Q. Talk about your round out there today.
ALEX SMALLEY: Challenging. Wind made it pretty difficult today. Had three pretty big par saves the first three holes. Didn't hit it in very good places, but was able to somehow get up-and-down.
I had a lot of up-and-downs today, but those kind of keep your round going. Overall pretty pleased with even par with the way the course was playing with the wind.
I guess we get to do it all over again tomorrow with the same wind. Looking forward to that.
Q. Have you played in conditions here at Sawgrass like this?
ALEX SMALLEY: I don't think so, no. My first year I played was '23. I think in '22 was when they had all the rain and the wind, and I wasn't here that year. This was probably the windiest, for sure.
Q. What did you do well today that you're looking to build on tomorrow?
ALEX SMALLEY: Get up-and-down a lot. I mean, I got up-and-down probably -- the sand pit in the backyard, to the garbage can on the side of the house. It was crazy. I played with Collin, and I'm not sure what he was thinking, but some of the up-and-downs that I had were -- it was just one of those days. Some days you're really on, and today just happened to be one of those days with my touch and feel and everything.
Q. What was the best one of the up-and-downs?
ALEX SMALLEY: The best one? I don't even know. The one on 3 I was in the pine straw, long right of the green. There was a tuft of grass that was right in front of me, so I would have loved to have hit something low and bumped it into the fairway cut and let it bounce on to the green, but I couldn't do that. I kind of had to go over the tuft of grass, so I played it like a bunker shot and hit it to two feet. That one was really good.
17 was interesting. My ball must have barely cleared the water and one hopped in the bunker and kind of plugged in the bunker. I told my caddie, it was almost kind of a blessing that it kind of plugged because I could hit a shot that would run out quite a bit, and to get that to three or four feet was awesome.
I had another bunker shot on 15 that was really tricky. Pin was in the back, I was in the bunker front that was on the front of the green. Luckily it was downwind, and just somehow judged it perfectly and hit it to two or three feet. I had a lot of really, really, really good up-and-downs that I haven't had in a while.
Q. Who's here with you this week?
ALEX SMALLEY: Whole family is here, mom, dad, sister, agent.
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