00:00But, of course, we must start with your winner, Chris Goddard up.
00:04And Chris's last nine starts, Smiley.
00:06He has two wins, three top fives, and five top tens.
00:09He entered the week 49th in the data golf rankings, 28th in the OWGR.
00:15As he was closing this one out on the Golf Channel, your colleague,
00:19Brendan DeJong, said, I think we're looking at a star in the making here.
00:23And so just starting big picture on Chris,
00:26what does this win do to your perception of Chris Goddard's potential
00:31to become a star on the PGA Tour?
00:33Well, you know, he's got the tools, right?
00:36He's got the superpower of being an incredible driver of the golf ball.
00:40A really cool customer, too.
00:42You kind of like his moxie, the way he carries himself.
00:44That swagger reminds me a lot of Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka.
00:50You know, he's got this masculinity and strength to him
00:53when you watch him that seems intimidating as well.
00:56And he's the first, I shouldn't say the first,
00:59but he's won a PGA Tour event in every season that he's been on the PGA Tour now.
01:04And Steve Sands gave a pretty good stat of, you know,
01:06there were about five or six players, a lot of names that you would recognize,
01:09you know, John Rahm, Tom Kim, Victor Hovland, Kyle Morikawa,
01:12players that have done similar to him.
01:15So he's in that elite company of players who have played very well earlier
01:19in their PGA Tour career and also have won.
01:22What does that do for him, you know, moving forward to the future,
01:25the whole big picture with Chris Goddorup?
01:28I wouldn't say that Chris Goddorup is just going to go out
01:32and now he's going to win a major championship.
01:33I mean, he has all the tools to go and do that.
01:37I think for Chris, it's just about staying focused.
01:40I think Chris is a player that continues to build confidence.
01:44If he's able to just focus on the things that he can control,
01:48he can take his game to heights that maybe not even himself could have dreamed of.
01:53But the talent's always been there.
01:54He's an All-American and a player that put me into the media world.
01:59If anybody listened to the episode we had with Chris Goddorup,
02:03I told Chris, I said, buddy, when I played with you in Puerto Rico,
02:06I said, I'm not going to be able to beat this guy moving forward.
02:10And so if there's more of him coming, I probably need to go find a microphone.
02:14So Chris Goddorup, I couldn't have been more impressed with him
02:18as a collegiate player playing the Puerto Rico Open.
02:21And to see, you know, how he's been able to kind of figure out his game
02:26one step after another, I feel like he's progressed and learned something each year.
02:30And coming out of, you know, an offseason where he's moved from Oklahoma
02:35down to Jupiter, I thought that was interesting, too, because that's a big step.
02:39You know, he's been living in Oklahoma, Edmond, playing with all of his buddies there.
02:43But the reason for the move for him is that he didn't want to go in this offseason
02:48and have to play in 40-mile-an-hour winds and be freezing cold,
02:52figure that long-term he was going to improve more in Jupiter
02:56and be around more good players.
02:57I have to say there's not enough good players in Oklahoma where he was.
03:01But just being around, you know, a lot of the top players in the game,
03:05I think it doesn't hurt him and also more predictable weather
03:07and he can get some more work done.
03:11Explain a little bit what you were saying to me about the way you think
03:15TGL has impacted his game as a player on tour.
03:19No, I think a lot of people are on the edge of their seat here.
03:22You know, but I'll say this.
03:25I think that it always gives players more belief when they are on a bigger stage.
03:30So if you're playing in front of the lights in an ESPN TGL crowd,
03:34not to say that Chris has an experience playing on the big stage in the lights,
03:40but he's also around some of the game's best in what is considered to be
03:45the top players on the PGA Tour.
03:47And I think being around Billy Horschel and having matches against Rory McIlroy
03:51and being successful.
03:53And also you can't forget, too, that this is the same player
03:57that held off Rory McIlroy at the Scottish Open a year prior.
04:01So he's already building on success that he had in the prior year,
04:05but then getting into TGL, kind of being the MVP of that team,
04:08and then goes right into the first PGA Tour event
04:11and looks literally like he's playing a video game on the back nine,
04:16cutting off dog legs, hitting it 350 yards in the middle of these fairways
04:19where some of these holes shape the opposite of the way of his curvature of the golf ball,
04:24which he's a guy that primarily plays cuts 80% of the time.
04:28He plays low cuts.
04:29That's the shot that he plays.
04:30Now he can move it right to left if he needs to,
04:33but that's the shot that he hits most of the time.
04:35And meanwhile, he's finding fairways that you would think,
04:39oh, man, it's going to be really tough with this wind
04:41or this angle for him to find the fairway.
04:43And he was doing it on the back nine where other players weren't.
Comments