U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 17, 2024

John Harris

Hazeltine National Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Want to get your perspective of how the relationship between you and Noah has worked through the years.

JOHN HARRIS: Well, it's been great. He's very kind, and he's been very generous with the compliments.

I watched Noah from the time he was 10 or 11 years old and dragging his bag at the back end of Calusa Pines Golf Course and watched him mature physically and mentally.

He's just a nice young man who's become a really good player, and he's got a nice balance to his life.

Q. John Cook here. Hope you're doing well. Miss seeing you out there playing some golf and always enjoyed our times together. Take us back to Champions Golf Club in Houston 1993. Did you have any feeling going into that week that this week was going to be special?

JOHN HARRIS: You know I kind of did, John, maybe a little bit like you did. I had a good summer. We played the Walker Cup the week before in Minneapolis.

I got through the qualifying. I won a match. In the second match, I had a 20-footer on 18 that I needed to make to go to extra holes, and I happened to make it. It was a putt that you don't make very often, and you certainly don't make it on the 18th green very often. But I made it, went to the extra holes, won.

A couple matches later, I beat Justin Leonard, which nobody did at that time, and had the great momentum going into the semifinals.

You know, the semis are hard. This is a hard match for these guys emotionally, mentally, not physically. They're not tired. But both these guys played beautifully yesterday, and they're trying to come back today, and I'm seeing they're a little cautious.

They know what they're playing for, and they're not free wheeling like they did yesterday.

Q. This is the ninth time Hazeltine has hosted a USGA Championship. The U.S. Amateur is back for the first time in 18 years. What does a week like this at Hazeltine mean to the entire community and state as a whole?

JOHN HARRIS: Well, it means a lot, and they've put an awful lot of effort into this. It was always going to be one of the great Amateur championships that has been conducted by the USGA because they've got a great golf course, they've got a membership that supports it, and they've got a staff at Hazeltine that is second to none.

I think this is going to be great, and obviously we've got, in the next 36 hours, going to change a couple kids' lives.