SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 7, 2023

J.J. Spaun

Plantation Course at Kapalua

Quick Quotes

Q. What was working so well for you today?

J.J. SPAUN: I don't know. It was kind of a blurry day. I think the thing that worked the most for me was I didn't make too many mistakes. Except for one hole on 15. But that was just a tough shot. Made a poor choice there.

But, yeah, I didn't put myself in too much trouble other than that hole and that's kind of how I kept it all day. Nothing really stuck out to me like that I did great other than other things in my day. So just kind of a ho-hum day I guess is what you would want to call it.

Q. Obviously first event of the year coming back from a little bit of a break. You played QBE. Were you surprised how good your game's been the first three days?

J.J. SPAUN: Yeah, kind of. I think I was doing really well at home like playing a lot of golf with my friends that are members at my golf course and that play out here too. So just seeing, being competitive out there and putting low rounds together at home kind of made me feel like I'm in a good spot to start the year.

So, yeah, I'm a little, not too surprised, but maybe a little surprised that it's my first time here and just kind of, I feel like there's a lot of nuances here that you kind of learn the more you play here. So to be able to kind of do pretty good for three rounds, yeah, I'm a little surprised, but I think the game is there.

Q. How have you been able to conquer some of those nuances so quickly?

J.J. SPAUN: Like, for instance, like 17. It's like the widest fairway on TOUR maybe. But we jokingly said, Well you can never miss the fairway. And I missed it yesterday. Because if you hit it right you can run through and it gets in the rough and that's not the spot you want to be.

So you almost cut that fairway in half and like it's not very wide. And just like the elevation and the wind and the slopes and the greens. It's Augusta-esque. I think my first time there was pretty similar with all the lies.

That's the other thing is the lies you get. You never really have a flat lie. Also, like number 10, you hit it up the right and you don't realize it's going 95 yards down backwards almost to the left.

Same thing with number 13.

So you think, like, Oh, yeah, you can hit it up there and it's going to stay up there. But those are the little things that I think over time you go, like, Okay, I expect that, versus first time around you don't really expect it.

Q. Will you be super aggressive tomorrow, just maybe to see if you can catch Collin? You can't control what he's doing, but you got to think birdies are still going to be flowing.

J.J. SPAUN: Yeah, I think tomorrow's going to be a little bit easier condition-wise from what I saw in the forecast maybe. Like a little bit lighter wind. So there's going to be guys going low.

I think just by seeing the leaderboard, guys going 6-under through 11 or something crazy like that's going to make me feel that. But, yeah, I'm definitely going to be more aggressive just because I don't have the tournament really to lose. Just kind of go for it.

I think that's what I did Thursday. I played pretty solid and I played aggressive because I just felt like it was there for the taking. Hopefully have that mindset tomorrow.

Q. Did you play with Collin yesterday? He looked pretty solid.

J.J. SPAUN: No, he's putting really good. He doesn't miss a shot. It's a hard combo to beat. Sunday, you know, no matter how big a lead and how wide of fairways you have it's still hard to win. Maybe for me. I don't know about him.

Q. On this golf course when you say that you'll try to go low, a lot of times it would be like going after pins. But that's not necessarily the case here, is it?

J.J. SPAUN: Correct, no. I think it's being smart and taking the right green light shots at the right time.

Like 5 you can have a little like 6-iron in there and you want to go at that pin, but you just got to be really smart. I think it's kind of understanding, Okay, I can make an easy bogey here if I take this too aggressive of a line. You don't want to be giving up shots for dumb mistakes like that.

Q. Feeding it in there almost more than at it?

J.J. SPAUN: Yeah, exactly. That's the other thing, just kind of try to use the contours. I think towards the end of the day, I'd say like I started putting with less pace. For me, my more aggressive is not so much tee to green it's more like committing to hitting the putt to the hole.

Sometimes I get, especially a down grain, downwind, like I'll just kind of feed it up there and not really give myself a chance to make it, but more of a lag. That kind of upset me. I did that a couple times on the back nine today.

So I think for me that's what I'll have to change for tomorrow to put up any sort of number.

Q. You always need luck to win. But how much more luck do you need on this golf course?

J.J. SPAUN: Yeah, that's a great question. It's not like you can get a bad -- I mean, maybe you can get a couple bad bounces. But I don't know if there's a whole lot of luck involved winning here, honestly.

Maybe -- I mean, I think 18 yesterday I hit a drive and it like plugged and it could have been 80 yards further. Maybe little things like that, but who knows. I don't know.

I know when I won I got pretty lucky a couple times. But that place you can really miss fairways or miss greens. So we'll see what happens.