It’s safe to say Patrick Cantlay is well-rested.
It will be 100 days come Thursday’s first round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions that the reigning FedEx Cup champion will have played a competitive round, his 4-and-2 victory against Shane Lowry in Sunday singles action in the Ryder Cup in September his most recent appearance playing golf in public.
“In golf, there’s tournaments all year round that you almost have to force yourself to take time off,” Cantlay said ahead of the first tournament of 2022. “I thought that was the perfect opportunity for me to get a couple months and rest my body and rest my mind and that way I can play the rest of this year just really fresh and excited to go out and compete.”
Cantlay was on a roll at the end of last season, tying for 11th in the Northern Trust in the first postseason event, defeating Bryson DeChambeau in a six-hole playoff at the BMW Championship the following week for his second win of the season, and then, armed with a 2-shot lead due to the staggered scoring format, winning the FedEx Cup Playoffs at The Tour Championship.
He followed that up with a 3-0-1 record in his Ryder Cup debut when the U.S. crushed Europe.
Then he was named the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year.
Patrick Cantlay poses with a Calamity Jane replica after winning the Tour Championship. (Photo: Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports)
So the man known as “Patty Ice” for his stoic behavior when golf’s pressure cooker heats up celebrated by sleeping in, reading books on his couch, watching TV, savoring his best year in golf, and just kicking back and putting his golf shoes up for more than three months.
“I did some workouts and kind of just spent some time at home,” he said. “I travel so much playing golf all over that spending time at home is really nice. And not getting up to (early) much is really restful for me because I do go so hard and play so many tournaments and practice to get ready for those tournaments during the year that it’s nice to just decompress and take some time off at home.
“You don’t get to win too often in golf, so you really need to relish the times that you do win, but you can’t let that make you not hungry to go out and practice and prep. So time off for me, really, when I got back to practicing and getting ready for this tournament I noticed I was more excited even than usual to go out and just practice because I had taken some time off.”
The Plantation Course at Kapalua in Maui should prove suitable for Cantlay’s return because it’s a big ballpark built on the side of a mountain that features staggering elevation changes.
“It’s a good golf course to kind of shake some rust off,” he said. “The fairways are big and there’s lots of space out here to hit shots and it’s also a golf course where you have to be very creative, and so you have to play all the different shots out here to be successful.”
He’ll also be armed with good vibes.
“It sounds silly, but I think success breeds success,” said Cantlay, 32, who has six PGA Tour titles. “So I think the more you win golf tournaments the more comfortable you get when you are coming down the stretch of a golf tournament near the lead or in the lead.
“So the more times you can succeed under pressure, I think the more likely you are to do it in the future. So from that perspective, it was extremely helpful because I closed out a lot of tournaments and matches at the Ryder Cup in a really positive fashion and I think that carryover, those positive memories, will only help me going forward.”