KITCHENAID SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 25, 2023

Stewart Cink

Quick Quotes

PGA Frisco

Q. 4-under 68 for you today. What do you think you did well out there?

STEWART CINK: Well, I was a little sloppy at times to be honest. I saved myself a few times. Made a few good par putts. I actually really felt good over the putter. I took advantage of my driver a few times to reduce some of these holes quite a lot in length. When I was in play I was really being able to be aggressive. The greens were holding. The wind was down for the most part. It was a really good day for scoring. To be honest, I had a fun time today playing with Miguel and Robert, guys I haven't played with much in the last several years. It was good to reconnect with them. I'm always impressed by how everybody else plays. It was fun.

Q. How are you feeling about your game coming into this week?

STEWART CINK: Well, small sample size, very good. Big sample size, pretty terrible. This year I just haven't been playing that great. I just was, at the end of -- I had a good run with my son caddying and it was such a fun time regardless of the results. When he went back to work and basically fired me, it was, I wasn't really prepared for how like kind of devastated I would feel on the inside. Not that I was really devastated, but it did kind of like take me a little while to dig out of that hole. I just was not really myself for the last half a year or so. And the last couple weeks, the last, I don't know, say three or four weeks, I've just been feeling a little bit physically a little bit more command over the ball. My wife Lisa started caddieing some, which has been nice. She's not really a golfer but she knows me really well. So, small sample size, I like the way I'm playing. I like the way that my wife and I are working together on the course. We're having fun. That's really what it's all about. When you have a good time, you have a good attitude and you're enjoying it, then lower scores tend to follow you.

Q. Kind of the best sport in the world to be a rookie, right, this tour anyway. What are your thoughts on that and what's it been like for you this week to see -- I'm sure you've seen a lot of people you haven't seen that much of.

STEWART CINK: Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of guys I keep up with, we text and stuff back and forth. But I don't ever see 'em. Guys that I've been friends with since my kids were tiny. So I gotten to see a lot of those guys and catch up with 'em and spend a little bit of time. I can see why guys really enjoy playing on the PGA TOUR Champions or the senior majors, it's really, it's fun. And after you've been in the grind for a long time -- it's a grind out here too, the guys play great. But it's just, out here, it's like grinding with a smile. That's been the real fun change from the PGA TOUR where it's quite a lot more businesslike nowadays. And it ought to be, it's a huge business and I've been fortunate to be part of that, too. But this has been a great, fun experience and I'm looking forward to the next three days.

Q. What set up the eagle?

STEWART CINK: I was just able to really crank a drive out there down No. 1. We had a little bit of helping wind and it's a course where if you, on the par-5s especially, you hit good drivers and you hit it long, you can really reduce these holes into some short -- and I hit a 6-iron into that green today. It's a really narrow target if you're coming in with a wood like I have been the first two days. Today I just hit a little bit better drive even and had a little bit of help and the ball was rolling a little bit more and I got that much more distance out of it and was able -- you control your ball a little bit more with a 6-iron than you can with my 7-wood coming in, for instance. So that's a small target to hit it. I hit a great shot, hit it close. It's just one of those, it's a do-or-die shot. There's a few shots out here that are like that and that's one that I was able to pull off and hit it close and make eagle.

Q. How close were you?

STEWART CINK: I hit it about three and a half feet.

Q. Did your son end up going to work for Delta?

STEWART CINK: Yeah, he did.

Q. So did it start originally as like a one off and you guys won or something? I mean, as you look back on that whole experience, what did it do for the two of you in your relationship?

STEWART CINK: Well, I wouldn't say it was in reverse, because our relationship was already -- like we're the same person. He's just -- like you take my DNA and we just dropped it into another human being and that was my son Reagan. So we were already like that. He was working as sort of at the tail end of a co-op in college with Delta when the pandemic started. And apparently that affected the airlines pretty significantly. So when he accepted his full-time job, COVID sidelined his start date for awhile and they kept pushing it back. He was just, he didn't know what to do. So he just said, Hey, you know what, if you need me to caddie, I'll caddie. We were playing at home three or four days a week during COVID anyway. And whenever we go out and play golf, for years now I caddie for him and he caddies for me. We're in the same cart and we're just kind of caddie for each other. So it was very natural. And he came out and caddied that one tournament, we won, and it went from being a one-tournament thing to a three-tournament thing to a four-month thing, another win and so two years. But, yeah, he went back to work for Delta. He didn't get the same job, he had to go back through the hiring process and start over, basically, but got a job with them. He loves what he's doing and it's a great company.