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PGA CHAMPIONSHIP MEDIA DAY

June 5, 2017

Jimmy Walker

JULIUS MASON: Did you know you were the only person in the history of golf to open and close major championship seasons with victories? You won the Masters Par-3 Contest (laughter) and you won the PGA Championship. Did you know that?

JIMMY WALKER: I did not. (Laughter).

JULIUS MASON: In the history of golf.

JIMMY WALKER: I heard after the fact that actually winning the Par 3 was good for winning other majors, not the Masters. There's other guys who have gone onto win majors after they won the Par 3 that year.

JULIUS MASON: That's true.

JIMMY WALKER: That is true.

JULIUS MASON: Let's go back to Baltusrol for a second. You did play in the 2000 U.S. Amateur there, and that's where you met your future caddie, I'm told; is that correct?

JIMMY WALKER: That guy right there.

JULIUS MASON: How did that work out?

JIMMY WALKER: So I flew up here and was playing in my first U.S. Am, and was getting to see a lot of East Coast college guys that I never really got to see, and met Andy on the 10th tee at the upper course. And I was like, wow, this is Andy Sanders, he's a really good player and he kind of said the same about me after the fact. And that's where we started.

That's where we started our friendship and when we started playing professional golf together right after that on the Canadian Tour, and we travelled a lot together, and he got hit with some -- with an illness and quit playing and decided to start caddying.

As soon as I got out, you know, I knew he was somebody I wanted to work for me and we've been at it since, 2008 we've been together. It's been a good run. It's going to keep being a good run.

JULIUS MASON: July 2016. How were you playing coming into Baltusrol?

JIMMY WALKER: Not playing too bad. Just not getting a lot out of my golf game. I remember I started working with a new sports psychologist. We were putting some stuff into play. I played well the week before in Canada. I felt like on the weekend, I finally got some MoJo going and liked where the golf swing was at.

Had a really good -- just a really beautiful back nine on Sunday in Canada. It was like, wow, golf feels where like it needs to be. And come into Baltusrol and go out and play a practice round, it's how I remembered it. I remembered enjoying the golf course.

So we get back there and we're out playing, and I said, "Everything's starting to feel good. It feels just like it did on Sunday."

Actually played a few matches on Tuesday and Wednesday and played beautifully. Kept making putts and kept hitting great shots, and golf was just feeling nice and easy. And I liked the golf course. I felt like the way it was set up, and the way I was hitting it, and as soft as it was, I just felt like I got in this very nice comfort zone where I felt like I was going to make a lot of pars.

Bogeys weren't going to -- I wasn't going to make a lot of bogeys and that's a very comforting feeling when you're out playing golf, when you feel like you're in that good of control of your golf game.

So we just go out and I said: It's just a matter of the putts going in and they started going in and I just kept hitting it good and the putts kept going in. I just played great all week. Didn't make many bogeys and just a lot of birdies, a lot of great shots. Special.

JULIUS MASON: Are you allowed to tell yourself during the week that you have a chance to win this thing, and if so, what point of the week did you say to yourself: I've got a chance to win this thing, because you've got the world's best players there, Open Champion Henrik Stenson breathe down your neck, world No. 1 Jason Day that's not letting go of your ankle.

JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, he didn't, did he. You are allowed to embrace positive feelings that you're having about what's going on. If you can't wrap your head around: I've got a chance to win this, this is something that's very special; if you can't wrap your head around that, I don't think you really need to be thinking about it.

But obviously you have those thoughts, wow, I've got a chance to win this, this is feeling really good. You've got to wrap yourself around that and embrace that moment and snap back to reality, because we still have to go hit all the golf shots.

Yeah, there were points in time where I made that -- I was feeling stuff like that all week, but when I holed the bunker shot on 10 on Sunday in the last round, it was like, "This is looking pretty good. I'm looking the way this is going." (Laughter).

And you can that, go step up on 11, hit another good shot. Hit a shot into the green, and I made that putt on 11, after Jason had made his. I was like, "This is really shipping up to be your day."

After that, I knew there was really only one tee shot left on the whole golf course that had any kind of -- you always have these little sticking points and it was the drive on 14. After that I felt super comfy coming in. I hit such a good drive there. I felt really comfortable coming in, and it's nice being in the driver's seat, so you can see and react to how the rest of the players are playing.

JULIUS MASON: So we try to get above the clouds looking down, trying to figure out how we're going to play this. But as Kerry was mentioning, it's a major championship but now we throw in 36 holes on one day, delays, weather. Are you being challenged even more, or are you saying to yourself, everybody else has got to do it.

JIMMY WALKER: It is, it's a situation where everybody has to deal with it. I honestly felt like where we got to park our bus, we always travel in an RV bus, and where we got to park, it was literally across the street at a church.

After I played the first round on Sunday, I literally walked straight out of the scoring tent, back to my bus. My physio met me there. He did the whole body break down, I jumped in the shower and I fell asleep on the couch for about 40, 45 minutes, and that really helped break up the day, as opposed to if I had gone back and sat in the clubhouse. I got to kind of remove myself from the golf tournament for an hour and 20 minutes and come back and reset and refocus and I think for me that was huge. I felt like it broke the day up, got my energy back, and was ready to go again.

JULIUS MASON: I can tell you everybody in this room on the platform back there was thinking, when you were going to your bus, that was in the church, you were going to say something like you saw an angel come from the sky or something like that. Everybody was thinking it (laughter). I know I certainly was thinking it.

Did you hear the roar on 18 when Jason Day dropped the putt?

JIMMY WALKER: I watched it. I was standing in the fairway when he made it. So yeah, we were standing down there waiting to go because I was going to wait for the green to clear.

So we got to watch it and as soon as he made it, Andy, my caddie, without skipping a beat, he's like, "That doesn't change anything we're trying it do."

JULIUS MASON: So you're going for the green?

JIMMY WALKER: Oh, yeah. We're going for it. And the goal is still -- I mean, we're trying to make a birdie. The closer you get to the -- the closer you get to the green for a PGA TOUR player, the easier golf gets. I'm a great bunker player. There's nothing up there, just looking at that -- I mean, the only shot -- you can't see it, but there's a divot right there. And we got ball-in-hand so I got to put it right on the front side of this divot. I mean, the ball was sitting right up on a tee. You couldn't not go for it. (Laughter).

JULIUS MASON: You can thank Kerry Haigh a little bit later for that one, too.

JIMMY WALKER: We all had got to do it.

JULIUS MASON: Tricky chip?

JIMMY WALKER: It was a tricky chip. I mean, I couldn't have hit it in a worse spot. I mean, it was just awful. And if this would have been Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you would have tried to flipped it a lot closer and tried to make a birdie, and then the situation I was in, if you're trying to get it closer, there's a risk of hitting it in the bunker and that's the last place you can hit it.

I knew I put myself in a little bit of a pickle, and it was just from there, get it on the green and 2-putt and get out of there, which is hard to do. But yeah, it was kind of a tough chip. I had a lie where the grass was growing towards my feet and there was a big chunk of it behind it.

So I had to really kind of get in there and get after it to make sure that it didn't kind of come up short. So it could have been a little better lie but it could have been a worse lie. It could have been setting down or at the bottom of the grass but it had enough Fluff under it where I could get under it and get on the green no problem.

JULIUS MASON: Were your nerves going nuts here, or even stronger for the putt on the green? How were you feeling?

JIMMY WALKER: Honestly I was actually pretty calm about all of it. It was just simple. I knew what I had to do. It wasn't -- it wasn't, you know, you had to make a birdie or an eagle.

But it's hard to make par sometimes. I just kept my wits. Tried not to think about too much. Just the shot at hand. Go up and read the putt just like you would any other putt, don't -- you know, I'm not trying to make a super big deal about it.

You talk about those thoughts that pop into your head. I remember when I rolled the putt by and I had that putt coming down, I said -- I had a little bit of a stroke working that week and the week before, and the putting stroke felt good. I can remember telling myself, it was like, "We're going to see how good that putting stroke is right now." (Laughter).

I said, "Just try to keep it as simple as possible. Don't break your routine. Don't make it any bigger than it needs to be in your head." But those little weird thoughts pop into your head. I mean, I buried it, perfect. It worked. Stroke was working. Working all week.

JULIUS MASON: Without getting too emotional, you're trying to absolutely kill everybody on that golf course, beat them to a pulp. You win the championship, you go sign your card. There are some players waiting to congratulate you, and one of them was the person nipping at your ankle coming all the way in, too, right?

JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, as soon as I walked off the green, we kind of did our celebration and Jason is right there. He travels in a bus, too, so we're literally parked right next to each other all week, and we do that every week. Him and his family are great people and our kids play together all the time. And we're out playing soccer at the Masters this year; we hang out with them.

So he was right there, and saw Ellie and Dash, and just, you know, we kind of had our little moment there. I told him, "Great playing" and "great eagle." I ended up texting him later that night. I said, "Man, I really appreciate you making eagle on the last hole." I was like, "It sure made my job a lot harder, which in turn I learned a lot more about myself and golf," and he totally took it the way that I meant it. If he had gone and made a five or a six, it would have been super blah coming down. I would have enjoyed the walk a lot more (laughter) but I wouldn't have learned anything.

So I definitely feel like I learned a lot. Learned a lot that day, and I thanked him for it. He said, "Man, it was awesome. I had a blast." He's like, "I wish I could have played with you." But just great.

And then Rickie was there; Jordan was there. Just, it was awesome.

JULIUS MASON: Very special. Let's talk about your health, because you gave us a scare several weeks, months ago. Talk to us about this photograph, maybe where you are with your health right now and how you're feeling today.

JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, it was about November last year, right before Thanksgiving -- and I think this is where it happened but I don't know. I was down at the King Ranch doing a guys' trip, duck hunting, deer hunting, quail hunting and I think I picked up a tick and I think that's where I got this. But I didn't know and I never saw it.

So I fly down to Australia with Rickie to go do the World Cup and I get down there and I just start feeling awful. I mean, awful, awful. And it continued all through the winter. And I just felt like I was getting about the flu about every other week, like a full-on flu, no energy. I just couldn't figure out what was happening. And it's not something you really like to talk about because you feel very -- it's not a great feeling and you don't want to talk about how draggy you feel and how tired you are all the time.

And I've got two little boys that some of you got to meet last night, at least one of them, he's got tons of energy. I've been in just a funky mood because I get done with my day and I just want to go lay down and the boys want to play. I was just in a bad spot and finally I just said, "Something is really wrong. We need to get this figured out."

So we did lots of blood work, and if it wasn't for my sports psychologist, Julie, who told me to go get tested for Lyme because she thought that's what it was; nobody in south Texas wanted to do the test. It's like, that's not happening here.

So we got tested for it and I found out the Wednesday of Augusta that I was positive for it. And I played San Antonio the week after that, and started the treatment, and I got done about a week ago and I actually feel pretty good.

We did a really heavy dose of antibiotics, and they made you very sun sensitive. My hands were really burning at THE PLAYERS, so I decided to shut it down till I was done. Still haven't been able to go out and practice a whole lot but plan on playing next week.

JULIUS MASON: Good deal. Can we say you are 100 percent?

JIMMY WALKER: I don't think so yet. It's still early to tell. I think I need a few weeks off, maybe a month off the medication and see how I'm doing. I still every now and then have a little bit of the feeling, kind of the Lyme feeling. So we'll just keep going and see how I do. I may have to take some more medication. I don't know yet.

JULIUS MASON: Can you win this major championship at 80 percent?

JIMMY WALKER: At 80 percent? I'd like to think that when you're playing -- when you're winning, you've got everything going. It's hard to say. I mean, my goal right now is just to get healthy. The golf's golf. I'm in a good spot.

JULIUS MASON: How is your golf right now?

JIMMY WALKER: I really don't know. I honestly don't know. I was playing pretty good leading up into THE PLAYERS. I had a decent Masters, and a good finish at my home course.

But just the way I was feeling, you just don't -- I just haven't had a whole lot of like self-confidence, because you just feel -- you physically just feel awful.

So the MoJo has been -- that's what I like to call it. The MoJo has just been gone. You get kind of irritable kind of quick because you just don't feel great, and been taking a lot of Advil and Tylenol. I'm dying to get off that stuff just to function.

All I'm really looking forward to is just getting healthy.

JULIUS MASON: So you saw the golf course today; right? You were out there. What did you think?

JIMMY WALKER: I thought the new holes were great. 1 has got a beautiful look to it. It's reminiscent of the original tee shot and it opens up nice down there to the right, and the green, you can see the entire green. I love being able to see kind of where you're going.

All the new green complexes are very nice. They are not too tricky. They have got a lot of flat spots. They have got some movement in them but they have got flat spots where you like to put the pins and there's plenty of room. Just I thought it looked really good. It's going to be fun playing with all Bermuda. It will be a completely different test.

JULIUS MASON: What's the deal with you and the color black?

JIMMY WALKER: Well, it's a black-and-white picture (laughter). That could be navy blue.

JULIUS MASON: It could be teal blue. Correct.

JIMMY WALKER: That's my buddy there, too, Phil.

I don't know. It's just -- I don't know why. It's very professional, and I've always felt like I like to be very professional looking on the golf course and black always does it. It's very slimming too, (laughter). That's kind of it. I don't wear a ton -- I'll wear some more colors in the summer and stuff. But just look professional I think.

JULIUS MASON: Is this your Sunday outfit?

JIMMY WALKER: No, I'll do it any day, really. But it's just something I've kind of always done. All my cars are black. I think it looks the best. You have to be well-kept and get everything together when you're wearing all black and your car's black. You've got to really love a practice car.

JULIUS MASON: Thomas Parker, your manager, I think is here someplace. But wherever you are, I'm saying, doesn't have a lot of space on the shirt for anymore logos, telling you that right now (laughter).

So we are here to get to know a little bit more about you, who you are, your personality. We see the black all the time. We are going to show you some images of people who wear black but to get to know you a little better, you need to tell us which personality gets the thumbs up and which does not. So we're going to show you a picture of some people and you're going to say yay or nay.

First image. Clint Black, Johnny Cash, which one?

JIMMY WALKER: I don't know, they are both good. I've got Clint on a country play list. I have some Johnny Cash, too. They are both good dudes.

JULIUS MASON: Are you saying this is a tie?

JIMMY WALKER: Got to go with Johnny. Well, let's go with Clint. He's wearing all black. Johnny's got some white on. I mean, come on.

JULIUS MASON: The way Johnny's looking at you, might change your mind.

Next slide, Judge Ito, Simon Cowell.

JIMMY WALKER: I'm going to go -- I'll go with Simon Cowell. He's pretty formidable.

JULIUS MASON: I wish your son was here to help with you this next slide.

JIMMY WALKER: He is. He's right there. Come here, buddy. Look at this shirt he's got on.

JULIUS MASON: Baltusrol shirt, very good. So Mclain, we're having a little fun with Daddy now. Looking at pictures on the TV screen, and we're asking him who is cooler.

JIMMY WALKER: Who looks cooler.

JULIUS MASON: Maybe this next picture you can help him with because I don't know if he's going to be able to answer this.

Mclain, tell us who is cooler: Batman or Darth Vader?

MCLAIN WALKER: Darth Vader.

JIMMY WALKER: That's right.

JULIUS MASON: Good answer. Are you aware of your presence and your demeanor, how you are perceived by others on the golf course?

JIMMY WALKER: I think people think I'm pretty -- I don't know, intense? I don't know. I'm pretty happy go lucky. I haven't been a lot of fun to hang around with as of late but I think everybody will tell you, I enjoy having a good time and laughing and telling jokes, and I would think that's what people would say, I hope.

JULIUS MASON: Well, let's see what people are saying about you real quick. Let's go ahead and look at this. So we have Sports Illustrated's Alan Shipnuck said of your putting, "You half expected him to blow smoke off his putter during Championship week."

Jordan Spieth said, "He kind of walks like a cowboy, confident in what he's doing."

JIMMY WALKER: I've been told I have a walk.

JULIUS MASON: And Paul Casey said, "He looks like freaking Clint Eastwood out there."

Do you agree with any of this?

JIMMY WALKER: Sure. That all sounds good. I think it was the beard. (Laughter) who is that? That's me. That's horrible. (Laughter).

JULIUS MASON: Mclain, do you know who that is?

MCLAIN WALKER: (Pointing at Dad.)

JULIUS MASON: It's him. Kind of looks like Clint Eastwood.

JIMMY WALKER: It's the whole Texas thing. I've got some cowboy hats and boots in a duster.

JULIUS MASON: So besides being more recognized now and doing more media interviews --

JIMMY WALKER: There's the same shirt. Look at that.

JULIUS MASON: What's the coolest thing about winning a major championship?

JIMMY WALKER: I've enjoyed teeing off this year and having that said before I tee off. It just sounds -- it sounds cool. You stand a little taller. I've really enjoyed that. I get a really cool parking spot at my club now. It's got that logo. That was a cool moment.

I had heard Henrik was at the Tarmac after we did Media Day, and I ran over to his plane and literally knocked on the door and said, "Get your trophy out. We're going to take a picture right here.

And he's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it."

Just being a part of that kind of club. I got text messages from guys like, "Welcome to the club" and this and that, Jack Nicklaus hand-writing you notes. Just super special. My trophy is way bigger, too. (Laughter).

JULIUS MASON: So does Mclain get it? Does he know how cool Daddy is?

JIMMY WALKER: Is daddy cool or is Kevin Harvick cooler.

MCLAIN WALKER: You.

JIMMY WALKER: Me. He's a big NASCAR guy. He's so excited to go today. We hope it stays dry out there for us.

JULIUS MASON: We do, too. It's going to be pretty special out there.

JIMMY WALKER: He gets it. He knows. "Daddy, you won the PGA," he says that a lot.

Where do we put all your baseballs?

MCLAIN WALKER: By your trophy.

JIMMY WALKER: That's right.

JULIUS MASON: So it's real interesting to see this private jet that you're walking to, when you talk about this bus that you stay in when you go to tournaments or championships.

JIMMY WALKER: Who is that? That's you.

MCLAIN WALKER: Yeah, that's me. That's me.

JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, we've been doing that since he was born.

JULIUS MASON: Where did it start? Where did it come from? Is it a way to keep you closer with the family when you're traveling? Do you drive the bus or does somebody drive the bus for you?

JIMMY WALKER: We have both. If it's a short haul, I'll drive it. And it's actually fun and easy to drive. We've been doing it since he was born, so 2010 we started, and we still have one to have day and we still travel in it. It's amazing. It's great for weeks like the major weeks are huge. Augusta does an amazing job putting us very close to the golf course, and we walk in every day. You guys have done an amazing job with us --

JULIUS MASON: Has Johnny reserved a parking space for you here yet?

JIMMY WALKER: We should talk about that (laughter).

JULIUS MASON: And there are only two of you doing this now?

JIMMY WALKER: It used to be a huge wave of guys that did it and as families grow, things change and it becomes -- the bus gets a lot smaller when you have one guy running around in there, it's actually pretty big.

So families get bigger, you've got three or four kids in there, it starts getting tight. So as life changes, this kind of stuff changes, too. But we've maintained the bus life and we had one -- we've got one that's got bunk beds in it now for the kids. It works great and that's what they were sleeping on last year.

You guys love the bus, don't you? It's so much that we'll go home after being out for weeks at a time and we get home and we're like, we want to go back to the bus. No, we're going home.

JULIUS MASON: What is an astrophotographer?

JIMMY WALKER: An astrophotographer is anybody I think that has taken any type of picture at night up at the sky. That's me.

JULIUS MASON: How long have you been doing this?

JIMMY WALKER: About the time that he was born, I started with a telescope in the backyard when he was just a baby. You were tiny, you were maybe like this big.

Started about 2010 and I've been doing it since. If anybody -- if you know me, I don't go to anything kind of halfway. I go at it all the way. This hobby has grown into something that's just huge. I've got a couple of telescopes situated across the country that I operate remotely and I've gotten to be very, very good at it.

So all the pictures that I take and then I post on Instagram or my website, they are all mine. They are all with my equipment and pictures that I have put together and processed and put out.

JULIUS MASON: If we showed some images that you've taken, can you help us understand what they are.

JIMMY WALKER: I hope so.

JULIUS MASON: Let's try. Next picture.

JIMMY WALKER: That is the Eagle Nebula. It's M16, it's in the Summer Milky Way. This is actually shot with filters that the Hubble telescope uses. So that's why you're getting this false color image. These filters are used to show a maximum contrast.

So with these filters, you can see more dust down on the bottom than you could if I shot with an RGB filter which would be like regular, normal light that you and I see. So this is a false color image designed to show maximum contrast, maximum detail in what's going on there.

So right in the middle there, it's called the Pillars of Creation, that NASA has named it and that's where there's a star forming. There's a bunch of stars forming right in the tip of that little hook there right in the middle.

JULIUS MASON: You just blew me away, holy cow. I can't wait for the next picture.

JIMMY WALKER: This is actually in the Summer Milky Way, too. It's decently close to the last image we saw but this is a -- this is an RGB image. So if you could see it lit up in the sky, this is basically what it would look like. This is what you would be able to see. And this target is actually very big, so this is actually two pictures that I've taken, so I took one frame and one frame and I've merged them together to get -- to fit it into this image.

So this is with my big tell scope, so you can really zoom in on this and tee a ton of detail. This is an RGB. I think I've got some -- I think I put a hydrogen filter in there to really accent some of the stuff. Any of the things you see that are glowing and red, that's all hydrogen gas. All the dark stuff is dust clouds, and this, again, is a young, like star nursery, lots of stars being formed.

JULIUS MASON: One more picture.

JIMMY WALKER: I think that's NGC 281. That's an edge on --

JULIUS MASON: Yeah, I think you're right (laughter).

JIMMY WALKER: That's an edge-on galaxy. So when you look at other galaxy picture, sometimes you'll see the whole thing and you'll see the spiral arms like this and it looks like a hurricane.

So what you are seeing right here, the way this thing is situated for us to see, you're looking straight through the middle it and so that's what is called an edge-on galaxy where there's other ones you can see where they are face on and then obviously there's ones that are different angles but that's an edge on and it's very, very cool.

JULIUS MASON: Is there an image you're most proud of, maybe more difficult to get than any other?

JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, when I'm most proud of doing now is taking galaxy shots and with my telescope and the amount of time that I'm able to put into them, and from the places that I can do it at, it's very dark, the skies are amazing. And I'm able to see in my pictures thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of galaxies in one frame.

And my favorite thing to do is to be able to pull out all of that detail deep in the background and the black and show that, and that's my favorite. That's what I'm most proud of anymore on doing stuff like that is -- that's really hard to do is bring in all that background stuff out. But at the same time, bringing that out and then making your foreground galaxy look amazing.

It's a big process, so that's been my favorite thing to do as of late is making that background stuff really pop.

JULIUS MASON: True or false: You've sold images to NASA?

JIMMY WALKER: That's false. I have not sold them --

JULIUS MASON: But ...

JIMMY WALKER: But they have got one of the longest-running Web sites in the Internet's history called Astronomy Picture of the Day, and they pick one picture every day to showcase space and technology, and anything that's going on. And so that's kind of like the coveted prize of any astrophotographer is getting a picture like that and having one picked.

So I've gotten quite a few of them now, and I need to start submitting. I've just been in kind of a funk and I haven't submitted anything, and I've got a lot of really good stuff that needs to be shown.

JULIUS MASON: Are there a lot of people like that you do this for a hobby? This is more like a profession in way.

JIMMY WALKER: The walks of life of people that do this and are into it, it's incredible: Doctors and guys that sell papers -- it's all over the place. It's just anybody that's had any kind of a hobby -- or any kind of interest in it. A lot of guys don't take it to this level or have the means to be able to take it to this level, because it is expensive to get into the stuff that I've been doing.

But to be able to take beautiful pictures doesn't require huge equipment. It doesn't require a ton of money. It requires you going out and putting in the legwork, going out, finding a dark place, and doing it. That's the hard part is going and doing it.

So those are the guys that you really applaud that get up and stay up all night and go out in the middle of nowhere and find the good spots and put out something really, really pretty.

JULIUS MASON: Do you like game shows.

JIMMY WALKER: Sure.

JULIUS MASON: You ever see that game show a long time ago, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

JIMMY WALKER: Mm-hmm.

JULIUS MASON: We were watching it the other day and there was a really tough question, and we said to ourselves back at headquarters: I wonder if Jimmy would know the answer to this.

So if you don't mind we're going to show you the front end of this clip. I don't want you to answer it until we ask you to answer it but follow us on this one.

JIMMY WALKER: Okay. (Video played).

JULIUS MASON: So go ahead. Do you know the answer to this question.

JIMMY WALKER: Honestly, I don't. I've never been into mythology.

JULIUS MASON: But you know what the planets are.

JIMMY WALKER: I do.

JULIUS MASON: Take a guess. What do you think it's going to be?

JIMMY WALKER: Saturn. I have no idea.

(Video played).

JULIUS MASON: I was really hoping you would say the word -- but no, you weren't going to do that.

MCLAIN WALKER: That's you.

JULIUS MASON: I think because of your love of the universe, it's our impression that you must watch a lot of sci-fi movies and like sci-fi movies, so we'd like to test you on your sci-fi knowledge, if you don't mind. We are going to show you a screen grab from a movie. Your job is to tell us what the movie is. Let's go.

JIMMY WALKER: Star Wars --

JULIUS MASON: Going to give that you one. Absolutely yes. Next one?

JIMMY WALKER: Tougher. Alien.

JULIUS MASON: Ten points, very good.

JIMMY WALKER: I didn't know if it was Alien or Aliens.

I don't think you know who that is. E.T., extra-terrestrial.

JULIUS MASON: Good job. Next image?

JIMMY WALKER: Just watched this yesterday.

JULIUS MASON: Does Mclain watch this.

JIMMY WALKER: Spaceballs.

JULIUS MASON: Very good. Yes. Next image.

JIMMY WALKER: That is -- which one is it. Is it Wrath of Khan?

JULIUS MASON: Very good. Very good. Next image?

JIMMY WALKER: Apollo 13.

JULIUS MASON: Very good. I don't think you're going to get this one.

JIMMY WALKER: Yeah, that's close encounters.

JULIUS MASON: During rehearsals, nobody got it in the room. That's very good. Final picture.

JIMMY WALKER: Independence Day.

JULIUS MASON: All right. A hand for our movie expert, ladies and gentlemen.

JIMMY WALKER: Man, you've got to bring up something harder than that, come on.

JULIUS MASON: Trust us, we were going to go really deep on you, but I think there were people that there was no way you were going to get some of the ones we were going to put up.

True or false, you have a that too of the Big Dipper on your thigh.

JIMMY WALKER: I don't.

JULIUS MASON: No.

JIMMY WALKER: That is the Big Dipper. Good job.

JULIUS MASON: Thank you. Can you name all the planets in our solar system.

JIMMY WALKER: All the planets? I can.

JULIUS MASON: Well we're going to test and see if you can do it. Start from left-to-right.

JIMMY WALKER: You do it (naming planets with Mclain).

JULIUS MASON: Are we alone in the universe.

JIMMY WALKER: Are we going to go there? When I take the pictures I take and see what's out there, and when there's a hundred billion starts in our galaxy and I take one little picture that's got ten thousand galaxies this it, that each galaxy has a hundred to a hundred billion stars in it, I can't see why there isn't something else going on out there.

Have we been visited? I highly doubt it. The numbers and the scale of the universe are incredibly, incredibly large. I just don't see it happening. And we're finding all these planets around stars that are really close to us now, and we're finding these planets that are in what we know as a habitable zone and so that's the really exciting part about space exploration right now is like the planets, the exo-planetary research everybody is doing, it's really, really cool.

JULIUS MASON: Ron Green, Junior, I think that's a yes. So go ahead and write that down, "We are not alone."

So let's come back down to earth, we have a lot of amateur golfers in the room with us today. Can you give us maybe a swing thought before we address a ball to think about before we can hit it that would help our games?

JIMMY WALKER: I think the biggest thing is good tempo. Let the golf swing build, carry your speed through the ball and pass the ball. Too many times you get too short and you go too fast at the ball. You get too long and you quit at the ball, it's about letting the golf swing build, I think is good. Good rhythm. Good tempo.

JULIUS MASON: Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, at Quail Hollow Club and those watching us on Facebook and Twitter it's time where we can ask some questions to our defending champion.

Q. Shortly after your PGA victory last year, a couple weeks later you were part of the historic Ryder Cup win at Hazeltine. That two-month stretch of golf, is that the greatest stretch of golf that you have been involved with?
JIMMY WALKER: It was pretty special. I know we had, as players playing on the team we were all excited and nervous about the opportunity. There was tons of pressure on us to win, and I felt like we kept -- everybody kind of kept digging little holes for us to try to climb out of in the media and stuff.

So we had a lot to play for, and I was proud of the way everybody played. We all came together and played really well in front of a great crowd and a great venue. It was an amazing week. I know it was something that everybody on the team was very proud of.

But yeah, personally for me, I mean, I've got a great picture of me holding this thing in one hand and The Ryder Cup in the other hand, and just, yeah, it doesn't happen very often.

Q. Could you speak in just a little more detail about how the changes in this course will change how it will be played?
JIMMY WALKER: I think setting aside what they did with the golf course, just playing this golf course with the different grass.

We're all used to playing it with ryegrass everywhere and bentgrass greens and I know they have changed the greens the last couple years, but it has the potential to play really firm and really fast. That's when golf, it can get really hard. When you start losing control of the golf ball, that's when golf gets hard.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I don't know with the weather -- you just don't know. But it has the potential to play completely different than it used to. It's kind of an unknown on what's going to happen. I think -- I know it's going to be in great shape.

It's just a matter of where the rough's at. Bermudarough tends to fly a lot, or it can come out very -- you can get some horrendous lies, so that's something that guys are going to have to deal with, is am I going to get the big jumper; am I going to get the really soft shot that comes out. And even around the greens, bermudarough is tough to chip out of. It's very unpredictable and the greens will probably be fast. That's the biggest unknown I think. But like I said, the new holes look great.

Q. How has playing golf in Texas and growing up in Oklahoma shaped your game, and also have you been to the McDonald Observatory?
JIMMY WALKER: Playing golf in south Texas, this is all we really play on. All I grew up playing on was bermuda. So what I went out and saw today felt very much like home. I'm used to playing in the wind, and get firm and fast in Texas. I felt like I've seen all that.

So I'll be prepared for the turf here, and I have not been to McDonald Observatory. Ever since I've been -- we've had the kiddos, your spare time and free time is kind of taken up a little bit. I have driven out there and it very pretty. I've been out to some pretty dark spots in New Mexico before.

JULIUS MASON: We have a question from Mick on Facebook: What's on the menu for the Champions Dinner during championship week?

JIMMY WALKER: We started off with a very amazing shrimp and crab cocktail and we had a nice meat and olive plate and cheese plate. Then we had a caesar salad followed by bone-in filets and brussel sprouts, and we had Mac and cheese, and what else did we have? French fries. Got to have French fries with a good fries. Chen we finished up with chocolate chip cookies.

JULIUS MASON: Did you have anything to drink last night?

JIMMY WALKER: I had some wine. I think everybody did. And it was very, very good. Got to sample a lot of good stuff.

JULIUS MASON: Good answer. We're going to leave it just at that. Any other questions out there?

Q. What is the hardest transition going from city to city, weather system to weather system and course to course as a golfer, and what you have to do as you're approaching that new course to get yourself mentally ready for forgetting what you just did and starting what you are about to do?
JIMMY WALKER: Moving from place to place really is all about figuring out how firm the greens are, or how not firm they are. Get accustomed to how the ball chips out of the rough around the greens and how the bunkers are doing.

Other than that you're still out there, you have to go out and hit the golf shots you need to hit. So when you go practice, you're just practicing those little subtleties from place to place. You have to figure out the altitude, too; is it the ball flying, not flying, where am I, what's going on. All those little things add up, so when you show up, you practice all the small stuff, the stuff that -- the up and downs, how firm the greens are, so you know how the ball is going to react. Because it's all about controlling the golf ball.

JULIUS MASON: Steven from Facebook wants to know: Favorite memory from Baltusrol other than winning?

JIMMY WALKER: I don't know, it's nice to be close. I can't tell you how nice it is to be close, and we love going to the grocery store and we cook every night. We didn't go out one night that week I don't think. Actually we had our nanny with, us and Erin and I went on a date one night and went and watched --

JULIUS MASON: Spaceballs?

JIMMY WALKER: No. We watched the new Star Trek movie. That was fun. We went to this little pizza pub, and we walk in and they are like, "What are you doing here, how did you find this place?"

We were like, "We Yelped it and it was close." So we had one date night and it was fun.

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