THE MODERATOR: Please welcome to the media center the team champions of LIV Golf Virginia presented by Maaden, Crushers GC. We've got Charles Howell III, captain Bryson DeChambeau, Anirban Lahiri and Paul Casey on the far side.
Gentlemen, this is your second consecutive victory, which moves you into second in the team standings. It's also the eighth team championship you guys have produced, including the 2023 team championship. No other team has won more. Let's just get some thoughts from each of you on a really challenging day against a lot of great golfers out there.
CHARLES HOWELL III: Obviously, I'm watching Baan and Bryson a lot today. Their names were up there at the top, and I'm hoping one of them gets a win. For me, it was just about playing for the team today, just trying to have a nice round of golf to help them. I knew those guys were going to play good and be up there, and man, the golf course produced a lot of birdies, so it was close right there until the end.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, today was off and on. It was a test of patience, I think. We were all playing pretty well and I was trying to shoot as low as possible, and we fought really hard.
I was more surprised the fact -- I didn't know we've won eight times, which is pretty cool. It's a testament to these guys, and the roster hasn't changed. Since we established this roster we haven't changed it.
Proud of these guys for how they played today, and I'm looking forward to competing a lot more with Baan and seeing him up there and getting across the line at some point. It's a lot of hard work we've put in. We're a beast of a team.
ANIRBAN LAHIRI: Just a great day, I think, for us as a team. Definitely challenging with the on and off, two breaks and not knowing how quickly we're going to go out there. It looks like Armageddon one minute and next thing you know you're back on the course. So that's always a challenge.
But I think we were up to it as a team. I think we did really well. Great to see everyone kind of hit their straps. Good work for me personally. I put in a lot of work in the four weeks that I had, and glad to see some of that work paying off and I'll continue to work my butt off, and yeah, keep pushing.
PAUL CASEY: What is it about this team? I don't know because we're all very different.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Ain't that the truth.
PAUL CASEY: Yeah, especially you (laughing). But we care deeply. We care about each other deeply. What I enjoy most is the fact that we came into Korea and we hadn't won yet this year, looking at people like the Fireballs winning three in a row, and Bryson, somebody mentioned, come on, let's just turn it up a little bit, and we go and win back-to-back. That takes everybody -- obviously in Korea it was Bryson and Chucky, and this week it was Bryson and Baan playing great golf.
I know they're disappointed -- I guess personally I wanted Baan to get over the line and get a victory, but it takes everybody. We're tenacious, we've got grit, and we keep going.
Q. Baan and Bryson, obviously you guys were up there in the individual competition. How do you balance the team victory and the emotions against obviously not coming up with the individual win?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I think I can speak for both of us here that we're focused on our individual side. We want to win individually as bad as possible. I think having four guys that want to do that and competing, working, grinding as hard as we can every single day to be the best we can ultimately leads us to be a great team.
How do you balance that? I think it's by focusing on our individual stuff and taking care of our business and our job. That's why I let them do what they do. I don't intervene at all, and where they want help, I try to give them as much help as possible and the vice versa and that's why we gel so well together. We're all different individuals but we gel well together because we respect each other.
Q. Baan, you shot a 68, a pretty good score, but it's hard to beat a 63.
ANIRBAN LAHIRI: It felt like a 71, to be honest. No, I think I had a few bad holes out there, got off to -- didn't get off to a good start, and I think I needed to get off to a hot start.
I spoke about it yesterday that this golf course, once it gets soft, you're going to get guys make a lot of birdies, and you saw that today. I was not surprised to see someone shoot 8, 9, even 10 I think was on, to be honest, if you had it going.
For me, I didn't get off to that start that I wanted, and then just around the middle, a bit of a momentum loss. I think around 9, 10, 11, I should have picked up a shot or two there.
I tried my best, but yeah, it's disappointing to come up short. I could have played a lot better today. Didn't hit it pin high enough. There's a few things that I need to go back and work on, maybe dealing with the conditions a little bit better, gauging and judging that. But it's a learning process.
What I'm really happy about is how I handled myself. I think I was a lot calmer, more relaxed and more focused at the same time, and I believed all the way until that last putt that I was going to win today. I think that's the most important thing that I need to take away from this week and bring to every other week.
Q. Bryson, you chipped in a few times this week, but you were also able to witness Phil's chip-in on 17. Can you talk about that shot?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, so Phil hit a drive up the right-hand side, blocked by a tree, tried to chip it around it, came out straight out of the rough, and it landed up on that upslope. When I saw it landing, I'm like, my gosh. He's such a grinder. He works so hard, and I just felt -- I actually felt a little bad for him at that point in time because he was playing pretty well and just couldn't get anything going towards that back half of the round.
Man, he created some Phil Mickelson magic there. Vintage Phil. To see him get up on the side slope, and he's just staring at it. You could just see his wheels turning, and then he hit the shot, and I got the perfect angle of it. It literally looked like the top of this roof right here. Just came back down, landed perfectly, and I go, oh, my gosh, he's going to make it, and it went in the hole and I was like, that's got to be one of the greatest shots I've ever seen in my entire life.
Q. Bryson, the approach play in the majors has potentially stopped you from winning two majors this year. How does it feel this week with the new irons?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, they felt pretty good. I think there's more optimization at play, potential optimization at play, but it's a good start. I drove it really poorly for my own standards this week, so I'm going to go work on that. I feel like the driver might have kind of given away this week. I've used it for over three months now and it's time to put a freshy in. It's something I'm going to work on for next week and get ready.
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