Golf With Jay Delsing - - Stewart Cink

Jay Delsing spent 25 years on the PGA Tour and is a lifetime member of the PGA Tour and PGA of America. Now he provides his unique perspective as a golfer and network broadcaster. It's time to go On the Range with Jay Delsing.

On the Range is brought to you by Vehicle Assurance. Hey, good morning. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay. I got Perley with me. Perley, what's going on this morning? Nothing much, man. Just more sunshine and blue skies down here.

Looking forward to working with you. Me too. I am so tired of hearing this. Oh, come on.

It's getting pretty old. Yeah. We don't need a weather report. I thought you wanted an update. I thought you wanted an update.

I wanted an invite, not an update. We formatted. Can you tell we're a little bitter over here?

We're about as bitter as the bitter cold temperatures we're dealing with here. We formatted a show like Around the Golf. The first segment is the On the Range segment. It's brought to you by Vehicle Assurance. Their number is 866-341-9255.

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Reach them at 314-966-0303 or deanteamkirkwood.com. All right, Pearl, so our show today. Got to sit down with Stuart Sink. Stuart's been a good buddy for a lot of years.

Seven-time PGA Tour winner, the Open champion in 2009, which was one of the wildest tournaments for me to watch Pearl because he beat Tom Watson in a playoff at 59 years old. So, yeah, it's just crazy. We've got a little course management topic. We've got some other things to talk about. But, Pearl, something came across the wires last week. We didn't have enough time to get in the show, but I'm really excited about this. The PGA of America has made, I'm going to call this a monumental statement for golf. And they're allowing players in the Senior PGA Championship, the KMPG Women's PGA Championship, and the PGA Championship on the regular PGA Tour. They're allowing measuring devices to be used in the tournament. So just for those events, not for the Tour?

No, the Tour is not right. So the Tour is a separate entity. The USGA is a separate entity.

The RNA is a separate entity. So obviously the RNA and the USGA can get together and say, well, here's what we're going to do in the US Open. Here's what we're going to do in the Open Championship abroad. But all those other ones are going to have to run through Jacksonville and go through the PGA Tour protocol. But I love what they said because they said they're always looking to increase and enhance the flow of play and the pace of play and the competition itself. And they really believe that this is going to make it go quicker and easier. And they're taking a bold move, Pearl. And maybe I'm overstating this a little bit, but sometimes the golf powers-at-be are just a little slow to react to some of these things for me. I think reacting slow is an understatement. Do you think it will have that effect, Jay? Do you think they'll play faster because of it? I mean, on the surface, personally, I like it.

I like it a lot. It would be better. How much better of a caddy would I have been if I had a top-notch radar? I mean, I could have been top of the heap. It sounds like a movie opportunity here, Mead.

He could have been a contender. Oh, Pearl, you know, John, I think it's like, I don't think it's going to be a massive amount of difference, but I think you're talking about five to ten minutes around. I'll place a bet on that. I think it's another 15, 20 minutes around, which on the surface might not sound a lot, but any improvement, I think you would agree, is a lot, is a big deal. Okay, so John, think of it from a monetary standpoint with the television networks and how important they've always been trying to shorten our game.

They've always been trying to clean this thing up and let it run a little quicker, a little smoother, a little cleaner. Yep. It'll be interesting. Nonetheless, it'll be really interesting to see what indeed does happen with this. Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot. I think it's not too long before it's going to come down the pipe for the rest of the thing. I think there's a lot of, I think colleges, some college events, some other amateur events are using it.

I think it's here, and we should do it, personally. I want to say one thing that happened last week. We didn't get to mention it on the show, but the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am Pro, one of our favorite events, one of my favorite events.

I played 26 years in a row out there, and I know probably the last ten you spent out there almost every year with me, I'd say. Don't you think? I love it.

I love it. What a gorgeous place in general, and walking that course, any of the courses, but Pebble in particular coming down 16, 17, 18, it didn't get much better than that. And because of COVID, they weren't allowed to do the Pro Am portion of the event, so it wasn't a foursome walking down there with two pros and two Ams. It's just going to be the players themselves, and so it's a totally different look, but it'll be back next year.

It'll be interesting to see. That is one of the highest-rating golf events every year, Pearl. It'll be interesting to see what happens this year without the Bill Murrys and the Larry Fitzgeralds of the world, Larry the Cable Guy, and all those other folks that come out there and support the event. Yeah, probably won't have quite the draw, but I know the players are all going to say, and have been saying, oh, we're going to miss the amateurs, kind of. That's a long week with the amateurs, for sure.

Yeah, those rounds can drag on quite a bit. Okay, so, John, one of the things that I wanted, we've been talking about throwing out some ideas for how people can improve their game through the winter, and we've talked about exercise, we've talked about how statistics and analyzing your statistics can be misleading through your putting and your hitting and stuff, and today I wanted to bring up course management and this topic, and what does it really mean, and how can they actually manage, how do you think people can actually manage themselves and their games better to translate to lower scores? Because I feel like when people talk about course management, I don't really feel like the majority of the amateur player knows what that means.

I'm not sure a lot of people do. I mean, you and I went back and forth, even on tour. I think we all understand it to a certain level, but there's just another level, another level, and another level.

Remember the time in Caddy Foria for Phoenix Open Qualifier, I think it was out at Pima, one of those places. We got done with the day, you played pretty well but not good enough to make it, and you kind of said, well, if I would have had this shot or this shot. And I think part of it is just that perspective of what we have control of, really, and what we don't. And I think the other part of course management that's so important that maybe we can touch on is the momentum that you can create and the comfort level for yourself that you can create if you do have your eye on course management. Not getting in those funky positions and then having a tough time getting out.

We've talked about this on the show. Whenever we're in any of that kind of stuff, hit the shots you're most comfortable with, and when you're in trouble, get it back in a place that you can be very comfortable. I think if you do those types of things and establish a bit of that rhythm of the round, if you will, and that comfort level, other things can start clicking.

And that, to me, is what I mean by managing it. Yeah, you know what, John, I remember that round specifically. I think I shot 71 and I needed like 66 or 67 to get through. And I was like, man, I missed a couple of drives here and there.

We broke that round down. And if I would have hit, and this is where the first true awakening of how important the short game was and how important 100 yards in was to my game, if I would have hit one bunker shot better, two pitch shots better, and two chip shots better, you know, I'm shooting 65 minimally because of the momentum you said. And, Pearl, I have written down here and circled momentum because there's a rhythm to the round as we talk about. And some of the young guys that I try to help coach, I talk about this and try to get them to understand this momentum. When it is on your side, you want to cherish it. You don't want to be reckless and careless with it. And you want to keep that ball in front of you. And if this is a day where you're going low, man, put the ball on the green and give yourself a bunch of good looks at it because those days don't happen that often. And that day in Pima still resonates in my mind as a very important day for me understanding the game in a different way.

Pearl? Absolutely. And another time, actually many times, we would be out there in one of our goals, certainly at the beginning of the tournament, but really at the beginning of each round, was let's try not to have to hit, certainly not more than a full shot. I mean, let's not go after anything in the first nine if we can help it.

And if possible, between a seven and an eight, if you could get comfortable with it, let's hit the seven. And that really helped use kind of the rhythm of your swing. That was the course management.

Because we knew if we were hitting pressing seven irons, pressing nine irons, pressing things off the tee early, it could really get you out of whack. And when we can kind of stick with that, it really got you into a good groove. And then by the end, you're flying. Your comfort level is there. You're building that momentum.

You had your rhythm. And then you could hit it however you wanted to hit it. But if we started that too early, it could get wonky. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's going to wrap up the On The Range segment.

But don't go anywhere. We have the interview with Stuart Sink coming up on the front nine. This is Golf with Jay Delsing.

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Welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay. I've got Perley with me, and we are headed to the front nine brought to you by the Ascension Charity Classic. Man, if you're anywhere near the Midwest this September, you've got to go up to Norwood Hills. It's going to be, oh, I'm just going to say the best field for the Champions Tour all year long at Norwood September 6th through 12th.

Cannot wait. Perley, we are going to go right to my interview with Stuart Sink, a seven time PGA Tour winner. He won the Open Championship in 2009.

He was also the winner of the prestigious Payne-Stewart Award in 2017, among many other accomplishments. Let's go to that interview now. Stuart Sink, 47 years of age, was talking to him on the practice putting green. He's like, I'm going to go give these young guys a run today. He gets hit in wedges like that, making the putts.

He's going to do exactly that. Stuart Sink is brought to you by Golden Tee. But I got to tell you, it's so fun to prep for some of you guys that get to come on the show. I look at your career, seven PGA Tour wins, five Ryder Cup teams that you played on, four President's Cup teams that you played on, 14 professional wins around the world. Currently, you're sitting ninth in the FedEx Cup. You've made over $40 million in career earnings. And gosh, man, what a great career you've had.

Thank you. It just feels like a blink, and here we are. I'm 47 years old, and I can't believe that it's been going on this long. It just doesn't feel like that long. The numbers add up, and I think this is my 23rd or 24th season.

It's amazing, but golf makes you start over every week. In a way, I don't feel like it's a twilight part of my career. I still feel like I've got a lot to play for, and I've got the ability to keep competing. So, why not?

Absolutely, why not? I mean, you won an event last year, but let's start a little bit and give folks a kind of a glimpse at how you started. Like you, like many of these stud players that are coming out on tour, like the Victor Havelins and the Colin Morakawas and the Matthew Wolfs, you turned pro in 95, and then 96, you won three events on the Nike Tour of the Mexican Open, and then right out on the tour straight away in 97. Yeah, growing up, I never really saw myself as like the PGA Tour was my destiny or anything like that. I really kind of hoped that golf would somehow get me a college scholarship and I could move out of the small town and go see the rest of what was out there.

I just tried to get a little bit better every day. I grew up kind of in a blue collar, I wouldn't call it like a pessimistic environment. I'm not talking about my household or anything, but the area was kind of economically shrinking.

It was not a very happy place back in the time when I grew up. So, it didn't feel like there was a lot of optimism for me. I was playing well and I was winning my regional and local tournaments, but there wasn't a whole lot of, you really have something. I don't think a lot of people around my area had really seen much in golf.

I didn't know what to expect, so I didn't really expect much. I was a competitive junior golfer and definitely I was on top of my class as far as my age division in the state tournament I was playing in, and then I was winning. So, I got some attention from colleges and I ended up with a scholarship.

I went to Georgia Tech, so I got out of the little town in Alabama to the big town in Atlanta, Georgia. Then I kind of started over and got into a place where now I was like a little fish in a big pond again. Hopefully, maybe I can just compete and maybe make the team.

I was doing that right away. Then I was learning a lot from David Duvall, who was on my team. I won a tournament, and then when Duvall left, I was kind of like the senior guy and the leader and college player of the year. Then I was like, well, I think I can maybe turn pro and try this. I wasn't one of these kids who was like, from a young age, like the PGA Tour is my calling. I didn't think of it that way, but I worked hard and I stayed kind of in the present, you could say. I tried to get a little bit better every day, and it worked out to be in my favor. Before I know it, I was looking around at everybody going, I'm beating everybody.

It was the next step, logically. Stewie, how difficult, you know, I've had a lot of guys on, and Gary Woodland just talked about this a couple weeks ago, where he said, I didn't realize how difficult it was once I got on tour that it's almost like these doors open and 20 or 30 of the best, younger, stronger, non-fearful players come and try to take my job. It's pretty intimidating. It is, and you're working against a lot of factors. I should say it this way, there's factors that are working against you, and there's factors that are working for you, and there's a lot of them. Number one, everybody has a different comfort level with being in the spotlight or in the center of attention, and that's just a personal thing that everyone has to work through, or maybe they don't.

Maybe they're just totally natural at being in the limelight, and that's great, but not everybody's like that. Then every year goes by, like Gary Woodland would have said, that you've got a couple dozen of the best in the world that are coming to basically try to take your job. It's like the first day of camp every year, and you're the quarterback, and you look, and there's 40 quarterbacks standing there that all look bigger than you, stronger than you.

They probably can do all the technical skills they need to do, maybe a little bit better than you, but you have the whole package, experience and trust of your club and everything. There's a lot of factors, and one of those is definitely as we age naturally, physiologically our brains sort of develop, and they change. When you're 25, you have very little regard for risk, and you're just more about taking everything on and let the chips fall where they may, and that kind of attitude is great in golf. As you get older, you get experience, which kind of has two sides. Yeah, you learn how to play more, and you learn yourself, and you learn the courses, and how certain courses react to certain types of wind and all that stuff from all your years of playing.

That's an integral part of golf, but everybody learns that. The other side of experience is you develop scars and mental demons. As it matures, it starts to hang on to the things that it associates with risk, and that's natural. That's good for us because in the rest of our life, it's better to be a little bit risk averse when you're a little older because you're more saving and you get into retirement age.

It's not really great for being a professional golfer. You're fighting against that physiologic sort of development and maturity too that kind of works against you. There's just a lot of factors that go into it, but throughout my whole career, I've just been trying to stay on that same type of mentality that I had when I was a kid.

I just want to try to get better at golf. I try to learn a little something every day about what can make me a little bit better. Some days I feel like I learn a ton. Some days I regress, and tournament plays like that too. You take huge steps forward, you take steps backwards, and you just constantly try to be a little bit better.

It's a craft, it's a profession, and I try to treat it that way every day and try to be the best I can. Well, not only are you a great golfer, you're a great human being, but we're going to talk about that in a little bit. Let's go to 2009. We talked about some wins that you have, but winning the Open Championship, beating Tom Watson in the four-hole aggregate playoff, all of those things, it had to be a dream come true. Well, I mean, certainly winning a major was like a dream come true, yes.

But at the same time, though, because I wouldn't call myself a dreamer at all. I felt like it was a validator for me. I felt like I had established myself in the professional golf ranks by then. Let's see, I was 36. I'd been playing on the tour for about 13 years at that point without a major, success, but no major. So I felt like I had enough game to compete in majors, and I kind of felt like it was a situation where I should be patient and just wait. I never really felt like the monkey was on my back or anything like that. I probably, unfortunately, probably didn't win enough for the monkey to be on my back. If I had been a 20-win guy and no major, then I think the monkey would have been on my back. But at that time, I think I had like five wins and no major. So I didn't feel the monkey, but it was a great sense of validation. It wouldn't erase the difficulties that my family had been through for me being gone all the time.

My wife was basically a single parent for about 12 years of our life while I was out running around chasing the white ball. But it definitely had a sense of validation where I felt like I belonged. I felt like you can't really get much higher than that in golf.

I mean, you win a major championship, and it puts you in a very small group. Oh, absolutely. So, Stu, let's talk a minute about what you said. I find it fascinating because some guys talk about dreaming, and you talk about this validating. When I was a little kid, I was always dreaming about this stuff, you know, like I could see myself out there and things like that. And that wasn't the case for you.

Not really. I just never have been motivated by that. And I think that's what most of us, most people anyway, are, you know, your dreams are motivators.

And it's frustrated my wife to no end because of the way that I approach a lot of things in my life. And golf is just one of those things. But I'm a small goal type person, you know. I want to be ready to hit every shot and every putt and be settled and have a good process on each shot before I hit it. And I want to be able to look back at my round and say, you know what, today I did a great job. I don't remember one time when I hit a shot where I wasn't completely decided and focused and ready to execute. And then, you know, I mean, we're going to always execute shots. Not exactly how we want to. That happens.

That's my type of goals I set. And it's so undramatic and unemotional. It's not incredibly sexy. I talk to my team about it. My wife is like, oh my gosh, really? I mean, she's more like a typical, probably more of a dreamer. And she would be like, yeah, but why don't you say, like, I want to win four times this year or I want to win another major.

I want to make the Ryder Cup scene. I'm like, well, if I do my goals, all that stuff will take care of itself. And I see that as more rewards than goals. So I just have always been like that and never really thought of myself as a dreamer and never really.

I mean, sure, I was on the putting green when I was a kid, you know, putting against, you know, my imagination, Jack Nicklaus to win the Masters and creating those kind of scenarios and stuff like that. But that was more just for entertainment. Right. Well, but, you know, how important is it, though? And that's kind of why I brought it back up is to stay true to who you are, because at the end of the day, you know, you're out on an island out there and you've got to feel good about what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Very much so. And I think it lends itself that the small goals thing lends itself well to keeping your poise under pressure. And, you know, that they're very similar because when you're playing in golf and, you know, quote unquote, when the bullets start flying, you know, you start to get nervous, things start to speed up. You felt it.

You know, your your arms don't feel like arms anymore. You start wondering, not only am I going to hit the fairway, but how am I going to get this ball airborne or how am I going to make contact? You know, that's part of what you've got to learn about yourself. And I think I've been very, very fortunate to that sort of mentality of the small goals instead of the big rewards and big goals.

That helps me because it helps me to remember, like, OK, what do we do on these routines, these shots? You know, I remember my my first shot in in the Ryder Cup when I was paired with Furyk in my first Ryder Cup in 2002. It was the one that got delayed by 9-11. So I had to wait a whole year for my Ryder Cup experience. And so in our first round, Furyk hit the tee shot off the first hole and hit it in the absolute perfect place for a first shot of a Ryder Cup career.

And that was in the first cut. So the ball was sitting up really nice from about 160. So it was like an eight iron. Just the simplest shot you could ever imagine for your first shot in the Ryder Cup.

It's like a perfect scenario. And my caddie and I discussed the yardage and it was perfect club. And it got my club out.

It was an eight iron and stood behind the ball. And I remember actually saying to myself, now, what do I do for my pre shot routine? I honestly forgot what I was so out of sorts with myself because of nerves and anxiety.

And, you know, I was just so intense about, oh, my gosh, the Ryder Cup. I forgot what I do. And I had to remember like, OK, yeah, I take one practice swing. I look back at the target and I had to reconstruct my whole pre shot routine. But that's the kind of thing that if you do that enough and you get in those scenarios, those the natural flow of getting the yardage, deciding about the wind, you know, reducing all the factors down into one shot you're going to hit and making that decision and being committed to it. It all feels like it should happen the same way so that when you get under the gun, that process doesn't change. And you can you know, you can rely on that process because it's something you can control and it doesn't change.

It's something internal to you. And those big goals like, OK, yeah, I want to qualify for the tour championship every season. I want to win a major every season. I want to win multiple tournaments every season. Those haven't happened because you can't always control that kind of stuff. I don't like putting the.

I don't like putting value on rewards or goals that I don't have really anything to do with. All right, that's going to wrap up the front nine, but don't go anywhere. We're going to finish that interview on the back nine. This is golf with Jay Delson. Hi, this is Bob Costas and you're listening to golf with Jay Delson. Hey, this is my buddy Joe Scissor and he's with USA Mortgage. Good morning, Jay.

How are you doing today? Great, Joe. Thanks so much for the support. We really enjoy it.

Thank you. We look forward to the show every Sunday morning. We love all the information and all the great tips. And we all sit around the radio on in the morning. I'd love to listen to your show.

The good old days. Yeah, I get the wife and the kids and the dog and we wait for whack and chase to come on. It's our favorite part of the show. Which one are you? Are you whack or chase?

Oh, no, I'm whack because I'll hit it. And then because Pearly is also a caddy, he's got to go chase it. He's the chaser.

He's got the worst end of the stick. Well, we really enjoy it. And thank you so much for having us on the show.

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If you need any sort of insurance for your business, for your home, family, anything. 314-398-0101. Ed will take care of you. We're jumping right into the second half of our interview with Stewart Sink. This is from 86 yards. There's room to throw it a little bit behind this whole location.

Spin it back. There's something like that. Stewart Sink is brought to you by Golden Tee. OK, so one of the things that I found, I always look forward to certain golf courses that I would go to. They set up better for my game and I just had some positive memories and less scars. For you, talk a little bit about Hartford or Harbor Town because I know you've won there twice. I got to imagine every time you fly into that state, every time you head to that golf course, you've got to get a rush of really positivity.

Absolutely. I completely agree with you about courses. I've got courses that I swear every time I play that I'm never going back to. I've got courses that I wish they'd have every tournament.

We had a very unusual year, obviously, in 2020 with COVID and our big break we took. When the season picked back up, there was talk of trying to create a bubble-type scenario where we just played several tournaments in a row at the same course. And it kind of happened at Muirfield Village. But there was talk that maybe Muirfield might be a place where we might play a lot of tournaments in a row. And there was talk that we might do that at Sawgrass.

It never happened, of course, but there was talk. And, man, Muirfield Village is one course that I absolutely feel the way that you're talking about where I just love the tee shots, I love the greens, the breaks. I feel like I read the greens well. And I just feel like that's the kind of place that I can really play well a lot. And when I heard them talk about maybe having a lot of tournaments there, boy, I was excited.

Now, I did get my wish that they had more than one tournament. We got to play two back-to-back events at one of my favorite courses, which is great. But, yeah, when you go to Hartford for me or Harbor Town, I just have – the very beginning of my career, I loved playing at Harbor Town. I just had really good feelings off the tee there. I felt like I could judge the wind there really well. The greens, you know, everything just felt really familiar and comfortable to me, plus the area, just being there.

It's such a relaxing environment. And then in Hartford, you know, the only thing I can really point to in Hartford was that early on in my career, Hartford was the week after the British Open. And Harbor Town was the week after the Masters. And if you look back over my wins, a lot of them occurred the week after Majors. And that's because – I believe that's because not only do I have terrible timing, but I think it's just a decompression. You know, you get so excited and hyped up and sort of ultra-prepped for the Major that once it's over, you feel like you can exhale and sort of be yourself again.

And suddenly, like, well, you're yourself and now you can sort of – you know, the good things start coming out. When you're all tense and uptight and, you know, you put so much on the Major, you drive down from Augusta to Hilton Head and it's like you're in a different world and you're in a decompression chamber and I relax. You know, these are things you wish you could learn a little faster than my 24 years has taken me. But people don't understand how difficult these Majors are. I mean, there is so much – we are penalized so heavily for minor mistakes that, you know, doesn't happen in a normal week on tour.

Yeah, they just demand a lot more of you. I mean, mainly like the U.S. Open, it just is really demanding and it's just not possible really to, you know, keep the ball in play for that long, that many days in a row. I mean, there are some guys that can probably get a lot more fairways than I can, but in the end, you're just going to have to face it. You're going to have some shots out of the ruff and you'll get some bad breaks and some short putts that bounce off the line and, you know, your nerves are going to get to you.

And everybody – it's just whoever deals with that the best and has the most limited impacts is the guy that wins. And it can be like that at the Open Championship too. It's just very much more weather-related and, you know, leading up to the event, if the course has received a lot of rain, it's going to be just brutally difficult with ruff. If not, like at Carnoustie, what was it, 2017, where we had just like dusty, brick-hard conditions and no ruff and the ball was going like 10,000 miles? Yeah, you couldn't get it to stop.

It wouldn't roll anywhere. Yeah, it was so fun playing that week at Carnoustie because Carnoustie is usually so like strict and serious and sincere, you know, about like you can't hide. But that week, it was kind of like playing golf in a wide open pasture with bunkers and a few burns here and there.

It was really cool because it was different. But the majors just all test – they test you in different ways. There's also a lot more media. There's a lot more kind of like everything that falls into the hassle category. There's a lot of just demands on your time, especially for the players who are ranked really high. Really a lot goes into their week of planning ahead and setting their schedule up and sticking to the schedule.

It's a tough – it's definitely different from a normal week. Oh my gosh, no question. So you have two boys, Connor and Reagan. You and your wife, Lisa, have been married.

You guys got married back in college. I forgot all about that. That is just an amazing feature. Oh my gosh. We got our family started really early. Yeah, that is terrific. And I know that – but talk a little bit about – I got to bring this up. In 2013, you won the PNC father-son tournament with Connor. I mean, what the heck? Connor, how does it get better than that on a golf course?

It doesn't. And that was actually quite a surprise because of the two boys, Connor is the older one. He's 27.

Reagan's 23. Connor just never really liked golf that much. He played, but he just wasn't really into it and didn't really put much effort into trying to ever get better. And he played other sports, and that's perfectly fine.

But when we paired up in that father-son event for the first time, that was in 2013, you know, didn't really have very high expectations. I mean, Davis and Drew Love were there. Drew's a professional golfer and Davis is Davis's last.

Right. You know, there's people like that were playing, and I just felt like, well, you know, this is going to be a nice, fun time. But a two-man scramble for 36 holes, and it turned out that me and Connor match up pretty well because Connor, while he never really loved playing golf, he's always been like incredibly gifted with his hand-eye coordination. So any sports is also just a superb athlete. Any sports that require a lot of touch and feel and athleticism, Connor is just like really, really naturally gifted. In golf, he was always just a really good short game and putter.

He just reads greens and he has great speed, even though he hardly ever plays. And so me, you know, being a touring professional, I was able to keep the long game part of our two-man scramble going, drove it well and hit a lot of nice irons. And then as soon as we got around the green, me and Connor both were making putts and chipping close and hitting bunker shots, you know, and doing the thing that we both do around the green. So we turned out to be a pretty formidable team.

And they have a banquet the night before, and they ask all the teams to write down their prediction of a winning team and a score. And of course, we put our own team, team sync down. And I think I put like 22 under and I had no idea what to guess. I didn't know if it was going to be 11 under or 30. And I put team sync 22 under, and I'm pretty sure we shot 22 under. I think so, too. That's incredible. I think we shot, we guessed that we were interested.

We had no basis of that at all. But 2200 par for 36 holes and Connor hardly plays golf. And it was just because he's got such great instincts of reading greens and he got on an unbelievable role. I didn't hardly putt the second nine holes of the last round. We made nine consecutive threes. Connor was draining putts from everywhere.

I don't remember hardly even speaking to him about the breaks. Just like I marked the ball, I would hit the shot into the green, mark the ball, and then he would look at it and replace it and knock it in the hole and we'd move on. Go pick it up, Dad. Let's go to the next hole. We'll try not to get in the way. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

I just can't imagine the thrill of that. So we've got to talk a little bit about Lisa and breast cancer. This was one of the things that I learned with the death of Payne Stewart that the community of the PGA Tour, Stewie, is just remarkable.

And prior to that, we didn't really have anything like that that might have brought us together. So in 2016, Lisa was diagnosed with breast cancer. And I know that tour, I reached out to you. I remember a lot of people just did a lot of different things for you and your family. And the Sunday's round at the Players Championship, everybody wore a pink ribbon in her honor.

I mean, what's that like? Well, that day was touching, to say the least, that the PGA Tour and the Players Championship chose to honor Lisa on that day. And I mean, it was a big moment for our family, for sure, when we found out that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And especially as the diagnosis unfolded and became more and more significant and it was advanced disease.

And we were just like knocked on our backsides. I mean, I hesitate to put myself in the category of weak when I'm talking about this. Because even though I'm alongside her and I am, you know, was slash am a caregiver, I still can't comprehend what it felt like and what it feels like to her every day when she wakes up. And the first thing she thinks of is I have breast cancer.

I have stage four breast cancer. And so I hesitate to say we because of that, but it still slips out. And but if we were touched and it was just a one small indicator of how the tour and individual players and families.

Show their, you know, their love and their kindness to us and in that time and still do. I mean, it's just been remarkable, the journey that Lisa's been on and the way that she's been embraced by. Now she's like the elder stateswoman of the traveling golfer, significant others, because she travels out here almost all the time with me. And and, you know, she's got to meet a lot of the younger gals. And there's probably a lot of young gals who don't even know she's got breast cancer.

But, you know, that's OK. Lisa doesn't want that to be the identifier for her. She just has it. It's just part of her life. You know, I just I just knew what a strong person she was just from the few times that we've been hanging out together.

And I'm so glad that she's doing well. One of the things that I look at, Stewie, you're such a community oriented guy. You're just such a fun.

I don't. One of the things I remember is you started out on Twitter way before anybody else. And I can remember going, I don't even know what Twitter is. And someone told me you had like a million followers or something. So you just have some really creative ways of telling stories and doing things. And of all these awards that I look at that, you know, you were the ninety six night Nike Tour leading money winner and the player of the year in ninety six and ninety seven PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.

But in nine in 2017. But you won the Payne Stewart Award each year. You host a junior event down in Atlanta where you guys live in Atlanta now in each fall. You also host the East Lake Invitational for the East Lake Foundation. All those things are so important and it really is important for you to give back, isn't it?

It is. I think that's just a natural offshoot of one play in a game that just is so rooted in respect. And in character as golf, you know, we call our own penalties on ourselves and we don't need we have rules officials. We don't need refs to throw flags or blow whistles. And, you know, we play by a set of rules that, you know, in your heart, when you look down at that ball in the rough and no one's around.

I mean, yeah, it'd be nice to kick it out, you know, get away from that tree or give yourself a nicer lie. But we don't do that. And so that's one thing. But the other thing is the affiliation we all have with the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour, if I'm not mistaken, is the most charitable of all the major sports leagues. Oh, yeah.

And I don't think it's even close. No, Stu, we give. And that's something we can really be proud of. We give.

Go ahead. You know the numbers? No, I was going to say in 2019, we hit a record of like $207 million that we donated. And each year, our donations exceed the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL combined.

Yeah, that's something to be proud of. And that is, I think it's just that golf lends itself to fundraising and charitable giving and good-natured selflessness. And the numbers that you told about the Tour are staggering, but they don't even include what Jay Delfing has done over the years on a personal level. I'm sure you've hosted events and I'm sure you've been part of charity golf outings.

I've done that. And almost every player has done that kind of thing where they raise money for a local charity or something close to their heart or their life or their family. And that's a whole separate bucket when they talk about giving. So, yeah, it's important to me, but I think it's not just because of me, it's because of golf. And it's just being part of the PGA Tour just makes me feel like I'm doing the right thing if I mirror what they do in my own personal life and try to do whatever I can do. But I really so much appreciate your time and your thoughtfulness. I love watching you and root for you all the time.

And I appreciate you coming on the show. And heck, man, go out and win again and get on that Ryder Cup and get up to Wisconsin this fall would be something, wouldn't it? It would be something. It's been a while since I played in one, but I know what it feels like.

It would be great to be able to represent the U.S. again somehow. I never thought of myself as a California type of player growing up on Bermuda or really sand and crabgrass for the most part. But now out here, my most recent win comes in California on Poana and I'm back here at Pebble Beach on Poana again this week. So maybe I can rekindle the positivity from just up the road here and get another one. Well, that was one of my I really enjoyed that interview.

I hope you did as well. That's going to wrap up the back nine, but don't go anywhere because John and I'll break that interview down on the Michelob Ultra 19th hole. This is golf with Jay Delsing. Hey, everybody. It's Vince Gill. You're listening to Golfing with Jay Delsing.

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Grab your friends, a cold one, and pull up a chair. We're on to the 19th hole on golf with Jay Delsing. The 19th hole is brought to you by Michelob Ultra.

Welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay, and Pearly is with me, and we are going to the Michelob Ultra 19th hole. Oh, man, that Ultra just tastes so good right now.

All right, Pearly, Stewart Sink, buddy, jump right in. Well, first of all, as I've already told you in one of your best interviews, and one of the guys out there, Kenny, when you played with him, but I certainly don't know him, but you knew I was going to love him because he's referencing neuroscience with scar tissue, how younger players handle things, pressure, older players. It was just fantastic. And then on top of that, that he throws out proper goal setting, and how do you match it with your personality. I was eating it up big time.

That's the stuff that I like relative to golf, relative to life, and relative to the business work that I do. So I thought it was just excellent, and it was kind of a fresh perspective from as many great players as you already had on your show. I thought it was unique, and I loved it. Well, what about what he said, Jen? I just thought it was wonderful because he's like, I'm not really a dreamer. You know, I said to him, gosh, winning that open championship had to be a dream come true, and he's like, I'm not really a dreamer. I just know that if I stay in my processes, and keep this thing really simple, and keep my head where I need it to be, and this, that, the other thing, you know, things are going to go my way more times than not. And he also said, hey, folks, don't think that I'm sort of some sort of a savant or anything like that.

He goes, I paid a lot of money to a lot of people to try to get me this help. Yeah, well, just the clarity of it all, and how to reference dreams versus goals. And then he said several times, hey, the reason I've got these short-term, small goals is because they're going to lead to something. So you can say that that's not a dream, and I love, love what he referenced. That's the reward.

Here's what I'm after, and I'll consider it a reward if day in, day out, I do these little things, these smaller goals. I never heard it like that, and in the work I do, trust me, I'm stealing that one, and it's going right next to my what matters mission, vision, values, and he referenced it as his reward. I absolutely love that. He earned that. He had a plan on how to earn it.

To me, it's just semantics, but for him, it fits his personality, and I love how he talks about how his wife gives him a hard time about it. But you know, Jay, when you're out there playing and you want to get things done, it's nice to have that kind of calm demeanor. There's no doubt, John, and we talked a little bit about how you do accomplish these seemingly overwhelming and sometimes monumental tasks or these rewards, and it's all through those processes of one step at a time and one day at a time and trying to break that stuff down into the smallest increments.

Well, it fits so much what you talked about earlier. We talked about earlier in the show about kind of building momentum, having a management on how to manage the game. That's how he manages it. He just breaks it down into little tiny things, and one of the pieces that he talked about and you and I talked about all the time, can you play a round of golf without missing the shot before you swing?

Listen, swinging's hard because it's dynamic and it's happening and things can happen, but how many times do we miss shots before we even make the swing, meaning we're trying to hit a shot we can't hit, we're trying to hit it off of a lie, we're trying to hit a draw when we only really know how to fade it, we're trying to hit it 250 when really we can only carry it 220, those types of things. And he referenced that as well, and we know how huge that is. When I could help Caddy through a round and we could get done and you said, hey, I only missed this shot and that shot before I swung, that was a big day for us normally.

Oh, it was, Jen. And you know what comes to mind right off the top of my head is when we had the great Cardinal Chris Carpenter on the show, either last year or the year before, and he talked about cleaning up all the junk. And that's exactly what made me think where I went when Stewart Sink was talking about the processes and that stuff. And Karp was always talking about cleaning up all the stuff in his head so that he didn't miss a pitch before he threw it. Yeah, we've all heard this before a gazillion times, but I think when we hear superstar after superstar reference it, do the little things and the big things will take care of themselves. Do the little things in alignment with what you know needs to be done to attain your goal or your reward. That's how you're going to win this. Yes, when things are tough and it's tedious and you want the bigger win or the bigger giant step forward, that's not really how it gets done at the end of the day.

No, it really doesn't. This is the way, I guarantee you, someone like Tom Brady's got these processes out to the nth degree and follows them religiously and he's done pretty well. And I'd like to, when he referenced some of the family stuff, because that's part of this whole piece. There's got to be that partner. He even is humble. He appears to me as a family man. He said, hey, my wife was a single parent for a lot of years.

I think he's done something like 12 years. And you know how it is, Jay, being out there all those years. And it's just so key that he had that partner, that understanding, because that's a piece of it.

Can you focus on those little things diligently, day in, day out, if the other parts of life aren't together? And I think it's tough, man. Really tough. It really is. Well, Pearl, that's going to wrap up another show, but man, I hope the folks love the Stuart Sink interview because not that many people know of him and he's really a cool, cool dude.

Absolutely. One of your best. Well, come back next week. We'll have another guest and more banter from John and I at Golf with Jay Delsing.

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