THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Jacob Bridgeman here to the interview room at the RBC Heritage, making his second start at this event as a South Carolinian. Talk about what it means to play one of our tournaments in South Carolina.
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, this one sort of feels like a home game to me, even though it's about four hours away from my house. I grew up playing junior golf at this course, playing the Junior Heritage, and then I got to play in my first Heritage last year. Coming back is amazing. There's been a ton of Clemson support and hometown support here, even in the practice rounds, and I'm sure once the tournament starts, it'll be even more.
THE MODERATOR: How does Harbour Town fit your game specifically?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: It's kind of the course that I would maybe put a star on on the schedule, one kind of like this one Tampa or maybe a TPC Sawgrass, the kind of place where you have to plot your way around, be strategic off the tee, can't really overpower it with length. That's the courses that I prefer.
This one is probably the most of those where you have to really be selective off the tee, which side of the fairway you're going to hit it on, and the small greens, overhanging tree branches.
A little bit new this year with the new bunkering and new grass, but it still has that same heart to it.
Q. No. 3 in the FedExCup standings. You picked up the win at the Genesis Invitational. Talk about your season up to this point and the state of your game.
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, season has been great. It's been even better than I would have dreamed it to be. I've typically had a slow start to the West Coast just because I wasn't familiar with the grass and climate and all those courses, but I think my third year I've started to figure it out a little bit, and I played really well to start the year.
Then getting the win, that was kind of my goal to start the year last year and didn't do it, and that was my focus was to win and make it back to East Lake.
It was a dream start and kind of my game has been in great form really the whole season. I hope this week is just a repeat of that.
Q. What is your favorite restaurant to eat at on Hilton Head Island?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: I haven't spent a whole lot of time down here other than just this area. So I don't have that huge of a spectrum to talk about. But the one place I look forward to when I'm down here is Java Burrito. It's like the Chipotle of Hilton Head and has so much for flavor and it's one of my favorites. I'll probably go a couple times this week.
Q. In your tournament debut last year, were there certain things you learned from playing the course that were different than your junior golf experience?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yes, a lot. I think when I played it as a junior, middle of the year, not close to the tournament, they kept the course in a certain way for members and for guests that time of year where it's not as challenging, so it was a lot more friendly when I played it as a junior. Then playing in the tournament here, they firmed up everything, the greens were a lot quicker, a lot faster and firmer, and just I think the difference in the trees being green and healthy made them appear bigger versus when I played it in the winter. A lot more challenging, which is how it should be for us. We need a challenge sometimes.
Yeah, it has the same bones, but it played completely different.
Last year I didn't play great. I was a little bit burned out on a pretty long stretch of golf, but I'm excited to give it another shot. I think I've got some good golf here.
Q. Do you enjoy playing events like this where you have to exercise a little bit more patience?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, I think that's kind of the name of my game. I like the events where the scores aren't going to be crazy low; it's not a birdie shootout. I seem to like those events, and this is kind of the perfect example of that where the course is going to give you what it gives you, and you can't really take anything extra, so that's kind of the perfect course for me.
Q. As a South Carolinian, can you tell us what's great about playing golf in South Carolina?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: I think we have all different climates kind of all across the state. I'm an upstate guy, but I love spending time on the coast. I know that's kind of where most of the tourism is is on the coast of South Carolina, tons of good golf, a bunch of good beaches and islands.
I think I'll be a South Carolinian my whole life. I don't really plan to move, don't really want to. All my friends and family are around here. But yeah, all across the state, we've got mountains, mountain golf. We've got golf on lakes. We've got golf in the city. We've got golf on the coast. It's really anything you could ask for, and anything you're looking for you can find it in the state.
Q. Where did you guys go on vacation when you were a kid?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: We would come down actually here a little bit. My grandmother had a timeshare that usually once a year she always wanted to take the grandkids, so we'd come down here and spend a week with her. That was always fun. We would go to Pawleys Island. My uncle had a best friend who had a house down there. We did that a little bit.
We never really did the Myrtle Beach, kind of stayed away from that, a little bit busy for our liking. But my parents liked to go to Folly Beach a little bit when we were younger. Other than that, we'd go to the lake, lake or mountains, about an hour from our house up north.
Q. Never went to LA or Boston or really explored?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Not even close. We were, I think, stuck to the places we could drive.
Q. What's the difference of showing up here this year showing up after the Masters as compared to last year? How do you feel?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Energy wise, I think I feel a lot better than last year. I played a ton in a row last year to try and get into the Masters and burned myself out a bit and kind of ran my body into the ground.
This year I strategically planned around playing in the Masters and being fresh for that so I took a couple weeks off before, prepped and was fresh there and still kind of same thing, I had one day of rest on Monday and been back at it.
I feel a lot more prepared this year. Last year I think it was coming out of my house, trying to get back woken up after resting for a while, so a little bit more prepared.
Q. Was that exhausting last week in terms of the attention you had to pay to every shot for 72 holes?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, I think just mainly mentally demanding. I know people talk about the walk, and physically it's not a big deal. The hills are what they are. You just walk around. We do that for a living. But mentally very demanding.
The attention that you need to every shot on the course, you can't really take one shot off. It'll bite you.
Yeah, just every day you know you're in for kind of a fight for five hours, and that kind of is draining, especially when I got there on Sunday. I had eight days of it.
But it was nice to get down here, relax a little bit with some southern hospitality and get ready for the week.
Q. This event last year was the first event the PGA TOUR allowed range finders to speed up the pace of play. It's a year since then. Have you seen a difference in the pace of play since last year with the range finders?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, so I think we did kind of a test run on that starting here and went through the PGA last year, if I remember correctly. It was great. I thought it was a good option.
It seemed like guys were -- the caddies especially were still used to getting the numbers from our books and kind of trusted that a bit more and then would maybe check it with the range finder. But certain situations it would help a lot. When we had a weird angle on a short wedge, where it's 50, 60 yards, where most caddies will walk all the way to the hole to get the yardage because the yardage book can't really tell you, that helped a lot.
Then situations when we hit it in the trees and it's hard to find a number, those sped it up a ton, but in the middle of the fairway, it didn't really do a lot because the guys are stubborn and want to trust their book.
Q. Is there anything else you think the TOUR could do to try to help speed up play?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, I feel like if I start to go down that rabbit hole, I'm going to have to put a lot more of my play -- I tend to stay off of that. I let people handle that that are supposed to handle it.
Look, there's so many things that could be done, I guess. But we're all a certain way. We're all stubborn in our own way. We want to do things how we want to them and we've gotten used to doing them over the years. Any changes I would be fine with, but I'll let the people decide that that decide it.
Q. I couldn't help but notice you're No. 1 in strokes gained putting. Has putting always been a strength of your game? Are you a guy who switches putters a lot? Do you stick with one putter? Give me the evolution of your putting.
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, I think I've always been a very aggressive putter, and when I was in junior golf, I was pretty good. I three-putted a lot because I hit putts really hard, and then over -- I think when I went to college I learned quite a bit about strokes gained and why I was losing shots by three-putting and doing that.
Dialed it back a little bit, got a lot more focused on speed, and towards the end of my college career got pretty good at it, pretty good at putting. Always used a blade, and I turned pro, used it for the first year and a half, two years of my pro career, and that was definitely the top of my game at those times.
But then just randomly the story behind me switching putters to the Spider, it was when the kind of internet blackout thing happened and the flights were getting canceled middle of -- two years ago, and my caddie ended up having to drive from California to Minnesota, and it was a 28-hour drive. He drove, I think, 15 hours one day and woke up, 13 hours the next day, and I was just there by myself, messing around, got bored, picked up a Spider, started putting with it at the 3M Open and started making everything and decided I'm going to switch to this. Putted with it the first few days, decided I wanted some sort of alignment aid, took a Sharpie out, drew a dot on the top, and that's kind of been the putter I've been rolling with since.
I think I looked at the stats, and I doubled my strokes gained from the blade to the Spider, so it's helped me quite a bit.
This year I've putted well to start the year, and I think I'm going to stick with the Spider for a while. I messed around with different colors but it's always the exact same putter.
Q. There's some rumors floating around that LIV may cease operations. I'm curious, if that happens, what would you like to see happen -- would you like the players to be allowed back to the PGA TOUR or how would you handle that?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: I haven't heard really much about it. Look, Brooks was welcomed back, and it's been great for our TOUR. Any more eyeballs we can get, I think it's great, and Brooks has been playing some great golf. He's earned it; he's a major champion I think five times.
Yeah, if they're able to come back and promote our TOUR, then great, and if they're not, then it's not really going to change my day-to-day. I'm going to play the golf that I play on this tour and have fun doing it, and if some guys that haven't been here for a few years come back over, then good for them, and if not, then it doesn't really matter to me.
Q. How much golf are you going to play during this busy time with majors and Signature Events? How is that affecting your schedule this year?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, I was in everything kind of to start the year, so I had set aside what I was going to play and what I wasn't going to play.
I think my future -- my next few weeks looks like playing this week and then I'm going to play the new event down in Miami, Doral. I'm going to play at this Truist in Charlotte, then I'm going to play the PGA and then I'm going to take a couple weeks off and rest my body.
I think the schedule has to be made around the Signature Events and around the majors because those are the ones that we all want to play well at. But it's also courses that each one of us really like and want to fit in the schedule. I'm sure everyone has a different plan on that, but yeah, I think it's silly if you don't make your schedule around those big tournaments.
Q. You were a good enough putter to putt on poa annua at Riviera and have success. What advice would you give to people who have never putted on that grass as to how to become successful on it, because the people who are playing professional golf say it looks like little broccoli on top of the green by the end of the day, and I've been to Riviera a ton of times and Pebble Beach a ton of times, and putts go everywhere. How would you gauge that?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Yeah, so it's funny, at Pebble Beach I asked a few people because I was the same way. I was lost. I said, I don't know how to putt on these greens, and I'd always been frustrated in the past.
No one really gave me an answer that was like, oh, this is the solution. All of it was just, if you hit a good putt, that's the only thing you can do. Just hit a good putt; it might go in, it might bounce out, but some of the bad ones might bounce in.
I think it was more of a difference in my putting on the West Coast last year versus this year. I think it was just a mindset and a mental strength thing of saying, some of the putts that I hit really good that I expect to go in aren't, and that's okay, just because of that's how the surface is. But some of the bad ones are going to go in. That's kind of how it was at Riv. I made a couple putts that I shouldn't have made, and then there was a couple -- especially on Sunday that I thought I made that just bounced out.
I think it was just being okay with knowing that that's going to happen because on an uneven surface we're rolling a little white ball that's going to hit something at some point and maybe bounce out, but most of the time it bounces in if you're having a good week. If you're going to win, you need to have those bounces.
It was just a mental thing for me just switching that a little bit.
Q. Hole 14, I would love to get your opinion on that hole, the par-3?
JACOB BRIDGEMAN: Is that the one with water right after the bunker island par-4? Yeah, I think it's a great hole. I feel like in the past I've heard that was one of the more challenging ones on TOUR if I'm right on that.
They'll put the pins down the right side that baits you into hitting it in the water, and you don't really want to miss it left because the green slopes so severely from left to right, but we've got a scoring club in our hands most of the time, plus the wind is blowing fast. It's like 8-iron or so.
I think it's an amazing hole of risk-reward. If you want to take on the risk of the water and go at the hole where you might have a chance at birdie, and if you want to chicken out, you've probably a little bit more of a difficult up-and-down.
Yeah, perfect example of risk-reward.
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