Professional golfer, James Hahn, walks through the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale during media day for the tournament. He talks about the emotions and nerves that come with playing in front of a large crowd and how he deals with the heckling from fans. He also discusses the strategy and challenges of hitting the ball on this particular hole. He mentions the importance of using the crowd’s energy to his advantage.
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Yeah this is awesome I mean so right about here you’re you’re just trying to get your emotions in check right your heart starts beating you hear the crowd you hear the music you hear everything that’s going on and right here is your last chance to kind of gather yourself before you enter
The stadium hole and then right about now is when all the fans start seeing your group come up and they start cheering they start yelling they start chaining some of guys are happy you’re there some guys are not some guys start heckling you and by now the nerves have
Hit or you’ve done it enough where the nerves aren’t there anymore the nerves always hit on this hole I mean the nerves are will always hit when you have 30,000 people yelling at you and you don’t know what they’re yelling at you but it could be good could be bad but a
Lot of guys um enjoy this type of experience I I absolutely love it and uh is it just noise or do you hear specific things like do you remember a couple comments or is it just sort of just that kind of noise crowd noise so there’s a
Group of people I don’t know what they call themselves but there’s a group of people that they do research on on the players on every player in the field and they’ll bring up like ex-girlfriends or Ex-Wives or you know anything that you’ve done in the past and they’ll use
It to kind of heckle you during uh when it’s your turn to hit so usually you know if I’m first to hit I remember um my rookie year I came out here they chanting Asian Brad Pit Asian Brad Pit you want you like that yeah I mean
That’s a good guy to compare myself too right uh so that was kind of funny um but you have to kind of start focusing back on trying to hit this golf shot and it’s only about 160 yards from the back te’s depending on pin location um could be an eight could
Be a nine iron could be a pitching W depending on how you feel I’ve hit as low as sandwich when the tea boxes are moved up a little bit cuz you on Saturdays I think they do that right try to J the uh the adrenaline gets you but
Um you know you’re counting on the adrenaline to get you that extra 6 to eight yards um and if you don’t get it you’re plugged in the front bunker so it’s kind of a tough shot I’ve heard there’s something about the Buzz of the noise is okay it’s those burst of noise
When somebody yells suddenly that’s more distracting than 18,000 people all kind of totally totally agree with that um so usually when I hit um I’ll kind of I’ll do one of these to get the crowd going um because it’s easier to hit when there’s a lot of white noise compared to
It being pretty silent and having that one guy yell noon in on your back swing right and we’ve all had that happen on this on this hole which you know it’s part of the experience so I’d rather just have um a lot of yelling and screaming um instead of having it you
Know really quiet I like it get in the hole nice dog nice baby nice Man
