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SONY OPEN IN HAWAIIJanuary 11, 2014Will WilcoxHONOLULU, HAWAII JOHN BUSH: 6‑under 64 for Will is not too shabby today. If we can just get some comments on an excellent round. WILL WILCOX: Yeah, yeah, my chipping has gotten better so I'm not so nervous about trying to hit the greens, and it doesn't feel like I have to. I actually chipped one in and I holed a bunker shot yesterday. Basically I've just been working really hard on my chipping and putting this week, so it feels good. When you can take pressure off your iron game, it feels better. JOHN BUSH: Talk about how excited you are for this upcoming season. You were 10th on the Web.com TOUR last year. WILL WILCOX: Yeah, this is the third time I've ever played on TOUR, so it's something else. It's a dream come true. Obviously this is what I've been thinking about since I was eight years old when I first started playing competition golf. I wish my parents could be here to see it. But it's pretty epic. I'm having a great time, I've got a great caddie, and I feel like I know which direction it's turning, and that's a good thing to have. Q. Talk about your dream foursome, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Boo Weekley. Can you explain that? WILL WILCOX: Yeah, Boo is a friend. I've actually played with him so I can't actually say it's a dream anymore. But Tiger and Jack, I mean, Tiger is obviously my favorite golfer. My generation loves Tiger Woods. So the day I get to play with Tiger will be fulfilling the third part of the dream. But anyway, that would be a fun day. Q. Why didn't you pick Heath? WILL WILCOX: I've actually played with him, too, so he doesn't count, either. Q. In '10 you were at the U.S. Open at Congressional? WILL WILCOX: Yeah, and '11. Q. What did you do in '10? WILL WILCOX: Canadian Tour and Hooters Tour. Q. Did you play a PGA TOUR event in '10? WILL WILCOX: Yeah, the Canadian Open, because I won the Saskatchewan Canadian Tour event. Q. You're in a great spot now because your name is the first one we see, but there's got to be 20 guys separated by two shots. WILL WILCOX: Yeah, it's tight. I was looking at it on maybe 9 or 10. I saw I was beating James Hahn by two or three, he was in like 51st and I was in 13th or something ridiculous. Yeah, you've just got to play tight and make a couple of clutch putts, which I did today. I don't know, we'll see. I'm used to the bunched‑up leaderboard on the Web. It's just like that out there. Q. How did you do in the finals, the Web.com finals?  What was your ranking coming out? WILL WILCOX: What, on Tour this year? 49th. I unfortunately didn't get to play in those, but I finished 7th on the regular season. Q. Why didn't you play in them? WILL WILCOX: It was personal reasons, unfortunate personal things, family stuff, so I didn't get to play. Q. So you were 7th in the regular season? You didn't play last fall then? WILL WILCOX: No. Q. Did it still carry over from stuff at home? WILL WILCOX: Yeah. Q. If someone had told you on Thursday that you might be tied for the lead after 54 holes, what would you have said to them? WILL WILCOX: I would have said I have no idea where the ball is going. But then it just kind of came together. Yesterday I think I hit one fairway on my front nine, and we were just like, what am I even doing out here. I was like embarrassed after about four of my tee shots. Not literally, but just hitting it so poorly, but loosened my hands up and everything kind of fell into place. I didn't know what was going to happen this week. Make the cut was a dream come true; playing good on Saturday was a dream come true; getting to have a decent shot tomorrow is ridiculous. We'll see. Q. What will you do tonight? WILL WILCOX: Nothing. I'm just going to probably go run or something, get the heart rate up so I can relax, eat something healthy, pass out early. Q. Are you staying in Waikiki? WILL WILCOX: Yeah. Q. Will you call your mom? WILL WILCOX: Oh, yeah. Q. What will she tell you about sleeping on the lead? WILL WILCOX: She'll just tell me to stay calm. She's not going to be calm, so I'll just try to be strong for everybody, I guess. Q. A year ago pretty similar conditions and Henley was about 17‑under going into the last day. Why the big difference? WILL WILCOX: In the scoring going into the last round? I think maybe it's firmer, I don't know, maybe the rough was shorter. I have no idea. I didn't play last year. I wasn't here. I was playing on the Web. Actually I wasn't doing anything this week last year, I was just trying to get ready for the season a little bit. Q. Any ideas what it could be? WILL WILCOX: The winning score? Q. No, why the difference in‑‑ WILL WILCOX: Yeah, maybe there was a little bit of wind we played in. We played in 15, 20 the first two rounds for like the front nine and then it would die down, so maybe it has to do with wind. The rough is pretty juicy around the greens, so if you have a short shot from the primary rough and you're 20 feet from the hole, it's really hard to get it close. Maybe that had something to do with it. Q. How disappointed were you not to be able to play in the Web.com finals and go from 7 to 49? That makes a huge impact on your schedule. WILL WILCOX: Yeah, it wasn't good. It didn't work out well at all. But there's nothing I can do about it. Just fight it out. Q. Your mom taught you to play? WILL WILCOX: Yeah. Q. That's kind of unusual. It's usually the father teaching the sons to play. WILL WILCOX: Yeah, mom, she played four years at Auburn, played golf there, and she was the head golf pro at the course I grew up at for about 10 years. Q. Where was that? WILL WILCOX: Pine Harbor Country Club in Pell City, Alabama. So she would just in the summers, I would just ride out there with her to work and then leave at dark. I was walking 36, 45 holes a day by myself from 10 until about 15, 16, and then I got my car and it changed a little bit. But I was just a golf nerd. I was always about‑‑ I think my freshman year in high school I was the shortest kid in school, including girls, so I was just like‑‑ I didn't play other sports. I was just a golf kid. That was all I did, because of mom. Q. How tall are you now? WILL WILCOX: 6 feet maybe. I don't know. Q. Isn't your mom a golf coach? WILL WILCOX: Yeah, at UAB, Alabama Birmingham. Q. What's the UAB/Clayton State? How did that work out? WILL WILCOX: I started at UAB in 2004, had a little too much fun, so they demoted me to D‑2. I was there for like a year and a half, ended up working in the coach's sandwich shop for the last two semesters I was there, and then they kicked me off the team, so I ended up at Clayton State, and I played two and a half years there, was First Team All‑American a couple times, cleaned up my act and I was good. Q. Where is Clayton State, Atlanta somewhere? WILL WILCOX: Even people from Atlanta don't know where Clayton State is. It's just south of Atlanta. Q. What town? WILL WILCOX: It's Clayton County. It's called Morrow, Lake City. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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