BARRACUDA CHAMPIONSHIP

July 16, 2022

Yannik Paul

Tahoe Mountain Club

Quick Quotes

Q. How would you describe kind of this stretch here coming over and playing these PGA TOUR events as a DP World Tour member?

YANNIK PAUL: Yeah, I like it a lot. I live in the States, so it's easy travel, and I want to play on the PGA TOUR as soon as possible. To get this opportunity I think is awesome. I've really enjoyed the last two weeks, and this kind of feels like Colorado, so feels like home. Yeah, I'm enjoying it.

Q. Where do you live?

YANNIK PAUL: I live close to Denver in Colorado.

Q. What's your plan for the rest of the year? Is it a goal to try to top-10 here and try to get into the KFT finals?

YANNIK PAUL: Yeah, I think I need solo fifth or so to get to the Korn Ferry finals. I think I need a really good round tomorrow. But I talked to my brother, obviously would like to play on the PGA TOUR together as soon as possible, so yeah, either go play well tomorrow and then play a couple more or have a couple weeks off and then go back to Europe and then the season goes until I think November. There's still a lot of big events left there, as well.

Q. When did you decide to play these tournaments, these co-sanctioned tournaments, or had it been early in the year?

YANNIK PAUL: Yeah, I think once they announced they were going to have co-sanctioned events I really looked forward to that just because it's easy travel and I like to play on the PGA TOUR, so that's as close as it gets. Once I saw that, then I was just hoping that I'd get in with my category, and that was the case, so yeah, really enjoyed the last two weeks.

Q. Is there anyone you've enjoyed meeting that you hadn't met before just playing these couple events?

YANNIK PAUL: I'm really good friends with Dylan Wu, so we played a couple practice rounds together. We actually played Saturday and Sunday together last week, so we got a lot of golf in together. So that was cool.

Played with Charley Hoffman today. He was really nice. Yeah, overall just enjoying it out here.

Q. How do you describe your relationship with your brother? What's it like having a twin brother that's in your same profession?

YANNIK PAUL: Yeah, we're really close. We talk every day. We FaceTime all the time. We haven't seen each other that much as of late, but we talk every day, and we're really close. A lot of people ask us if we're really competitive with each other, but we're not at all. I want him to do well and I want to do well, so we both want to kind of succeed together.

Q. What impresses you the most about him and his game?

YANNIK PAUL: He hits it really straight, and I think he just overall hits it -- always the same shot and kind of really solid all over the game, especially his irons and the driver is really good. If he gets the putter going, he's always close to the lead.

Q. What's one fun non-golf thing about your brother, either personality-wise or a hobby or a quirk?

YANNIK PAUL: You've got to give me a heads up on that. Something fun outside of golf? He likes to go to different restaurants and just kind of check out different restaurants. We both like to do that. We kind of like to socialize and hang out with our friends, check out new restaurants. I think that's something outside of golf that we like to do, and yeah, that's basically one insight.

Q. You've both been pro for a couple of years now, but the fact that his game is trending, he's playing so well on KFT, you have this opportunity, as well, how does it feel that you're both just so close to breaking through to the PGA TOUR together?

YANNIK PAUL: Yeah, obviously at first when we came out of college it's obviously a grind playing on the mini-Tours and just going from tournament to tournament. It's tough to kind of -- unless you play Korn Ferry Q-school you just play a lot of tournaments just to make some money. So it's kind of nice that as of last year we kind of went to the next stage of our career, and we always felt like that's where we can play and that's kind of where we belong. It was nice, we just kind of needed the right opportunities and they came, and we kind of took advantage of that.

Q. Do you have the same cuisine preferences?

YANNIK PAUL: Yeah, we eat exactly the same, so we're really twins. If he orders first, I'll just say, I'll eat the same, order the same thing. We literally are as identical as they come, so yeah, we like exactly the same stuff.

Q. Do you ever play a prank growing up on people pretending to be each other?

YANNIK PAUL: Well, it's not that easy. Like at first everyone thinks we look exactly the same, but after some time it's actually pretty easy to tell apart. Not as of late. Sometimes when I talk to my brother we FaceTime where Morgan -- his girlfriend is on the phone, then I just come in and see if she gets it right away, but it's pretty easy to tell. She hasn't really fallen into it.