ISPS HANDA WORLD INVITATIONAL

July 29, 2021

Amy Bockerstette

Joe Bockerstette

Jenny Bockerstette

Galgorm Castle & Massereene Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Amy, how did the first tee shot feel? Can you take us through the moment and the excitement of hitting the first tee shot at this event?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: I loved it. I loved hitting my first tee shot at the opening. I had so much fun. Also Niall was proud of me. It was fun.

Q. That had to send some good vibes through you, chills down your spine?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

Q. When was your last first tee shot that you hit maybe for an event? Have you ever done that before?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She has. That's a complicated question.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Can we just pass?

Q. We'll pass.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: She does a lot of things, so it's hard to keep up.

Q. How did you prepare for that?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: It was great. I'm happy to be on the course.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She got to play a practice round on Tuesday with three of the LPGA pros, a woman named Sarah Jane Smith, so Amy has played with Sarah before, so she played with Sarah Jane at the Founders Cup pro-am in 2018 we met Sarah Jane, so that was before Amy's par on the 16th hole, so that was a little bit early.

And then Hannah Burke from the UK, and Lee Lopez played. They were great.

It rained a lot, so when we got here, it was raining. They took a break, so she got to play four holes, and I think we were at the farthest part of the course when it started pouring down again, so we had to run in under the rain, but that was fun, right? You got to play four practice holes with the ladies.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: The other thing you did to prepare was you played three holes with Niall at the pro-am on Wednesday. That was fun.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Very fun.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: In front of a crowd, so she hit her first tee shot and made her first putt on the par-3 7th hole, and the crowd cheered, so Amy said, "My fans are here."

Q. Is it a dream come true to have met Niall and to be here?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes, I'm so happy to be with Niall. Last Tuesday before the reception, I went into the room and Niall surprised me and we had so much fun. I was with mom for Wednesday. I played pro-am with Niall like three holes, and I'm very happy for that.

Q. What's your favorite song of Niall's?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Ooh, his Irish accent.

Q. What's your favorite song?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: My favorite song is "This Town."

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: What she likes about him the most is his Irish accent.

Q. I think a lot of -- he's got that really nice strong Irish accent.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes, he has.

Q. Have you guys ever been to Northern Ireland before?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: We have not.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: We've never been to Ireland.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: This is our first international trip with Amy.

Do you know how this came to be? Do you want to know the story?

Q. Yeah, I'd love to.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: In 2019 when Amy made the par with Gary Woodland on the 16th hole at TPC, the PGA I guess put it out on Twitter amongst other places --

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: The video.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: And Niall responded on Twitter with, "I love this."

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: He did a quote re-tweet or however you say it, and it said, "beautiful" on it.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: And so Amy, being a huge Niall Horan fan, seized the moment and said what?

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Then she tweeted to Niall on her account and said, Would you play golf with me sometime, I'm your big fan, or something like that. And then his fans happened to see that reply that she did or however she did it on Twitter, and they kept going at him, Niall, you've got to play with her, Niall, Niall, and they kept re-tweeting and forwarding these to him, and he responded with, Yes, Amy, I would love to play golf with you sometime, I'm your big fan, or something like that. You can look those up. So it's been two and a half years kind of in the making.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah, because of COVID it was -- anything that was contemplated last year got canceled.

Q. Were you supposed to come last year?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: No.

Q. It never got that far?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: He was supposed to do a U.S. Tour last year and we were hoping to see him on the Tour. We had some plans in the works. He was coming through Phoenix as part of his Tour, so we likely would have seen him there, and then of course that got canceled in March, and of course this event got canceled.

In the spring, in May, Amy's college team went to nationals and she got quite a bit of media attention from that, and Niall's partner Mark McDonnell reached out to me like the week after nationals and started the dialogue about possibly coming here.

It took a lot of logistics and a lot of preparation, and we didn't actually finalize plans for probably two weeks ago, probably -- it was very last minute before things fell into place that she could come.

And then a week ago Monday Niall surprised Amy on Zoom with the invitation to come, right?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah.

Q. Were you expecting that at all or did you have a hunch that something was up?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes --

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: No, you were completely in the dark. I know you say yes sometimes to answers or to questions. You were completely surprised.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes, completely surprised.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She was very excited, very happy. Very surprised.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: As you can tell from the video.

Q. You were very excited. I would have been excited, too. And I think you were even more excited when you met him.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Certainly been a lot of media coverage in the last two weeks of Niall and her --

Q. That makes it fun, right?

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: That was the surprise she was telling you about before the reception is they had Niall in a room so she could meet him before the crowd was all part of it so they had that moment there in person.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Thank you, Mom.

Q. That was just the other day?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: That was Tuesday.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Tuesday.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Tuesday evening, yeah.

Q. Are you enjoying the weather even though it's raining?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes. I like rain, and it's cloudy. I don't like sun.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Because of Phoenix, right? We like the cloudy, rainy weather here.

In Tuesday when she played a practice round was the first time she's ever played in rain, and it was raining pretty hard.

Q. It's been raining for the last three or four days pretty good.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: We had to get rain jackets to come over. We didn't really own rain jackets before this. So we had to practice on playing in the rain a little bit, huh? And then yesterday for the pro-am we got a break. There was no rain during the pro-am. A little bit this morning when you teed off, but not bad.

Q. Was it different to play in the rain?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

Q. How so?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: How is it different to be in the rain?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: I like it.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: The clubs are wet, the ball doesn't go as far, it was sloshy.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah, and the rain was in my hands.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She kept complaining about her hands being wet and her clubs, so dad as the caddie had to keep things dry.

Q. That's a big responsibility. Did you make sure he did okay?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah.

Q. He did good?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah.

Q. What's the plans for the rest of the week, just watch some golf?

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Tomorrow we're actually going to do a little bit of a field trip for the first time. We're going to go up to the north coast and see the causeway, Giant's Causeway.

Q. I've read that's a go-to.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: That's what everybody said, so we're going to take a day and go sightsee.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: That's as far as we've planned.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Sunday I'm sure we'll be here for golf, and Saturday I'm not sure. We'll go back on Monday. How about you, when do you go back?

Q. I go back -- I'm actually playing Portrush on Monday. I snuck that in because Steph Meadow is a member there, and I'm good friends with her, so it's like, Steph, can you pull some strings, she's like, yeah, I'll do that. And then I'm playing Castle Rock on Tuesday, which apparently I guess is as nice as Portrush but no one knows about it, and I guess it was like established in 1901 or something like that. It's real old. Everything is just historic and real old?

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: That's awesome for you.

Q. I'm excited. My wife laughs at me because she's like, you don't even like to play. I'm like, I'm only in Northern Ireland once.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: This isn't really about liking to play or not. It's like yesterday at the pro-am there were hordes of people following Niall, lots of young girls, women, right, and we chatted with a few. We walked a couple of holes watching before she played. We chatted with a few, and I'm not sure there were a ton of golf fans there, but there were a ton of Niall Horan fans there.

Q. We've talked about it through the LPGA Tour, just it brings out a different kind of crowd.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: It does.

Q. It introduces them to a sport that otherwise they probably wouldn't have stepped foot out here. That's interesting. It makes it fun.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: We had great fans out there.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: What Niall is doing for the sport I think is incredible. I think he's introducing it to people who wouldn't have considered it before.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: And the fans with men and women together and the disability component, that's so forward thinking.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: And I love that he's a feminist and that quality. Anyway, I love that.

Q. Did you nudge him a little and say, hey, can I go to Australia, the Vic Open? Because you know that ISPS Handa also hosts a tournament just like this in Australia?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Yes? Let's just say we talked to some of the people at the reception and made sure we had our contact info. That's all. We'll just go with that.

Q. Is this the farthest you've ever been from home?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: For sure. That's a long way. She didn't sleep an ounce on the way over.

Q. How did the flight go?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: It went great, but she was just too wired --

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Chatting.

Q. So excited?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah.

Q. You were still thinking about your moment when you met him virtually, yeah?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: And when would she get to meet him in person. We had to hear that for a day, getting to meet Niall.

Q. Were you nervous to meet him a little?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: No, I wasn't nervous to Niall. I was very happy to see him. I haven't seen him since forever, but I am happy.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Very exciting, right?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: I will tell you when she got off the call, Joe was sitting on one side of her and I was sitting on the other side of her and it was really cool and fun and she was so excited still. When I gave her a hug she was shaking. I could just feel the vibrations in your body from that call. You were so excited.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Excited.

Q. That's thrilling to have that kind of passion about something and to enjoy it like that.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Basically a lifelong dream to come true.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: She was a fan probably before she knew how to play golf, she was a Niall Horan fan.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She's lucky to be here and so fortunate to be a part of this and it really did make a dream come true for her.

Q. Your team won the national championships?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Didn't win but we went.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: Qualified.

Q. What's the next step for Amy as far as competitions and stuff?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: What are you doing next year?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: I've got one more year for college golf, and also I've got to find a job. I'm taking a TV job and a music job.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: She wants a job in TV or music.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She's talking to guys like you and thinks she wants to be doing that.

Q. You can do it, you'd be great. You have a great smile, you have great knowledge of the sport.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: I do.

Q. You can do it.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

Q. It also would be kind of fun to go on Tour with Niall, right? Maybe do his social media?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Right, that's a great job.

Because of COVID the college gave her another year of scholarship. They gave her an extra year, so she will actually have played four years at a two-year school by the time it's over because of COVID, so how great is that, what a great college, and she studies dance, so she takes dance classes and plays golf, so that's like the perfect college life, right?

Q. Can't get any better.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Our goal is to go back to nationals, at least dad's goal.

Q. Do you help out with the team?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: I'm her caddie, so I help her select clubs, sort of pick yardages and direction and some things like that.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: What's your official role? You're a volunteer assistant coach.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: Yeah, in order to do that I'm a volunteer assistant coach. That's a good point.

JENNY BOCKERSTETTE: They had to make him an assistant coach.

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: So I could be on the course with her. How cool is that, right? You get to be on the course with your daughter playing golf, watching her perform. It's big fun, right?

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Yes.

Q. Anything else that I may have missed?

JOE BOCKERSTETTE: She'll give you her life story, at least the last week and a half story. Everything else is already on the internet.

Q. I know you've inspired a lot of us, so thank you for all you do to inspire.

AMY BOCKERSTETTE: Thank you.