Jake Knapp & Patty Tavatanakit

December 15, 2024

MODERATOR:  Evening, everyone. We would like to welcome the 2024 Grant Thornton Invitational winners, we are here with Patty Tavatanakit and Jake Knapp. 

Congrats on your win. Just want to start off with some opening comments, Patty, on what it was like to get this win today.

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  It was nice to put the cherry on top of my 2024 season to win my last event of the year. It’s definitely going to be a nice feeling to take some time off. 

And to be able to do it alongside Jake, it’s just been so fun and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.

MODERATOR:  Jake, anything to add? 

JAKE KNAPP:  Yeah. I mean, kind of the same. Great way to end the year before Christmas. I feel like in an event like this you never really know what your partner’s going to be like when you haven’t met ’em before and I feel like I couldn’t have gotten a better partner. I feel like we just got along perfectly energy was the same. It was a really, really fun week.

MODERATOR:  Jake, you just mentioned that you guys went from meeting just for the first time earlier this week to holding a trophy greenside. What’s it like now to have a friend for life? 

JAKE KNAPP:  Yeah, you don’t get to play in many tournaments like this. This is my first time playing in an event like this. I think the last time was maybe with my brother when I was 15.

Yeah, definitely having this connection, I made kind of an early call coming up 18 and I said, Same time next year, and she said, It’s not done yet. But hopefully it’s safe to say we’re going to play again next year.

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  Yeah.

JAKE KNAPP:  I think being able to build a friendship, especially in this sport, it’s such a small community, everybody kind of knows one another, to be able to kind of build another close friend is pretty sweet.

Q.  When did you guys realize that you won on the same day earlier this year?

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  I always new that, I just didn’t tell him. I didn’t want to jinx it. I was very close on mentioning it yesterday but I was like, you know what, I’m going to wait.

JAKE KNAPP:  I remember seeing when I won like two other Bruins had won like Champions Tour and LPGA Tour. 

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  It was you, me and Bronte on the same week this year.

JAKE KNAPP:  Yeah, I think something like that happened when I won on the Canadian Tour as well. It was definitely in the back of my head, but until we finished the round today I had no idea.

Q.  Patty, I’m curious if you can just talk about the arc of your season. It was very emotional earlier in the year when you won and just kind of where that took you in terms of confidence. 

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  I feel like how I started the season was like highs of highs, right? Backtoback wins. Then I felt like I just hit a plateau for a little bit. 

Was figuring out my putting. I went through eight putters this year and to be able to finish off finding something that OK, this is going to be my gamer next year, it’s a nice feeling. I feel like my game was really up and down. I didn’t finish my season the way I wanted to. To cap it off to play good golf on this course that I didn’t two weeks ago was a really good feeling.

Q.  And you obviously putted beautifully. What did you find?

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  I’m not sure. I mean, Morgan was asking me that after the round. I was like, I don’t know, I just rolled ’em in. It just comes. I guess that’s just golf.

Q.  For both of you, is that as much fun as y’all have had on the golf course maybe ever? It just looked like you two enjoyed it so much out there. 

JAKE KNAPP:  Yeah, kind of an inside joke between my caddie and I is like not really out there to have fun in my opinion. I treat it very much like a job and it’s like winning is fun. So I try to go out there and play the best I can. It’s not that I’m not trying to enjoy myself by any means, but I take golf very seriously and I expect a lot of myself. 

So a week like this felt a little bit on the opposite end of the spectrum, like let’s just make sure we enjoy it. Don’t get to do this very often. It’s the first time meeting each other. You also just don’t want to give off that bad energy for your teammate. If you hit a bad shot, whatever it is.

Even when I hit a bad one, she was the first one patting me on the back. So it just made it very, very easy even when you’re making some mistakes and whatnot, just carry on and go about your business.

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  I think Jake also got a heads up from Alison to babysit me, so he won Best Babysitter of the Year Award. 

Q.  Patty, I know confidence is a hard thing to come by when you’re slogging it on the LPGA and trying to bet everybody in the field every week. You looked so much more confident and comfortable this week. Was it just having that validation from playing with him or was it the validation that you’re rolling the rock really well and playing some great golf?

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  Yeah, I feel like Jake was the biggest help out of all the factors, but if anything, I feel I found something those two weeks off just working on some stuff, getting through thoughts in my head. I was just really clear coming into the week even though like guys, practice round, I don’t know how  I wouldn’t have known how I would like play because I was so stressed out. I was literally like push cutting my drives and I was like I don’t want to put Jake in a bad spot. He really helped me on the first day just like free it up and send it. I hit a couple good ones and I found some good feels that worked this week and we were able to close it out.

Q.  And then finally, obviously Lydia’s talked about this tournament, that win really lifting her to a solid season next year. For both of you, what are you both looking forward to in 2025 and having some momentum from a really fun week out here with the Grant Thornton?

JAKE KNAPP:  Hopefully more of this, hopefully more interviews, more trophies. Just trying to  I think next year I would like to be a lot more consistent just throughout the season. 

You know, similar issues, I don’t think I played as well the second half of the season as I would have liked. This was my rookie year so there was a lot of new courses and things like that I kind of feel like I’m more settled in, I know what’s going on, I know my schedule and I can just focus on the weeks ahead.

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  Yeah, for me, I think I’m excited going into the next season. I feel like getting the gist of what I actually have to work on, like I kind of see a very clear direction on what I’m taking just overall with my game. So I’m excited to take some time off and get back to work in January. 

MODERATOR:  That’s all the questions we have. Patty, Jake, thank you for the time and again congratulations.

PATTY TAVATANAKIT:  Thank you.

JAKE KNAPP:  Thank you very much. Thank you guys.

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