LIV GOLF NASHVILLE

June 19, 2024

Jon Rahm

Tyrrell Hatton

Kieran Vincent

Caleb Surratt

The Grove

Legion XIII GC

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Let's welcome Legion XIII. We are joined by Kieran Vincent, Tyrrell Hatton, our captain Jon Rahm, and our hometown hero Caleb Surratt.

Jon, we're going to start with you. The obvious question, how are you feeling and what can you tell us about your injury.

JON RAHM: I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. The main reason for the withdrawal the two events was the infection I had and just to be precautionary towards not making it worse and seeing what steps I can take to prevent that from happening in the future.

The wound is still there. I'm not going to show any graphic pictures, but it's still there. It's manageable now. I'm not going to really make it worse. A lot of things to follow up from what happened to make sure it heals properly and it doesn't happen again.

Q. You feel ready to compete this week?

JON RAHM: I feel ready to walk and hit it. I haven't been able to do much. It doesn't take much for me to feel ready to compete. Looking forward to it. Just happy that I'm here.

Q. I want to get reactions from Tyrrell and Jon from Bryson's win last week.

TYRRELL HATTON: Yeah, it was very impressive. For me personally, it was a pretty sad day with my golf, but he handled the situation really well, and it was great for LIV that Bryson went on to win.

Q. Jon, what did you make of it?

JON RAHM: I thought it was quite a show from the comfort of my home. It's a very enjoyable tournament to watch. I haven't gotten the chance to enjoy a major from start to finish like that and to get to see a lot of golf was really fun, and to see how everything unfolded.

You never want to see great players make a mistake at the end, whether it was Bryson's three-putt on 15 or Rory's on 16.

But I do consider that Bryson might have, that I could remember -- if it's not the best up-and-down to win a major ever made, it's got to be top 3, maybe up there with Tom Watson's chip-in at Pebble on 16, Phil's up-and-down at Baltusrol on 18. There's obviously going to be a few others like Tiger's chip-in at Augusta.

But on 18, having to do it to actually win the tournament has got to be one of the best, and with how he played on Sunday, I thought he showed a lot, and how much he's changed himself in the last few years and to hear him talk about it was quite inspiring.

I think it's great for all of us and great for LIV Golf to see him do that, as with.

Q. Kieran, we are more than halfway through the season. Can you talk about what this experience has been like on LIV Golf for you and how it's impacted your life and your golf game?

KIERAN VINCENT: Yeah, I mean, nothing short of awesome. I mean, it's pretty cool that -- I never really sat in many press conferences, let alone attended any of them, so now to be sitting on this side and sharing the stage with a bunch of pretty cool guys with me, you can't ask for a better first couple of months out here on LIV.

Yeah, the first half of the season has been great. I think the guys have put in some great work, and I think we still have said that our best golf is ahead of us, and I still think that's very true. I'm excited to see what the rest of the season holds, and obviously being able to do it alongside these guys is always something to special. So excited for the rest of the season.

Q. Caleb, you attended the University of Tennessee, and you're a current Knoxville resident. This is a home game for you.

CALEB SURRATT: It is, yeah.

Q. How excited are you to be here in Tennessee competing in front of your friends and family?

CALEB SURRATT: It's just going to be so cool seeing a lot of the same faces I saw in college. All my friends asking me to try and get tickets, it's just going to be cool to look over and see all my boys that have really quite frankly been a huge role in me getting here, watching me and supporting me.

I'm so excited for that. I'm excited for the test this week. I was telling somebody the other day, it feels like a home game, but I've really only been on the golf course one time.

But it's a pretty sweet place. It's going to be an awesome week. Super excited.

Q. Do you think there will be a lot of Legion XIII fans out there this week?

CALEB SURRATT: I think there always is when you've got this guy on your team, but yeah, it's going to be -- I hope so. I think we're in a good spot to start competing again, and like Kieran said, our best golf is ahead of us.

Q. Jon, I wanted to ask you about the Olympics. Obviously the players came out on Monday. Just your thoughts going into the Olympics. I think the last time you were there you beat Tiger in singles if I recall. Just kind of get your thoughts on the Olympics.

JON RAHM: Is the full list of players who are playing out? I haven't seen it, sorry.

Q. You're on it, and David.

JON RAHM: That's what I thought you were getting to. I mean, David and I, we've worked out together a lot and practice at home together, and he's told me it's been a goal of his to make the Olympic team. So it's been in my mind quite a bit.

I think we knew when we were in Houston that I think it was Campillo if he didn't finish top 10; David was automatically in. But Campillo finished high enough, but then with Sebastian's mistake on 18, they redid the calculations, and I think I remember it was .003-point difference, and Campillo was just ahead. He went to the U.S. Open now with an extra added pressure to make the cut to then be in the Olympics, which it was such a big goal of his.

To see him after shooting 6-over go into that Friday round and get under par quickly and shoot low and make it was quite fun. It was really, really fun to see, and he actually played pretty good besides Sunday. He didn't have his best Sunday.

But he's a great player, and I'm looking forward to sharing the stage. We're going to a fantastic venue, a great city, a great golf course, and a golf course where I think Tyrrell and I have some decently good memories. Maybe not of our golf, but the rest of the team played pretty well.

It's to me one of the better golf courses we've played or that I've played and a golf course that I'm looking forward to going back and hopefully be able to represent Spain the right way and earn a medal for the team.

Q. Tyrrell, I wanted to ask you about your season as a whole. You're the only player that has finished inside the points in every tournament. How would you evaluate your season on LIV so far?

TYRRELL HATTON: I'd say it's been okay. I mean, I'd have liked to have given myself more opportunities to try and win the tournament on Sunday, but that hasn't been the case.

I feel like personally I've struggled a little bit with just my game not being quite where it needs to be to compete and sort of grinding your way through each week and sort of just trying to finish as high as you possibly can and to earn as many points as possible.

What have we got, six events left? Still plenty of opportunities to go out there and play some good golf and maybe have a chance to win one of these.

Q. Caleb, being the youngest player in the league, do you feel like all the other guys have kind of taken you under their wing to a certain degree? You obviously got some lessons from Phil in Hong Kong and I'm sure some other guys have helped you out, too. How have you felt about everybody else has kind of treated you as the young kid?

CALEB SURRATT: Yeah, I think it's kind of a -- it's a double-edged sword because I grew up -- you read Phil Mickelson "How to Chip" and now you're sitting here getting lessons from Phil Mickelson. It's pretty cool.

I think there has not been any players at all that haven't really been extremely nice to me and taken me under their wing, and I'm fortunate to be under Jon and Tyrrell and under their kind of words of wisdom all the time. It's vital for a young player to kind of -- and a true blessing to be able to come up under something like that.

I think I've learned in my four or five months on LIV now what I fully believe it would have taken me many years as a professional doing it on my own to learn.

On the other side of it, I feel like I can compete, and I feel like I'm good enough to be out here and I'm excited to, like, feel like I'm in a spot to start going head-to-toe with a lot of the best players because I want to take advantage of that knowledge. It's not just for fun.

I'm working hard, and I'm trying to learn from the best. I think I can confidently say that I am taking advantage of the resources of players out here rather than just kind of putting my said down all the time.

It's a blessing, and I'm happy to be under these two especially because I couldn't imagine it any other way, to be honest.

Q. Just talking about Caleb, what you have seen this year, his growth as a player, and just as part of the team.

JON RAHM: You know, he's an extremely mature young man, to be 20 years old, 19 when we all met him. To have the understanding of his game and the game in general that he has, as a golfer, he had barely left Tennessee but a couple times in his life at that point -- and North Carolina because that's originally where he's from. So there's a lot of growing to do when you start traveling around the world. That's a big step to take to professional golf. It's a lot more alone time than any other amateur golf you've dealt with.

So he's got a lot of new experiences to deal with. Like he was saying, you go from being around your teammates, perhaps being the best around the people you play with in college golf, so now you're put in a world-class stage with world-class players and major champions is not only a bit of a reality check sometimes that we all need at some point, but it's also a lot of new information that is coming to you and you need to learn how to process, and that's not easy to do, and I think he's doing a great job.

Once he learns how to apply a lot of those things that he's learning to his game, I think we're going to see a massive jump on what he can do. We still haven't seen what he can do. We saw it on the last four holes at Mayakoba and there's been moments here and there, but I can't wait to actually see him put 54 holes together. It's going to be eye-opening for a lot of people that haven't seen it.

TYRRELL HATTON: I feel like Jon has answered that pretty well. I don't know what else I can really add to that to be honest.

KIERAN VINCENT: He's a great teammate, as well. But Jon knocked it out of the park there.

Q. Jon, are you frustrated at all for Bryson that the Olympics won't be an opportunity for him, and can you as players use things like the Olympics -- I know the next one is not for another four years, but to move along maybe things with the agreement?

JON RAHM: I mean, I don't know if I can be frustrated for Bryson. I don't know where he stands on the matter. I think it's more of a question for the Americans in the room. Would you want to have somebody like Bryson on the team right now or not? In my case, as a competitor that week, no. (Laughing).

But it doesn't mean that the next guy isn't going to be as good as Bryson.

I think it's getting to the point where we hear the conversations between the Tour and PIF are going on. I hope sooner than later there's some resolution to where there's a way for the players here to earn the events like you can pretty much everywhere else and there's a clear pathway. I know LIV is a bit of a different league, but the talent is there, and that's in my mind undeniable, so there should be a pathway for all of us to be able to earn certain points or a way into majors, Ryder Cup and so on.

Q. Jon, you said you were at home watching the coverage. I wonder if you enjoyed that, or was there anything you took away from that with the fan experience in mind that you thought LIV is doing different or you would like to see changed in watching from home?

JON RAHM: I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say. I mean, I enjoyed watching golf, yeah. I'm a big golf fan myself --

Q. A lot of golf fans have issues with NBC in particular, their production --

JON RAHM: Honestly, this has been for a long time, and I think it's more because I'm in the situation I just watch golf on mute. I want to watch the shots and I try not to -- was it a bit of a -- I don't know what the word is, but to go from ABC to NBC to Peacock, then back to the next thing, yeah, they should make it a little bit easier. It is an Open after all. Just turn on one channel and hopefully be able to watch the whole broadcast.

I thought from the times I had it on and I could hear, I thought it was okay. One of the things that absolutely burned me, and I think it was Smylie who said it, he severely underplayed how difficult Rory's putt on 18 was. When he said it's a left-center putt, if you hit that putt left-center and miss the hole, you're off the green because of how much slope there is. You could see Rory aiming at least a cup left from three feet. They severely underplayed how difficult that putt was. Severely.

I think that can happen a few times where unless you've been there on the golf course and you're playing it or you've played it, it's hard to truly explain how difficult the golf course can be, and a lot of times they only have those five seconds to say something quickly, so I also don't blame them.

But besides that, I thought it was good.

Q. What have you seen of the course here, and what do the next couple days of preparation look like for you?

JON RAHM: I think two of us up here have only seen the clubhouse so far. Is that right, Tyrrell?

In my case, today would be a day where I'd probably make a few more swings than I usually would on a Wednesday, just try to get up to speed. I don't really care how I hit it tee to green on practice days to be fair because it doesn't matter. I try to get the speed and touch around the greens. But since I haven't done as much as I would have liked at home, I probably need to make a few extra swings on the range and maybe on the course just to try to get my body up to speed as soon as possible.

Q. Caleb, did you take the boys down to Broadway for a little celebratory welcome-to-Nashville thing, some team bonding?

CALEB SURRATT: Yeah, well, I can't get in anywhere, so it's not really on my radar, no. I don't know how to answer that. I've actually only been to downtown one time.

No, all my boys get in later in the week. There will be a bunch of off-the-golf-course hanging out and just trying to make it feel like home as much as possible. Like Jon said, it's hard going around the world when you never have, so a week like this especially like driving from Knoxville, it just feels so much more comfortable for me. It's a lot more what I'm used to.

To have my friends around me, it's going to be awesome. But to answer your question, no, I don't have much access anywhere anyway.

Q. Tyrrell, you're obviously a pretty electric personality. You're my son's favorite player because he likes to watch you sometimes melt down and show it a little bit, which we all do on the golf course. If you had to make a Mount Rushmore of LIV Golf players, the Mount Rushmore of most electric players out here, yourself would be on there. Who would be with you?

TYRRELL HATTON: Did you say Mount Rushmore? What is that?

JON RAHM: It means top four angriest players in LIV is basically what he means.

Q. Pretty much.

TYRRELL HATTON: Who else gets really angry out here, to be fair?

JON RAHM: I think anybody with a Spanish passport has a claim so far. There's a couple. You just probably don't want to name names. You can say me.

KIERAN VINCENT: Can't we just put Tyrrell four times over, like different days?

JON RAHM: There's historically some different names that you can definitely -- but I don't want to say it.

Q. Tyrrell, obviously everybody here wants Jon to be healthy and playing golf, but looking at the bright side of things, was it sort of an ideal scenario for you where Jon was not participating in last week's major, you had one last top competitor to focus on but here he's back this week to be on your team and playing on the Tour. Was there any sunshine in that for you in the situation and the way it played out?

TYRRELL HATTON: I don't think you can ever -- you wouldn't ever wish ill on someone. You don't want someone to miss a tournament because they're injured or anything like that. No. I have sympathy for Jon that he was having to miss -- pulling out of Houston round 2 and then missing the U.S. Open, which is a tournament that he's won before, and with it being a major, it's the type of event you never want to miss.

Yeah, that would be tough to take for Jon, but yeah, certainly as a competitor, you don't get any -- you don't have any good feelings that someone is missing the tournament through injury or illness.

Q. Tyrrell, what kind of words of wisdom are you reaching Caleb?

TYRRELL HATTON: I think the biggest thing is trying to teach him how to pack a suitcase properly. That's been quite a stressful process for the first seven events.

I think we're getting there, but I think it's only because he's been able to drive himself here that he's managed to hopefully pack everything that he was meant to pack this week.

CALEB SURRATT: I know there's other people sitting here that did not pack everything they were supposed to this week.

JON RAHM: Yeah, but when you're the captain, I'm always right, so it doesn't matter. I would be second on the team for forgetting shirts and belts and shorts. He's definitely by far the worst, I would be second.

Q. You're in Nashville; do you have a favorite country artist that you're hoping to see out in the crowd this weekend?

CALEB SURRATT: I mean, the concert is going to be great. Dan and Shay? He's probably never heard of Dan and Shay. But I know Shay. I haven't met Dan, but I know Dan and Shay.

JON RAHM: I've talked about this with Caleb because all he listens to is country. Even though I've been living in the U.S. for a long time, country is something that's really taken me a long time to get used to until a year ago. Kelley played a Luke Combs song for the first time, and she always played it for the kids at bath time, and sometimes it was too much of background noise for me to realize.

It was at East Lake, I think after a Friday round or Saturday round where I played bad, we're in traffic, it's raining on the way back. "Beautiful Crazy" came on, and a lot of what he says in the song, it's a lot of what me and the kids do in the morning. So when he says her day starts with the coffee, when I get the kids out of bed when I'm home and let her sleep in a little bit, Kepa will literally go to the coffee machine, make the coffee with me and bring it to Kelley in bed. Then when it says, and ends her day with a wine, Kelley and I very often would often have a glass of wine with dinner, like many other people do.

So a lot of the things that the song was saying, I was like, Kelley, who is this. Like I was already emotional, played a terrible day, driving in traffic. I'm like, who's this man, and obviously his voice is incredible, and she started playing more songs, and I became a Luke Combs fan. I can't say I'm a full-on country fan yet, but Luke is somebody that I really enjoy, especially his new album being very, very relatable. Saw him in concert about a month ago, which is quite impressive. He puts on a show.

I know he won't be around because I think his two year old, his older son is turning two years old this week, and to be honest, probably too big a country star to be walking around out there.

But he would be my favorite to see out there, obviously.

TYRRELL HATTON: I mean, I'm similar to Jon in a way, like Luke Combs would be my favorite country singer. But yeah, he's not going to be out there. I don't know who else I would -- who else's name I would put forward.

KIERAN VINCENT: I've actually seen Dan and Shay in concert before, so I guess seeing them a bit more up close -- because I was back in the grandstands far back up there when I went and saw them, so seeing them up close will be a little bit better. But like the rest of the internationals on this team, country music isn't the sweet spot for us.

We're getting there, though. Slowly but surely.

CALEB SURRATT: I've got to get them turned on to Zach Bryan. I'm the biggest Zach Bryan die hard in the world.

JON RAHM: He's very good, but I just can't -- like his talent is undeniable. He's really good. Same with Oliver Anthony. They're both incredible.

THE MODERATOR: Zach, if you're listening, come out and watch Caleb this week.

CALEB SURRATT: Dream come true.