THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Taylor Moore and Wyndham Clark to the 2025 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Taylor, I think this is your fourth time playing in this tournament. Just some opening thoughts.
TAYLOR MOORE: It's a fun week for us. I'm excited to come here every year in kind of a cool part of the schedule to have a team event and cool format for us, so I think definitely looking forward to getting back here. I've had a couple good tournaments here, a couple good weeks, so looking forward to getting started tomorrow.
THE MODERATOR: Wyndham, obviously it's a fun week with the team format but also New Orleans, fantastic city. Do you want to add anything on to looking forward to an exciting week here?
WYNDHAM CLARK: Yeah, everyone probably says the same thing, but it's really the funnest week probably for any of us the whole year. You get to come to, one, a fun golf course, a great city, get to enjoy great food, and then you get to play typically with someone you like. Which I do. I like Taylor. You get to have a lot of fun. It's fun playing different formats.
Every week we're playing typically 72-hole stroke play and it's nice to switch things up and be a little more lighthearted. Your goal this week is to have fun and really get yourself into contention, and if you don't, oh, well, but if you do, that's when you start feeling the heat and then it becomes real golf the last nine holes. Yeah, it's a really fun week.
Q. Who asked out who?
WYNDHAM CLARK: Our caddies.
TAYLOR MOORE: I think our caddies did it, yeah. Big Wave filled in for Wyndham at Bay Hill this year. Ellis was sick for a couple days, and I think that's kind of how it started, Thursday and Friday of Bay Hill.
WYNDHAM CLARK: Yeah, so Big Wave was like, oh, we should play Zurich together, and I said, okay, only if you caddie for me and then John caddies for Taylor. We kind of joked about it.
But one of the key things for this format is to make sure the player relationship is good and the caddie relationship is good because then all together it's just a fun week. Our caddies are super close. T and I have known each other since we were 14 years old. It was a no-brainer.
Q. One of the things that guys when they come in here say this is a unique format, a fun week. How do you balance the fun part of it with also once you get inside the ropes you want to compete? You're here to try and win a golf tournament. There's over a million dollars in prize money, FedExCup points. How do you balance the fun part of it as you would at a week-to-week 72-hole stroke-play event?
WYNDHAM CLARK: I mean, we're still doing our same stuff. He goes and does his work to get ready; I go and do my work to get ready. In our practice rounds, then we're kind of hitting shots and learning each other's games a little bit.
The fun part I'd say is mainly off the course. The fun dinners at night, the casinos, the playoff basketball and hockey going on. That's where we have a lot of fun.
When we get inside the ropes, it's, hey, we're really focused, but yet there's the jokes and stuff here and there. But when we get inside the ropes and it's time to tee it up, we're 100 percent focused and serious. It's a nice reprieve from the normal tournaments where you get away from the course and get to hang out with people rather than go back to your hotel room and just hanging out and not doing anything. That's where I think the fun comes in for us.
Q. I've been told this is one of the grainiest golf courses that you see throughout the year. What, if anything, does that do in terms of how you prepare for this? You're coming off of the Florida Swing where you're going to see a lot of that. Does that change within sort of the team dynamic, like reading putts or sort of adapting to that, or is that really, again, you guys prepare your own way, you handle that stuff your own way?
TAYLOR MOORE: I think for the grain part, that's just part of being in the South, and I think me growing up in this part of the country, I'm somewhat used to it. That is kind of the fun part about this format is that team aspect and being able to help each other on putts, have our caddies come in and read whatever.
I think that is kind of the beautiful thing about it and the team aspect for sure.
Q. Wyndham, I saw you had to withdraw from THE PLAYERS with a neck injury but you've maintained a busy schedule pretty much since then. How do you feel coming into this week?
WYNDHAM CLARK: Yeah, I haven't been too injured in my career, and I had to withdraw from PLAYERS, and then I didn't play TGL partially because of my neck, but then it went into my shoulder and I couldn't even lift my shoulder, so I didn't play golf for about a week leading into Houston. Then Houston I showed up on Tuesday, hadn't hit a ball for a week and then turned it into a nice week.
Then played the Masters, and then last week threw my back out just lifting up my golf bag. It's been kind of a unique year for me. I haven't had the best finishes yet this year and having to deal with some injuries.
But right now I feel great. It just happens. I am getting older. But I'm a little shocked that some of this is happening --
TAYLOR MOORE: I'm going to bubble wrap you tonight after all that.
WYNDHAM CLARK: But it's all muscle stuff; it's nothing serious. They tighten up and you can't really move, and you don't want it to become something worse. So to answer your question, my body feels good.
Q. Was it your casting shoulder or your retrieving shoulder?
WYNDHAM CLARK: Retrieving, so we're good.
Q. Obviously the defending champions are here with Rory and Shane both being, we presume, heavily involved with the European Ryder Cup Team this year. There are a number of different teams of European players who are paired up playing in this event. Are you surprised that there aren't more U.S. pairs of guys who are at least highly ranked on the point list for Ryder Cup, or is it just with the schedule sort of being what it is, this is a natural time when a lot of guys who might be in that position might take the week off?
WYNDHAM CLARK: Yeah, it's a tough question. I always like -- I would love for Team USA to do more team stuff as far as events like this or if we go play certain events together. I know the European team does a great job with that.
But at the same time, guys are probably more focused on what they're doing right now in this part of the season and they care more about their individual things, and then as we get closer to that time, then they start focusing on that.
Like you said, this is a great time for people to take a week off. You just came off a major, just came off a Signature Event. We have a handful of them coming up. I get that part of it, too. It's tough to fully answer your question.
Some guys have played it. It all depends on your schedule, to be honest.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think it just depends on the player.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports