SANDERSON FARMS CHAMPIONSHIP

October 5, 2023

Kevin Kisner

Country Club of Jackson

Quick Quotes

Q. Nice round, 5-under 67. If we can get some comments on your play?

KEVIN KISNER: Yeah, it's been good. Just looking for a little progress this fall from what was a tough season. Saw some signs in Napa, had a couple weeks off to keep working on things, and this week I started hitting the ball pretty well the last week or two, and looking forward to this golf course because I love it. It suits my eye off the tee, and I love the greens.

Excited where I stand after one round.

Q. Every athlete, every golfer goes through what you went through. Toughest thing golf-wise you've ever been through?

KEVIN KISNER: I kind of struggled at the end of college, and then once again when I was on the Korn Ferry TOUR I was really struggling. It seems to be about every seven- or eight-year cycle.

Hopefully I don't have to see another one, though. It's tough mentally not -- playing poorly physically and then mentally not really wanting to be there because you know how poorly you're playing.

The time away was super helpful. Had a lot of people helping me, and now it's just relentless perseverance and keep trying to gain progress and not perfection.

Q. You're an aggressive kind of guy --

KEVIN KISNER: To a fault.

Q. Things like this seem to eat at people who are aggressive like that more than ever. Was it hard to almost take a step back and --

KEVIN KISNER: Yeah, I kind of want to be a fixer all the time. I want to hurry up and fix whatever is wrong and let's move on, and I couldn't fix it. The more I tried to fix it, the worse it got. At some point I was like, at the Travelers last year, I was just done. I was done before I teed off the first round. I knew it and everybody else knew it.

It was good to have some time away, and now I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to work on it. I'm excited to see the progress.

Days like today make it all worthwhile.

Q. Looking back, was it any one thing, one area of your game, one thing that was off that you had to fix, or was it --

KEVIN KISNER: No, I just started hitting some drives off the planet, which I had never done, and didn't know how to fix it. The constant cycle of my brain working to try to fix it made it even worse.

The time away totally helped that, and it wasn't like it was good when I came back after two months, so I had to work through it.

Since about the middle of August, I've really grinded and starting to see some results.

Q. Is that how long, two months, you didn't pick up a club?

KEVIN KISNER: I played sporadically, maybe four times in two months.

Q. Kevin, somebody reported you were maybe cross-handed chipping today? When did you start that?

KEVIN KISNER: I've been doing that for like a year.

Q. When did you start doing it?

KEVIN KISNER: The chipping? Fitzpatrick, I asked him, and he's like, yeah, it's easy, try it, and I hit one, and I was like, holy cow, why did I spend all this time working on my technique. That seemed pretty easy.

But I still practice regular-handed trying to figure it out because we're all maniacs out here.

Q. Can you remember when that was?

KEVIN KISNER: I've got a video of it. I was in the fairway at Palmetto like a year ago, I had just hit a bad chip, and I was waiting in the fairway, and I took my phone and stuck it on the cart and videoed me hitting one cross-handed, and it was like a perfect five-yard pitch. I was like, well, that seemed pretty easy, and I chipped that way the rest of the day.

I don't do it out of bunkers or rough or anything like that, but into-the-grain tight stuff that we don't really love, it seemed to work.

Q. Is it just close around the greens or is there a distance range --

KEVIN KISNER: Just kind of feel it out. Whenever it gets sketchy, I go cross-handed. How about that.

Q. There's a great YouTube video of you showing college aged kids how to chip. You ought to go back and watch it.

KEVIN KISNER: I need to go back and watch it probably. Seems easier just to go cross-handed.