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WELLS FARGO CHAMPIONSHIPMay 13, 2015Kevin KisnerCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Kevin Kisner into the Interview Room here at the Wells Fargo coming off of a spectacular showing last week at The Players Championship. First of all, Kevin, if we can get you to comment on what an exciting Sunday that was for you. KEVIN KISNER: Yeah. It was whirlwind. Enjoyed every bit of it. Lot of fun to be in the mix. Obviously a great atmosphere to be a part of. Super cool setting there on 17 to be in a playoff and have all those fans going crazy and looked like we put on a heck of a show. So, yeah, it was just super cool event. JOHN BUSH: Here at the Wells Fargo Championship this will be your fourth start, a T-6 here last year. Get some comments on this golf course and how it sets up for your game. KEVIN KISNER: I feel at home here. Both my parents grew up in Charlotte. Spent a lot of time in this area of my life. My brother-in-law is a member here. Played the golf course a bunch. Love the golf course, sets up perfect for my game. Played well last year. Got into the mix. Played in the last group on Saturday and second to the last group on Sunday. Very familiar with the golf course and looking forward to getting going tomorrow. JOHN BUSH: Let's go into questions. Q. Kevin, confidence-wise, after Hilton Head and last week, you must be on Cloud 9. KEVIN KISNER: Yeah. Got a lot of confidence in my game. Hitting the golf ball really solid. Working it both ways. Seeing every shot, hitting them. So it's one of those stretches in your career where you know you're playing well, you're hot so you better keep playing and do it as long as you can. Hopefully it will last the rest of the year. Q. Kevin, I think one of the things that made that Sunday playoff so memorable to people is that everyone played well, like all three of you. There really weren't any bad shots. KEVIN KISNER: Right. Q. When you're right in the middle of that, can you -- are you even aware of it or do you have time to reflect since that? KEVIN KISNER: Yeah. It was impressive golf, obviously, but I mean that's what we hit all those golf balls on the range for and practice for is to be in that situation and, you know, that's the kind of stuff I live for is to be in the moment and to pull the shots off. That's what we dream about and that's what it's all about. I've always wanted the ball in my hand coming down the stretch and I felt like I've had it two out of the last three weeks and I've done just about everything I can. One of these days I'm going to shoot 65 on Sunday and come up and somebody is going to hand to it me (laughter). Q. Kevin, along those lines, leaving there Sunday, what percentage of you kind of felt satisfied in how well you played and what percentage of you felt the sting of not getting a trophy? KEVIN KISNER: I haven't really felt any sting. Obviously it would be great to win as far as job security, you know, all the exemptions that would have come along with it. If I keep playing the way I'm playing, I'm going win one sooner or later. That's kind of by staying focused on what I've been doing, stay in my process and one of these I'm going to knock off. You keep beating on that door long enough you'll fall through. That's kind of what I've been keeping my head up with. Q. What's the biggest thing you gained out of working with John Tillery? KEVIN KISNER: Ball striking. I was over 100th the first three years on Tour. We started a year and a half ago. He hasn't changed my game plan. We worked probably on the same things for six months, still working on it today and hopefully we're just scratching the surface of where we can go and if we keep improving on this, this scale, I think we got great things ahead of us. Q. Along those same lines, John told me yesterday when you guys started working together that you told him if you could just drive the ball a little bit better, get me to Sunday I can get it done. Where does that confidence come from? KEVIN KISNER: I don't know. That's kind of how I was raised. My dad was always an athlete, competitor. I grew up playing a lot of golf with kids and all we wanted to do is beat each other. If you want to beat somebody you had to learn how to do it and just every level I've won and that's what I love to be in that situation is to -- I want the pressure, I want to feel it and I feel like I can perform when I have the pressure on me. But at some point I'm going to hit a bad shot under pressure. That's just part of it. The last four, five holes in Heritage and Players I don't think I missed a shot. I hit every shot like I wanted to and shoot, even the putts. I would think putting is probably harder than hitting the golf ball down the stretch because it's probably where you feel the most nerves. Still can't believe that putt don't go in on 18 (laughter). Q. What specifically with the swing and work you done kind of kicked in? What's different? KEVIN KISNER: We worked a lot on width out of the top of the bad swing, get narrow, cause me to get steep and working really hard on my lower body, instead of spinning out of the top I turn my hips really quickly and straighten my left leg so we're trying to get some flexion in my left leg and stay on the ground more so you can use the ground and picked up a considerable amount of distance with the driver and it's really helping on the Tour. Obviously we all know how far everybody hits it. You can hit an 8-iron into greens instead of a 6-iron, makes a huge difference. That's one of the big things we've done. Q. Did your dad play in college? KEVIN KISNER: Had offers to play quarterback at East Tennessee State and one of the military academies. He was wise beyond his years. He knew he wasn't going to make any money in the NFL. He went to NC State and got an engineering degree. I throw a football with him at the beach. He can still shoot a basketball, played baseball in high school. Went to Harding High School. All-State, All-Region. Pretty cool. You know, he's got that competitive edge and I think that's where I got it from. Q. Did you play sports growing up? KEVIN KISNER: Football and basketball to the 10th grade. Too small and too slow in everyone of them. I played a wing-back in football which is basically a dummy blocker and then I played a shooting guard in basketball. My golf coach was my basketball in high school. He said, "I think you better stick with the golf" (laughter) JOHN BUSH: All right. Anything else. Q. Did you go home for a day or two and did your buddies say much to you? KEVIN KISNER: I drove to my brother-in-law's hunting camp, Duck Bottom. Boo Weekley and a couple caddies were already there. We hung out all day on Monday and shot guns and hunted hogs and no cell phone service so it was awesome. Just a cool way to decompress and it's about an hour and a half from here. We drove up yesterday morning. I played 18 and back to the grind today. Q. Get any hogs? KEVIN KISNER: We did not. Might have been too many beers consumed to get any hogs. Q. How long have you and Scott Brown gone back? KEVIN KISNER: We probably been playing golf together for 20 years. We play golf everyday we're at home, practice together. Q. Back to your junior days? KEVIN KISNER: Oh, yeah. He went to North Augusta High School. I went to South Aiken. We played everywhere in high school. When I moved back to Aiken after college, he was still around. We played the mini tours and traveled together and played together. If he wasn't there I don't know if I would still live in Aiken because practicing by yourself is boring so it's cool to have him around to be able to go practice and play golf with and someone at your level to compete against. Q. Palmetto, what is that place? KEVIN KISNER: It's such a cool place to be able to play. We can jump in the car and if we want to play 18 holes we can play in an hour and a half. If we want to go out and hit four, five drivers and chip and putt and members pull up, they don't care. "Y'all go ahead. We'll go around." They all embrace the fact we're trying to do it for a living. They love having us there and super, super special to us so they enjoy having us around and we just love being at that place. Q. Given the way you play right now, what do you feel like your chances are this weekend? KEVIN KISNER: I don't see any reason why I can't compete again. I don't feel tired. I don't feel worn out or anything. I played great yesterday. Still hitting the ball solid. I'm going to have a little session with John this afternoon when I get done and he said he wanted to firm a couple things up and get ready to go again tomorrow. JOHN BUSH: All right, Kevin Kisner. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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