SENIOR PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

April 19, 2026

Stewart Cink

Press Conference

The Concession Golf Club

THE MODERATOR: 2026 Senior PGA Champion Stewart Cink joins us now. Stewart, first of all, congratulations. How does it feel to win your first Alfred S. Bourne Trophy?

STEWART CINK: It's really satisfying to win my first major on the PGA TOUR Champions. It's a grueling golf course to compete over four days. It's hot. The golf course is in incredible shape, but it really is testing out there. You don't have to veer very far off to find trouble.

It's tiring, but in the end, rewarding. I did a good job staying in the present, and that's probably one of the things I look back on and being the most proud of is that I was patient, patient and present, really this week. A lot of good shots. Not all great shots, but managed myself really well.

Today was just one of the best rounds I've played as a professional golfer. It was just really good.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. So it's been 17 years since Turnberry. This is a different setting. This is different circumstances, but I wonder how this feels compared to that?

STEWART CINK: It's hard to compare the two. My body felt a little different then because I was 36, and now I'm 52, but the level of satisfaction and validation feels the same.

I actually feel like I'm probably more in control now than I was then. I feel like I'm a more complete player now than I was that year.

You know, I consider myself a student of the game. I love pursuing golf, just trying to squeeze every little bit of it that I can out of it.

It's a maddening and rewarding and awesome game all at the same time. Days like today makes we want to get up early in the morning and go and work hard again. It just felt so good out there today. I almost didn't want it to end.

Q. Obviously winning is a big thing, but was there a point today where you kind of got the feeling that today was going to be not just a winning round, but a special round?

STEWART CINK: I didn't really ever get to that point, because like I said a second ago, I stayed in the present. I didn't let myself get ahead. I just kept playing the shots, disciplined shot after disciplined shot, and executing those shots well. Sometimes the putts went in. Yesterday they weren't.

You know, I went and tweaked a little bit yesterday on the practice green after the round, like I mentioned right here in this room. Today I just had a little bit better command, just like a 5 to 10 percent better feeling on my putting, and the ball was jumping off the face.

I just kind of went back to a few basics and changed my philosophy on reading the greens just a hair. Added some break today, actually. The ball was finding the center of the hole an awful lot.

No, to answer your question, I never got ahead. I never thought, this is a special day. I thought this is the kind of day that we train for and we spend a lot of hours dissecting every hole out here and every tee shot and every wind direction. Let's just go execute all those and see what it adds up to. In the end, it didn't add up to very much (laughing).

Q. Then, also, if we set the Claret Jug aside and compared to your wins even on the regular tour, how does this one kind of rank?

STEWART CINK: Oh, I don't know. It's not fair to rank those. It wouldn't be fair.

I've won some tournaments recently, and so I can definitely say it's not getting old. This is a lot of fun.

To win a tournament like this, back to four rounds on a golf course like this, full field -- this trophy is so heavy can hardly pick it up -- it feels great. It's just validating what I'm doing with my team. Everybody always mentions the team in the interviews, and I'm going to do the same thing.

I've got two awesome coaches right now. Three really if you count my trainer, but James Sieckmann and John Scott Rattan and my trainer, Billy Mitchell, at home, and my caddie Chris Jones. I've just got a great team. Everybody is fully on board with being on my side. It's turning into some good scores out there, and I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

Q. Stewart, can you talk a little bit about that stretch around the seventh hole where you made eagle and you birdied eight? You went from like 2 behind to all of a sudden you're 2 in front, and you never lost the lead after that.

STEWART CINK: Yeah, I did not know that I gained the lead or lost the lead or whatever. I knew that I was up near the lead, and I made eagle, and I kind of thought I might have just nosed ahead, but I wasn't sure.

All that stretch can go back to one moment, and that was on number five. Five is a hard hole, by the way. Statistically I bet it's one of the hardest holds on the course.

I had a long putt for birdie, and I left it about probably 7 feet. I had kind of a tricky -- it was flat, but the grain was across. Because of yesterday's little putting session, I added a little break, played it outside the hole. I just made one of the most committed and peaceful, accepting strokes, and the ball just gutted the hole.

After that putt, I felt like I was never going to miss another putt the rest of my life. So I hit it on the green on six. Of course, I missed the first putt, but I hit 30 feet. But on seven that eagle putt, that was a good setup. It was just outside left of the hole, just a little bit of right break. Buried that. Buried one on eight. Buried one on nine.

I just felt like all of that came from number five. That second putt for par was just such a pure putt that I felt like, all right, the ball likes what I'm doing today. My caddie and I talk about that all the time. The ball likes it; the ball didn't like it. The ball liked what we were doing.

So it showed. You know, it didn't stop there. It just continued. Just a lot of good -- the putt on 11 was kind of a circus almost. It was an up and over, a lot of break. For those putts to go in, I mean, yeah, it was a good putt, but for that to go in the hole is a little bit luck. I'll take it.

Q. Stewart, I know you mentioned that you got a text from your son Reagan ahead of the final round today. Was that something on your mind throughout the round, kind of you're constantly thinking about it? You talked about staying in the present, but did you think about that at all today?

STEWART CINK: I think about what he said all the time. What he said was -- and this is something that goes back to when he caddied for me. He and I developed a really strong game plan every week, and I still do that. It's one of my favorite things about golf.

He just said: Let's just bludgeon this place. Just bludgeon it and bludgeon it and bludgeon it until it yields.

That's what you have to do out here. You have to rep your game plan and your executing and just keep on doing it until a birdie happens or an eagle happens. Then maybe a bogey happens, but you've just got to keep on bludgeoning. That's what Reagan said to me last night. He said, Keep on bludgeoning; the course will yield.

I was already thinking about it, but he reminded me. He's part team member too. I don't want to leave out my other son Connor, but Reagan is just really tuned into golf and what's going out on here. When he said that, it just gave me the confidence to know that, yeah, I don't need to change a lot.

I tweaked my putting a little bit yesterday. I wasn't going to the practice green to find something, but I noticed, we analyzed -- we learn and grow by analyzing what's happened in the recent past, and I was missing a lot of my putts low. I was under-reading some of the break. I decided today I was going to play a little more break, and looky there, I had one of my best putting days of the last year.

Q. So among other things, this win today gets you to the PGA Championship at Aronimink. I wonder how you embrace this next challenge and being there with those guys?

STEWART CINK: I hope so. I did realize that was part of winning this, which is awesome. What an opportunity, but I've got to think about the schedule coming up. You know, this is unusual where a win gets you into a tournament that's in three weeks, because I've got my schedule kind of blocked out, you know, for quite a while here.

I would say that playing in the PGA -- I'm favored to play in the PGA right now, and I'll adjust other stuff to play in the PGA because, number one, I miss all the young guys. I haven't been around them very much. Being able to see them will be fun, so yeah, I'm excited about it.

Q. Ben Crane, the runner-up, said this week PGA Championship was his favorite tournament. Now his favorite tournament is the Senior PGA. I don't know what you feel about that.

STEWART CINK: I feel similarly. This is the Senior tournament that I've played the most. I made my debut in 2023 at the Senior PGA, and this is the fourth one I've played. No other Senior tournament have I played in four of. I have the most experience playing here, and I'm just tickled to be the winner here.

Yeah, to get a chance to play at the PGA at Aronimink, it will be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to that.

Q. Speaking of yielding, I'm looking at your Senior major record. You had a runner-up last year. You had, I think, three thirds, a fourth. Do you feel like you were about ready to knock that door down too?

STEWART CINK: No, I didn't put any thought into it, to be honest. I didn't even know that I had that type of a record in the majors. I finished high a lot last year. I didn't win any majors, but I haven't been playing in these majors long enough to think, like, I had some kind of monkey on my back or anything like that.

So I just come into these tournaments not thinking of them like majors, but just I think of all my tournaments as majors. You know, next week is another major in Atlanta as far as I'm concerned. I'm going to treat it just like a major.

It's the most important event I'm playing in that week, so I don't see why I would show up and not treat it with every molecule of my body focused on trying to win that tournament. We'll do the same thing the week after that and the week after that and then Aronimink.