RBC Heritage

Thursday, April 13, 2023

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, USA

Harbour Town Golf Links

Joel Dahmen

Quick Quotes


JOEL DAHMEN: Unbelievable. That was the best I hit this calendar year. I just haven't hit it that great this calendar year. I don't know exactly what clicked. I can't pretend I hit extra balls or did anything special, but I striped it today. I hit my driver on almost every hole. A lot of guys don't.

So I was way down there, and I had a lot of birdie chances today. I didn't get up and down on 2. I didn't get up and down on 9. I didn't get up and down on 14 -- 15 -- 14, whatever that par-5 is.

So it's easy to sit here, yeah, I played great, but a couple got away. So that's all that pro golfers think about are the ones that got away.

Q. What about Harbour Town suits your eye?

JOEL DAHMEN: I'm one of the more accurate drivers on TOUR. I think I'm top ten in accuracy this year, so length is not my game. If you want to get in a bombing contest, I'm not going to beat you.

But out here, a lot of guys I played with were hitting 3-woods or 2-irons off the tee, and I hit my driver anyway. So they're having 8-irons in, which are scoring clubs, and I'm having gap wedges and sand wedges in. If I can keep that up and drive it that way, I think I can hang around.

Q. I wanted to ask, you mentioned that it's an advantage to be able to hit driver here. You kind of just alluded to it again then. But can you kind of go into detail about how that is?

JOEL DAHMEN: Well, I'm maybe slightly below average in driving distance, but I also have this very low driver shot that only flies like 250. So it can't get in that much trouble. It never goes that far offline, but it still runs out there to 300.

A lot of the trouble is, if you're flying a driver 300 or 300-plus, those trees kind of go into play where I can just kind of run them out there. It's hard to get it offline when you're hitting that low as well. So I just kind of stuck to that today.

Q. What happened on 15? The 5.

JOEL DAHMEN: So I got greedy. I thought, man, if I smash a drive down there, maybe I can go for this par-5 in two. Tried to kind of ride the wind a little bit, and that's just not my game.

So the one swing that I didn't go with -- and it chases all the way through on that hard pack sand down there, and I actually had a great opening, great lie. So I hit 3-wood up by the green, which is a great -- because actually it probably looked like it was like an aggressive play, but it was harder to layup because I would be chipping it and having more of the water in play. So the further I hit it down there, the less water was in play.

Had a great lie, had a great 3-wood up there, and hit a mediocre chip and a great putt that didn't go in.

Q. Did you misread it?

JOEL DAHMEN: I guess technically it would be a misread. I missed low. Yeah, I just misread it, I guess.

Q. Then what can you say about your draw given the weather coming in?

JOEL DAHMEN: Yeah, I'm always hesitant to say my draw's better because we'll see after 36 holes which draw is better. As of now, I'll be happy if it starts storming and I'm sitting on my couch. I'll definitely tell you that much. I can sleep in tomorrow as well and just see how things kind of play out.

Q. Just to follow on that, what will you do with 24 hours off? You're on an island. Will you kick back?

JOEL DAHMEN: Yeah, I'm pretty good at that although I don't kick back as much anymore because I have a 3-month-old at home. I'll probably just -- he sleeps so much now you can still kind of hang out and do nothing. It's not like he's running around.

I have a Q&A I'll go to tonight, a dinner, so I'll do that. It's kind of a big thing, three or four-hour time commitment. So I'll go to dinner and do that.

Hopefully a nap would be awesome. Hopefully get the child to nap, and then I'll nap, and then we'll go from there.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
131840-1-1182 2023-04-13 16:37:00 GMT

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