ZURICH CLASSIC OF NEW ORLEANS

April 25, 2026

Alex Smalley

Hayden Springer

TPC Louisiana

Press Conference

Q. Can you guys just walk us through your day, starting with you, Alex?

ALEX SMALLEY: I think it was a little bit of a tale of two nines. We got off to a pretty decent start on the front nine. 7-under through eight. It's hard to complain about.

Then I kind of left Hayden out by himself on a few holes on the back nine and kind of had an error -- both of us had a little bit of an error on number 12 that resulted in a bogey. We had good bounce-backs on 13 and 14.

I thought we both hit pretty good shots into 15, but the downwind caught it, and I think both of our balls landed on the downslope a little bit and shot forward. Hayden had a lot of chips that scared the hole the last couple of holes.

Yeah, I mean, pretty pleased overall. I think if you would have told us we would have shot 10-under to start the day, we would have taken it, so pretty pleased with how the day went overall.

Q. Hayden, can you talk about where these conditions rank in terms of getability to what -- and you've played eight events on the Korn Ferry Tour too this year, but just how gettable was it today?

HAYDEN SPRINGER: Yeah, the rain obviously made it a lot softer, so we could be more aggressive. You know, even like it's just kind of stopping in the fairway where it lands, so you don't have to worry about the run-out on some of these bunkers and stuff.

So definitely made it a lot easier. Kind of, you know, just hit it where you want it, and it's going to stop right there. Then obviously, too, the greens -- I think the greens rolled pretty good as well. They were getting a little crusty yesterday, but the rain softened them up as well. They rolled good.

Q. Alex, for foursomes tomorrow, do you take the governor completely off? Do you go full aggression, or do you still have to be pretty smart and aggressive, conservative at times?

ALEX SMALLEY: I don't think we can take the governor over completely. Maybe if we're humming a little bit with a few holes to play, maybe we can get a little more aggressive if we're close with a few holes to play, but starting off, I don't know if that's really the game plan we're going to have.

I think if we just kind of stick to what we're doing, just trying to give ourselves as many looks as we can, I think that will serve us pretty well.

Q. This is kind of I guess a weird question, but probably pretty pertinent with Hayden's status and where he's at in his career, but is there going to be some smart play, 17, 18, if maybe you guys are a couple of shots back and there's a bunch of guys right behind you just in terms of FedEx Cup points scenario?

ALEX SMALLEY: I don't think it's really great to think about stuff like that. Good golf takes care of a lot of things, and that's certainly one of them. But you can't -- I don't think it's a great idea to focus on that kind of stuff, because that tends to get you away from your game plan a little bit.

Like Tiger said, he wanted to be aggressive to conservative targets, so I think we'll pick out good targets tomorrow and try to hit the best shot that we can.