You played well in the rain during your final round last year, but in your post-tournament press conference you said that historically you hadn’t played as well in bad weather. What changed that Sunday?
I had a moment where I thought, ‘I wish it wasn’t going to be this way; I wish it was going to be slightly easier.’ And then I caught myself and convinced myself to be thankful because no one was going to shoot a low score that day. The weather was really bad. It was to the point that it was pure survival. And I realized that that could work to my advantage—if I could make a bunch of pars, there was no way that anyone was going to catch me. I just made my peace with it as opposed to letting it get to me.

Is bad-weather golf in the UK different than bad-weather golf here in the States?
The weather is an extra defender over there, and because of that, they set up courses for bad weather, and I love that. I think that’s why the weather doesn’t bother me nearly as much over there. When we play in the States, the courses are set up for perfect weather; and if we get bad weather, it can be damn near impossible. But they set up courses over there in case of Armageddon, and they let the weather dictate the scores. If you get perfect weather over there, the scores will be low. And when the weather is bad, the scores are bad.

You mostly flew under the radar before your Open victory. Tell us something about yourself that you think most people don’t know.
I’ve dabbled in a lot of different hobbies over the years, and I tend to get very passionate about whatever it is that I do. I got into long-range shooting for a while. I was shooting targets that were 1,000, 1,200, 1,400 yards away, and I taught myself how to build ammo. I was obsessed with it. And then I got into bow hunting, and I learned how to build my own arrows. I also bought a piece of property for recreational hunting, and my dad and I have completely obsessed over how to maintain the land and regrow these natural pine tree forests. I’m very passionate about all those things, but I don’t really advertise any of that. And no one in the media really knows any of that because no one has really asked. But if someone wants to know, I’ll talk for days about it.

Have you ever considered creating a podcast to talk about all those things?
If Kevin Kisner and I wanted to make content about all the adventures that we have during the offseason, hunting and fishing and all this stuff, it would blow people’s minds. But we don’t do it for other people. We do it because we like to do it with the people we like to be around.