THE MODERATOR: Good morning. We would like to welcome World Number 1, Scottie Scheffler.
Scottie, making your sixth start of the event and your first since 2023 and the site of where you made your PGA TOUR debut. What's it like to be in a place where you're so comfortable?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I have really good memories of this tournament. This tournament has always treated me really well. I was fortunate to get a spot here when I was a senior in high school. It was my first PGA TOUR event. I have a lot of great memories of this event.
It's good to be back. I definitely missed playing here last year. Definitely excited to be back this year.
Q. Speaking of comfort, you're going to be playing with Jordan Spieth and other Dallas residents. What's it like having the crowd support you all out here?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Jordan and I got to play out here a couple years ago. I think we played with Willie Z. It was a lot of fun. The crowd was great. Si Woo and I play the same club here at home. We have three guys all from Dallas that will be playing this week and all together. So it should be a lot of fun.
Q. Obviously this time last year, you had important things going on in your life. I wonder -- I guess you guys were probably in wait mode. I wonder, did you actually watch the tournament? What kind of emotions did you have while this tournament was going on?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: That's a good question. It's funny, some of our friends just had a baby. Their baby is probably 2 months old, and I remember them asking us, what did you do at the beginning when your baby wasn't sleeping? How did you get your baby back to sleep? I was like, I have no idea what we did. I don't really remember. It was all kind of a blur.
So I can't tell you if I watched the tournament last year or what. All I can say is it's good to be back this year. I definitely missed playing this event. It's always a fun event for me to play. Like I said, the tournament's been great to me over the years, so it's good to be back here supporting this event. I'm excited to be playing at home for sure.
Q. Scottie, just your general thoughts on the fairways, the grass kind of changing from zoysia to --
(Weather.)
THE MODERATOR: We'll pause for a minute.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: When do you think the Pro-Am is going to start back up? Let's keep going. It's fine.
Q. The fairways going from zoysia to rye, your thoughts on that?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: The fairways being narrower, I think it's really good. I think this golf course, the knock on it would be that it was a little bit too easy the last two years. There wasn't a ton of rough, and the fairways were too generous. So having the overseeded rough and bringing in some of the fairways, I think brings a challenge to the course.
I think that's a good thing. I think putting more of a premium on guys getting the ball in play and not just hitting it as far as you can, I think it's a really good thing for the golf course. We'll see how it plays out this week.
Q. Your thoughts on Brandt Snedeker being selected as captain to the Presidents Cup team?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think it's good. Brandt, he was an assistant for the Presidents Cup last year. He's a good guy. He'll be a great leader. He's a lot of fun for us to have in the team room. So I'm looking forward to seeing what he's like as a captain.
We'll probably have to see a bit more of his serious side for sure, but Brandt's a great guy, and I think he'll do a great job.
Q. 2025 is the 25th anniversary since K.J. Choi became the first Korean to join the PGA TOUR. I wanted to know your thoughts in general on seeing more Koreans on TOUR and being in a Korean sponsored tournament and your friendship with Tom, and just your general thoughts on how the Koreans are.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think being friends with Tom would be a bit generous, you know (laughter). No, I'm just kidding.
Yeah, K.J. obviously has done a lot for Korean golf. There's a lot of Korean players out on TOUR now, a lot of Korean players playing well. I got beat up by a bunch of Koreans at the Presidents Cup a couple years ago. Si Woo beat me up. Who else? I specifically remember Si Woo because he got me again this year.
Yeah, I think it's good to see. Like you said, I'm good buddies with Tom. I'm really good buddies with Si Woo as well. Golf is becoming a global game, and it's really cool for CJ to come here and sponsor this event.
This event obviously means a lot to me with it being Mr. Nelson's tournament and being my hometown. For CJ to step in here and want to sponsor a tournament in the Dallas area is really special.
It's good to see as many Korean players as we have out here on TOUR, and hopefully golf will continue to get more global and get more competitive.
Q. You're playing with Si Woo Kim and Jordan Spieth tomorrow. How do you feel about that?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Playing with Jordan here will be really fun. Jordan is obviously a huge part of the community here, and with the success he's had on the course and the effect he's had off the course here in the community, the community here obviously loves him. It's always fun when him and I get to play together at this event.
Si Woo and I are members at the same club here in Dallas. We play in the same money games on weekends. He's a lot of fun to be around. I'm really looking forward to the week.
We'll certainly have a good amount of people from Royal Oaks out here supporting Si Woo and me, and we'll have a lot of people from Dallas supporting all three of us. So it should be a lot of fun.
Q. Is there any Korean food that you remember that you had before at the CJ CUP? And what's the best Korean food you can remember?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I went to college with Doug Ghim, so he introduced me to Korean barbecue and all that. I'm excited to go in there and eat some of the Bibigo stuff. It should be fun, yeah.
Q. Hopefully mother nature is not holding you hostage here. Talking to Will Zalatoris at the Masters, he was recalling the first time you and he and Jordan played together at Bear Creek when he was like 9 years old. Do you have any memories of that? Sorry, I keep asking you about memory questions. If you don't have memories of that, just kind of growing up with those two guys in Dallas and then playing this event.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I was going to say, as far as my long term memory goes, it's shockingly bad. I do have some recollections of playing with those guys. Will and I were always the same age. So we played in tons of tournaments against each other.
Jordan was three years older than us, and he was obviously really good. I would say Jordan was always a guy we looked up to when we were young. Let's say when I was 13, 14 playing in team PGA events here, Jordan was here playing in the Byron Nelson. He was a guy we both looked up to and wanted to emulate on the course.
It's pretty wild to have three guys from the same area to have the success I think that we've had. A lot of that is just the competition. We were always looking at Jordan because he was a little bit older, a little bit better than us. Will and I were always kind of looking at each other because we were both pretty good. He's a highly competitive guy as well so we were always trying to beat each other.
We've had a great friendship for a number of years now, and golf's always been a huge part of that. It's really kind of fun to look back on the journey we've been on, and being able to live out our dream and play the PGA TOUR is pretty cool.
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