“I had a super busy week last week with all the junior golf stuff I do at the Tennessee Golf Foundation there in Nashville,” Stallings said after the Sanderson’s third round, “and sort of made the tour of the middle of the state across the board.
“I actually played a decent bit of golf, which is a little bit abnormal for me during that week. I do a thing we call the Tennessee Junior Cup. We split Tennessee down the middle, 10 boys and four girls, and just watch these high school kids just grind all weekend and just see how much they love it.
“It was really rejuvenating even though I didn’t hit a single shot, just to see how much they love the game. It was super encouraging to be there with them this past weekend and sort of be able to carry it over into this week. Got a lot of texts from some of the kids, and it was cool to see, ‘Hey, you actually can do this a little bit.’”
Here, a reporter and Stallings then had this exchange:
“That’s pretty cool to get that inspiration and bring it to a tournament and put it into practice.”
“Yeah, it’s very cool,” Stallings said. “We’ve been doing it for this is our 12th year, and knowing a lot of different kids and kind of seeing it throughout, it’s really neat to sort of carry that on. A lot of times after that week I feel sort of — man, sort of glad it was over, but every year it just gets more and more enjoyable, and the kids just love it.
“Now like Sunday afternoon, it’s like man, I can’t believe it’s over until next year. It’s definitely a passion and probably one of my favorite weeks of the year, even though it is super busy.”
With that, here are the money payouts for the Sanderson. The total purse is $8.2 million. Golf Channel coverage of the final round starts at 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.