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SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN OPEN

October 31, 2017

Scott Strohmeyer

Las Vegas, Nevada

JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Scott Strohmeyer into the interview room here at the Shriners Hospital for Children Open. First of all, let's go back to last week at Sanderson Farms Championship, you prequalified, you Monday qualified, and then you finished tied for fourth to earn your way here into the event in Las Vegas. Just get some comments on what that week meant for your career?

SCOTT STROHMEYER: It's my first ever PGA TOUR event, so that's one thing I'll never forget, for sure. To go through all the prequalifiers and Monday qualifiers, I think it made it that much more special to me, just because I feel like I worked hard to kind of get that opportunity. But it was a great experience. I love that golf course set up for my game. Being able to have Wayne, my caddie, who caddies for Andrew Loupe, he was kind of the difference maker. Just kind of leaned on him because he has a ton of experience being out here. So that was very helpful.

JOHN BUSH: Now a very important week for you here as well. Just talk a little bit about your goals for this week?

SCOTT STROHMEYER: Trying to keep them simple. Obviously, can't get caught up too much in points and trying to, you know, make sure I finish in a certain place to get some type of status. But, just biggest thing is kind of getting comfortable on the golf course, setting little small goals each day, and trying to just stay one shot at a time like I did last week.

Q. What you were able to do last week is pretty rare. But in saying that, can you talk to how good it is that that is actually available to you and a lot of the players?
SCOTT STROHMEYER: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's a great thing that the PGA TOUR offers because it always gives you the opportunity to have one good week, and then, essentially, if you capitalize on it, you can play your way on to the PGA TOUR. It's very difficult, but it's possible.

So like I missed -- didn't get through the first stage of Q-school, so instead of being discouraged and thinking my year was going to be over and I was going to have to be on mini tours again, it kind of gave me an opportunity to, all right, instead of Q-school being the route to the PGA TOUR. I'm now going to go try to do Monday qualifiers, so let me see what I can do. So I think the fact that PGA TOUR offers that is great, because it gives guys a second chance to get into the PGA TOUR.

Q. How much confidence do you take from last week's win? I don't know if you know, but there wasn't a single Monday qualifier in the top 10 last year, so you obviously must be taking tremendous confidence forward?
SCOTT STROHMEYER: Absolutely. I've always felt like my game fits the PGA TOUR very well the way the courses are set up. I hit the ball high and I hit it fairly far. So going in, I was unsure. I knew that I could play well on a PGA TOUR style course, which was nice. But walking away with a T-4 in my first event gives me a lot of confidence.

I played very, very well, but I also didn't feel like I had my best stuff. So to know that I can contend and I don't have to be perfect, that was the biggest thing that gives me confidence going forward. I don't have to be perfect to play well out here.

Obviously, the golf course fit my game very well and that will change each week, but that was a big confidence boost.

Q. You mentioned not trying too hard -- can you just talk about your relationship with Justin, and what that's done to help you?
SCOTT STROHMEYER: Yeah, absolutely. Anytime you can have a major champion, a FedExCup champion in your contact list, let alone it being a good, close friend, that's huge. I've reached out to him after I qualified, because I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know where to register. I didn't know, essentially, anything. So having friends out here, and Justin being one of them, was helpful. Just instead of trying to figure things out, he kind of told me what to do. So he helped me more on what to do instead of what's going on. I feel like that was a big help.

His advice to me was it doesn't take as much as you think it does, and that was what kind of allowed me to relax. I was thinking about trying to make the cut on Friday. His advice was to try to Chase down the leaders and focus on playing as good a round as possible and don't worry about the cut. That helps, and shooting the 6, that put me right there in contention. So I have to give him a lot of praise for helping me out there.

Q. Seeing what he's done in such a short period of time, is it hard to stay grounded yourself and stay patient? He's already done so much.
SCOTT STROHMEYER: Not really with Justin, because he's always been better than me. In college I always looked up to him. He was one of the guys on the team that I tried to emulate, tried to kind of take the things that he did and apply them to my game.

But the PGA TOUR, the past couple of years and the Web.com Tour, a lot of my friends and people that I've played against, I've kind of been in the same area, I would say in college and had success. So seeing them have success gave me the confidence that I can do it, I just have to give myself the opportunities to do so.

Q. You were on that Bama team that won the National Championship in 2013 with Justin, and they won it the next year as well. But what did you see in his game at that time that made him so special?
SCOTT STROHMEYER: I always tell people he's the -- one of the best I've ever seen at getting the ball in the hole. When he's on, obviously, he's one of the best in the world. But I think the strongest asset of his game is he doesn't have to have his best stuff to still win. It seemed like he was always under par in college. So he was just at a whole different level than I was and a lot of us in college in that sense, that he just got the golf ball in the hole quicker than everybody else, and it didn't matter what he had to do to do it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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