little bit more of an understanding of how to do it and keeping it low.