Fairways of Life is joined by PGA Tour Winner Andrew Novak as he prepares for the Travelers Championship
[Music] benh Hogan Golf is back log on to benhogenolf.com and you can see how and why the classic name of Ben Hogan is once again reverberating around the game in earnest at least on the equipment side because of what he has meant to the game of golf since 1953 they have been making absolutely exceptional golf equipment to exacting standards and here’s the best part now they can be your tour truck you can buy directly from Ben Hogan Golf it eliminates the middleman so you can be sure that what you need is exactly what you get to play your very best golf because that’s exactly what Ben Hogan strove to do as we welcome you guys back to TPC River Highlands here for the Travelers Championship pleasure to be broadcasting live today and joined by Andrew Novak at the same time so Andrew I guess it came out last week you’re you were in a pretty marquee group there’s a little pain going on in the ribs what’s happening yeah just uh intercostal muscle strain not an ideal time of the year for it but uh I’m playing through it it’s painful at times typically if it’s colder rain y hacking out a rough you know when I played here two or three years ago when this was not a signature event i did not remember the rough being 4 in thick but I guess they’ve kind of grown it up for this so a little bit unfortunate but uh I’m make do i played better than I expected last week and uh hopefully I can just keep improving on that what tied for 40th yeah i very good no warm up or you know no prep at all hadn’t hit a ball in two weeks toughest course in the world so I was I was very happy with what I Do you think that mentally freed you up at all a little bit um but it was also tough because it was like I was when I hit it in the rough not only was it harder to score but it was more painful so it was kind of um I don’t know i I felt like I was playing with more to lose there sure if I you know got it offline where do you feel is it is it on the extension of the back or is it impact back swing spine impact and like going through it so it’s it’s essentially like it’s a muscle that runs between the ribs yeah and so as you condense like the ribs down coming through it’s coming through when they expand and as I open up that stretches it and that’s kind of where I’ll feel the pull so it’s kind of hard to get through it so uh the iron game was decent the wedge game was pretty good but the driver I’m still like it’s hard for me to go at it i was probably playing maybe 90 95% speed all last week do you know how you did it yeah i mean Advil and adrenaline no I mean like repetitive motion and No uh honestly I think um so I had pneumonia at the PGA Championship and yeah I have not had great luck with the majors this year and uh a lot of coughing from that and I think I kind of strained something or the had some ri stuff going and then I think uh the weather plus hacking out of the rough at Memorial I think aggravated it wow so it was it was pretty much right when I got home from Memorial I was I couldn’t do anything for a couple weeks did you talk to Xander about it by any chance i actually did last week any insights it’s it’s a tough one you know he he said he it was earlier in the season for him there’s no majors there’s no bigger events necessarily at the time so he was able to take some time and and just let it heal there’s not a lot you can do for it so uh luckily after this week I got a little time you know maybe uh rest up and and be right for you know open championship in the playoffs yeah that I I do want to talk to you about the form that you had it’s kind of odd with the injury to to get into that mindset but I know it’s kind of a chicken and egg type question I suppose what comes first the playing well or the confidence or the other way around i I think they could both feed off each other like you can gain confidence from hitting two good shots out there one good shot even but I feel like that’s within the day showing up on property and feeling really good about it like that comes from multiple good days of golf or really good preparation or uh just I don’t know feeling feeling good going into the week so I I I feel like within the round you can gain confidence from from shots and maybe hit good shots because of that confidence but I feel like the the biggest thing like if you really feel like confident like you know Ben Griffin’s been on a crazy run lately like he’s literally pulling into the course stepping out of the car is like I’m shooting 65 today like that’s because he’s put the preparation in he knows he’s playing well yeah but I mean you might be a part of his confidence too with what you guys did at the Zurich yeah you know did you feel the good play coming on was it was it all of a sudden or a little bit at a time zurich was you know I had had good play leading up into it i mean I I I would say Zurich was about as confident as I’d been going into a tournament um you know it was nice having been there as well like having someone to feed off of but yeah you know what whether that was a team tournament or just an individual tournament it wasn’t matter it wasn’t going to matter i was going to show up very confident based on how I played the week before at at Heritage i you know probably had played my best tournament to date uh that week and I knew you know my game was exactly where it needed to be to put myself in contention to try and win how are you with the nerves now when you were in position say with in the the playoff against JT and all the rest are you at a point right now where you know what to expect and know what your body’s going to do you brought up the word adrenaline i mean that you can pump it out there when that’s when you can’t really feel it coming on yeah I I think it is something that ideally you just get better at every time you’re in that position like fair enough the amount of times like the most you can maximize putting yourself in that spot I feel like you’ll just get better and better um like yeah I guess you could like build up scar tissue technically but as long as you’re being productive about it like maybe you know even if it doesn’t go how you want it to go at the end of a Sunday like you can still learn from things you can still look back on that the next time you’re in it so I truly believe like if I can just put myself in that spot as much as possible I will continue to get better at it and uh it will be easier for me going forward when I’m you know in those spots with 11 career top 10s with a win now on the PGA Tour in that event and a close call recently as well did any of that alter your self-perception or did it validate what you already believed about yourself i think last year was big for like validating to myself that I can play i think statistically I hit almost every single one of my goals last year but like results-wise I hit like almost nothing it was such a weird year i think I was fifth on tour in stroke average last year i was top 25 in total strokes gained like crazy good year but I didn’t turn it into anything super productive i had I made almost all my cuts which is great yeah but I just never really finished top 10 like I I had a couple top tens but they were all kind of sort of backdoor they weren’t really in contention and so I think going into last fall I I wanted to make it a point to really try and put myself in contention because I I was just kind of sitting there after you know I uh I had missed the playoffs so I had like a month or so before I started playing the fall schedule and I was able to kind of sit down and look at my stats and I’m like there’s no reason I shouldn’t be like up there trying to win these golf tournaments like I clearly can play i’ve done all of these good things on the course but I’m not getting there like there’s something holding me back so uh I basically in the fall I started trying to change the mindset a little bit on Saturdays to it’s not just hey we just made the cut like that’s great it’s hey now let’s go be more aggressive yeah well not even more aggressive it was more of just a mindset of like continuing to push you know Thursday Friday I would be locked in grinding you know whatever make the weekend like not let up basically just keep going keep going trying to push to get in those final groups on Sunday so I have a chance to win instead of you know maybe taking a little 71 on Saturday and setting up the 68 on Sunday to back door top 25 or something did you find Andrew that that kind of laser-like focus that has obviously worked for you but is that the laser-like focus of the best of the best because now you’ve played around them you’ve competed against them headtohead in some cases did you find that that’s difference between the guys that contend a lot and the guys who make it past the cut and kind of take a breath i think so i think I think when you know you’re one of the top players it’s just about hanging around like yeah maybe Thursday doesn’t go your way Friday doesn’t go your way but somehow we get to Saturday or Sunday and Scotty’s three off the lead and it feels like he’s had a terrible week but he just is always kind of chipping away at it and stays in it like if you’re not making huge mistakes and you just kind of stay around it like yeah it it tends to kind of work out for you coming down the stretch like you just kind of be around you know like like last week US Open like if you were two three over with a few holes to play you would have thought you were out of it leaders were four under start the day everybody just starts coming back like not every week is like US Open but it’s still I I feel like golf is so long like 72 holes it really is like such a marathon you know a few holes go poorly or something like you have so much other time to kind of get it back so I I think I think learning some patience I think has been big for me um I think it’s a lot of confidence too you should be brew actually brimming with confidence right now i’m going to ask you about your sponsors in just a second it’s kind of our way of saying thank you to you for being here and hopefully you just say thank you to them for helping you do your thing but I just want to circle back to one thing with the rib kind of hurting you you know here we are from now until the start of the travelers will you work a little bit more on the short game and might this be a backdoor way of helping you out in that area too yeah I mean I’ll definitely I’m not going to hit balls today i’ll be doing a lot of chipping and putting next couple days um just getting a feel for that these greens are really good from what I remember um they get pretty quick there’s decent bit of tilt on them so I think just getting used to how the ball’s reacting this week compared to what we were playing last week um I think that’s going to be big i’ll probably save some of the swing reps for later in the week and uh see where I’m at it’s you know by Thursday it could be fine it could hurt i I don’t know i hope it’s a beware of the injured golfer type situation for you all right so I was going to ask you about your sponsors do you want to tell us about who you’ve aligned yourself with uh I just want to say thank you to Adidas uh Cleveland Strickson and Dreamfinder Homes uh they’ve been great to me um they’ve been with me for a while now honestly all all three of them uh Adidas and uh Cleveland Tricks on from the start so uh I haven’t really changed much up equipment wise it’s it’s all been you know good for me it’s It’s just been about me getting better and um yeah very impressive we wish you the very best appreciate it good to see you
