THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome Patrick Cantlay to the interview room here at the RBC Heritage. Patrick, you're the current FedExCup champion, this season you started out, well this year, 2022, you started out really well, you had four top 10s early in the season and kind of just gone off the ball a little bit, but you started the season well. Is there any explanation for maybe just the downturn in form?
PATRICK CANTLAY: I think that's just kind of the nature of the game. It's hard to play well each and every week, but like I've said before, when it feels really good it's not far away from struggling and when you're struggling it's not far away from really good.
So I played well here at this golf course a number of times and so I'm looking forward to the week.
THE MODERATOR: I was going to say, this is your fifth start, sadly missed the cut last year, but a number of top 5, top 10s previous. So what do you like about this course and what do you like about coming here after a stressful week at a major championship?
PATRICK CANTLAY: I think this golf course is a very strategic golf course. I think it demands that you be very precise. The greens are really small. And because the greens are small if you're not precise and you do miss a green you can actually chip in or get up-and-down a lot I feel like.
So short game's really big this week because you're just not going to hit all the greens because they are so small. But if you do get really precise, you can have a lot of really short good looks at birdie.
THE MODERATOR: Questions?
Q. What's your takeaway from last week personally and when you make the drive down here do you just rinse all that away or do you carry something from that that you can use here?
PATRICK CANTLAY: Yeah, I felt like last week was really difficult. Definitely the hardest Masters I had seen in all the tournaments that I played there. This week will be obviously a different feel totally different golf course, a different test. But I think it's really important to stay fresh and not live in the past and live in the right here and now and so all my efforts are focused here this week.
Q. When you came out and TOUR looking at the World Rankings there are three guys in the top 4, 25 or younger. When you came out what kind of mindset did you have? Did you feel like there was a break-in period or a get-my-feet-wet period that maybe some of these guys at least maybe seem to have leapfrogged a little bit?
PATRICK CANTLAY: I feel like that trend's been going on for a little while. We saw it probably really start to take shape when Jordan played well in 2015, 2016 he really played extremely, extremely well and he was young at the time, probably 25, 24 years old. That's a trend we've continued to see, that the best players in the world, in the past they used to be over 30 and now they seem to be around 30 or a little younger.
That doesn't surprise me with all the technology and more availability of good coaching and good feed back to younger players. I mention all the time to friends of mine, when I was in high school I had no sense of how much my ball was spinning, how to hit the driver further, not realizing that spin was probably, spin and launch were the most important things to hitting the golf ball far. I just had a feeling that if I swung harder it would go farther, but that's not necessarily the case.
And so there's kids that are growing up with Trackman from 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. So by the time they're 16, 17 and they're developing into really good junior players, they're dialed in on all of that stuff and they have been working on launching it at 2,000 spin at 13 or 14 to get it to go as far as possible.
And so the young guys when they come out now I don't want to say have an advantage, but you can definitely see that they play a different game. They swing hard, they hit it high and straight and they go for almost every flag stick. And I would say when I was growing up it was slightly different. It was maybe, there was some guys that were on that model, but a lot of guys were play to the edge of the dogleg, old school, you know, like when DL-III won here five times, play to the edge of the dogleg, play to the center of the grown, putt up the hill to the corners.
So I would say that's been the biggest difference and what I would attribute to maybe a younger generation playing better quicker.
Q. Most other sports if you are very successful beyond age 35 you're rare, something like Roger Fred Federer or Tom Brady, but it's not common. Do you see golf going in that direction where the prime of your physical life, early 20, 30s, you'll see less stories like Mark O'Meara or Nick Price winning majors or things like that?
PATRICK CANTLAY: I do. I think you'll see in general shorter careers, it would be hard for the careers to get longer. DL-III, I don't know how many years this is for him on TOUR, but it's got to be near 30 and he's still playing this week past 50. I would be surprised if we saw a lot of kids of this generation do that into their 50s.
I think that's just, the competition seems more fierce and so it takes more out of guys, more out of their bodies, more out of their preparation, more from a time perspective, and so the careers get hotter and shorter. And I think you're seeing that in all sports.
And there always will be exceptions, Tiger still being able to win majors in his 40s. Brady being able to win Super Bowls in his 40s. So there will always be exceptions, but I think in general, as a rule, careers will be shorter and guys will play better younger.
Q. I asked Collin earlier, the weeks that you won, have you had a sense before the week started that this might be a week where I could really do well, and then to bring that to an even more narrow level, he talked about sometimes there's shots like his on the 18th at Augusta where he walks up to it and thinks, I'm going to make this, just kind of has that feeling somehow. So those two things, do you relate?
PATRICK CANTLAY: I'm not sure. I definitely feel like some weeks my game feels better than others and there's a golf course that suits my eye better than others and so those weeks you tend to think, you know, this is a better week for me.
But I don't know if I show up to any tournament and go, oh, I'm for sure going to win this week. But I also don't show up to many weeks and think, oh, I'm not going to play well this week. I tend to come in with a similar mindset time after time.
Golf is funny, sometimes a 30-footer looks better to you than a 6-footer and sometimes you stand over long putts or long shots and know you're going to hit a good one before. But I'm sure there's some confirmation bias, I'm sure there's shots that have looked good to me before I hit it and then I don't hit great shots, so, yeah.
Q. For those of us who don't see you each week, did winning the FedExCup kind of change your perspective on your game or what you expect when you come out to the course?
PATRICK CANTLAY: Not for me. I feel like the results part of things and winning tournaments is the result of all the process and good work that you do to get there. And so those things should take care of yourself or take care of themselves. And as long as you keep doing the process and doing the right things to keep putting yourself in those position, those things should come about. And I don't think putting more pressure on yourself or saying, oh, now I've won some tournaments, I should win more or I should change my process is helpful.
THE MODERATOR: We appreciate you coming in, Patrick and good luck this week.
PATRICK CANTLAY: All right, thank you.
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