U.S. ADAPTIVE OPEN

July 20, 2022

Chad Pfeifer

Pinehurst Resort & C.C. (Course No. 6)

Quick Quotes

Q. We're here with Chad Pfeifer, who will be finishing this championship in third place. Chad, out there today, 4-under 68. That's going to be the low round of the championship. You were hitting it pretty well. Can you talk us through the round?

CHAD PFEIFER: Yeah, I had everything going today. I was making a good little comeback and felt solid coming down the stretch. I got aggressive on 17. Normally I've just been hitting 3-wood all week on that, and I pulled driver trying to get one down there close so I could make a birdie and just fanned it right. One bad swing today, and it -- I don't know if I would have went birdie-birdie to catch those guys, but you never know. I was trying to be aggressive and trying to get up there and hopefully maybe tie them or get the win.

Such a great time out here. It's hard to beat this.

Q. You did make a heck of a charge. Do you think being in that final group with the leaders, do you think you put a little pressure on them?

CHAD PFEIFER: I hope so. I mean, for nothing else, just to inspire other players. If there's -- if someone runs away with it, it doesn't make it that exciting. I'm glad they're going to a playoff. They both played fantastic today, just steady all day.

Yeah, hopefully I put a little pressure on them. Again, like I said, they were just steady all day and didn't seem like what I was doing making a bunch of birdies, they were just making them right on top of me.

Q. Bigger picture, what are your takeaways from this historic week and the adaptive golf community and golf in general?

CHAD PFEIFER: Yeah, this has been just so amazing in so many ways. USGA, again, I've said it a bunch of times and I'll say it again, they've done just a phenomenal job with this tournament.

Again, they set this up like we're Tour pros, and they gave us first-class treatment. Everything was just amazing about this tournament, so proud to be a part of this historic event.

Q. What do you think this does to the stature and visibility of adaptive golf? This is a whole -- you play in so many things, but how does this compare to how this raises the stature?

CHAD PFEIFER: This tournament here is going to be top of the notch. This is what everybody is going to be striving to play for. This is what organizations are going to want their tournaments to be run like. For smaller organizations, it's obviously tough to get all the money for this, but for the players, it's going to give everybody something to play for, something to keep working on their game all year long. If a little kid -- again, I've seen a couple little kids out here with disabilities and one gal missing her arm, hopefully she sees some of these other gals out here -- Sarah Beth is missing her arm pretty similar to that little girl. This is going to be something that hopefully inspires anybody with a disability to get on a golf course, work on their game or even just pick up golf in general.

I think it'll be great in growing the game, and it's going to be huge for adaptive golf.

Q. Those two guys who are in the playoff now finishing at 3-under, can you assess -- and you had this great day today, but can you assess how good that is relative to the heat, relative to the difficulty of the play, soft course? How impressive is it what they've done?

CHAD PFEIFER: Yeah, it's very impressive. The heat was no joke this week. All three days were -- I don't even know what the heat index was, but I know it was high.

Yeah, their play was phenomenal. Only having played with them today, I can only imagine that the last two days were just as steady as these ones were today.

They played great all day. Unfortunately I gave them too big of a head start yesterday with my round, but yeah, I couldn't catch up. But it's solid play just for all the conditions.

Q. How would you assess each of their games?

CHAD PFEIFER: They're both just steady. I mean, if I had one word to say, they were just steady. Very consistent. Felix was phenomenal -- neither of them missed that many greens, and when they did, I think Felix probably had a leg up in that because he would get it up-and-down every single time, I think. He had one bogey -- he might have had two. I think he bogeyed 16. He was just kind of out of position. Being left on that hill is not a great spot to be. But it seemed like if he wasn't making putts, he was aggressive with them, but he'd make everything coming back. He faced a lot of six-, seven-footers for come backers, and he drained them all.

Both of them are great putters. Simon is just consistent. I think he was out of position twice and recovered for the most part pretty well. He only had a couple bogeys. They're great players.

Q. The scene at 18 there, how cool was that?

CHAD PFEIFER: That was very cool. It was pretty emotional, too. Being the first event, the inaugural adaptive U.S. Open and being in the final group coming up with all those people out there, it's pretty special to be a part of. I got a bonus and made a birdie in front of people, so that was good. It was a phenomenal scene out there.