In doing research for this week’s preview, I wanted to write a little section on the two time defending champion Matt Every with the emphasis being on his multiple out of nowhere wins at such a high profile event. How can a guy who has compiled just one other top 10 in that two year stretch win a tournament bearing the name of one of the best golfers of all time?

In doing research, I found this article with a few quotes that I thought were interesting coming from a guy who just won a PGA Tour event. Usually players just stick with boring platitudes about how honored to have won, or how they are just happy to be contending. Which is either garbage and everyone knows it, or the wrong attitude for a person who’s playing golf for a living.

Here are some things Every said that I thought were noteworthy.

“After I won last year I wanted to become a better driver of the ball, and I knew that wasn’t going to happen like with one lesson overnight,” Every said. “When you watch Golf Channel and guys say if he doesn’t hit it better immediately the coach isn’t telling him the right thing, that’s just not right. You can’t change something you’ve been doing your whole life in a week.

Two takeaways from that quote. First, not often do you hear players talking about improvement right after winning. Most guys stick to the standard and very boring quotes about how they’re honored to win, feel like it’s a long journey that finally culminated in a victory or some garbage like that. While that may be true, it’s completely uninteresting to hear.Second is about how changes don’t come quickly – something that weekend golfers need to understand.

Another great quote in that article was about the difference between the normal tour player and the top tier tour players, and about how those top tier players go ‘big’.

“If you guys go on the range and watch guys hit balls, there are guys that have won out here multiple times that you’ll watch them hit balls and you’ll be like, ‘Wow, I don’t see it, you know?'” Every said. “Then you watch a guy like Adam Scott hit balls and his normal shots are big golf shots.

As an avid follower of the PGA Tour, I can definitely see there’s a difference. Adam Scott, especially this year, Stenson, Rose, Rory, Day, all the big name guys playing this week play well every time they play an event. Normal players don’t. For a tour player to both mention this different, and then go on to describe himself as normal is not something you see often.

Like I want my good shots to be really good shots, and my bad shots to be what my good shots used to be.

Don’t we all. And needless to say, Matt Every gained another fan.