HILTON GRAND VACATIONS TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 19, 2023

Mardy Fish

Lake Nona Golf & Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Mardy, a lot of points out there. What was the state of your game?

MARDY FISH: A little scratchy in the beginning. Got lucky with some longer putts that went in on the back nine. I think the front nine is a tough front nine. The back nine there's some chances you can take advantage of a little bit. Yeah, it's just nice to play competitive golf again. It's been since July that I've played a competitive round of golf, so kind of cramming everything in in the same week.

It's always great to be here every year.

Q. You made birdie at 18 --

MARDY FISH: No, par, but it was still a good par.

Q. Those feel like birdies. What were some highlights of the round?

MARDY FISH: Yeah, just kind of every time I made a mistake I was able to kind of come back and play a good hole or kind of get my momentum back. I didn't really lose -- apart from the first six holes, I think I was 3-over, and ending up under par feels nice.

Kind of try and channel those last maybe 11, 12 holes.

I did start playing well from maybe 8 on. Birdied 8, didn't birdie 9, was able to birdie 10. Made a three-putt on 11, and then back to another birdie. I was able to kind of take advantage of the good shots and wasn't taking advantage of the bad ones. Wasn't able to clean those up. But I'm not going to get greedy. I'm happy with a round like that out there today. I usually don't play very well in the first rounds of these events, so my worst scores are in the first rounds of these tournaments, so nice to get one under par and get one going a little bit. I don't know where anyone is. I didn't look at anything. But I can imagine it's probably fairly close to around a few strokes here or there.

Q. You and Annika are --

MARDY FISH: What a shocker.

Q. Is it fair to say that someone who is aggressive, an aggressive pitcher, an aggressive tennis player, is also an aggressive golfer? Are they aggressive by nature?

MARDY FISH: I think it's a mindset. I think it's a mindset thing. But only on things that you're comfortable with. I'm aggressive with my driver but I'm not necessarily aggressive with my putter. I can get a little tentative with those types of things.

I think it's all relative. It's a nice question, but I think it's all relative. It's just what your style is, what your comfort zone is. Certainly on the tennis court I played an aggressive style, but that was the style that I kind of had to play. I wasn't going to be a kind of side to side, Klay court type player. That's not how I grew up. That's not how my father taught me. That's not how I enjoyed playing, as well.

I think just the style of play for me in tennis was an aggressive style. Yeah, it can bleed over into some other things.

Q. You say that, Ivan Lendl would bore you to death on the tennis court, and you play golf with him and he grinds you into the ground?

MARDY FISH: Yeah.

Q. It's that style carrying over.

MARDY FISH: Yeah, look, he's a very unique athlete. I mean, you're talking about one of the greatest competitors in any sport of all time. So that's a tough one to -- yeah, look, he's special, right. Like Nadal, these guys are special, where they're -- McEnroe, as well, like on the tennis court and the golf course, which I've done both with all three of those guys, and they're all -- I can say they're all very intense on and off the tennis court and the golf course.

Q. You've had some nice success on the celebrity circuit. What has it done to fill that competition void?

MARDY FISH: Yeah, almost everything. Adam said, we were sitting on 18 just waiting to hit a tee shot, and he said, there anything you'd rather be doing right now, like in the century, playing fun golf with Ashleigh, who's an amazing player, and that was super fun to watch her play.

Yeah, there's not a whole lot of things. I never take these invites for granted. I'm super thankful to just be invited and to participate. If I can play some good golf, that's a bonus.