Zach Johnson On Links, Whistling Straits & Liking A Course

Open Champion Zach Johnson was very engaging in today's pre-PGA press conference despite getting a tiny crowd of reporters (peaked at 16!?). Mercer Baggs has a nice roundup of his comments here.

Even though he missed a playoff the last time around at Whistling Straits by just a shot, Johnson was not afraid to admit the course is not a favorite.

I brought up his January comments about the Old Course not being a favorite, hoping to hear less about that and more about his feelings on Whistling Straits and whether a player has to like a course to play well on it.

Here's the full exchange:

Q. Earlier this year you had said The Old Course was not one of your favorite courses in the rota. But you won there.

ZACH JOHNSON: Yeah. I'll clarify that. It's inaccurate -- go ahead.

Q. You can clarify. My question, though, related to this week is, do you have to like a golf course to win on it and do you like this golf course?

ZACH JOHNSON: That's a good question. Second part, no, you don't. This isn't my favorite golf course that we stop at for the PGA Championship, but I've played okay here, so evidently I can play here. So, no.

The first part, maybe you did say it right, forgive me if you did, but year in, year out, that's my favorite golf tournament. And inside the ropes, as a competitor and I would say as a quasi--athlete, I don't need motivation to play at the Open Championship. We don't have it here, maybe that's the reason, we don't have true links golf here, in my opinion. I just appreciate what that tournament is all about, and what it requires of me and us, my peers.

Now, if I'm going to go down the list of ranking the venues of The Open Championship, it wasn't my favorite. I mean, that's because there's two or three golf courses I've played in that tournament that I would probably put in my top five, potentially my top two. But St. Andrews is not in the top two or three. It's probably still in my top 10 favorite of all time. Does that make sense?

I just love true links golf. Yes, my love for St. Andrews has certainly grown. And it literally it grew three weeks ago. My appreciation and respect for St. Andrews was always there. It's probably also mushroomed a little bit, for the right reasons.

But it's hard to rank them. And it's not fair to rank them, either, because I love The Open Championship and I love true links golf. I've said that all along.

Someone said I've made now, I don't know what, nine or ten cuts in a row in that tournament. And maybe it's because I love it. Maybe I've got to start doing that in other tournaments. Mentally I go in there and I'm so excited to play, regardless of the venue of that tournament.

Now you tell us punters!