John Swantek hangs with Brandon Wu as they discuss his success at the Mexico Open at Vidanta, his sterling collegiate career at Stanford University, and his adjustment from the Korn Ferry Tour to playing on the PGA TOUR.
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00:00 Introduction and Mexico Open at Vidanta
00:48 Success in Mexico
01:31 Early Season Performance
02:30 Evolution of Game on PGA TOUR
03:24 Data and Analytics in Golf
04:10 Playing a Heavy Schedule
04:45 Setting Goals
05:13 Challenges of Winning
06:22 Collegiate Career at Stanford
07:22 Staying in School and PGA TOUR University
09:41 Degree in Product Design
10:12 Graduation at US Open
11:19 Walker Cup Victory
12:58 Waiting to Use PGA TOUR Card
13:43 Competing in Major Championships
14:02 Upcoming Tournaments
PGA TOUR LIVE and GOLF Channel host John Swantek has conversations with top players and discusses trending topics with leading broadcasters and content producers in the golf world.
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My first guest today is in his third season on the PJ tour he’s competing at the Mexico open at vidon this week and that is great news for Brandon woo because nowhere else on the PJ tour has he played better than in Mexico at this event finishing second and third the
Last couple of years Brandon you just had a proam and a press conference as well how’s the week going there for you so far yeah it’s been great to be back to be honest I really enjoy the golf course the people are awesome and super accommodating and super nice here down
At madon and uh yeah it’s been fun week we’ve had beautiful weather as well which doesn’t hurt after a rainy and cold West Coast Swing I’m sure you were asked um in your press conference and when you chatted with Golf Channel earlier about your success rate here I
Mean can you explain it can you put it into words yeah I guess I’ve thought about it a little bit over the years and um I feel like the past it’s definitely been pretty windy around here and I think my game lends well into the wind I
Hit it a little bit flatter um and I can usually control my ball pretty well with my irons in the wind um so I usually like playing in the wind and then I think the pass palum surface I think I’ve putted well just the greens are at a make makeable speed
And I feel really comfortable on them and uh I guess I’ve just read them pretty well over the past couple years so hoping to keep that up I had very little doubt based on what we’ve seen the last couple years how about this season so far you’re playing your fourth
Event Brandon had a top 20 at wly Country Club in Honolulu 89th in the FedEx Cup points race uh how was the early phase of this season gone for you where’s the state of your game right now yeah you know I feel like it’s it’s
Close it hasn’t gone quite as well as I would have liked it was definitely a nice finish um at the Sony Open so that was good and then I think I missed the cut in Palm Springs and at the Phoenix Open just by a couple shots so I don’t
Feel like I’m far off but I think I could you know hope to improve a little bit on those finishes I mentioned this is your third season out here I’m wondering about the evolution of your game and the progression of your game and really really more than that your
Comfort level because sometimes the transition from the corn fairy tour to the PJ tour it’s a short step but it’s a big step right I mean what has been the Comfort level for you from year one to year two to now in your third full season out here yeah I think it’s
Definitely increased I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit better um in certain areas of my game like my short game and my iron play over my last three seasons um so yeah I think that’s the biggest goal every year is just to get a little
Bit better and I will say like although you are comfortable I think you can never get too comfortable because it’s pretty Cutthroat out on the PGA tour and you know you’re only guaranteed this year right so you got to go out and play well every year and I think that’s
That’s good because it keeps up the competitiveness on tour there’s so much information available to players um which offers sort of a pathway to Improvement right and I feel like if you’re digging into data and analytics and you might have someone on your team who’s responsible just for that Brandon
Uh you can identify the areas where you need Improvement I also think you players are inherently in tune with your game so there’s some of that as well is it kind of a blend of Art and Science with you in that space yeah for sure I
Think you have a good sense of what you’re doing well and what you’re not doing well week to week and but I think the data like you said I do have someone who helps me look through the data and comb through and see what we’re missing
And uh yeah I think like taking larger sample sizes of that and you can kind of see trends like what’s it like after a week off versus playing three weeks in a row like what are your Tendencies there or um you know where are you lacking on
Your putting is it 6 feet is it 10 ft is it 12et and I think most helpful part of that is just be able to structure your practice a little bit more efficiently you know okay these are kind of the key areas for this course this week this is
What you’ve been struggling the last few weeks and this is what you’ve been doing well so I would pay a little bit more attention to that this week it’s interesting to hear you say that because you played a very heavy schedule last year uh 35 events I want to say and I’m
Wondering if that was just because you’re young and healthy and you’d be playing golf on your off weeks anyway so you might as well make some money while you’re doing it right yeah I think you know you can’t really make money sitting at home so yeah I I like to get out
There and play and I feel like I’m always grateful to be a member of the PGA Tour and to be able to play these tournaments so it’s sometimes hard skipping weeks and turning down the opportunity to play and uh yeah so I like to go out and and try to play are
You a goal Setter either micro or macro week to week season to season what does that look like for you yeah absolutely I think it’s great to have goals something to work towards something to Aspire to I like to set sort of season long goals
Like I think in my first couple years my goal has been to win and I haven’t quite gotten there yet but I think it’s good to have goals that are you know feel like they’re just just Out Of Reach and something to just keep pushing you winning is so difficult right to get
Across the line late on a PJ Tour Sunday and the more you want it sometimes the more challenging it becomes right right have you identified anything in particular Brandon that might push you through that threshold yeah I think you know I trust that if I just keep developing and keep
Getting a little bit better every year I think I’ll become closer and closer so I think on a smaller scale that’s mostly what I’ve been focused on and I feel like I have been able to do that every year that I’ve been a professional and I
Think in college too I felt like my scoring average got a little bit better every year which I was actually really proud of and I think if I can just continue to sort of you know chase that carrot right in front of me uh eventually I’ll hit my goals well your
Collegiate career was celebrated at Stamford All America all four years in Palo Alto and of course you’re a part of the Cardinal National Championship winning team your senior year along with Isaiah Sinda some of the other uh close friends and colleagues and teammates of yours at the time I remember Tom Watson
Tiger Woods uh gave you guys shoutouts on their social channels after winning that must have been pretty cool yeah I think another really interesting story was Nota beay was the oncore supporter following my group uh during the championship match so uh you know actually my match had finished but our
Team was still going um but he was standing right next to me uh about to interview me for me winning my match when he’s like hey you guys just won so that was pretty special hearing it straight from him and uh yeah that was a special moment for us I’m sure you were
Highly recruited uh at the tail end of your high school career how much I wonder did the Allure of Tiger’s presence in Aura at Stanford lead you to sign with the Cardinal yeah obviously I think you know anyone can try to follow into tigers’s footsteps is is doing the
Right thing he’s made such an impact on our game but you know I wouldn’t sell Stanford too short I think they had a good academic and golf reputation as well uh and I just I really wanted to be a part of that um so it was it was
Really awesome for that to be able to come true was it always your plan or your goal to stay in school for four years and get your degree while you were competing yeah I would say I was maybe never good enough to think about leaving school too early I you know really
Wanted to go to Stanford I thought yeah finish out school it was really fun going to school with my classmates and taking classes with them and doing all that so I yeah I thought the four years at Stanford was great and for me there was no rush to turn pro necessarily so
I’m happy I stuck it out so this would have been before the PJ tour University system was implemented Brandon I want to get your take on that because you’re a player who would have greatly benefited from that staying in school for four years earning your degree earning All America status throughout your four
Years as well it is a really tasty reward for young collegians and an enticement for them to stay in school develop their games for four years and offer a direct pathway in the case of ludvig oberg last year for instance right to the PGA Tour that’s amazing
Yeah I think it’s been an unbelievable program just because I thought thought it was quite difficult turning pro you know you not really guaranteed anything despite being um a good college player and whatnot everyone kind of starts from zero once they turn professional uh so
Yeah I think it’s it’s good and I I really like that stipulation of having to stay in school for four years because I think we should put good value on education and finishing school and I think for these really good young players there’s no rush to turn pro like
Pro Golf will always be there but you’re only in school for these few years you can make lifelong friends and have all these memories from playing college golf uh with your with your teammates so I think it’s good for them to stay very well said what was your degree in by the
Way and it’s something that uh you feel you might be able to put to use someday yeah so it was in the engineering school the specific degree was called product design I really liked it I think a lot of my classes were sort of we would be
Presented with a problem and we’d have to design sort of a solution to solve that problem we’d go out into the field we’d talk to people about some of the issues they were having with certain products or certain experience experiences and we’d kind of conjure up
A solution and I thought it was good cuz we’re just really trying to think creatively trying to problem solve and I think those are good skills for any industry identifying a problem and finding a solution for it sounds like something you might do during the course
Of a 5-h hour round on the PJ tour yeah 100% I think every week we’re presented with a different Challenge and we’re just trying to figure out what’s what’s the best way to solve this challenge of course you were not in person for your graduation from Stanford you were a
Little busy competing at the Us open at Pebble Beach back in 2019 but you were presented with your diploma when you walked off the 18th green can you tell me about the experience of all that yeah that was honestly such a cool experience Sunday I was pared with Dustin Johnson
So I was quite excited to play uh that day the final round the US Open and but you know I I remember waking up and I was a little sad to miss out on graduation uh you know knowing that my classmates and all my friends were
Lining up in the stadium and uh getting ready to graduate and I was kind of getting ready to play golf I guess which was exciting but yeah it was actually a total surprise I didn’t know that uh that had been put together and uh you know so after I walked off the 18th
Green thankfully my family was already there uh and they were able USGA was able to pull off a pseudo graduation for me that’s awesome you talked about the unique experience of of college life especially as a a scholar athlete I suppose that applies to the Walker cup
As well right that’s the height of am team competition and you were on the Victorious team at Royal Liverpool in 2019 Brandon as I recall you guys were down going into Sunday singles you won eight of 10 matches to win the Walker cup what a wild week it must have been
Yeah I think that was you know another decision and kind of going along the lines of staying four years and being patient I chose to remain as an Amer during the summer after I graduated just hopefully to be able to play that Walker cup and um it didn’t disappoint it’s it
Was so fun being over there there with my teammates and yeah I think we hadn’t won across the pond in a a long time so it was really nice to be able to play well in those Sunday singles and uh unfortunately I was one of those two
Losing matches but uh I did score three points early on so at least I contributed I was not going to bring that out because you were three in one you were a massive contributor uh to that Nathaniel Crosby team that year and Isaiah celinda was one of your teammates
College teammate as well your boy won by eight on the C fairy tour in Panama this year looks like he’s going to be joining you on the PGA tour next season if not sooner Brandon for sure I think it’s great to see him play well um he’s got a
Ton of talent and he’s a great player and you know I think that kind of shows without PJ toru it’s sometimes can be tough to even break through on the professional golf scene and you know I think for great players eventually the good golf comes at the right time and
They can make it so I’m I’m really happy to see him play well so when you graduated from the corn fairy tour it was a weird scenario because it was at the height of the covid pandemic and there was no graduating class so even though you had won the corn fairy TOUR
Championship you had to wait essentially another full season to put your PJ tour card to use um what was like going through that because that was a strange situation yeah to be honest I actually viewed that as a kind of a good turnout just because at the time that I had won
The Tour Championship I think I’d only played seven events on the corn fairy tour and I just felt like it wouldn’t hurt to sort of develop for another season just learn how to play 3 four weeks in a row learn how to travel and sort of be a professional you know so I
Was grateful to have that extra time just to be able to learn how to be a professional golfer before I got kind of got to the Big Show you’ve competed in five major championships already which is a pretty healthy taste for a young guy the players as well you finished
19th there last year at the stadium course looking forward to the rest of the Florida swing and getting another crack at the Players Championship in North Florida yeah 100% I think you know the Florida swing also presents very tough golf courses so I think it’s a
It’s a sort of a brutal stretch of golf for us but it’s it’s a like you said a really nice Challenge and uh fun to sort of try and Conquer those places so I’m looking forward to it all right who are you playing with Thursday and Friday
What do your tea times look like so I’m in the morning tomorrow I think just after 8:00 and I’m paired with Michael Kim and Sam Stevens so I think we’ll have a good time that’ll be fun I hope you keep it going folks can follow
Brandon woo on X he’s at bwoo 97 and he has been fabulous at the Mexico open at vidona finishing second and third the last two years go get him this week Brandon I appreciate chatting with you yep thank you so much
