Q. All right, excited to have Aaron Hicks here in the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions media center. Aaron, had a great round today. Sitting pretty tied for third. Jack, who was just in here, was in your group. Were you guys feeding off each other today? Talk about the round. Seemed like every time he went low you were right behind him.
AARON HICKS: Yeah, whenever you get the opportunity to play with good golfers it's definitely infectious.
He played really well today, so did Lauren, so it was just fun to kind of ping pong off each other and continue to push each other, especially since for a while it was just one and two while we were on the course by ourselves.
It was fun.
Q. Any comparison that you have when you're approaching your game and getting ready to go play? Anything you can take from your golf game that you used there and vice versa?
AARON HICKS: Oh, man. I would probably say just trying to be patient. You know, in the game of golf, if you try to force anything, usually never works out that great. Just try to pretty much be patient I would say is what I've taken from baseball into golf.
Q. This is a unique format. You have the top players, golfers in the world playing alongside you guys. NFL Hall of Famers, NFL, MLB Hall of Famers. Runs the gamut. What was this like for you to be in this field and kind of feeding off both sides?
AARON HICKS: I think it's fun. You get to find out different personalities of different sports, different athletes. I think what's so great about it, is we're all trying to come together and play a game that some of us aren't really that good at. You know what I mean?
We're all out there having jokes together. You know, we're hitting weird shots that we never hit before. We're just competing, and I think it's so much fun to watch LPGA players go out there and absolutely dismantle a golf course that we're out there struggling on.
So it's just fun. It's fun to be out here. It's fun to play with these athletes, celebrities, and it's definitely an honor to be here.
Q. It's a unique week with what Hilton Grand Vacations does. Are you able to enjoy some of the concerts, parties?
AARON HICKS: Yeah, we went to Chicago. Brought my wife and two little kids. It was fun. Just to go out and have a good time, mommy and daddy time with the kids. Just kind of relax and enjoy the event. It was awesome.
Q. You've been playing golf for a long time going back to when you were a kid. How do you balance both golf and baseball and how much time do you devote to both sports?
AARON HICKS: So pretty much goes like this: As soon as my last game is played during the baseball season, pretty much the start of the golf season.
I would play golf until about middle of December pretty much as much as I can, and then right around middle of the December is when I start kicking up with baseball stuff and hitting three, four times a week and golf on my other days.
Definitely slows down around spring training. From my last game I'm right to the golf course as fast as I can.
Q. Talk a little bit about the impact of your dad in terms of encouraging you to pursue golf.
AARON HICKS: Well, I kind of went against my dad, so I was playing golf from like 4 to 12. Then I kind of picked up baseball and fell in love with it. It kind of became something where my dad was a little frustrated because he had put so much time in with me in playing golf, and now I want to play baseball, which is in the same time.
So it was kind of -- it kind of sucked for him a little bit. But soon as I started picking it up again during the offseason is kind of when we kind of rekindled that love the golf again. Now we get to play every day pretty much back home in Arizona. It's, yeah, fun.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports