MASTERS TOURNAMENT

April 11, 2025

Rafael Campos

Quick Quotes

Q. Your birdie on 8, you fought for it.

RAFAEL CAMPOS: Honestly, I hit the ball well once again. Yesterday for the exception of like three swings. I was working hard. I wasn't really giving myself a lot of great looks today, but still in the correct positions and still giving myself chances.

It's funny how things work; after I got done 13, which was the bad hole yesterday, I took a breath like on 14, kind of a relief that I got through it, and all of a sudden I stand up on the ball thinking, just hit it forward, and the one time you lose focus, I made probably the worst swing I've made in so long. Unfortunate to lose a ball there.

I hit a great fourth shot to five feet and just didn't hit the putt. That was a very costly double. I still knew -- I was very upset, obviously, but my caddie did a good job calming me down a little bit, and we came back with a really good birdie on 15.

Gave myself some not favorable looks but at least looks the last -- 16, 17. It hurt, 18. I pulled a driver, but it was still fine. I thought I hit a phenomenal hybrid. I was waiting for the wind to start pushing it right, and it just hung up left. Still was in a fine spot. I just didn't read properly what I thought was putting through the fringe and gave myself like a 10-footer.

Austin's putt looked fairly straight and then at the end it just dove left, and I was pretty much on a similar line. I won't lie to you, I really thought I hit a great putt. I honestly thought I hit my line, hit my speed. It looked like it was going to be in all the time.

At the end, it just didn't move to where I thought it was supposed to move, and very costly. Not the finish I obviously wanted. But we'll see. Hopefully it gets really hard out there. But I don't know.

Q. There's a new attitude that got you here, that you showed here this week. What do you take from this?

RAFAEL CAMPOS: Yeah, obviously I'm trying to work on my attitude. I'm Latin; I'm still hot tempered. Just thinking about the first two days, in all honesty I pretty much hit the ball fairly good. I really can't complain with that. There was an exception of like three swings yesterday and only a couple really poor swings today.

But I'm happy with the ball-striking. I'm very -- how do you call this? It's not depressed. It's just I obviously wanted to play two more days. I feel I was hitting the ball fairly well, and it really hurts to finish the way we did the last couple days.

Q. We caught up with Stephanie and your whole family at 12 and 13 --

RAFAEL CAMPOS: It's awesome. I won't lie. It's really cool to see my daughter, my wife, my parents and my closest friends are all here.

I obviously felt the support. On 12 it was ironic. It was funny because obviously the patrons can't go to the greens, so they're pretty far away, and I make a good 10-foot par putt, eight, ten feet, and the only person I could hear screaming was one of my closest friends. You knew it was him.

It's pretty nice to see that they were also cheering me on, struggling with me, as well. It feels great, man. I just really wanted to play a couple extra days. I feel like my game is really getting there, and I wanted to prove it to myself.

Yeah, it stings right now. I kind of want to get away from here and kind of decompress and hopefully -- you never know. Hopefully it gets really hard.

Q. You're new to fatherhood; my father used to tell me all the time as I was playing golf as a kid, golf and life, the ups, the downs, the ability to refocus, and I think about your last six months and how the --

RAFAEL CAMPOS: I'm telling you, I'm still working on it, trust me. Yeah, obviously this is a really tough sport, and you can mentally get drained, depressed. You can really have a lot of mental battles.

I'm very fortunate to have the support that I have. I truly am because a lot of times you really do feel very down and people don't know how bad, like, internally a golfer can be at this level. So it's really nice to have my family and friends to always kind of keep pushing me forward.

I know I'm playing really bad golf, like statistically right now, but I'm extremely close to playing extremely good golf.

I really wanted these two extra days to kind of, like I said, prove it to myself, kind of get back there. This is the type of course I like. It's strategy and -- like I said, courses like this really test every aspect of your game, and I missed the one time my mind relaxed.

That's when it came and bit me. It is what it is, but I'm very happy to be here, though.