AT&T BYRON NELSON

May 13, 2023

Jason Day

TPC Craig Ranch

Quick Quotes

Q. Just a comment on a good round today.

JASON DAY: Yeah, we had some softer conditions in regards to the wind, which was nice. Course is starting to firm up. It was actually quite nice to be able to get through today. I know the weather didn't look great this morning when we were looking at it, but overall very happy, very pleased to get in the house at I think 14 and only a couple shots back.

Q. I know you're still looking for that elusive win here, but you've been in contention several times. When you do it more and more, does it get easier heading into the final days?

JASON DAY: It doesn't get easier, but you can handle the conditions a lot easier and handle the pressure easier. You can't control what a guy is going to go out there and shoot tomorrow, but you can control your attitude and your emotions and just keep pushing along and hopefully if you give yourself somewhere around the lead on the back nine on a Sunday, you never know what happens on Sunday.

Yeah, that's kind of the plan for tomorrow is try and get myself into contention and see how it goes on the back side.

Q. When you see someone like Scottie up there heading into the round, I'm sure you're not expecting him to stay in neutral. He has let some people back into the tournament today. At what point did you feel like I'm not too far off this thing?

JASON DAY: To be honest I wasn't really -- I had a sense of where the lead was. You're trying to get yourself somewhere close to the lead. It's very difficult to try and push on days like this. You can definitely make some mistakes, and with how everyone is going low, you kind of want to pick and choose when you can be a little bit aggressive.

Sometimes it's better just to coast through the middle part of your round if you're not feeling it, then hopefully come back with a flurry.

Scottie, you know he's going to have a good one tomorrow. He's on 15-under I think coming down the last, so I'm thinking he most likely is going to birdie just the way that he's driving the golf ball right now. So 16, if not 17, if he eagles, so we'll see.

Yeah, it's a course that yields a lot of birdies, so it's kind of anyone can win, just depending on how much they want to go low. I'm thinking somewhere around the 20 mark, low 20s will probably win it.

Q. How important is that last putt, especially after you were blemish free until most of the round until 16 there?

JASON DAY: Yeah, I was trying to get at least one in the last three. Unfortunately bogeyed 16. Nice to be able to birdie 18. It's funny, the bunkers, not a lot of sand in them. They've got a pretty firm base. I'm not saying there's no sand. They've got a really firm base and there's like a thin layer of sand on there so you've got of contact the ball correctly and I caught it a little bit behind, that's why it kind of shot through. It was good to be able to hole that putt, good momentum going into tomorrow, get some rest to get, get into it tomorrow.

Q. How much do you like scrambles like this where there's a lot of birdies out there and pretty much anybody can have at it on Sunday?

JASON DAY: I'd prefer like a U.S. Open style golf course where it's like everything has to be firing. I'm not saying that you don't have to -- you have to have your game here, as well, but I just feel like when the course conditions are a lot tougher, that's when guys that are finding their game or know that their game is well, that's when they kind of start to rise.

Like I said, it could be anyone's tournament tomorrow. I think 13-under, which is three strokes back, that's just T7 or something like that. There's a number of guys on that. It's kind of anyone's tournament right now.

Q. What do you think was your best shot today?

JASON DAY: I don't know. Actually probably the bunker shot on 6 because I hit one -- it didn't really come out the way I wanted it to from the rough, landed in the bunker and then had to get that up-and-down. That was probably my best shot actually by far. Other than that, though, just kind of boring birdies, which is a good thing to say because sometimes when you're making birdies that are exciting, you're either in trouble. It was nice to be able to keep that momentum because at that stage I was 3-under.