I’m from Samoan heritage, and with the rugby in our blood and everything,
TONY FINAUIf the rules aren’t going to protect the integrity of the game, then they’re wrong.
More Tony Finau Quotes
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When I got on tour in 2014, I was hitting a slice off the tee. No joke. Yeah.
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It’s cool to be able to dunk. I’m pretty tall and pretty long. My body’s probably built more for basketball than for golf.
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It was tough, and sometimes you had to find some sponsors for a percentage of your winnings.
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The Ping 51-degree makes for a nice transition from the irons. On my 60, it says 8 degrees of bounce, but I grind it to about 5 or 6 degrees. I tried a head with less bounce, but it just didn’t look right.
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We grew up in the Rose Park section of Salt Lake City. It’s a good neighborhood but a tough one, on the poor side but proud.
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So it’s really cool just to be the start of something pretty special for our culture.
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I have a half-court in my house. If you saw my house, you’d think I was an NBA player.
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I’ve had opportunities to step foot on the grounds and play Augusta and watch the Masters. But I always, since I was a kid,
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If the rules aren’t going to protect the integrity of the game, then they’re wrong.
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Golf is an extremely expensive sport, and growing up, I didn’t come from a lot, but my parents sacrificed a lot for me to compete, and my goals were their goals.
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This whole golf thing was so left field for us, as Polynesians, but he had a lot of knowledge about sports in general. My dad was a genius, really. He was an absolute genius.
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Maybe I carry a little chip on my shoulder with just how tough it was for my parents to overcome some of those financial situations.
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I definitely feel it’s important, whether I’ve taken time off or played right before, that I take necessary rest time in the weeks before the tournament.
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But I always believed that I could be something special. I just had to prove it to myself.
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We’re going to tournaments, and we’re driving the par-4s. At 10 years old, I was hitting it, like, 240.
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I always felt I’ve been tough, and that my tolerance for pain is pretty high.
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I’ve taken two weeks off before I’ve played a major, and I’ve played two straight weeks before a major as well.
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I think it’s a cool thing to have kids look up to me and to know that it doesn’t matter, your background or your ethnic background. If you have goals and dreams, you can achieve them.
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It’s a privilege to be in a position to give back, and one that I take pretty seriously because I know what it’s like… to be less fortunate, to be less privileged.
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Everything just kind of fell in my lap at a young age. Things were thrown at me very fast.
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I didn’t have really much of a social life in high school, and I’m not really a partyer, so college wasn’t super appealing to me at the time.
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I always told myself I am never going to set foot there unless I am playing and a participant.
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If you make the effort to address the moves that cause a slice, you can straighten out all your shots. It won’t happen overnight, but if you’re systematic about it, the process will work.
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We didn’t have cable TV. We just couldn’t afford it. But you don’t need cable to watch the Masters. In 1997, at the exact moment I started out, I watched Tiger Woods win the Masters.
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It’s the Tiger Woods effect. What he was able to accomplish at such a young age – he drew me to the game, and I can only speak for myself, but a lot of the players that are my age saw Tiger in his prime when we were all teenagers.
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It’s something that I dreamed of since I was a kid – to be able to represent my country and play in the Ryder Cup is what dreams are made of.
TONY FINAU