|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPSJune 3, 2015Stewart JollyBrandon PierceEric RicardBenjamin TaylorChuck WinsteadZach WrightBRADENTON, FLORIDA THE MODERATOR: We are honored to be joined today by the LSU Tigers and their fifth national championship this afternoon and their first since 1955. Congratulations and welcome. Joining us are head coach Chuck Winstead, students Stewart Jolly, Brandon Pierce, Eric Ricard, Ben Taylor and Zach Wright. Just a quick opening statement about how excited you are to win the national championship and just your thoughts on today's match. CHUCK WINSTEAD: Well, hats off to USC and Coach Chris Zambri. We don't have the opportunity to play with them very much. Maybe a couple times a year, but they've got five great players and played really well today. Proud of my guys. Obviously the Concession Club, it's a challenging golf course, and to be able to play around here the way they did this week, we're very happy about it. I only saw Ben Taylor. I watched my phone for about six hours closely, so I don't know that I know yet. Q. For anybody who wants to answer, how far away did this dream feel heading into the last day of regionals? STEWART JOLLY: I don't think it felt that far off because we knew that we were due to play a good round at regionals, and we've been doing that all year. We've had several tournaments where we started off poorly, but we have played very, very well in the final round, and we started after the second round, we all got together and had a little talk, and we all started believing in each other. Well, we obviously believed in each other the whole time, but we started getting our minds wrapped around that we could actually make the comeback, and we went out there ready to play and played phenomenal and got ourselves here. Q. Who was leading that conversation or that meeting? STEWART JOLLY: This guy over here started it off. Q. What did you say, Coach? CHUCK WINSTEAD: Well, through the 10 years that I've done this, we've made nationals, and I don't have the exact numbers, but I want to say maybe we've made five of the last six or something like that, and almost every time we've had to play well the last round. Regionals, as any college coach would know, it's challenging, no matter where you are, no matter how good you are. So I gave the guys examples of John Peterson, Andrew Loupe, Sang Yi, Austin Gutgsell, when they were at Virginia Tech and had to play a great round the last round, showed them the progression in scores, 305, 291, 284. You know what I'm saying? And I think I need to be a better coach and get the 284 on the front end because these guys are great players, but for whatever reason, we've had to do it. I showed them the examples. I told them I believed that they could do it, and I told them that if they didn't believe they could do it that it wasn't going to happen. Q. Ben, can you run down the two putts on 18? BENJAMIN TAYLOR: Sure, my first one I had into the grain up to the slope to get to the top of that tier and then it was very quick going to the hole, and surprisingly past it, just over that bunker, it can run off the green, so we knew it was a very fast putt. Having said that, I didn't hit a very good putt, didn't even get it anywhere near the hole and had that eight‑foot putt down the hill, and it was straight downgrain. It was relatively straight, just broke a touch off the left, and we hit that putt in the practice round so I was quite confident with the line and hit a good putt, and it never looked like missing. Q. Yesterday there was that putt on 18 that you didn't get to putt out. How happy were you that you got to putt this one out and it dropped and you won a national championship? BENJAMIN TAYLOR: I was thinking the same thing actually because yesterday was fun hitting that shot close and I wanted to putt it because it obviously feels nicer to hole the putt, but having said that, you're always going to take the win, of course. But today was special. Coach said to me numerous times today and said to me before I hit the last putt, I've holed a million of these putts, it's just one more putt, and we knew we were going to hole it, we had the perfect line, and it was a very special moment for me to end my college career. Holing that nine‑foot putt to win the national championship was very special. Q. I know you're the only player to win a D‑II and a D‑I national title. How does that feel, and reflect on your decision to come to LSU two years ago. BENJAMIN TAYLOR: It's an awesome feeling. I'm very lucky to ‑‑ having competed for two very special schools. Nova Southeastern, it was a very good school, and winning the national championship with them was amazing, and I actually won that with Garrett. He was my coach, and to make the transition to LSU and to be guided by Chuck and Garrett again is very special, and to win both national championships is awesome, but to come here to Concession and hole that putt to win the Division I national championship is very, very special. Q. How happy and how proud are you of Ben for making that transition to LSU and trusting you to move over with Garrett? CHUCK WINSTEAD: Yeah, like he said, he had a relationship built with Garrett, and Garrett has done a phenomenal job coaching him. From my perspective, he came over to the team, fit in with the guys, and you know, I'm obviously proud of the putt. But the other guys up here holed putts, too. That's the one that is going to be shown as sealing the deal, but it's like the last free throw that goes in. In golf, at least from my perspective, it happens over about a two‑and‑a‑half mile stretch out there, and there are putts missing, and all of a sudden one goes in at the end. I'm proud of all of them. Q. How are you going to remember this team and this season in the future? CHUCK WINSTEAD: I mean, I'm obviously proud of them.  We did‑‑ in some ways have a breakthrough last year making match play and then winning our first match against UCLA. We played and lost to a great Alabama team, who won the national championship. To come back, lose Smylie Kaufman and Curtis Thompson and have Eric Ricard and Brandon Pierce step into this lineup this year and play the way they did, I don't know all the scoring averages out there, but I'll put those two sophomores up against almost any sophomores relative to what they contributed to my team. You know, so I guess for me, I'm proud of all of them. It's more than golf. I'm proud of them just the people that they are, and I'm happy for them that they get to experience this. Q. Brandon and Eric, can you guys comment real quick, at the start of the year you get in the lineup and do what you did this year to help this team get to where they were today? ERIC RICARD: I knew that somebody needed to step up, the team, because we had three really solid players, Ben, Zach and Stewart, so I needed to work hard to make the lineup and contribute to the team. BRANDON PIERCE: I mean, I was coming back after a winter break, didn't know where my game was going to be, had a couple good tournaments, and I knew my goal was really to step up and make the lineup because I hadn't done it the previous spring. I worked really hard over the fall on my swing and just technical stuff, and it so happened that I made it into the top 5 and started traveling with the team and just kept on going. Q. How do you compare and contrast this year's team and the one that lost in the semifinals? STEWART JOLLY: I think that they're both very special teams. Last year‑‑ I feel like we were actually pretty close to being able to do what we did this year. It was just a couple of things went Alabama's way, and that's why we lost the semifinals, and then this year we got a couple of things go our way, and here we are. Just a couple of breaks out‑‑ I mean, small things. It doesn't take much to get the momentum from matches going certain ways. I mean, we played great. Q. Zach, how would you compare and contrast this year's team to the one that lost last year? What's different about it in other words? ZACH WRIGHT: I don't know. I mean, like last year we went there, and I guess we thought we could make match play I'd say, and then like once we got there, we were so excited to make match play, and then this year, I guess like we came here expecting to make match play, and then like going on and like trying to do this, and like last year it was kind of like a shock, so when we did, like, get to match play, we weren't exactly prepared for it I'd say, and then this year we were definitely mentally there. Q. Yesterday you talked about what you guys learned from last year and a lot of that was they were excited just to get there. How easy was it to go to bed last night? CHUCK WINSTEAD: Well, I don't know exactly what time they went to sleep, but it probably was later than I wanted them to. It's still exciting. The Golf Channel does such a great job showing the championship, that when you see‑‑ and all of you guys that care about these guys and what they do, when you have success and then you're able to go back to the hotel room when you're 18 to 22 years old and you get to watch yourself on television, it's hard to go to bed. You're excited about the opportunity to succeed and you're excited about the opportunity that may exist to win a national championship, and then you get to go and watch yourself‑‑ the rerun. It's on until midnight. My guess is that these guys probably‑‑ even though the text message and the message was turn it off, I'm sure they were up late. Q. There's a lot of former players on Twitter that are so excited. Just how much did these former players care about this program and how cool was it to see? CHUCK WINSTEAD: LSU is a special place. I'm a homer, but it's a special place. It doesn't matter what sport you play. It doesn't matter‑‑ I mean, Tiger Stadium is a special place, but I promise you, it's not the football. It's the people. It's the people at Alex Box for the super regional coming up this weekend, and all those people‑‑ it doesn't‑‑ men's golf, women's golf, it doesn't matter. If you're successful‑‑ even if you're not successful, they love these guys because they carry a banner that means so much to those people. I don't know how to put it into words. When you're there, if you're on campus or you're there and people that go to Tiger Stadium feel it, it's real. Q. This was the first year of the new format again with 72 holes of stroke play, three rounds of match play. CHUCK WINSTEAD: Yeah, I've got a fun story about that one. Q. Please. CHUCK WINSTEAD: I didn't know. I didn't read the manual. I told these guys we were playing 54. Like Garrett, he printed it off, I wasn't even in town. He didn't know, either. We're sitting in the coaches' meeting out there. I didn't pay attention. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. You have to play great. But I thought it was the same as last year when I was sitting in that coaches' meeting out there. Biggest mistake‑‑ Q. When was that? CHUCK WINSTEAD: This week. Q. Like six days ago? CHUCK WINSTEAD: Yeah. 10 years of doing this, these guys will laugh because like details aren't my thing. The biggest one and the first one. It was that big. There's lots of other ones, but how crazy is that? I'm just saying, at the end of the day, you know, these programs that come here and the coaches are so good that from my perspective honestly, I don't have to look too close at the details. I know that if we don't play great, we won't be there, because Vanderbilt, they're a great team, USC, they're a great team, Georgia played great this week in stroke play, Texas has a great team, UCLA has a great team, Illinois, I've got such respect for Mike and what he does at Illinois. If you don't play great, you're not going to be around, whether you play 54, 72, 36, 108, doesn't matter. As much as it's funny for these guys to laugh at me, which they have every right to, at the end of the day, if we don't play well, we're not going to be here. Q. What was your reaction when you did find out it was 72? CHUCK WINSTEAD: I mean, you've got to like if. You've got to like it. It is what it is. You just tell me what the rules are and we'll play by the rules, whatever they are. Q. How difficult is the week? If you include the practice round, it's eight rounds in seven days. How much of a grind is it? CHUCK WINSTEAD: It's long. I didn't play. It's long. But all that to be said, Stackhouse and who from Baylor‑‑ how phenomenal did they play coming down the stretch? And all I kept telling these guys, they played phenomenal golf coming down the stretch, same format, nobody looked like they were tired, grabbed their bag and hit shots out of the lake to nothing and then to make birdies coming in? That was special. That was really great. It's like I said yesterday, you can't‑‑ I mean, it's the national championship. Tired doesn't work. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|