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TRAVELERS CHAMPIONSHIP MEDIA DAY

April 27, 2009

Stewart Cink

CHRIS BERMAN: Welcome home.
STEWART CINK: Thank you, Chris.
CHRIS BERMAN: How are we today? He's from Alabama, Georgia, we want to make you feel at home. Did we do a nice job?
STEWART CINK: Great. In fact, I heard it was 90 degrees yesterday.

Q. I think the NFL Draft was going on. I didn't know.
STEWART CINK: I thought you might be the right person to ask. How did the Falcons do?
CHRIS BERMAN: They did okay.
STEWART CINK: Defense, defense, defense.
CHRIS BERMAN: That's right. That's what they need. This quarterback might work out for them, Ryan.
STEWART CINK: As I heard from a sportscaster, his future is ahead of him.
CHRIS BERMAN: What a class act that the governor would come today. I think that's awesome. Stewart can attest to this, because I am out there some, the momentum on TOUR and in the golfing world of Travelers here at this event, we say it, it's legitimate buzz.
STEWART CINK: Since Travelers came onboard, the tournament really has taken on a whole new brand. There's lingo out there among the players. You refer to places that you play tournaments as Colonial, as L.A., used to be Hartford. Now you hear players talking about the tournament, they're just saying 'Travelers.' That's a rare deal. You have Pebble, Phoenix, Miami, Doral. Now you have Travelers. They're really behind this thing. It's more than just being behind it, they're in front of it. It's really awesome.
CHRIS BERMAN: And it's real. For them to extend to 2014, Andy, good job. You're hired.
We want to rehash last year's event, which was awesome. We teed off early, right, on both tees last year Sunday because of the storms, et cetera. I happened to see Stewart at 9, 9:15. For a leader, you're not near the clubhouse, you're trying to kill your day a little bit or get in the mode. It was about 25 minutes till tee-off. I think you warmed up. You stepped in the locker room. Hardly anybody up there to do what you do when you walk in the locker room for two minutes. It's a bright yellow shirt. I said, There's a guy that expects to win the golf tournament.
Did you know that? You hadn't won in, what, four years. Not that you hadn't played great, been a Ryder Cup member. But did you have a feeling this was going to be different? I could just see it.
STEWART CINK: It didn't have anything to do with the yellow shirt. It was more to do with that was the only one I had left clean (laughter).
But, no, I did have a confidence last year about the way I was playing, a confidence about being back here at TPC to play a course where I had won several years before, but that I had won on and had some success at. I just felt a lot of confidence.
The first three days did nothing to hurt that. Shot some low scores. I felt like it was my time. I was in the lead. It was definitely mine to lose or mine to win. Again, the yellow jersey, shirt, whatever you want to call it, didn't have anything to do with it.
CHRIS BERMAN: But it was screaming it was your time. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. That was the story I told.
Now on 18, you have the lead, you need to par. You hit a long tee shot, but it's up on the hill. Most of us, we're hitting our third shot from up there, but we've all been up there. You have to get it -- you're up on the hill. Oh, my God, I'm not on the fairway. I must par this hole. Take us through it. You go up there, the crowd is around you, what are you thinking?
STEWART CINK: First of all you have to back up one shot to the tee. The only place you could really hurt yourself on that hill, it was playing downwind, it was warm, nothing but a sand wedge coming to the green. The only place you could hurt yourself was left. If you go right, you can go way up on the hill, but it's in play. You take your line a little further right than you normally would, hit it hard, knowing if you get up with a sand wedge, even if it's in the rough, you can get it in the green. Of course, I didn't. I hit it over the green.
I hit what I thought was a pretty good shot. It landed and bounced back over the back down the hill. Because of the slope, you can't really tell exactly how far the ball rolled. It looks like it's sitting up against the back rough. I thought I hit it 20 yards over the green. When I got up there, it was an illusion. The ball barely crested the hill.
I was thinking to myself, I'm giving the tournament away right here if I don't make a real strong third shot. Of course, as I got closer to the hole, I realized it was nothing but putt coming down the hill. Didn't hit as bad a second shot as I thought I might have.
It was relieving. Still a tough one to get down there close where it was kind of a no-brainer tap-in for par. You never know in golf until it's in the hole. I've been in the situation before, U.S. Open, Southern Hills, where you think you got tap-ins, suddenly balls are looping out all over the place. Until you're picking it up, putting it in your pocket, you just don't know.
CHRIS BERMAN: That was the ultimate member's bounce. You won a decade before. You thought it was over in the rough on the fringe. He wasn't a member yet. He didn't know yet.
STEWART CINK: Future members.
CHRIS BERMAN: Right, future members. Then you win. Your fifth win. You're going to win many more, we know that. Is there a different level having won again? Do you ever question, Am I going to be able to close the deal here? Do you find yourself a different player in the nine months since?
STEWART CINK: My results would indicate I'm a different player because I haven't come close to winning since then (laughter).
I think what you mean, yes, I find myself with a lot of confidence knowing that I did it, now let's move on to the next one. When that time comes, I'll be gunning for it. There's no backup in the system.
I look forward to being in contention again. My game has been pretty good this year, but no results to show for it whatsoever. My results have been pretty bad, lackluster. I'm looking forward to getting in that mix again. I got a lot of patience. I've been out here for what seems like a hundred years. I know it takes a lot of waiting around sometimes for the results.
CHRIS BERMAN: A lot of folks don't know, but Stewart is not just, Okay, I'm out here trying to play well, make some money, move along. He's involved with the players, board, president, very much involved with the TOUR. What I'm trying to say is you're also a golf historian, you appreciate it. This tournament has been around almost 60 years. It's a nice list to just see some of the names. But there's a short list of guys that have won it twice or more. Palmer, did you ever hear of him?
STEWART CINK: Yes.
CHRIS BERMAN: Casper. Zinger. Mickelson. Jake, which was an interesting one, like 20 years apart. And you. I don't think I missed one, right, six? Do you think about that historically?
STEWART CINK: That's good company to be in. Anytime you put your name up, if it's chiselled in stone anywhere, except I guess for one place, and that's the cemetery, but everywhere else you're in pretty good shape. To have my name up there with those guys as multiple winners, it's great.
CHRIS BERMAN: You come out here, you see this course well. 10 years between winning. But we all look at all pro golfers as they see every course better than we do. There's some that just shape you well, having won first year out here... Do you come expecting you know what you're doing more than some others?
STEWART CINK: Well, I've said it before, that some courses you go to, you just feel like they're kind of easy courses and the field seems to have the trouble. Other courses you go to, you feel like they're hard as heck and the field shoots nothing.
This happens to be one of those that I just feel very confident on, like I can knock it down if I'm playing well. The rest of the field doesn't seem to think that. The cut is always over par. Doesn't matter if the weather is perfect, greens are soft. Cut is almost always over par. I can't explain that. I can explain off the tee here I feel like I have a good handle on what I need to do, what club to hit, not always a driver, the curve, how far it needs to go. The greens, I feel like I have very few surprises on the reads. All that adds up to just being very comfortable playing this course. Over 72 holes in any given year, I feel like I have a better chance of winning on a course like that.
CHRIS BERMAN: We could spend two hours talking about it. But your experience, you've been a Ryder Cup-er four times, but this past year, pretty good enough now. What about the camaraderie even before you set foot on the first tee on Friday. What do you take from that week, even going in, that you knew this might be different?
STEWART CINK: It was the first time I ever started a Ryder Cup knowing full well the other team was better than we were on paper. We weren't expected to win anything. Automatically there was a veil of expectation that was erased that we felt we could be ourselves. If we finished second, that's where we're supposed to be anyway.
The 'underdog' thing took on a life in the locker room, among the wives and girlfriends that were there, the captains. We just wanted to go out there and have a good time playing. It was the first time we really felt relaxed. We were able to just play loose. That's a term thrown around in a lot of sports. In golf playing loose and playing tight are two totally different animals. In the Ryder Cup, we played to our abilities, which is the first time we've done that in my Ryder Cup experience in the last nine years.
CHRIS BERMAN: Was there something that happened maybe before or afterwards that you will take, the group, the players, the wives? Maybe not to get into anything, but you had little pods, mini groups. Paul Azinger was the captain, Olin Browne was there. I don't know how it all worked out.
STEWART CINK: Olin chipped in on me in the playoff. Thanks for reminding me.
The moment I remember where things seemed to turn and we got confident was the very first session on Friday morning. Friday morning we played four matches, and we were down in three and I think tied in one about halfway through it. It looked like, Here we go again. We never led after the first session since I've been playing Ryder Cup. I think the last time we had led a session, a first session, you have to go way back to like '95 or something. We still lost that one.
All of a sudden, being down three and tied in one, it looked bad. It was a lot of blue on the scoreboard, which is bad for us. Everybody one by one started picking up the pace a little bit and getting their match chiseled back down to even. We ended up winning three and losing one I think. So a 3-1 edge after the first session in a Ryder Cup doesn't sound like much, 3-1, but it's huge. It's almost insurmountable.
We just had this swagger about us after that. If we get down, we can come back. We did it again the second session. We came back. That was just huge for our confidence, being down is not the end of the world. We can come back.
CHRIS BERMAN: Interesting blend on the team, younger guys, older guys.
STEWART CINK: Yeah, the younger guys were playing well, but they didn't have any memories of losing. Jim Furyk, Mickelson, myself, the guys all knew what it was like to lose the Ryder Cup. We had felt it before. We knew what it was like. Those guys had no memory of that stuff. Anthony Kim, Hunter, they didn't know what it felt like to lose. They just played to play. Without those guys and their input, they wouldn't have won it.
CHRIS BERMAN: Made you pretty proud at the end of that week, didn't it?
STEWART CINK: It did. It lingered for so long. The feeling of satisfaction lingered. You came from team sports. I'm sure you can identify with how it feels to win championships. It just stays with you so much longer than it does to win an individual deal.
I've been lucky to win five tournaments on the PGA TOUR. It's great, wonderful. Once you get finished with the phone calls and the media interviews, maybe in a day or two, it's like I got to get back to business. No one I'm playing with, certainly they don't care anymore. They're just trying to beat my brains out again.
The Ryder Cup thing, it stayed with me, stayed with all the guys. The ones who were on the team, we still talk about it. We still share things. It's going to be there forever.
CHRIS BERMAN: Everybody felt they shared with you, that's for sure. Pretty good stuff, wasn't it?
The governor mentioned stimulus package. Reality here. Do the players, the ones that have been on TOUR, you're in the middle, the ones on tour Kenny Perry's age, some will look back, they know it was a different time, but some of the younger players only think it's a bonanza out there. Is there a sense among the players, everybody travels, but sometimes you sit in the locker room, We got to make sure that we do our best, however we can present our product better, if that's the right word, as a group, not to shoot a 60, but is there a discussion point among some of the players, What can we do to kind of make sure that golf stays as healthy as possible?
STEWART CINK: It's definitely a dual responsibility out here. I'm definitely responsible for my own golf game, try to play as competitively as I can. There's another side of the equation. You're right about me being in the middle. Players that are younger than 30, younger than I am, I'm 35, they seem to approach the TOUR and the way that the structure is out here differently than the players older than me. It's been here. They seem to think the TOUR has always been and always will be.
Now going through this difficult time that we're in, the PGA TOUR business sort of lags behind the rest of the economy by about a year, give or take, because of contracts and all that. We're not even going to feel our bottom until after the bottom has hit and everybody else is on the upswing. We're starting to realize how important it is to increase value.
Really all we can do to increase value is to spend a little more time with the sponsors, the ProAm, chat it up a little bit more and have a good time, try to be more available and play more.
The more we play, the healthier the game is. That's the same for Tiger Woods as it is to the guy who finished 125th on the Money List. We have to play more, keep the value, driving it home for Travelers. 2014, unbelievable they announced it. Must have something to do with their past champion (laughter). That's all I can think of.
CHRIS BERMAN: Without a doubt.
STEWART CINK: We have to continue to drive the value up. I know that companies are being a lot more sophisticated with the value they're getting out of stuff like PGA TOUR sponsorship. Certainly Travelers is. We have to be more sophisticated with what we can deliver. In the end, it's all about deliverance. We have to deliver it.
CHRIS BERMAN: Back to this thing. I don't need you to necessarily be a cheerleader. We hear Nathan saying anybody going out on this range, it's pretty good. Does that make a difference? In other words, TOUR players go, Boy, that's a good place for me. Is that a draw as much as we like to think it is, maybe get the odd player to start coming, it's a good place for my office for the week?
STEWART CINK: Absolutely, it is. The prototypical practice here is the TPC at Sawgrass. Players love going down there early to THE PLAYERS, which is coming up in two weeks. They love going down there early to practice. You get both ends of the range. Incredible chipping and putting area. Little par three area in the back there that players almost camp out at.
Here I see this becoming the same way. Players like to go where they can get alone and get what they need done done. It's almost a hindrance to have people come up to you constantly, you're trying to focus, but they're trying to get a quote or maybe they're trying to ask, maybe it's another player that wants to talk. It's easy here with a space like this to get away and get what you need done. It's a huge, huge asset for the tournament.
CHRIS BERMAN: Lost in Cromwell basically.
STEWART CINK: You can get lost. Now that they've opened up some par 3 holes, I haven't seen them, you may be able to get lost.
CHRIS BERMAN: We'll open it up to anyone that might have a question. This is our time. Don't be bashful.

Q. Can you talk about the FedExCup. Have they got it right? Do you pay attention to that? Do you just play, let what happens happen?
STEWART CINK: This part of the season, you don't think about it that much. You go and play as well as you can. You don't start thinking about the points till the end of year when it becomes important to be higher up. Obviously, it's important to be high along the way. All you can do now is play golf. Towards the end of the season you start to notice what do I do in the playoff events to try to boost myself up a little bit higher, where do I need to be to have a chance of actually winning. That's when it starts to matter and you start thinking about finishing, different places, all that stuff comes into play. For now I think we're trying to play as well as we can and get wins and get high finishes as much as you can.
Have we got it right? I wish I could tell you the answer to that one because so far the answer seems to not have been yes. But we'll look at it. Nothing's written in stone. We can just keep looking at it. If we have to keep tweaking it a little bit, we will. No one ever said at the start of this deal it would be written down forever the first day. We always can change it and make it better.
I think this year we definitely got it more simple than it was last year. It's a step in the right direction. But I doubt it will be the last time we ever change it.

Q. Can you give us a quick rundown on your equipment, what you're carrying, the new technology you're seeing.
STEWART CINK: I'm using mostly Nike, which is my sponsor. My main equipment sponsor. I use the CCi irons, which are from about 2007, 2008. I've got the highly technological Sumo2 driver, which is actually in the shape of a square. I can't believe I'm actually saying that, but it's true. My woods all have UST shafts, graphite shafts. Steel shafts and irons. Pretty standard for a TOUR player. X100, about as stiff as you can get, extra stiff on all the graphite shaft woods. I'm still only using two wedges, which is a common trend now to go to more. I have a 62-degree wedge I rely on. I guess the belly putter is what separates me out from a lot of other players. I use a belly putter. I've done that for about six years. That's about it. Nike One Tour D is my ball.
CHRIS BERMAN: No Persimmon?
STEWART CINK: I have some Persimmon. Mostly it's by the fireplace waiting. Back when the ball changed about 2000, when we went to solid-core balls, the Persimmon was out of date. Instant classic.
CHRIS BERMAN: Because of the ball?
STEWART CINK: Because of the ball. The Persimmon drivers, they spun the ball the optimum way for the wound ball. For the new ball, they spin it the same way, but they don't launch it high enough, so the ball looks like a wounded duck. It would drop straight to the ground.
CHRIS BERMAN: So that's the problem (laughter).

Q. You mentioned about playing more. Can you talk about what you personally are doing on the TOUR? What is your general feeling about mandatory appearances every four or five years among the top players?
STEWART CINK: There's a pretty popular proposal right now that's circulating around the players and staff to play one in four, sort of called the one in four thing, where everyone would be required to play every tournament on TOUR at least once out of four years. It's gotten some traction. I don't know if it's ever going to become a rule or not. It might.
There's positives and negatives to it. Obviously the positives are Tiger Woods is going to come to every tournament eventually. That's a great thing for all tournaments. The negatives are, when you start imposing rules on that like independent contractors, they can also choose to not play at all. There would be nothing stopping Tiger Woods from playing the European Tour for a few years or the rest of his career. He's got that kind of power. Unfortunately he could do that. That would be a serious mistake if we did that. Got to look at things from both sides.
Personally, I'm just trying -- I added the Honda Classic this year already that I normally don't play in. I'm adding some tournaments here and there. But with the wife and kids at home now, my kids are 12 and 15, they don't travel near as much. I'm trying to use other ways to do my part to get the value driven up. That's maybe attend a few more sponsor parties, ProAm deals, be a little more social with the ProAm group. I'm one of the best out there at pro-ams anyway. Maybe a little annoying to my group (laughter). I don't want to get on anybody's nerves.
I'm trying to do my part. We could all play 35 tournament as year, that would be great, but the level of play would probably suffer a little bit. Got to balance it.

Q. To drive the value up, to be more specific, the week before this tournament, the greatest array of golfers in the world is going to be less than a hundred miles away. You have a sponsor here at a time when the TOUR is losing sponsors. Sponsors are reducing their commitment. You have a sponsor here that just recently went out and extended its commitment beyond what everybody expected. How would you go about getting those guys across the sound to understand the importance of showing their commitment to a sponsor like this and making that hundred-mile trip here?
STEWART CINK: Well, I think the best thing that can be done is exactly what Travelers is doing, and that's staying in the picture all the time. You have Nathan, Andy. These guys are on the range all the time reminding players they're here, they're convenient, the week after the U.S. Open. What they're doing is exactly what I would do. I would constantly be visible out there, be making hotel reservations for everybody, just constantly reminding, We're the week after the U.S. Open. I don't know geography around here, it's a ferry and a car ride.
CHRIS BERMAN: Just a car, easy.
STEWART CINK: Spend the day in New York on Monday. Take the wife shopping. Maybe take in a Broadway show or something. That's what I would like to do. But just make it easy. The travel is the one really difficult part of what we do out here. It comes in many phases, obviously traveling itself, but also being away from the family.
If you take the difficulties and stumbling blocks out of the equation, there's less reason for anybody to say no.

Q. On the players' side of that equation, don't you think there should be some commitment in the players to say here is a sponsor extending its commitment while others are having to cut back?
STEWART CINK: Well, that's the job of the board I'm on. I'm on the PGA TOUR Policy Board. It is our job to get that kind of message out, educate players, let everybody know what this means. Not sure that everybody does quite fully understand what this means, the impact that an extension like Travelers announced this year really does mean.
Yeah, educating the players, just constantly driving home the message to all the players, young and old. That is part of the job. It's effective, too.
CHRIS BERMAN: So how many will you play till here in Quail Hollow?
STEWART CINK: Some players think about their schedule in six months. I think about it in six minutes (laughter).
Right now, all I know for sure is that I'm playing Quail Hollow this week and then THE PLAYERS after that. Probably I will do the Colonial, Crown Plaza. Almost definitely I'll do Memorial. I think we're almost right up to the U.S. Open, then here. There's really only four tournaments for me between now. I almost look at the U.S. Open, Travelers as the same tournament because I won't be going home in between. It's just the same trip and is so easy. I mean, it's right around the corner for me.
CHRIS BERMAN: Being a defending champ, once you tee it up, that and $4.95 will get you a latte at Starbucks. You did it before. You've won other events. Is it important to defend well? I don't know if that's the right question. Then again, as defending champ, you have more obligations. Finally getting to the first tee, you exhale a little bit. Having done it here and a few other places, do you think you'll be better prepared?
STEWART CINK: It's hard to say that that would be applicable because 52 weeks means a whole lot in the span of a career. The game that you bring the year later is never the same game you brought. Sometimes it's a lot better; sometimes it's not as good. Once the festivities, so to speak, are finished early in the week, you get to the first tee and exhale, that is exactly how I put it, you exhale, get to the business of playing golf, you just never know what is going to happen. That's why we tee it up and play all the holes.
I hope to come back this year and play with confidence. Knowing I have won here twice, I will have more confidence than usual. But who knows. You just come back here and do the best you can. If they add up, you beat everybody, then you're happy.
CHRIS BERMAN: I'll say this. You represent the TOUR well. You represent yourself well. We've always felt you've represented this event well from the minute you won it way back in the '90s with Persimmons. You've always represented us well. Welcome home. Only one guy that has his name on it three times.
STEWART CINK: Got a little work to do to catch up with that guy.
CHRIS BERMAN: Nice of Stewart to come up here. Please give him a round of applause.
STEWART CINK: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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