A new chapter will unfold on Thursday when six-time ATP Tour winner Mardy Fish tees off in his maiden start on the PGA Tour with a sponsor’s exemption for the 3M Open. Excerpts from an interview:
We would like to welcome Mardy Fish into the interview room here at the 3M Open in 2022. Mardy, you’ve been around golf. You’re obviously a tennis professional, but you’ve played in a number of celebrity events, but this is the first go-round in the big leagues basically. What’s the anticipation heading into this tournament this week for you?
Mardy Fish: Excitement, humbleness, right. Like no one’s ever played an ATP and PGA
Tour event before. The ATP formed in the ’70s, so it’s something new as well. Obviously for me new, new for anyone to do that. So it’s special, it really is. It’s special that it’s here as well. I’m born just down the road and spent the first five years of my life here and root for the Vikings and the Twins and the Timberwolves. I didn’t go to college. My dad went to the University of Minnesota, so a lot of roots were laid down here a long time ago. So I’m just excited that it’s here and where I’m from and where I was born. And I don’t get to come back very often and so this is a special, certainly a special trip.
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Did you kind of anticipate this happening in the last year or few months given the amount of golf you played on the celebrity circuit?
Mardy: A few years ago I had the luxury of meeting and playing golf with Mr. (Jack) Nicklaus, and he is buddies with Hollis and called him and said, hey, what about this
Fish guy for a sponsor’s exemption? That was the year that they had (Collin) Morikawa, (Viktor) Hovland and (Matthew) Wolff as the sponsor exemptions. So I felt like — and I didn’t necessarily know who they were at the time. I knew they were great collegiate players or whatever, but so I figured if Mr. Nicklaus can’t get me in, I may as well not try.
And we revisited it this year. Kyle Rudolph, who played for the Vikings and is a 3M
ambassador, was a huge part of talking to Hollis and Mike and Kady and the rest of the crew and got me over the edge and I couldn’t be more humbled and excited.
How different do you expect it to be teeing it up nerves-wise against these guys
versus celebrity tournaments?
Mardy: Yeah, a little different probably. I get — the difference for me with pressure,
stress in golf and tennis was in tennis, I was really a basket case before matches. Once they called my name or once I walked down on the court, I felt great. Everyone’s different. That was me. I remember playing a match at Wimbledon and it was maybe fourth round or quarterfinals and I looked over at my opponent, it was an hour before the match and my opponent was asleep and taking a nap on one of the training tables. I was the opposite of that.
In golf, I get a little nervous on that first sort of swing or the first kind of birdie, you know, sort of free up to make a birdie or double bogey kind of thing and you can kind of relax a little bit. I anticipate it’s no similar than something like that. Golf, golf is obviously so technical in terms of your swing and stuff that when it’s a little off or the nerves are on and your swing’s a little off can really throw you. It will be a new experience, for sure. You can ask me on Thursday after the round how that was.
You’re a really competitive guy. How do you balance the “happy to be here” with I’m sure at some point it’s going to be like “I want to do really, really well.”
Mardy: Oh, no doubt, yeah. Look, I certainly don’t expect to, you know, compete to win the tournament necessarily, but making the cut is something that I’m eyeing big time. Look at some of the scores of the past and I don’t know, it seems fairly doable score-wise, but then you’ve got to get out there and actually play. I’m confident in my game, I know I can — I’ve worked really hard to get — you know, during the past couple months to kind of get myself into this type of golf shape, long irons into par4s and long holes and stuff like that. So you can only rely on that. I’ve played golf my whole life, ever since I could stand, and so you’re just hitting a little white ball around. I don’t have to run after it or anything like that, so it’s right there in front of you.
And so yeah, it’s a great question, right? Like how do you enjoy it and not play well or how
do you enjoy it and play great? It’s difficult to kind of compartmentalize like that. I hope I do. I know I do leading up to it, for sure, but once the tournament starts you’ll kind of jump back into that mode and think that you’re as good as these guys out here and I’m sure that’s what I’ll do.
