KITCHENAID SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 27, 2022

Tracy Phillips

Press Conference

Harbor Shores

JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon. Welcome back to the 2022 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship here at Harbor Shores in Benton Harbor, Michigan. We are with Tracy Phillips. Tracy just posted a second-round 68, 5-under par for the championship. Tracy, a really -- you made a move there at the turn, your turn, going to the front side. Talk about that little birdie binge you had there, three birdies in four holes.

TRACY PHILLIPS: Yeah, kind of made a bomb on the first hole that probably broke about four-foot, so very fortunate there. The third hole I hit a sand wedge from about 83 yards to about two foot, made that. Then the fourth hole I hit a 5-iron in there from -- I guess it played around 200 or 202 and knocked it in there about six foot and made that.

Back side kind of got more comfortable, started swinging the club a little bit better and got a little bit more relaxed, and things kind of went my way on that side.

Q. Probably coincides with the warming up a little bit out there.

TRACY PHILLIPS: That's right.

Q. What are your emotions when you see your name on the leaderboards around here? It has to be a pretty cool thing?

TRACY PHILLIPS: It's a pretty cool thing. I obviously got off to a rocky start, didn't hit it very good the first couple holes. I felt dad's presence kind of towards the tail end of that nine. I got it up-and-down a couple times early in the round for pars and just felt like he calmed my nerves a little bit, and it felt good.

Q. Do you hear your dad as you play?

TRACY PHILLIPS: You know what, more than anything, he was here in '18 when he watched the -- I'm sorry, '14, he was here in '14 when he watched me play. Both my mom and dad came in for the weekend.

But no, I thought about him a lot out there, and he seemed to calm my nerves for sure.

Q. Was he also a pro?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Yes, he was a head professional at Cedar Ridge Country Club for about 40 years.

Q. How cool is that for you to be there now? You could be at a lot of places.

TRACY PHILLIPS: It is cool, yeah. Cedar Ridge has been very, very good to me over the years, and like I said, I basically grew up out there. I feel his presence all the time when I'm out there practicing and teaching and stuff like that, and the membership is awesome. It's a good place to be.

Q. We hear about pitching rotations in baseball, but you've got a caddie rotation going on this week. Who was your starter today, and what's it looking like for the next few days?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Right. Well, I've got two guys that I play a lot of golf with. They're both just retired. One was a GM at Oaks Country Club and another was a head pro and actually worked for my dad for 12, 13 years. They're both retired, and they said, hey, we'll come up and caddie for you, and I thought, well, it'll be great. So I'm very fortunate to have them on the bag. They can probably go about 18 holes. That's about it.

We'll probably see Rick Reed on the bag tomorrow and Pat Tubach was on the bag today.

Q. Which one worked for your dad?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Actually both of them worked for my dad. Rick was a first assistant for dad for 13 years or 12 years possibly, and Pat came and worked for my dad for about four or five years, kind of late, just before dad actually retired. And since then they've both been at Oaks. Pat went over there and worked seven or eight years.

Q. What's your expectation for the weekend? Do you feel like you can contend here?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Yeah, I'm going to go out and kind of stick to the same game plan. Hopefully I'll feel as relaxed as I did today. Still been hitting the ball well. I actually putted the ball well and got the ball up-and-down on some crucial holes early in the round after that bogey start. Just didn't hit quite it as good on that first nine holes but made some key up-and-downs, actually made about probably a 30-footer on my 11th -- the second hole, No. 11, for par. That really, really helped kind of ease the nerves and kind of turned it around a little bit for me.

Q. Did you birdie 15 and 16; is that right?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Yeah, I birdied 15 and 16.

Q. Knock it in close or --

TRACY PHILLIPS: 15 I knocked it to about a foot, and then 16 I made about -- probably about 18-footer.

Q. What did you hit in at 16?

TRACY PHILLIPS: 16 I hit a -- I think I hit a 6-iron.

Q. You said you made a bomb on 1; how far was it?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Probably about 45 feet, kind of one of these that goes up and over and around.

Q. This is May, we're in Michigan; what would this be in Tulsa? Are we playing the first week of March, this caliber of weather? This is not summer weather where you're from but maybe fringes of the season?

TRACY PHILLIPS: Typically it would be, but I played as a marker on Southern Hills and we kind of had this. We had, gosh, I think it was 50 degrees when I teed off at 7:30 in the morning, light mist most of the front nine, and a little breezy, too. Probably had 10 to 15 mile-an-hour winds. It was not a comfortable day out there, so maybe that round kind of helped prep me for today.

Q. A moment like this, how thankful are you that you kind of found golf again? A lot of people leave for that long and are never coming back.

TRACY PHILLIPS: Right, right, yeah. You know, I am very thankful I've got a good backup support in my wife Suzy and my daughter Samantha and I have some good friends, Vince Bizik was actually the one that called me up, gosh, I think it was around 2007, 2008, said hey, why don't you come out and play with us just on some Mondays. We'll get a couple of the guys and we'll just go out and have some fun. So I had a good support group that kind of got me interested in starting, and like I said, kind of was a -- it was a progression of playing with those guys and starting to have some fun, and then got me to here. I've been having a blast playing these last really couple two, three years for sure.

Q. Where would you go out and play?

TRACY PHILLIPS: All over. We'd actually travel to -- we'd take the Mondays, where most courses are closed, and we'd go to Shangri-La up in Grand Lake and we'd go to Pryor and just some small clubs outside of Tulsa, occasionally we played in Tulsa, but just a little bit everywhere around and kind of had some games and kind of got my interest back.