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WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIP

May 8, 2011

Jonathan Byrd

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

DOUG MILNE: Jonathan, good round today capped off with a great birdie at 18 to get yourself into a playoff. Obviously not the outcome you wanted, but overall you've got to feel good about the week and how you're playing. Just some comments and then we'll take some questions.
JONATHAN BYRD: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I'm never going to walk off a golf course after losing in a playoff. Obviously I'm a little disappointed just because you're here to win. You love to compete, especially when you get in a playoff. You birdie the last, you feel like, hey, this is just going to work out.
You know, a lot of good stuff this week. You know, I stuck to my guns all week. I stuck to my plan. I played within myself. Today was the worst I've played all week, but I still hung in there and still gave myself a chance and did some amazing stuff on the last three holes to get in a playoff, you know, with the 8-iron on 16 to a foot and then a good par on 17 and then an awesome birdie on 18.
So I'm quite pleased with that. I'm just a little disappointed with how I played the rest of the 15 holes earlier in the day.
DOUG MILNE: Talk about 18 in the playoff, your second shot. Just take us through that.
JONATHAN BYRD: Well, I had a hook lie, a little hook lie out of the bunker. I couldn't start it to the right. My goal was to aim at the flag and just kind of push it like a push cut and just try to hit it up the middle of the green, take it somewhere right of the flag. Well, I don't know if I just caught the sand and turned it over. I just pulled it, and I hit it far enough, but I just hit it ten yards left of the flag, and luckily stayed out of the hazard so I still had a chance to get it up-and-down and then hit a poor chip and a good putt, and it just turned out to be a 5.

Q. Did you have a sense out there how wild everything was going on? You had a four-shot lead, 30 minutes later you were tied, Sabbatini was coming out everywhere? Were you scoreboard watching?
JONATHAN BYRD: I really wasn't. I knew when I birdied 7, 6 and 7, that even though I hadn't gotten off to a good start, I knew I was in good shape. My caddie said nobody was doing much, and just -- I don't know if I played a little careful on 8, but I made a bogey there and then a bad bogey on 9 and then didn't get it up on 10, and I knew that was my -- somewhat just my missed opportunity right there to just kind of take the tournament in my hands. You know, just made some short game mistakes, just didn't quite play aggressive enough in that little stretch. 11, as well, and didn't get a birdie on 11 -- 10 or 11 or 12, and then making bogey on 14 was just pitiful.
But last four holes I played great and got myself back in the golf tournament, so...

Q. Lucas said that he predicted you guys would end up in a playoff. Did he say that to you? He said that on television.
JONATHAN BYRD: He did? Well, I mean, it just kind of looked like we both were going to be there all week. We teed off on Saturday, you know, we kind of gave each other a high five before we teed off and just kind of said, "Hope to see you late at about 2:00 tomorrow afternoon," and when we teed off today we gave each other a pat on the back, a hug, and said, "Good luck, hope to see you later today," same thing. I knew he was playing well, I'm playing well, and you're rooting each other on. If I couldn't win, I couldn't pick anybody else I'd want to win other than Lucas, so I'm very happy for him.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about your friendship and how many years did you team together at Clemson? Was it just one or two? Talk about the chronology a little bit.
JONATHAN BYRD: We played three years at Clemson. He's one year younger than me. He came in my sophomore year. I've told people the reason I knew I had to get better with my ball-striking was just watching Lucas and Charles. They hit the ball golf ball better than I could ever imagine in college, but I could putt and chip a little bit better than they could. But I knew if I'm going to compete with these guys down the road, I'm going to have to learn to hit it better. We played a lot of golf together, junior golf, even when we were ten years old. I remember seeing Lucas all the way up through high school. I've played golf with Lucas my whole life.

Q. Lucas has struggled since winning the Open. Did you see this coming?
JONATHAN BYRD: Absolutely. You know, I mean, he's an amazingly talented guy, and whenever Lucas starts making some putts, he's going to be right up there because he certainly drives the ball great, ball-striking is good. When he plays patient golf and putts well, he's tough to beat. You know, I'm thinking he's just going to be there about every week; that's kind of what I have in the back of my mind.

Q. What club did you hit out of the bunker at 18?
JONATHAN BYRD: I hit a 5-iron.

Q. And you guys are so close; what does this mean to him with everything that he's been through?
JONATHAN BYRD: Obviously it means a great deal. You know, he's had a difficult time the last couple -- maybe over a year now, you know, off the golf course, and he's had to play through some things, and for him to come back and play as well as he did this week and play as well as he did other weeks, I'm really proud of him. You know, I consider Lucas a close friend, so I'm rooting for him all the time.
But any time you can come back from kind of struggling with your game and to come back and win, I mean, that's huge. I've done it. I did it last year.

Q. Comparing this to other playoffs you've been in, did this feel a little different or even a little odd because you were going one-on-one against a guy that you've known for so long and know so well?
JONATHAN BYRD: It did feel odd a little bit. You know, when I got on the tee, I just tried to treat it like -- we had a match on Tuesday where Lucas and I paired up against Charles Warren and Davis Love. We played 18 holes, and I had a putt on the last hole to halve the match from about 15 feet, and I wanted to make that putt just as bad as I wanted to make that putt in regulation. I told my caddie Adam walking up, I said, "It's just like that putt we made on Tuesday, when I birdied 18 in regulation;" I said, "Let's make it again." So it was just the same process, you know, and I felt just as good walking off the green on Tuesday as I did today.
So any time you play a match, we're super-competitive, so we're trying to win those matches just like we're trying to win today.

Q. Did you feel like you had some momentum coming off of 18 going into the playoff hole at all?
JONATHAN BYRD: I did. I did. You know, I'd hit a good tee shot in regulation at 18, and obviously all day I'd been kind of missing the ball right, hanging it out to the right all day, just kind of getting stuck behind it, so I felt like I tried to have the same process and get up there on 18 and try to hit the same shot. Unfortunately I came out of it again and hit a poor tee shot in the bunker.
You know, when you miss that fairway, it's just -- it makes that hole a lot more difficult. So when Lucas got out and striped it down the middle, you know, ball was in his court.

Q. This would have been your third win in 12 starts. Is this the best you've felt about your game ever?
JONATHAN BYRD: This is the best I've felt about my -- just my mental game, I think, and my wedges and my putting. You know, there's times where I've felt better ball-striking, but I just feel like my game is really simple and really clean right now, and I just don't feel like I should get that far off. So I guess some of that is more mental than it is necessarily the physical part of my game.
But obviously as a whole it's better than it has been in a long time. The mental part of the game and then my putting, this is probably the best I've felt since I've been on TOUR.

Q. Did you notice all the Clemson fans out there? A lot of people dressed in colors and all that stuff.
JONATHAN BYRD: Yeah, there was about five guys that walked up on the range that were -- they'd had a few too many already. (Laughter.) And those same five guys followed me all day long. "J-Byrd," yelling the same thing off every tee shot, and I didn't even have to look after the first couple holes. I knew exactly who it was. I wasn't surprised. Riding in the car at the 18th tee, I said to Adam, "Man, there are going to be some happy Clemson fans about this playoff," here in Charlotte and on TV. I was excited for them for that, just to have that moment, to have two Clemson guys in a playoff trying to win the golf tournament.

Q. All the times you and Lucas have played against each other, have you ever played in a playoff before in junior golf or any other time?
JONATHAN BYRD: I haven't played in a playoff, but I have -- in the South Carolina State Amateur one year we dueled it out all 18 holes one year. He won three years in a row, so obviously same outcome; Lucas won then. Lucas won today. But we didn't have a playoff, but we kind of dueled it out all day. We were right next to each other, and he won by one.
DOUG MILNE: Jonathan, we appreciate your time. Great playing this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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