SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 6, 2023

Will Zalatoris

Plantation Course at Kapalua

Quick Quotes

Q. Second consecutive 69. You said this one felt a little bit better today. Comment a little bit on the round.

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, just disgustingly rusty. I hit it a lot better today, made a couple of nice putts. Just doing silly stuff, you know, laid the sod over a couple wedges the last two days.

So overall, I mean, first two days back I'll take a couple 69s. The easy part is the stuff I need to fix is right in front of me.

Q. And health is good, feeling good?

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah. I feel great. Yeah. No, I took a couple extra weeks just to make sure that I was all good. Glad it paid off.

Q. Just your thoughts going into the weekend.

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, I mean, quit doing the dumb stuff. I think it's pretty straightforward. So playing nice golf. Just got to keep doing what I'm doing.

Q. I'm writing about the Jordan Spieth-Tom Kim friendship. It's like the buddy movie we didn't know we needed. But you're a Dallas guy. Have you seen that connection between those two?

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, you know, so personally I have not seen -- I just read yesterday that obviously it sounds like they had Christmas dinner together. But Tom joined Dallas National, where I play out of, and they asked me for a recommendation -- or a letter of recommendation, which of course he didn't need it, but it's just the protocol-type thing.

And it was pretty funny. They said, Well, you know, what's he like? And I said, Well, this pretty much sums it up. When I went and watched the first day of the Presidents Cup, it was like the fourth hole. I was trying to stay out of everybody's way, even though I was inside the ropes, and K.H. Lee was hitting a shot, and Tom came 40 yards of the tee to come over and say hi and check in on me, and I'm like, Dude, your playing in the Presidents Cup. You don't need to say hi to me.

So that pretty much sums him up. He's so good for us. He's such a great dude, and I look forward to playing some games with him at home.

Q. What did you say in the letter of recommendation?

WILL ZALATORIS: Literally, it was like two sentences, like, he needs to be here. He's the best. We need to have him.

So it was, he's, like I said, he's so fun to be around. He's a guy that I feel like I've known forever.

Q. What do you like most about his game?

WILL ZALATORIS: I haven't played with him, but obviously the guy rolls the crap out of it. What he did at Wyndham, I think he, what did he shoot, like 27, 28 on the front and made like 150 feet of putts. We saw it at the Presidents Cup too.

So the guy's got no flaws. That's for sure. But I'm looking forward to actually finally playing golf with him.

Q. What's the outfit you've got on today and why are you wearing it?

WILL ZALATORIS: Yeah, so Aloha Friday. Footjoy came up with some pretty cool prints, got some pineapples, got a couple cocktails on it. I'm looking forward to participating after we get done here.

But hat's are pretty cool. It's pretty cool what we do obviously with our charities. A thousand bucks for every article of clothing a player wears go to the local Maui charity. So it's pretty awesome.