PNC CHAMPIONSHIP

December 16, 2022

Justin Thomas

Mike Thomas

The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club

Press Conference

DOUG MILNE: Like to welcome Mike and Justin Thomas to the 2022 PNC Championship, past champions here. Not your first time together here doing this obviously, but just a few thoughts on being back here together for what's obviously a special, fun week.

JUSTIN THOMAS: Yeah, I think we are excited. It's a very fun, laid back, relaxing week for us.

You know, it's kind of a nice little segue into Christmas and obviously the holidays and spending some good, quality time together. I mean, we've said this in the past years, that we don't get to play as much golf together as we used to or we'd probably like, but we really enjoy kind of the lead-up to this and then these couple days out here.

MIKE THOMAS: For sure. Don't get to play near enough golf together. When he's off, last thing he wants to do is play golf.

So it's a great couple days for us, and my wife is here caddying, so everybody gets to be together. And certainly appreciate everything PNC and everyone does to put this event on.

Q. Do you ever take a video of your dad's swing and told him he's loose at the top or anything like that?

MIKE THOMAS: It's a long list. It's a long list.

JUSTIN THOMAS: More of a notebook.

Yeah, I'll take some videos for him whenever he asks, but I mean, yeah, I'm always here to help just as much as he is to help me I'd say.

Q. He was a little banged up last year if we recall, but how much fun was winning in relation to everything else you did do, and did it feel any worse when you didn't or was it still a good time?

JUSTIN THOMAS: It was still a great time. We had a blast last year. It was just such a different, unique feeling winning this. It just was, I guess I've grown up my whole life thinking and dreaming of winning tournaments and winning majors. But I never thought about the opportunity to be able to win a tournament with my dad, and that's pretty cool.

It's something that I can't really put into words or explain but it's fun whether it's watching highlights of past tournaments or, you know, we're able to spend the night together after winning a tournament but for us to actually celebrate together because we both won was a pretty cool -- cool deal.

Q. How much leaderboard watching on how the Spieths are doing and anything on the line there?

MIKE THOMAS: No, no. We want to beat everybody. So just beating one team; we just go out and try to make as many birdies as we can and see where that is at the end of two days.

Q. How is the course playing for you?

MIKE THOMAS: Good. Good. Long as always. I'm short, as always. So it played long.

Q. How much has Charlie's game progressed in the last year?

MIKE THOMAS: Yeah, I haven't spent near as much time in the last couple months as he's grown so much but he's gotten so much stronger and longer. He's got a lot of skill for sure.

Q. Is it as -- last year --

MIKE THOMAS: If the opportunities arises for each of us to give each other some grief, there will be some grief dealt out, I'm sure.

Q. (Have you been able to play with Tiger and Charlie leading up to this? How often do you play with them)?

JUSTIN THOMAS: We haven't, all of us have our own lives going on. I've been busy. Charlie has got school, so -- and Tiger is obviously hard on him about that, and Tiger has stuff going on and same with my dad.

We would love to get together and play more. We asked if they wanted to play last week but Charlie had midterms, and that's way more important than this going on. Whenever we can, we enjoy it.

Q. If you can think back, you win the PGA in 2017, becoming eligible for this tournament, but at what point did it get on to your radar screen? You didn't play until 2020, did you?

JUSTIN THOMAS: No, we didn't. I don't know, I think it truly was just kind of in conversation. Anything like that in 2019, 2020 we talked about it and Tiger mentioned it and we're like, why don't we go play in that. We're like, yeah, that would be pretty cool. Now we've turned it into a pretty nice little tradition.

Q. What does it say when you have 20 major champions or Players champion, whatever, and the prize money is like $1 million for the entire purse and guys are scrambling to get a spot in the field? Do you find that funny at all? Because I do.

MIKE THOMAS: I think this whole group of players just don't have this opportunity to play -- we were even out there with Jay and his dad, Joe, today. The opportunity for these busy people to get to play with their son or father, either one, it just doesn't arise often enough.

So it is fun.