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SBS TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 5, 2017

Jimmy Walker

Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii

ALEX URBAN: I'd like to welcome Jimmy Walker to the interview room here at the SBS Tournament of Champions following the first round.

Jimmy, great playing today, 8-under par. Take us through your day.

JIMMY WALKER: The day started off with a nice drive down the first. I don't know if you can hit that fairway. I was down there in the sweet spot in the rough. Knocked it on and hit a good putt and didn't go in.

I hit a great shot into 2, a 7-iron to about three feet. Made that.

Another good look on the next. Didn't go.

Made a good birdie on 4. I got to watch Brandt putt down there.

Then 5, made the long putt for eagle. That was nice. Had about 12 feet of break on it. That's huge.

Birdied the next hitting kind of a little chipper off the fairway that kind of hit and ran to kind of the back pin and made that.

Then just kind of -- I hit a lot of good shots but didn't make any putts in the middle part of the round.

I hit two good shots into 9, but got myself into a spot where it was hard to hit it close.

You know, I played 10 good, 11 good.

11, I didn't hit a very good shot.

12, played great.

Good shots into 13.

And then 14, wasn't sure I was going to carry the bunker on the right just with the way I wanted to hit it, and I had been kind of missing it up the left side. The rough and with that left pin, I just didn't think hitting driver was going to be good there. So I just laid up and I was wedging it close, so I wedged it up there nice and close and made that downhill putt.

Didn't hit a very good drive on the par 5. Left it out to the right, tough shot, and a great pitch shot to about five feet and made that.

16, had a good look. Hit the cup.

17, bad drive. Got lucky on the second shot. Made a good par save there from about 50 yards there. Made about a 16-, 18-footer or something there.

18, hit it down the middle. Had a little mud on the ball. Was in a divot. Hit 5-wood out to the fairway and then wedged it up to like three feet. It was good.

Good wedge play. Good ball control.

Q. Can you take us through the thinking behind and the process of getting the 42-inch driver in the bag?
JIMMY WALKER: Well, the thinking is, that, just looked at kind of the stats and the career stuff, and I'm 50/50, pretty much for the year. Last year I didn't drive it as well as I would have liked to have.

I just kind of got to thinking. It was just kind of an experiment. I decided to cut one down and threw some tape on it liked it. It looks weird and sometimes it feels a little weird on the golf course, but I've been playing with it for about three weeks at home. I've since had Titleist make me a new one at that length, and I've been enjoying hitting it.

I actually have a 3-wood that's cut down, too, now. The 5-wood is not yet. But I'm liking it. I didn't really see much. Lost a little bit of speed on the ball off the driver. But spin rates were great.

And I just feel like I've got more control. I feel like the golf swing is better at that length for me, and that's where I've always struggled, the longer the club got. So that's the thinking. More fairways is what I'm looking for.

Q. How much distance do you think you've lost?
JIMMY WALKER: I don't know. I mean, it's -- it can be as much as -- it just depends on the height. If I tee it up and let it go, I don't see much difference. But kind of some of the lower shots are not quite carrying as far. It's anywhere between, you know, five to 20 yards, just depending on what's going on.

And it's tough to tell this week with what's going on. The ball, you don't know what kind of bounce you're getting; if it's soft. Like I hit a good one down 18 and it was a lower, kind of bullet, and I had mud on the ball, so I don't know what kind of bounce I got.

Q. You don't seem to be losing much sleep over it.
JIMMY WALKER: I'm not. I mean, no. I was interested to bring it here. I didn't bring anything else. So this is the only club I've got with me. I was enjoying it with me and all my buddies at home liked it. I took it to Butch; he liked it.

This is a tough golf course for that because it's such a big place and you want to just kill it, and I had to keep reminding myself today why I put it in and why I did it to hit the fairway, hit the middle fairway. Not that that's a huge task at this golf course. But places like next week are, and kind of the rest of the year. So I've enjoyed hitting it, and it's still taking a little getting used to.

Q. Sorry to go on about a detail, but can you explain physically how you exactly cut it down and put tape on it where?
JIMMY WALKER: Well, the original one, yeah. I took it over to my buddy's house and he wrapped duct tape around it and he hand-sawed it off with a hacksaw. And then we stripped all the tape off it. We didn't have a shaft cutter. So you've got to -- with the grip still on -- we did it with the grip on, so it doesn't splinter the shaft. I mean, it was a process. It was actually pretty fun we just started sawing away on it.

He goes, "How long do you want it?"

I said, "I want you to cut right here." I didn't know how long it was. I just said, "Let's just try this," and we went from there. And it was hard to get the weight up. I had to put a lot of lead tape on it to get the weight back up -- what's that? What about the tape?

Q. When you cut it, did you just put tape around it?
JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, just taped it up. I built up the grip just a little bit, because you're a little further down on the shaft. And I have a swing weight machine at home, I lead taped it up and went out and started hitting it.

Q. Did you try any other lengths?
JIMMY WALKER: No, I just went with that one.

I went extreme to see what it did. Could I move back up to 43 -- and 43 was the standard not too long ago. I remember I was hitting a 43 1/2 inch driver in college. So it's not that far off. I just went extreme just to see what it was going to do, and if it changed and if it did much.

Q. If my memory serves me right, you arrived here in 2014 as the FedExCup leader. Didn't have a great tournament here that week, but things have drastically changed for you since then. Today obviously you walk off, 8-under, leader. Can you just talk about how far you've come since 2014 when you played here the first time?
JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, a lot of great memories of golf, a lot of wins, a major championship and a lot of experience. I feel different. I feel like I'm, I don't know, part of the top level of golf now. It's been a great ride. I think it's just getting going, too. I'm excited.

Q. Tell me if I'm being harsh, but after the big win, the back half of last year, started to just fall away, a bit tired for yourself. Did you think that coming here, obviously you've had a lot of success, was the pickup you might have needed to get back to that PGA Championship?
JIMMY WALKER: I don't know I've -- it was a lot to deal with right afterwards. I played some tournaments I probably shouldn't have played right after. I felt like I had a decent Playoffs. I had a third place alone at Deutsche Bank and played pretty good the next week at BMW. TOUR Championship was okay, and then I played well at Ryder Cup.

Mentally, I was kind of done after that. I wanted to take some time off and I played two events I probably shouldn't have played. I was ready to get back home and reassess. I told Rickie I would be ready to go play the World Cup for him and I was, and I played well there.

And then we started the break down of the year and what I needed to work on, and here we are.

Q. What is it about Hawai'i and the West Coast that is so great for you?
JIMMY WALKER: I enjoy being here. I love the scenery. I'm a very visual person, so I enjoy looking out and watching the whales when I'm walking around. Just a pretty place. The food's great. Everybody's in a good mood. I love stepping off the plane and the air is just awesome. There's just something -- something does it for me here.

Q. The shots you hit coming in with a wedge, what one pleased you most?
JIMMY WALKER: The shot and the wedge into 15 was pretty good. I was really happy to get down there and see that I had a downgrain lie to that flag. It sure makes it a lot easier. So that was a nice pitch at that. That's a tough little shot. That was in just right. That was probably my favorite wedge shot.

You know, it's a par 5, you want to birdie it. The guys, it's usually a birdie hole, so you don't want to kind of give one back.

Q. What were you thinking on the second shot? It looked like Andy wouldn't shut up for the longest time -- one thing after another after another.
JIMMY WALKER: He said he wanted me to make sure I hit a hard shot into the green. He wanted me deep into the green, as opposed to coming up short and right. He thought it was going to be harder, and it was a hard shot. The wind is off the left, pushing a little bit. The ball is way below my feet. You want to hit a hard draw against it and it's like your body is just going like, yeah, I don't really want to do that and you hit the shot out to the right. It's easy to over-cook it and I just bailed out on it.

I said, all right, it's no big deal. I'll go down there and try to make a birdie. I didn't get mad about it.

Q. You said that you kind of did an assessment of what you needed to work on, coming off the biggest win of your career. What are you trying to work on and where are you trying to get to?
JIMMY WALKER: I talked to Broadie, the stats guy that does all the strokes-gained stuff for the TOUR, and he broke down the year and what he thought, where the anomalies were in the year compared to the first two, three years, and thought it came down to putting. I think it all boils down to speed. I wasn't getting the ball to the hole enough.

And so that's kind of easy to fix. You just hit it harder. I know I'm a good putter. I just get more aggressive. I'm not saying it's a fix, but look at that and say, okay, I think just from where I was missing putts, I don't normally miss, my speed was off. Working on that.

And trying to hit more fairways. If you can hit one more fairway every other round, it's going to help you out immensely through the course of the year on the strokes gained deal. He's like: This is where you're at, this is where the Top-10 guys in the world are. If you can get your putting to where it normally is, and if you can get your driving to here; your wedge play ws as good as anybody on TOUR. From 150 and in, you're outstanding.

Looking at the par 3s, my par 3 scoring was off, so I was probably a little too aggressive on those. Short-siding myself; and you just can't short-side yourself out here. It's too penalizing.

Those were some things I looked at and worked on. I do it ever year. You don't know anything is happening until you get a set of data to look at. Three events aren't going to do anything for you.

Q. Do the stats tell you that you're missing putts short?
JIMMY WALKER: He can see that. Just from the survey grid, he can figure out where you're missing.

Q. Have you always gone to Broadie?
JIMMY WALKER: No, it's the first time.

Q. Surprise you, as a good a putter as you are? Would you have guessed that?
JIMMY WALKER: You don't know why. You don't know what's happening. I went through a period in the beginning of the year where I didn't feel like I was making a lot, but I wasn't 3-putting. Everything was right around the cup. I just wasn't making anything. I mean, it's hard to say looking at it what was going on. And then you can have a guy say, hey, all of your -- you're missing putts in this spot where I don't normally miss. So it was interesting, a good hour talk.

Q. As someone who is already winning out here pretty regularly how do you measure confidence-wise getting a major?
JIMMY WALKER: I don't know if I've quite figured that out yet. I know that it's still real surreal, man. You walk by it and you see it and you bring it around and you take it on trips with you, because everybody wants to see it; and you walk by it and you look at it. I still have the app on my phone, I watch the winning putt all the time and the celebration. It's really fun to watch.

So I keep watching it, and it's a great moment in my life. Definitely want to do it again. I know I can do it now, which is cool. So I think once you know you can do something, it's easier to repeat. Until you know you can do it, it seems hard and it seems foreign and far away, and now you know you can do it.

Q. You've been on the other side of it. Did it turn out, I don't want to say easier, but easier than you thought it might be once you get on the other side of it?
JIMMY WALKER: I don't know, I think guys will tell you, when you play good, golf feels real easy. I mean, it just does. God, why can't I do that all the time. But you don't and you can't. It's hard.

I've always felt like when you're playing well, now that I figured out since I won, I won a couple more times, like sometimes it's harder to grind and make the cut sometimes, because you're not on. It's hard. Golf is hard when you're trying to make birdies, you're two back and you've got nine holes to go, making the cut, that's hard sometimes. It's hard all the time.

But when you're on and you're playing well, and your body feels good, you're in a good frame of mind; you're there for a reason. It's because you're on, and I think you really need to relish that when you're in that situation and enjoy that. It doesn't happen a whole lot. I've always tried to embrace that and enjoy it. That's what you're out here trying to do is have those chances, and you've really got to enjoy it.

I've always known that -- I think it's really rare, you kind of go out there and -- it's rare you go out and hack it and win a golf tournament. Everybody is too good. You have to be on. I don't care what anybody says. I think you're on. When you win out here, you're on.

ALEX URBAN: All right. Thank you for your time, Jimmy. Good luck this week.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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