Valspar Championship

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Palm Harbor, Florida, USA

Innisbrook Resort (Copperhead)

Matthew NeSmith

Quick Quotes


Q. Just your takeaways from today. You were right there all the way up until the end.

MATTHEW NESMITH: Yeah. I mean, I kind of went with the mindset that we weren't going to look at any leaderboards today, not for the fact of trying not to know where you are, but my whole goal was to finish 18 holes and enjoy the walk, and the better I could do at that, I thought the better I would play.

And I didn't really care how I played. I just want to keep building on what I've been building on this week.

Q. Is it difficult from a competitive standpoint if you're a competitive person to not know where your status is?

MATTHEW NESMITH: No, I don't think it really helps that much. Like, you can feel the vibe of the crowd. You can feel, I can at least. I'm sure a lot of people can as well.

But yeah I birdied 17 and I know I wasn't leading the golf tournament after birdieing 17, maybe had a chance to if I birdied 18. So I was just like I'm going to try and make 2, 3, but I'm not going to try to force something in there and hit it to two feet and change my game plan a whole hell of a lot to just try and force something that may or may not happen.

I just want to get in there and do the best can I at where I'm at, play and hit good shots, and see where we end up.

Now if you want to take some chances on 18 fairway, fine by me. But the shot into 17 was exactly where I was aiming. I wasn't trying to hit it to two feet. I wasn't trying to do anything crazy. I just hit good shot, hit it where I was looking, had a good look at birdie, and made the putt.

Q. How good did the putt look at 18?

MATTHEW NESMITH: Man, it looked very good. It looked a little high the entire way, but when it started to slow down, it started breaking more than I thought it was going to. So it looked really good for a minute, had a chance for sure.

Q. This new mindset that you came with this week, obviously very successful with it, was it hard to stick with that down the stretch?

MATTHEW NESMITH: Oh, of course. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Like, if I'm going to go out there and say that I'm okay with failure and I'm okay with playing bad, then I got to live by that example as well.

So I went out there today and I was completely okay if I went out there and shot 78. And it's hard, I mean it's even harder when you're starting to play some good golf, that's the hard part, you can't get in there and have a chance to tie the lead on 18 or birdieing 17 and then start to care, because that's not what got me there.

So I'm just going to continue it and build on this mindset and try and figure it out. I mean, it's fairly early on, but I'm glad I finally got out of my own way for a little while.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
118502-1-1044 2022-03-20 22:21:00 GMT

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