ARNOLD PALMER INVITATIONAL

March 5, 2021

Will Zalatoris

Bay Hill Club and Lodge

Quick Quotes

Q. Another solid round. Talk about what it was like out there.

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, first time being out here. Place is pretty cool. Obviously seeing it on TV throughout all the years and seeing Tiger, I feel like he won every other year for my entire life, so a pretty cool spot.

Q. What ties, obviously with Wake and Arnie you do have, but do you have any stories, should I say, of meeting Arnie before he passed?

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, I never met him. I was on a scholarship freshman year and I got a letter from him just saying, congrats on winning the U.S. Junior and best of luck at Wake. And it's a typed-out letter, but he signed his signature on bottom and I didn't know if it was like a copy or real and so I kind of put my thumb on the "r" of Palmer to see if it was real and I took a little ink off and my mom was like, You know what, I don't think you're going to have this until you have your own place. And so basically now I have that letter. So, yeah, that's the only interaction I have with him. But there's only one statue of Wake on campus and it's the Arnold Palmer statue in front of our facility. So walking by that thing every day obviously was pretty cool.

Q. Where is that letter now?

WILL ZALATORIS: It's at my place finally.

Q. Framed?

WILL ZALATORIS: Oh, yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

Q. We talk all the time now, how do you describe this run of great golf you're on?

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, I mean, this is my sixth week in a row. I mean, I wasn't going to miss this week. I think probably anybody else probably would have taken a week off before THE PLAYERS, but obviously with what it means to me, I needed to be here.

But just keep on doing what I'm doing. I hate giving the same boring answer, but I've kind of had the same mindset for two years of, just use each round to try to get better at whatever I'm working on and obviously it's paid off.

Q. How do you describe the two-year journey? We talked about it at Pebble of, you're No. 1 on the Korn Ferry TOUR points in that combined season, you're inside the top 50 in the world, you pretty much can get into anything, yet you're not a full-time PGA TOUR member.

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah.

Q. How do you process all that?

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, I mean it's weird, obviously, because, I mean, I could finish second for the next 25 weeks and be No. 1 in the world and not get in the FedExCup playoffs. But it is what it is.

I mean, if you had told me I would have been standing here in the middle of April last year, when we had that three-month layoff, I'll take it. So obviously, not knowing where we were going to be playing, whether it was Korn Ferry, PGA TOUR, we're not going to try and qualify for The Open, then I get a spot. Turn that into special temporary status out here so, yeah, good golf takes care of itself.