ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 24, 2026

Hank Lebioda

Eric Cole

TPC Louisiana

Quick Quotes

Q. Guys, all in all pretty solid effort; in contention. Just take turns talking about the round and what you feel like stood out?

HANK LEBIODA: Yeah.

ERIC COLE: Yeah, no, it was a good day. I think obviously not the best finish those last three holes, but played solid most the day and was relatively stress-free, which is good in that format.

Drove the ball well, so that kind of took a lot of pressure off both of us I would say.

HANK LEBIODA: Yeah, I think we were pretty fortunate to make our birdies early. Kind of allowed us to play that back nine free. Even though we kind of got ourselves in a little bit precarious situations on 16 and 17, 18 was awesome, about like how we been playing all day.

Thankful to get out on a birdie. Just makes lunch taste a little bit better.

Q. There are two trains of thought, Eric, when you talk about momentum. Some people don't believe in it; some do. Do you feel like the momentum from yesterday carried over with the different format?

ERIC COLE: Yeah, I think it does. I think especially like in a team aspect, I think the momentum or energy is definitely important. It's part of it.

You can kind of feed off each other, and when the other person is hitting good shots you want to reward the shots they hit. So that kind of just snowball into hopefully more of those good things.

Q. Hank, if you look at kind of your stats over the last few events, like you had a good approach week, good putting week. You kind of seem to maybe be putting it all together this week. What do you credit that to?

HANK LEBIODA: A lot of hard work. Yeah, just what it boils down to. There is no secret sauce, no magic bullet. It's hard work. Fortunate to walk next to a guy that has a lot of confidence and a lot of skill, and happy just to kind of coast off his speed he's going at.

Q. Does that have a lot to do with it, having a partner you're not super focused on yourself as much?

HANK LEBIODA: I think in the best ball format, yeah, probably allows you to be a little bit more aggressive than you would be.

In alternate shot it's a grind honestly. You're doing your best to -- you probably play a little bit more conservatively than you would naturally in an effort to just make it as easy as possible, knowing that the format and the course are just hard.

Q. What are you, 33?

HANK LEBIODA: 32?

Q. And you're 37?

ERIC COLE: Yeah.

Q. I mean, I'm 35 so right in the middle. How long does your guys' relationship go back? Obviously you both went to high school in the Orlando area.

HANK LEBIODA: About four weeks.

Q. Really?

HANK LEBIODA: No. We played together in '22 in Mexico. It was the first time I met Eric. Even though we both grew up in Orlando just never crossed paths whatsoever. I think Eric would've been out of high school by the time I got to high school.

ERIC COLE: Definitely missed each other when we were growing up. Hank went to the same high school as one of my good friends, Sam Saunders, so I definitely knew about Hank and heard a lot of great things about him and his golf game.

So I knew about him, but wasn't the closest with him. Been great to spend some time with him this week.

Q. So Sam went to...

HANK LEBIODA: Trinity.

Q. Not Olympia?

ERIC COLE: He did not. I wish he did.

HANK LEBIODA: Sam was a senior when I was in sixth grade. I was the little kid that would follow him around and tell him how great his shots were at the father/son and how cool it was and how awesome it was he was going to Clemson to play. I really looked up to him.

Q. Were you on the varsity team at sixth grade?

HANK LEBIODA: No.

Q. Because that's possible, right?

HANK LEBIODA: I joined the year after. After Same left, I think there was probably four, five seniors all Sam's age that left at the same time. It cleared the path for us.

Q. Otherwise you weren't getting playing time?

HANK LEBIODA: No, no.

ERIC COLE: Sweet. Thank you.