WGC DELL TECHNOLOGIES MATCH PLAY

March 23, 2023

Billy Horschel

Austin Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. What's the difference between yesterday and today? Is it just a different match?

BILLY HORSCHEL: Just made some putts. I mean, I've hit it very equal to yesterday. Maybe today was a little bit tougher with the wind out there. Hit some quality iron shots that obviously didn't turn out as good as I was expecting, but yeah, yesterday I missed three putts inside six, seven feet that I don't usually miss. I would have expected to make two out of three of those. If I do that, obviously I win the match.

Today I made some short ones early, gave me a little more confidence, and so at the end of the day that's what it came down to.

The putter I've been using the last couple years is out of commission now. It sort of got bent. Not by me. I just want to make sure everyone -- it wasn't by me.

I used my backup yesterday that I used a little bit last year, and it just hasn't really been good in tournament play, and then Ping made me another putter up before they left, so that's the one I used today.

Q. What's the model?

BILLY HORSCHEL: It's a Sigma Tyne 4 I think it's called. Same model I've been using for about four years now.

Q. I know you didn't bend it; how did the old one get bent?

BILLY HORSCHEL: I have no clue. Travel probably. Just it was bent probably three or four degrees closed because I putted with it Sunday with TA before I hopped on a flight, and I brought it out of the bag on Monday, and I was like, wow, this putter is not looking the same anymore. It happens. We all know it happens. Pros aren't any different than amateurs with clubs and travel. Yeah, it's unfortunate, but I've got a putter now that I feel happy with.

Q. You hear the thing in basketball where if a shooter is struggling and he gets to the line, he just needs to see a foul shot go down and he can kind of get them right. Do you think this tournament could be that for you? You're so good at match play; could having some success here jump start things for the rest of the year?

BILLY HORSCHEL: Yeah, you know, and that's the way I've actually looked at it. It's been a frustrating start to this year. There's no doubt about it. Myself and my entire team has been putting in a lot of hard work and we're not getting the results out of everything we wanted.

But I will say at Honda, and since Honda even though I've missed the cut at Bay Hill and PLAYERS, we saw signs of what we wanted to see. I just needed a week off to regroup, freshen up my mind mentally, and just work on a few more things.

Todd and I worked really hard last week, just nothing different, just tweaking everything, getting the feels a little bit better in the swing of what we wanted to do, and I was really happy with what I did on Friday and Sunday at home with TA.

I sort of told the entire team, I said, this week is sort of a cutoff point. Everything that happened the last couple months is behind us. This is the start of a new season. We're going to look at it that way.

Yeah, there's been a lot of -- I say a lot of changes, just a few changes. I switched to a brand new golf ball this week that Titleist has and I've loved everything about it so far and seen some really good positive stuff from it.

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm just looking at it as a new season, and like you said, this was like, I just need to play match play, play mano-a-mano, got to hit the shot right then and there, not worrying about strokes, not worrying about score. Just trying to execute that shot right there the best you can, and if you lose a hole, you lose -- you're only down one.

You can get it back the next. Yeah, that's the way I've looked at it this week, and I'm excited what I've done the last two days.

Q. Rahm tomorrow, obviously a huge challenge, about the toughest challenge you can get to be into the weekend. Does match play fire you up a little bit? Does that fire you up to have him on the other side?

BILLY HORSCHEL: I think everyone knows I'm pretty much raring to go any time. It doesn't really matter who I'm playing. This is the same situation that I had a couple years ago. The year I won match play in '21 I lost to JT and I played Collin in '21, and obviously we knew what Collin was doing. He was playing some of the best golf of anyone at that time.

I went out and played really well and defeated Collin. Obviously that led to me winning match play. Obviously very similar scenario tomorrow. I control my own destiny and I'm excited. I'm excited to see can I step up to the plate and perform the way I want and perform the way I have against some of the best players in the game of golf throughout my career. I've sort of always risen to the occasions a lot of times and may not have always got it done always, but my game has always had a chance to play well and come out with a positive outcome.

Rahm has been playing unbelievable. We all know that. So I'm going to have to, like I said, play really well tomorrow and hopefully fortunes are favoring me a little bit.

Q. You mentioned this when you and I talked the other day, but this format versus the old knockout format, which do you prefer and why?

BILLY HORSCHEL: Listen, I can go with either format, and I can be very happy with either format, but I like this format because it gives you three days of golf. It gives you three days to see where your game is at. For me personally, right now having three days of this format, pool play, is exactly what I need for my game of golf, to see some success, to see some shots.

If it was a one-and-done knockout and I felt like I did well in practice and I played well yesterday and would have lost to Keith, it would have been disappointing because it was like, man, I wish I could have another day just to go out and really build on that confidence that I had the previous day.

Yeah, so the pool play is great. I think it's great for everyone. I know why some guys don't like it, but I think for the fans and everything else around it, it's been an absolute success. It's unfortunate that it's not going to be on the schedule in '24.

Hopefully as I told you yesterday, hopefully Match Play, whether it's on our Tour, whether it's on DP World Tour, hopefully there is a way to have a match play format going forward because I think we all do enjoy it a lot. I think the fans enjoy it a lot.

It's just heads-up play right then and there, who wants it more at the end of the day.

Q. You mentioned doing some small tweaks with Todd. Is that kind of a sign of your growth and your maturity, that you have a couple bad weeks and you don't feel like you need to go searching for something, you just continue to focus on the things that you know will lead you to success?

BILLY HORSCHEL: Yeah, I've been out here for 14 years. Todd and I, we tried to make a few changes to get out of a couple bad habits in the swing at the end of the fall, and as I've talked about, it was really good at home and it was really good on the driving range and looked really good on video.

But under the heat of the moment, it just didn't execute the way it need today go, and we made -- we talked over the phone after Riviera, after missing that cut, and sort of said, hey, let's just -- I sort of told him what I wanted to feel, what I love to feel. He obviously knows my feels obviously being together for 15 years, and we just went ahead and built it around it.

A lot of it is just trying to get back to some swings of '13 or '14. Similar to what we did last year, but like I said, we tried to just change a little bit of the pivot a little bit and the way we loaded going back in the fall and the off-season and it just wasn't successful. I'm always willing to try and get better.

I thought this could make me better, and it could make me better if it worked, but obviously it didn't, so we just went back to, like I said, what we did in '13 and '14 and what we did a lot of last year and just made subtle tweaks to that, and it's been successful so far, and I'm excited where that's going, and I'm happy that we've still got a lot of golf left to be played.