WGC DELL TECHNOLOGIES MATCH PLAY

March 24, 2023

J.J. Spaun

Austin Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. J.J., just comments on the match today and moving on to the weekend.

J.J. SPAUN: It was a good match. We kind of went wire to wire for the most part of the day and kind of WNT my way towards the end and took advantage of the momentum and was happy to not just get a halve, get a win. So definitely a good day.

Q. Coming up on a year anniversary of your first victory on tour. Could you just kind of describe the state of your game and how it's improved since you won the VTO?

J.J. SPAUN: It's pretty similar. I want to say I've had better finishes leading up to this time of year last year. I feel like my game's in good shape. Obviously I'm playing great out here.

This is a course I've never seen before, but I feel like it suits my game pretty well. Things are going well. I think the weeks when I putt good, I'm putting pretty solid this week. I think those are the ones that separate from the average weeks to kind of contention and giving myself a chance to contend for the tournament.

So the game's in good shape. I'm excited to get back to San Antonio next week.

Q. Is match play a good tune-up for stroke play tournament?

J.J. SPAUN: I don't know, maybe. There's a lot of things I feel like I could take from the experience of match play and the strategy behind it. I think there's more pressure on each shot, which is good because you kind of have ebbs and flows through a round and you're not really playing against the guy you're playing with.

To kind of be put in a spot where every shot kind of matters as far as giving -- whether it's taking advantage of an opportunity on a hole or going first on a par-3 and like making sure you hit the green or something so he doesn't have your -- in the match play, your partner doesn't have like an easy layup to find the green and two-putt for a par.

So I think it's a good sort of indicator of how you perform under pressure. So I think that's a good thing, where stroke play you're kind of going along for the round and hit some good shots here and there. There's not much pressure.

When you get into stroke play and you have a pressure situation, you kind of lean on what you did in match play.

Q. Do you feel like you've become a better pressure player, like performing under those circumstances?

J.J. SPAUN: Yeah, I think this week's match is showing that. Today I didn't have a huge lead. I was actually down for the first time in the match. Even all the way up to 14 it was down.

So it was nice to kind of pull it through and rely on my game, my strategy, and be able to come through and hit those shots and hit a couple good putts on 15 and 17 too to kind of close it out.

Q. Personally I'm very glad you've made it this far, but in the event that you hadn't, what was your like schedule before going to San Antonio next week? And how does advancing like change that?

J.J. SPAUN: Yeah, I think tomorrow -- the whole weekend could be a very long weekend. We were planning on getting up to San Antonio Sunday night no matter what happened. So I have my wife and our 2 1/2-year-old. We probably would have toured the beautiful city of Austin tomorrow if I wasn't playing and maybe went to the zoo or something fun and just kind of hung out.

I've never been in this city before, and it's awesome. I would have made use of it and been productive and done some fun things.

But yeah, we're heading up to San Antonio on Sunday, hopefully with some hardware.

Q. Can I give you a little advice about zoos?

J.J. SPAUN: Sure.

Q. The San Antonio Zoo is far better than the Austin Zoo.

J.J. SPAUN: We have a Frozen play to go to Thursday night and Friday night, one of the two nights. We'll have to fit that in one of these nights.