FEDEX ST. JUDE CHAMPIONSHIP

August 13, 2023

Mackenzie Hughes

TPC Southwind

Quick Quotes

Q. However this plays out, you were really grinding it out.

MACKENZIE HUGHES: Yeah, I mean, I'd say that's kind of my MO a little bit. This year has been pretty tough for me. I feel like when you're going through a tough stretch like that, it becomes harder and harder to continue to grind and continue to grind when you're not seeing a ton of results..

I know that's probably -- that's all I could lean on today really was just grinding. Kind of like JT said last week, he said he was proud of his effort, and today I was pretty proud of my effort. It may or may not be enough, but like I said, I tried as hard as I could.

Q. Are you going to hang around or just pack up and go?

MACKENZIE HUGHES: I mean, there's a few guys basically that I need some help from essentially, to just not do anything super great, I guess. We'll see. A few guys are behind me finishing now. If they have a great finish, they can jump me.

I guess it's out of my hands now. It's going to be kind of helpless to refresh that FedExCup leaderboard every five minutes, but that's probably what I'm going to be doing.

I'll try not to, but it's hard not to.

Obviously I knew all the stuff going in, I knew all the stuff all year, and like my wife said, I'm a big procrastinator, and it seems like I leave it to the last minute all the time no matter what I'm doing, whether it's dishes or golf. Here we are, waiting it out.

Q. When did you see what your standing was?

MACKENZIE HUGHES: 17, when I was standing over an 18-foot par putt. I figured there was some decent implications there if I missed that. So I knew coming down 18, I was thinking 3 or 4. 18 is such a hard hole. Here's a guy here I'm looking at -- yeah, it's just so hard.

These guys get it done down the stretch, it's impressive. Hats off to them. I'll just sit and wait, and we'll see what happens.

Q. Can you pinpoint why your second half of the season hasn't gone exactly how you wanted?

MACKENZIE HUGHES: Not really, no. I wish I had an answer for that because that would be helpful for what I'm trying to do. I feel like I'm doing all the right things. I feel like I'm trying really hard, and I just haven't got the results for that.

I told my caddie today, that's probably one reason I hate golf is that you can try really, really hard, and it guarantees absolutely nothing.

I feel like if I tried to run really, really fast, that would probably help me. If I was doing a long drive and tried to hit it really, really hard, that would probably help me, as well.

But in golf, it's just one of those things where sometimes you try harder and it might make it even harder, if that makes any sense.

Whatever happens today, I'll reassess and I'll try and get better for next year.

Q. When you started the week you were looking at a great week, obviously. Were you looking more at 30 or more at 50, making progress toward?

MACKENZIE HUGHES: I mean, I get off to the start I did, I'm thinking I could make a jump towards 30, and then I played awful yesterday, and I'm thinking, well, now I need to make 50 and I need to play really well.

I made that pretty difficult on myself. I hope I didn't, but I probably needed another one or two shots today. Hopefully it works out, like I said, but yeah, 50 became the goal obviously the last day and a half.

Q. Do you start drinking now or later?

MACKENZIE HUGHES: Probably now. Yeah. That would probably be a good idea actually. I didn't even think about that, but that's probably a great idea. Have a little four or five beers, take the edge off, and see what happens.