HILTON GRAND VACATIONS TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 20, 2023

Taylor Twellman

Lake Nona Golf & Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Great playing out there today. Currently tied for second and you had a great round. You said you had one hole coming in on 16 --

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: Thanks for bringing that up. I appreciate that.

Q. -- that you weren't too happy about. Just talk about your round as a whole.

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: It was fun. Obviously it was extremely pleasant this morning, right? So it was calm and just it was nice being out there. We were playing at a good pace. Yesterday was such a slow round; today felt like, especially the front nine, it was a normal afternoon round for me just at my local club.

Yeah, I bamboozeled 16. Absolutely bamboozled it, and so Lucy and I going to be talking about what dad should have done on 16, which is the opposite of what I did.

Q. Soccer players as a group, where is their standing in golf. Are there a lot of golfers?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: There's one of us here, isn't there? I grew up in a sports family. Obviously a lot of people understand where my mom's side was; grandfather played 19 years of Major League Baseball. His son, which is my uncle, was on the PGA Tour for 25 years. So Jay Delsing is the PGA Tour pro, so we grew up with golf.

I tell the story all the time. At the Thanksgiving dinner table when I was Lucy's age, which is two and a half or when I was 20, if I was I was going to be a teacher or fireman or accountant, I think everyone at the table would've looked at me and said, wait a minute, what? Everybody here is an athlete.

And by the way, those are all great jobs. Just saying I was blessed with some God-given genes. So my family is a golfing family. I wouldn't say I'm a soccer family even though we are soccer, but we played a lot of sports. Golf was always part of my life; always will be.

I think soccer players are starting to get into it more, to answer your question, especially around the world. But to play at Lake Nona when the greens are running at the speeds they are it's completely different than playing your weekend round.

Q. So what's Jay to you?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: Jay is my uncle, and my mom is Moochie Delsing, Moochie Twellman. That's Jay's older sister.

Q. Okay. And who is your MLB family?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: Jim Delsing. We called him Chief. So my mom's side of the family did that.

My dad's side had three pro soccer places. My dad played from pro for ten years and an uncle that played baseball. So sports was part of our vernacular.

Q. What has most impressed with about the female pros that you've played with this week?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: Wow, that's a loaded question. There is a lot. How long do we have? The composure. You can talk about the professionalism. My uncle, go back to that, used to always tell all of us sitting at the dinner table, if you want to learn how to play golf, watch the women. Watch everything about their swing, how they are technically, the way they go about their business.

There is a politeness to them. I've loved both -- and I've had two different players with Mo and Celine, and so I just enjoy the way they go about it. I've got two lovely daughters. Rose is five and a half and Lucy is two and a half, and so if my daughters are acting the way Celine and Mo are the last two days, then I did a good job raising my daughters.

It's been a true pleasure to be on the same course with them. As I told both of them, I'll get out of your way because I'm not playing for anything. But it's been a blast.

Q. What would you list as your golf highlight?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: The fact that I played and I'm going to get uncle Jay in trouble, but the father-son tournament that is being played at Disney World that Tiger and all of them have played, I think it was 1989. Could be a little off.

Taylor Delsing played in that tournament as the son of Jay Delsing. Probably shouldn't have, and good thing we didn't win it. Then there would've been a birth certificate check. In our group was Raymond Floyd, Doug Tewell, and someone else.

And so I think eight years later when I was a professional soccer player on national TV, I think all of them were, wait a minute, he changed his last name. That was a real highlight for me.

Q. At Disney?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: It was at Disney, yep, it was. Yep, so Taylor Delsing made his one and only appearance.

Q. I'm just curious how your nerves might be different when you're competing in something like this than in your real job?

TAYLOR TWELLMAN: Yeah, it's funny. I'm glad you said that because I may be the only quote-unquote celebrity that actually has a real job. Like after the round yesterday I had to go do a Zoom for work. I think everybody else is like, what are you doing? We're going to the concert. Serious. So am I but, I got a job to do.

Appreciate you reminding me of that. Golf is unlike any other sport, because your nervous energy you can get out with physical activity, physical contact. Golf you cannot. It's the exact opposite.

Quite honestly, it was the one thing that brought I think balance to my life. I'm not telling you I don't get competitive, but it is 180 degrees different than anything I did in high school on a basketball court, baseball field, football field, or soccer field.

There is an appreciation for golfers, female and male. I don't think people fully understand it's you against the course. As a soccer player I could blame all my teammates all I wanted to. Now looking around, there is something individualistic I love about that. I love it's you against nature. There is a real appreciation for that.

I can't slide tackle the pin or slide tackle the bunker the way I used to as a soccer player.