FedEx Cup champion Patrick Cantlay has fond memories of Pebble Beach, including a T3 last year at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Excerpts from an interview.
We would like to welcome Patrick Cantlay to the interview room at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Patrick is making his sixth appearance here. You have two top 10s here including a T3 last year. Can you just open with your thoughts on being back here this week?
Cantlay: Yeah, it’s one of my favourite places in the world. I love the Monterrey Peninsula and I love Pebble Beach and so every time I’m here I feel lucky and no different this week.
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So far this season you have two top 10s, including a ninth place finish at the American Express. Can you just talk about how you feel about your game entering this week?
Cantlay: Yeah, game has been good. I took a long time off and so now I’m back in the swing of things and going to have a bunch more starts here coming up and so everything’s been good and just going to keep doing the same process that I’ve been doing, it’s been working and I’m excited to have a bunch of events coming up.
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With the year you’re coming off of and you already have two top 10s do you go into each week thinking differently than you did before you started playing as well as you have been playing?
Cantlay: I don’t. I feel like I want to get as prepared as I can for every week that I show up and the intention is to prepare to win the golf tournament.
Was it love at first sight when you first played Pebble?
Cantlay: You know, actually I think did I play a round here when I was maybe 12 years old with my dad. But I had never played a tournament here until I was a pro. So, yeah, I think so. I mean, I love California golf and this is the epitome of California golf and so I think it’s great and I definitely feel at home.
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How do you define when you say California golf, what does that mean to you?
Cantlay: I would say greens that are for the most part traditional and very severely sloped back to front. Poa annua greens and in general the properties are more condensed. There’s less real estate so it feels like the properties are a little older in general and that’s just golf I played growing up junior golf.
So I grew up at Virginia Country Club, which is a very old-school golf course and so whenever I’m on poa annua greens at a course like Pebble Beach it feels like I’ve played courses like that my whole life.
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What did you learn about yourself playing the Ryder Cup and how did that sort of change your place in the golf world do you think?
Cantlay: I don’t think I’m the right person to comment on where my position is in the golf world. I think that’s more on everyone else. I would say definitely the Ryder Cup, there’s so many expectations around what it’s supposed to be, anticipation about what that event’s supposed to be like and I think it lived up to all the hype, which things in life rarely do. So that was really exciting.
Also I just, that I love that type of environment and that moment and that the more pressure and the more intense it is the more I like it. So I really loved the Ryder Cup and everything that it brought out of me that week.
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