WGC DELL TECHNOLOGIES MATCH PLAY

March 22, 2023

Aaron Wise

Austin Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Aaron, nice start, 1-up win. If we can get some comments on your round.

AARON WISE: Yeah, felt like I played well. I putted amazing, made a lot of putts and made a bunch of birdies and made a few bogeys, and as match play goes, I made no birdies to win, so it worked out.

Q. Talk a little bit about what this does going into the second day tomorrow and then also as Tom as your opponent today, what was the key to winning that?

AARON WISE: Yeah, literally I made so many putts and that was kind of the key for me. He didn't play bad, he just didn't have his best stuff, and just kind of worked in my favor.

Overall it's just the first day, so we've still got two more days to try to get through, and a big matchup tomorrow with Xander who also won today.

So I think tomorrow will go a long way to telling what the week will be.

Q. Talk a little bit about the conditions out there this morning, how it was for you.

AARON WISE: Yeah, it was a little bit windy but it's getting a lot more windy now. They have some of the tees up. They did a good job setting up the course, but it's starting to play tricky, starting to play tough coming in there.

Q. People talk about whether you're good or bad at match play and you've got a lot of history going back to college, but what's more important, your history, knowledge and experience in match play, or your form? If you're not playing good, it doesn't matter, does it?

AARON WISE: Both. Match play is really the only time you're really watching what your opponent is doing and it's affecting what you're going to do. If he hits it in trouble you're playing safer. If he hits it close, you're going go after it too.

So there is little bit of that, but overall it's still golf. Most of the time whoever plays better is going to win. It's more about form in my opinion, but there are little nuances to it.

Q. When you look at how weird this tournament is or how unpredictable it is day-to-day, is there any value you would assess to at least getting a point on the board Wednesday as opposed to having to feel like you're behind the gun?

AARON WISE: Yeah, I got a point on the board. It kind of is what it is. You come here and you try to win every match you can, and I got off to a good start today doing that and I got hopefully six more matches all the way to the end.

Q. Any good shots today?

AARON WISE: A lot of good shots. A lot of good putts. I made quite a few. I went on a good stretch there where I made like a 20-footer on 7 and like a 20-footer on 8 and then got up-and-down because I hit it in trouble on 9 and then made like a 30-footer on 10.

I got hot in the middle which kind of was the key to the round.

Q. 30-footer was for birdie?

AARON WISE: Yeah.

Q. I couldn't see how far it was on 18 but Tom was inside you for a few feet?

AARON WISE: Yeah, it was probably 15, 20 feet, somewhere in that range. He was probably 15 feet. But I tried not to leave the door open, tried to close the match.

Q. If you had have walked off with a halve, would you have been pissed, A, and were you thinking about that?

AARON WISE: Yes, I would have been pissed, and yes, I was thinking about it.

Q. You talked about the match play nuance. Any moments today that you can think of where you think, that is a classic match play moment?

AARON WISE: You know, 9 was a perfect example. I hit a wedge shot to a back pin there. Tom his a good one to 10 feet, so I knew I could try to fly it back there. I actually flew it basically to the back fringe and spun it back to pretty much tap-in.

So that's a good example. Trying to think.

Q. It's about the reversals in momentum, huh?

AARON WISE: Yeah. Like another one was he hit it in trouble on the par-5, actually made an incredible up-and-down there to birdie it to keep the match going.

But they're just little things where someone gets out of position and you kind of affect and you play a little safer, or on the flipside if you know you've got to make birdie to try to tie them then you just go right after it.