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THE HERITAGE

April 22, 2011

Jason Day

HILTON HEAD, SOUTH CAROLINA

MARK STEVENS: Jason Day, nice bogey-free round here at the Heritage today. Take us through your second round and we'll take some questions.
JASON DAY: Yeah, I started on the 10th. I didn't drive the ball too well today. The last two days have been a real struggle. I've been trying to get the right feeling with my hands and I'm just not matching my hands up with the right swing path and I've been hitting the ball pretty wide the last two days. I had a little bit of practice on the range and hopefully I can straighten it out. I'm hitting the ball great with my irons and chipping well.
I'm very, very happy where I am right now. I think with how the course is set up, the greens are receptive, the greens are rolling really nice. We'll see at the end of the day if I'm not too far away from the lead.

Q. It looked like on 9 you had a bit of provisional but then you found your ball?
JASON DAY: I hooked my drive. Obviously, as everyone knows, it was out of bounds on the range, and I was inbounds by one yard. So actually if you're walking up the fairway and you looked to the left, my ball it looked like it was out of bounds, but the out-of-bounds stake stopped. And then it went, like, a right angle directly to the left and I was inbounds by a yard. So I'm actually glad I got through that. I nearly made a nice bogey, but I'm very happy.

Q. You're saying something we don't hear much around here, you're at the top of the leaderboard and you're not driving it well. Are you surprising you're scoring as well as you're scoring?
JASON DAY: I think the good thing about it is when I do miss the fairway, it's on the right side of the fairway where I can actually have a shot at hitting on the green. And when I do miss it, obviously in the wrong spot, I'm trying the best I can to obviously hit in the center of the green, or run it up the center of the green. The greens are so small here, if you hit it on the greens you have a good chance of making a birdie, even if you hit it in the trees.
It's not too bad. Obviously I drove it well at the Masters, and coming off The Masters week I obviously want to drive it a little better, but obviously it's tighter than The Masters.

Q. Is there anything to the idea that you're such a long hitter that when you come to a course that's not as long, like this, that maybe you have to find a different rhythm off the tee for yourself?
JASON DAY: Obviously for my perfect numbers where I want to lay up is 270 or 280 off the tee. I hit my driver around 300, 310. So it obviously goes way too far. You hit it to every corner, that's what you want to try to do. And obviously if you're not hitting a 3-wood well, it makes it very, very tough. So it's not so much changing the rhythm, it's just before each -- obviously before this tournament you've got to practice a lot of 3-woods, a lot of 280 shots.

Q. You said the other day that there aren't very many drivers in your game plan here, so does that minimize the effect of not driving it too well? Are you taking some irons off the tee?
JASON DAY: I'm not taking irons off the tee. I'm taking a couple of drivers and mostly 3-woods. So I'm not hitting the 3-wood too well right now. Obviously I'm going to try to straighten that out today.

Q. The driver notwithstanding, is this a week at all an extension of the way you played at Augusta, emotionally or mentally?
JASON DAY: I think mentally it was. I was talking to one of the media guys out there before, and he asked if I took a lot of confidence away from The Masters. I said, yeah, it gave me a lot of confidence to play these guys, like the big name guys. And obviously I think mentally to know exactly where I did out there on the last round, taking what I did out there and applying it to each round helps a lot obviously. It's just, you know, there's been a lot of planning, preparation is probably one of the biggest keys that helped me mentally.

Q. To kind of follow up on that, Jason, what's more important to you, the way you played the four rounds in Augusta or the way you played that last round?
JASON DAY: I played the four rounds great. I think the biggest thing that everyone is talking about is how well I birdied the last two holes. The last day wasn't different as compared to Thursday. I felt like I mentally handled myself just the same. Obviously in that situation I needed to birdie the last two holes. So I had to try and will the ball in somehow. So I think from that it was pretty much the same the whole week.
MARK STEVENS: Thanks a lot, Jason. Good luck this week.

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