SONY OPEN IN HAWAII

January 16, 2021

Stewart Cink

Waialae Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. How would you assess your round?

STEWART CINK: It was a scrappy round. I made a lot of good saves. My putting definitely was a key to saving my score. I felt like I was in the rough a lot. I started off shaky. I hit it up against the fence on 1 and had to play that hole in a crazy way and that sometimes is hard to shake off but I did a really good job of kind of righting the ship there.

Overall I'm pleased with a good round. Definitely the scoring conditions definitely were just absolutely idea again. I'm not surprised the scoring was really low.

Q. Funny to say this. But was that bogey on 1 kind of a good bogey, because you made two birdies right after and kept the round progressing?

STEWART CINK: Yeah, it's definitely nice to bounce back and make a few birdies right after a bogey like that. It was a good bogey in the sense that I could have made double real easily, but it was a little bit of A shock. I hit such beautiful drives off the range. My warmup session was picture perfect drivers, and then you get up there and hit one almost out-of-bounds. It's a little bit of a shock.

And Reagan was actually really good about saying, "Hey, it happens, it's golf and shake it off, don't let it get you rattled." He was doing the veteran talk and I was kind of like acting like a rookie (chuckling). It was good to have him sort of steadying me, and it paid off, a couple birdies right after that.

Q. Not just the father/son relationship, but what's the biggest thing that he brings to you, to your game right now, as a caddie?

STEWART CINK: Well, one thing I think that when you have your son caddying for you, or if I had my dad caddying or Lisa, is that there's an unconditional sense of love and sort of like acceptance there that may not be present if you are using a professional caddie.

There's nothing against caddies. I've had a lot of caddies over my career and all of them have done excellent work. But the relationship I have with Reagan, it eliminates that, "what's he going to think about me if I don't go" -- you know,

if I don't birdie this hole or if I don't finish in the Top-10" or something like that.

So without that little burden being on you, I think it just makes you a little freer, and sometimes that's just what it takes to give yourself that element of sort of a carefree attitude out there. That's when you can really be artistic and creative and play your best golf is when you have that carefree mentality where you're not worried about if you hit it over the green and make bogey. You're not going to plan for that, of course, but you're not going to feel bad about yourself. There's a difference between feeling upset about your shot or feeling you're less because you did something. I think that's a summary of what I think Reagan brings to me.

Q. Seems like you're having conversations not just about golf but other things does. It take your mind off, like in between shots, and that helps, too?

STEWART CINK: Yeah, I've known Reagan pretty much since he was born, so we go back a pretty long way. We have a lot of little private things between us, and along with Lisa, that we constantly are talking about, little jokes, inside things. And so he keeps me loose like that.

And then we also have a really good sort of cadence going with how we figure out our shots and the breaks on the green. We're doing a lot of that work together, so it feels nice to have a real partner out there that's alongside and invested. He's also just really good a great job with his decision-making, too.

Q. You won in the fall, and great mental pictures coming in. What can you use from that win and other experiences to help tomorrow?

STEWART CINK: Well, I think the big thing that I went through in the 11 years when I didn't win is I allowed myself to start thinking you have to play almost perfectly to win. At Safeway when I got in contention, I didn't play perfectly but I was pretty good and I didn't play poorly, and I still did enough to win.

And I think that was the biggest thing that shaped my time since then and hopefully now and going forward is that you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to draw pictures. You can just go out there and be yourself and be free. I'm in my late 40s; there's very little expectations when I tee it up. So I'm just having run. I've got Reagan on the bag, Lisa's here, we're in Hawai'i, and I'm looking forward to embracing the challenge of being in contention on the PGA TOUR.