U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 14, 2024

Christian Brand

Hazeltine National Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Really good playing. You feel like (indiscernible). Could you tell us a little bit about the match play.

CHRISTIAN BRAND: I think this golf course is, I've been describing it as the longest positional golf course I've ever seen. What I mean by that is you can't overpower it. You have to plot your way around A to B, B to C, C to D.

I think maybe that falls into kind of a veteran presence. It's a little different golf course than they may see in a D-I program or something. But honestly, these kids are so good, it doesn't matter.

Q. You won the State Am by 21 strokes, I think. Could you just talk a little bit about that.

CHRISTIAN BRAND: Yeah, it was a good week. It was like this every day. It was windy. I played really well, and I was in a great state of mind.

First win my son got to see, so that was fun.

Q. Does that give you confidence going into an event like this to win like that?

CHRISTIAN BRAND: Yeah, because I'll be honest with you, five or six different people have asked how I got in here, and my caddie will tell them, well, he won the Am, and he tells them by how much, and they're shocked. It just gives you confidence.

Q. If you could just talk about your stroke play here this week, playing Hazeltine and Chaska, coming back to Hazeltine.

CHRISTIAN BRAND: Hazeltine, as we know, is a monster. I want to give credit to Chaska. I played it in the afternoon yesterday, and it got crispy. It was difficult on that back nine. Really the stroke play portion is very, very difficult.

Obviously every match moving forward will also be difficult.

Q. Speaking about match play being difficult, could you talk about your experience in match play and kind of the mentality you bring.

CHRISTIAN BRAND: Really I like match play a lot. I think that I'm kind of steady Eddie, but I have a lot of firepower. I've made a lot of birdies on this course already, so I do think it helps me.

Q. The wind picked up today here, I think. It wasn't that windy during stroke play. How much of that was a factor today?

CHRISTIAN BRAND: When we played our practice round, it was this windy, maybe a touch more. And my caddie said, I'm glad we played the practice round when we did because you can see that you can't overpower Hazeltine, to go back to my first point.

That just goes to show you have to play it the way it's telling you to play it, not how you want to play it.

Q. You have a long afternoon going into tomorrow. How are you going to prepare?

CHRISTIAN BRAND: I'm going to eat a lot of food and drink a lot of water and just kind of hang out and take it easy.