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THE PRESIDENTS CUPDecember 10, 2019Patrick CantlayMelbourne, Australia Q. Have you been to Australia before? PATRICK CANTLAY: I have not. It's my first time. Q. How have you found it so far? PATRICK CANTLAY: I think it's great. I really like the golf course. It reminds me of Southern California a little bit, growing up there, with all the Eucalyptus trees, and the drive from the hotel along the course reminds me of SoCal a little bit. I like it. I've never spent 26 hours in the air before, so it was a long flight. But I think, you know, a couple days, a couple good nights of sleep and should be all good. Team golf is so fun. I haven't played since the 2011 Walker Cup. So I'm really looking forward to the week and having the week with the guys because we play so often just the individual tournaments. And then also match play, it's fun to play match play, and I'm looking forward to it. Q. Do you feel like this course suits your game? PATRICK CANTLAY: Yeah, the golf course is unlike any I've really seen. The greens are so undulating and they are probably the firmest greens I've seen in a long, long time and then with the wind blowing how it is, it's going to be a really tough test. I played all day today, and only made two birdies. It's tough out there. I feel like I've been playing really well for the last year. I've been working really hard and I've been doing all the right things. Being in my second or third year now, seeing all the golf courses has really been helpful. It's a little underrated thing when you first come out on Tour, you haven't seen the golf courses and you're learning them as you go, and seeing them the second and third time has really helped. Q. Patrick Reed is the man of the moment -- what are you expecting? PATRICK CANTLAY: We played together in New Orleans and we had some success there and I enjoy playing with Patrick. I don't know exactly what we're going to do yet. We're still figuring it out but I'd say there's definitely a chance, and if we do play together, I'm going to really enjoy it. I like his competitiveness and I know that no matter where I leave him, he's just going to take whatever I gave him and do his absolute best, which is exactly what you want, especially in alternate-shot. This is my first team event, so I haven't seen him, what he's like during a team event, but he has a reputation for doing really well in match play and doing really well in those high-pressure situations, especially when there's some scrutiny on him, and that dates back all the way to college in the NCAAs. He had a sterling record in the NCAAs. I think it will probably charge him up a little bit and he'll probably play well. Travelling and being here, the fanatics are obviously going to be at home and loud and I think that's part of the fun of playing these team events and being the road team, and then next year, I'm sure, it will be a more favorable crowd. But yeah, it's part of the fun of team golf. We don't get it all the time. When you do get it, I feel like it's better to embrace it. Q. What happened with Patrick Reed -- PATRICK CANTLAY: Penalties happen all the time. I think everyone's had penalties before, and stuff like that. So it's nothing new. We didn't really go over it. Q. The International Team -- cheating -- PATRICK CANTLAY: I think it's overblown. He got his two-stroke penalty and it ended up costing him that playoff. They are fired up and they are doing their best to maybe get their fans going and get their fans to heckle him a little bit. Q. Is Patrick Reed a distraction? PATRICK CANTLAY: I don't think it's that big of a distraction. And once the begun goes off on Thursday, I think it will just be golf. Everyone, no matter who it is, Patrick or anybody else, is expecting a fired-up crowd that's pulling for the International Team. I don't think it adds anything or distracts us at all. Q. Tiger said that they don't read the newspapers. Is that a team attitude? PATRICK CANTLAY: No birdie chance, but I'd say for sure everyone is smart enough to realize that it's just golf. The focus is on the golf and doing the best that they possibly can, and all that other stuff is just noise. It's just background noise. Q. Tell us about Royal Melbourne. What do you think about Royal Melbourne? PATRICK CANTLAY: I've heard a lot of great things. I've heard it's one of the best in the world, the different winds and the different conditions, there's a lot of angles out there that you really have to be cognizant of coming into greens and shaping your ball into greens because the greens are so undulated; that if you don't shape it the right way, a ball will just roll. If you get it working with some of the slopes, the ball will roll, sometimes a hundred feet on these greens. So you definitely have to be smart and pick the right shots coming into the greens, which is something I love about a lot of these classic architecture golf courses. Q. Any favorite holes? PATRICK CANTLAY: They all run together after the long flight. There was lots of pars and lots of putts for pars and bogey. Q. Is it too short for you guys? PATRICK CANTLAY: I don't think so. There's a lot of drivable holes, depending on the wind, and if the wind switches, some of them can be drivable -- less than driver, actually. I don't think it's too short and it really does a great job because there's no rough and it's so firm, that you can't take some of the lines, even if the wind were to switch, because your ball would go actually too far and go into that bush or native area. So I think it actually does a really good job of protecting itself from the bomber, coming around and getting a sizable advantage. I think that you see that with these firm golf courses that length becomes less of an issue with these firm golf courses, and then combine that with it's very difficult to get the ball close. So a shot that's feeding the right way into the green and has the right weight will get closer than somebody that has driven it down there and just trying to land it on the flagstick. Any balls that are landing around the hole, unless we get a lot of rain or they start watering, is not going to settle near the hole. So it's more than just hitting it far and hitting it at the flagstick, which adds another layer in, and really makes golf fun. Q. It's not a course you really play week-to-week. PATRICK CANTLAY: Yeah, it's more like a British Open. It's similar to Carnoustie when we played Carnoustie a couple years ago, but not as firm in the fairways and probably a little firmer on the green, and then obviously with a lot more undulation on these greens than at Carnoustie. Q. Favorite hole at Royal Melbourne? PATRICK CANTLAY: The par 3s are really good. There's a few short par 3s, I can't remember the hole numbers. There's one up the hill, only 140 yards or so, but the green complexes are so good that you have to really pay attention to where the flagstick is and shaping your ball the correct way to get it close. That's fun, and I'm sure I'll be able to play it better on Friday, Saturday, Sunday than I am going to be able to tomorrow, just after seeing it, and that's the fun part about golf when you get on these firm golf courses where learning it and being able to hit all the different shots, you actually play better, as opposed to just playing like you're on the range and just trying to land it 142 or whatever it is. Q. Match play or stroke play? PATRICK CANTLAY: I do like match play. We don't play it very much, match play, which I think makes guys enjoy it more when it is match play. You throw on top of that, the team component this week, it's going to be so fun to have the guys pulling for you and have it be match play. It's easier to get wrapped up in the team this week, as opposed to every week it's kind of more beneficial to insulate yourself and stay in your own zone. For someone that is more reserved a lot of the time and more concerned with trying to Shell -- I would say wall myself off from everybody, it's going to be nice to have a week where it actually going to be fun to kind of get more amped up and enjoy being with the guys. Q. Will you smile more -- PATRICK CANTLAY: If I can make a couple birdies I might smile or. I'll be more amped up this week, and it's easy to do when you have a partner out there. Q. Tiger as a Flagship Event -- PATRICK CANTLAY: Well, we haven't had a Flagship Event since Hale Irwin in '94. It should be interesting. I think if anyone is suited to do, it Tiger is, and he's definitely on top of everything and he's got a lot of responsibilities this week. He's playing great. I played with him today. His game looks really good. I'm sure he won't have too much difficulty doing it all this week, and like I said, if anybody's up for the challenge, it's him. Q. How is this different from a Walker Cup? PATRICK CANTLAY: There's just more going on. Definitely the Walker Cup, everybody is kind of the same age and everybody kind of grew up playing junior golf together. But this, because the age ranges are different and there's guys that I've grown up watching play golf, it's nice to get to know them on a different level, as opposed to Walker Cup, you know most of those guys. It's nice to see them off the golf course, and be able to hang out with them and see who they really are outside of their golf persona. Q. Is there anyone that surprised you or that gave you any kind of advice? PATRICK CANTLAY: I wouldn't say anybody that really surprised me much. But you know, it's nice hanging out with Stricker and Couples and Zach Johnson. It's nice hanging out with the assistant captains. I feel like because they are not worried about the golf, they are more captain to give some advice or talk about how they did things and what they were thinking about in match play or with certain shots. I picked Stricker's brain quite a bit today. He played on the team in 2011 here. It's nice to have those guys kind of on -- in your corner and pulling for you and helping you. Q. Are you similar to Stricker? PATRICK CANTLAY: I like his demeanor or and I like his personality. He's pretty mellow and lowkey, and I can relate to that. Q. Talk about the modern style of golf. What does this course teach? PATRICK CANTLAY: Because there's drivable holes, there's are holes you'll be able to smash it up there and hit a little flip wedge around. But I don't think the scoring will be good as you will see on a normal drivable par 4 because it's so firm. A lot of holes you have to hit 3-iron off the tee or something smaller than even 3-wood. It sometimes is 4- and 5-iron, otherwise you'll go through the fairway. I was saying earlier, the firmness of the golf course is what stops the bomb-and-gauge strategy from working and you're not going to see any of that pay off this week. Q. What do you think about the trend in modern architecture? PATRICK CANTLAY: Modern architecture is perplexing to me a little bit. The golf courses that have the highest scores relative to par now, are your Colonials and Riv, the ones that really make you control your golf ball and hit the fairways, and yet they are building golf courses with wider fairways and making them longer and longer and longer, and those golf courses, guys play the best and shoot the most under par. It's nice and refreshing to play a golf course with the greens being so undulated, it being so firm and not having to just hit it as far as you can off every tee and having some strategy. Q. Have you ever played a course that's too big for you? PATRICK CANTLAY: Yes, there was -- I can't remember the name of the course. Q. Not when you were 12, but as a pro. PATRICK CANTLAY: There was a golf course on the Web tour that they played at 7,600 or 7,700 yards. I felt it definitely didn't fit into my style at the time. I think it was really one of the only missed cuts I've had on that tour. A lot of the new golf courses I think are trending the wrong way, and they don't have a lot of rough and the fairways are too wide. If you want to make scores higher and you want to really test the guys out here, you firm it up and narrow the fairways and make the penalty for missing the fairways large. Unfortunately we just don't see that enough. Q. More dog-legs and bunkers -- PATRICK CANTLAY: You could. You see that at Hawai'i. I haven't played Sony, but a lot of those -- but even J.T. when he won, he was smashing that driver over the bunkers and everything. Yeah, you see it with golf courses like that that have the doglegs that it's a lot more difficult for those bombers to really have as much of an advantage as they would at like an Erin Hills or like a Torrey Pines. Q. Will you play in Hawai'i? PATRICK CANTLAY: I'm going to play Kapalua beforehand. I've got to save the one-off events for the every-five-years. Not confirmed, but I like that golf course. Q. When you got your first group text as part of this team, did you recognize all the numbers? PATRICK CANTLAY: I didn't have every number. Q. Who didn't you have? PATRICK CANTLAY: I didn't have Brooks' number. He was about the only one, but some of the guys had new numbers. Q. What do you think we'll see this week on the greens? PATRICK CANTLAY: I think you'll see putting around the greens. Putting from the fescue surrounds of the greens and I think you'll see bumps into the hills just because the greens are so firm that you can't land it on the greens, especially if you're short-sided. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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