ABU DHABI HSBC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

January 21, 2023

Richard Bland

Yas Links

Quick Quotes

Q. Richard, 6-under par 66, what pleased you most about your play today?

RICHARD BLAND: Tee-to-green, I've been pretty solid all week. A new driver in play which has been going really well. Hit a lot of good iron shots today. Considering it's my first week out in two months, I seem to be controlling the ball flight really well. You know, left a couple out there but I guess everybody can say that. So yeah, hopefully more of the same tomorrow.

Q. Started the day 4-under par, six behind the leaders. What was the mindset going out? Because sometimes players know they have to be more aggressive to get in the mix.

RICHARD BLAND: I kind of said to myself, I can get to double figures; and to get there after ten holes was probably a bit ahead of the game. Yeah, I had a couple of chances coming in and I hit some good putts that I just kind of misread them. But yeah, I just couldn't seem to sort of kick on from there which is slightly frustrating. I just kept telling myself, I'm playing well, hitting good shots and they would drop. But hopefully they will drop tomorrow.

Q. Leaders have still got a number of holes to play. How many shots behind do you think you can be and still have a chance to win?

RICHARD BLAND: I think around here you can probably be five maybe. I think you can get quite hot on the front nine. There's opportunity here. I hit a lovely 5-iron into six, seven feet at the second and had a pretty big horseshoe.

So I could have easily had two eagles on the front nine and then the par 5s, the way they were playing, 2 is downwind and at the time we were playing 7, started to switch and that was going downwind as well. As you see there's been a couple 64s already, so you can go low around here.