MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 10, 2025

Justin Hastings

Quick Quotes

Q. What do you make of your first round at the Masters?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: Yeah, it was solid. I feel like I did a lot of things good. The driver just held me back a little bit. Then we stumbled a little bit on 16, which killed a little bit of momentum. But overall did a lot of things good, and I feel good about tomorrow.

Q. How nervous were you teeing off? Was it what you expected more so than you would have thought?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: Yeah, I mean, honestly, the good thing about this tournament is I feel like Tuesday and Wednesday really get you ready for the amount of people that you're going to see Thursday.

I didn't feel out of place. Obviously you're nervous, you've got the first tee jitters and everything. But once that ball was in the fairway, I felt pretty good and I was in the zone for a little bit there.

Q. I know you played a lot of golf on the final day of the Latin America Amateur Championship. How physically taxing was your first round at Augusta?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: Yeah, my head hurts right now. But yeah, it's just like you slip up once or twice and you get punished for it.

A prime example is on 16; you catch a 9-iron heavy, you make double, and that's the difference between -- I don't know what it is, but it's a big difference between 74 and 76. You've got to be sharp at all times, and hopefully that can be a little bit more so tomorrow.

Q. You've had a very positive attitude the last two days speaking with you. How much does a day like this add to that?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: Yeah, of course. I had quite the fan club out there following me around, so that's always cool. You can hear the certain voices when good things happen. No, obviously super grateful. A lot of people from back home coming out to support.

Like I've said all week, that's something I've super proud to be from there and it's cool to see people from back homecoming out to support.

Q. Who is here?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: I couldn't even begin to name everybody, but parents, grandparents, cousins, friends, and honestly, just people that are from the Cayman Islands that I may not even know, but I see the flag and it's worth the trip out. I think that's what's cool about where I'm from.

Q. What's the best piece of advice that you've received for this week?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: Yeah, I played with Patrick Reed on Tuesday, and he really preached to me about just playing your own game. He told me about a story where he got one of his first Tour starts as an amateur and he played with some seasoned veterans and kind of adjusted his game plan based off what he saw them do.

He said that your game is what got you here, and you have to trust that and stick with it, and I think that was a great piece of advice. I did my best to stay true to it today.

Q. Did you learn anything or sort of enjoy getting to play with Dustin Johnson?

JUSTIN HASTINGS: Yeah, it's a lot of fun seeing how he hits the golf ball. He's an absolute ball striker, great guy. We had some good conversations.

But going back to the last question, you've got to do your best to play your own game, so sometimes if that means looking away when he's hitting a driver or something like that, then it is what it is.

But yeah, it was a fun pairing for sure.