Q&A: Stewart Cink on his tattoo (who knew!), being an airplane snob and whether he’s ever gone to a tanning salon for his bald head

This is the Stewart Cink Q&A you didn’t know you needed.

For starters, who knew Cink had a tattoo? But in all seriousness, as one fellow longtime golf writer recently told me, Cink is one of the most underrated thinkers and talkers on golf and life. I don’t disagree and you’ll find out why below.

Cink, the winner of the 2009 British Open, also talks about how he developed a game plan for the playoff with Tom Watson at Turnberry, knowing full well only his wife and family would be rooting for him.

Cink, who played on four Ryder Cup teams (2002, ‘04, ‘06, ‘08, ‘10), is making his first appearance as a U.S. Ryder Cup vice captain for his good friend Zach Johnson this week, and he recounts how Johnson asked him to be his final vice captain for the 44th Ryder Cup.

Golfweek: How did U.S. Captain Zach Johnson ask you to be one of his vice captains?

Stewart Cink: Zach was sharing a rental house at the Open in England and they had a chef and he invited my wife and I to dinner on Friday night. So we sat there and just had our meal and talked and laughed like always, and after it was over, Zach had given me a parking pass to get into his neighborhood.

So he walked me out to the car to get the parking pass back and we were on the way to the car, and he said, I’ve got something I want to ask you, and it still didn’t cross my mind, and he just came right out and said, ‘Hey, I want you to be a vice captain, would you consider it.’ I looked at Lisa, and she had figured it out somehow.  She told me later on, she’s like, I knew he was going to ask you. She’s a people reader, I’m not.

Golfweek: The easy answer to this next question is just to say you don't know, but do you think you would be a vice captain in Rome if Phil Mickelson isn't banished for the things he said before leaving for LIV?

Cink: I don’t know because me and Phil, we’ve known each other for a long time, and our families are –  I wouldn’t say tight, but we get along great, and Amy is just one of our favorites – but me and Phil are just such different personalities that if he was in charge of things, maybe not.

I respect Phil. He’s a smart guy, and he’s done so much in golf, obviously. But he’s just kind of polarized himself quite a lot. He’s made himself kind of a little bit almost untouchable at the moment because of a lot of things.

I don’t know. I hope Phil is happy with where he is in his life. I don’t know if he is or not, but he’s been a big part of our team at the Ryder Cup for a long time. Ryder Cups are bigger than any individual.

Golfweek: Who is the captain you played for who impressed you the most with the way he led?

Cink: I thought Zinger. He also was my only captain that I won with, but the organization and plan going in felt so comforting as a player; the expectations were pretty much all known. You knew what to expect going in. You knew who you were going to have dinners with, you knew who you were going to play your practice rounds with, you knew who you were going to get paired with, one out of these three guys. You weren’t going to get paired with anybody else on the team except one of those three guys. You knew that.

The course we had already played. We had played a PGA at least once before that at Valhalla. It was very much set in numbers, whereas most Ryder Cups were — I remember the pairings being made up the night before on pencil and paper. They were just asking guys, hey, who do you want to be with? As a young guy, I’m not going to say I want to play with David Toms and I want to tee off with him in the second half of the afternoon. It’s not going to work.

Golfweek: What's your fondest Ryder Cup memory?

Cink: Competitively beating Sergio in the singles in 2006 was my top level. We needed points and I was one of the early guys.  They had the confidence to put me out early. I made 500 feet of putts against Sergio, and he was never going to win that day, and I was just on fire. It didn’t mean anything for the team, as it turned out. We got trounced.  But I gave it what I had.

My best memory emotionally was winning in Louisville (in 2008), and we had a big comeback in our match, me and Chad Campbell, to win our match the first day.  We were 3 down. That was probably the best moment I got to share with another player.

Maybe a close second, 1-A would be my first match I ever played with Jim Furyk, alternate shot, and that was like, oh, yeah, playing a Ryder Cup, win my first match. That was awesome.

Golfweek: You have said before that you thought your window to be a Ryder Cup captain had passed.

Cink: Yeah.

Golfweek: Do you think you’re back in the conversation?

Cink: I have no idea. I feel like Zach wanted me to be a part of it because we’re good friends and he probably trusted me and knows that I have a lot of experience and have some stuff to bring to the table, and beyond that, I’m not trying to think about it much.

Golfweek: But the idea has been to kind of to groom people in the vice captain role. Is captain still something you’d want?

Cink: Of course, it is. I’m just trying not to go there in my head. I’m trying to focus on this year’s Ryder Cup first.

Golfweek: Do you feel like during Team USA's scouting trip to Rome that you got initiated into the fraternity?

Cink: No, because I felt like that already happened. I feel like once Zach chose me, right away the text messages and the Zoom calls and all that stuff, I feel like I’ve been an assistant captain for a few years because there’s been no ramp-up whatsoever. The assistants and Zach have hit the ground running and they absorbed me right in the fold.

When we’re on the meetings, it doesn’t feel like there’s a ranking one to six.  It feels like there’s Zach a little bit up and everybody else is right at the top with different input. Everybody has a different take on things. Me and Stricker and Furyk don’t see things exactly the same way, or Freddy. But everybody’s input is valid and it’s well-considered by Zach and even the stats team. I feel like the decision making has been high quality.

Golfweek: There’s no alpha male?

Cink: There’s really not. The thing is when you reach this level of the profession, I think you’re all alphas.

I mean, Tiger has been on the calls, and he’s a little bit of an alpha like that, but you can also tell that he just wants the team to win. He wants the team to be the best it possibly can, and he’s got pretty rigid opinions about certain things. He’s been alpha but not ‘The Alpha’ because it’s a roomful of alphas.

Golfweek: We're not that much different in age, but when my daughter was born, your son was already out of school. What was it like to be a parent in college at Georgia Tech?

Cink: I had a lot of days where I felt like I feel today after being in Italy and on a nine-hour time change. I feel like I haven’t slept in a whole week. That’s how I feel right now. No, it was a huge challenge. My wife and I both didn’t know what we were doing, but I think parenting is one of those things it doesn’t really matter how young it is, you’re never really ready for it. You get ready for it once they’re born. We just did it when we were 20 years old and got an early start. Difficult times, but looking back, it was probably the main cornerstone of our marriage that has kept us really together because those memories and that experience will never go away.

Golfweek: It was a great story seeing you have the success with your son on the bag. But let's be honest, what did he do that was annoying as a caddie?

Cink: He imposed the schedule. Like he called me out for being late, even if it was two minutes. He kept me honest about being on time, and it made me realize how loose I am with my schedule. It was annoying as hell but it was also something that I needed.

Golfweek: Did you guys have any awkward moments out there?

Cink: Awkward? We’ve probably had some awkward moments, but really that’s one of the best things about him caddying was that because he’s grown up playing a lot of golf and watching and learning through me, that we think the same. I don’t remember one shot in two years where we didn’t – not that we didn’t ever disagree, but when we disagreed, we always talked it out and arrived at an agreed strategy based on – well, he would state his case, I would state my case.  Sometimes we’d go his way, sometimes we’d go my way, but we never struck a golf ball without getting to a place of agreement first. I cannot say that about any other caddie I’ve ever had, including the one I have now. Well, she doesn’t really discuss strategy with me, but I’m sure she questions, like what are you doing?

Golfweek: Who do you like having on the bag more, your wife or your son?

Cink: Do you think I’m going to answer that? Actually, my wife would be very upset if I didn’t say Reagan. Having Reagan was just – a father-son combination – like his golf IQ is on the level of a Tour player. He knows the lies, the wind, the greens, just understands the shots so well, and he’s a good golfer but he can’t quite execute the shots like we can, but having that on your side and the chemistry you have with your son, every second of it was a blast.

Golfweek: Do you pay him the same way as any other caddie?

Cink: Almost, except that we pretty much paid all of his travel expenses and his wife because his wife traveled with us the second year. So I paid him a little bit less per week, just total transparency here. I paid him a little bit less per week than I paid my normal caddies. He got a little less because all his expenses were being paid.

Golfweek: Are you a plane snob?

Cink: You mean like airplanes? A little bit. Not really private. We don’t do that anymore. Now that our kids are out of the house, we don’t rush to get home anymore so now we don’t need charters. We did for a time because I was out here by myself and it mattered being home three or four hours earlier on a Sunday night. Now I can stay a little later.

But I like to think of myself as a commercial plane snob. I’m a hawk for the right seat, sitting in the right place. I don’t want the sun coming in my window and I’m window all the way. I love staring out the window. I don’t understand the aisle seat. I always pick my seat according to where the sun is going to be coming in. If we’re flying west, I always sit on the right. I never want to open that window and I don’t want the sun coming in.

I also don’t get why people stand so close to the baggage claim when their bags are nowhere near, clogging up the traffic. There’s a line around that thing for a reason, and no one adheres to the line. They’re always running to the edge. You’ve got to elbow your way through to get that big heavy bag off.

Golfweek: Have you ever thought about going to a tanning salon and asking them to tan the top of your head?

Cink: No because it’s my trademark.  How could I ruin my trademark?

Golfweek: Do you get some funny things said to you in the grocery store or at a restaurant by people?

Cink: Not really anywhere except at golf tournaments, and usually it’s people who know who I am. They recognize me at the airport.  They’re like, I knew that was you, I see that hat tan. Not really ever just a random person that says, you’ve got some hat tan.

Golfweek: Your calves were blowing up on the internet recently. What’s the leg day routine?

Cink: I tried to put it out there. It’s 30 minutes of calf work every day and 23½ hours of rest. That’s the best thing you can do. You’ve got to be rested.

Golfweek: If you got a tattoo, what would you get and where would you put it?

Cink: You mean when I got a tattoo…

Golfweek: Do you have a tattoo?

Cink: I do.

Golfweek: Where is it located?

Cink: It’s right above my pocket.

Golfweek: What is it of?

Cink: I got it in college. Briny Baird and I were coming back from a qualifying round in college, and we detoured on the way back from the dorm and stopped and got some sodas, and then after we drank the sodas we decided to get tattoos.  He was a big reggae fan, and he got a peace sign with the Jamaican flag colors, and I got a happy face. I was 18, that was my freshman year, so 32 years ago.

Golfweek: I was not expecting that.

Cink: If I got one now, I’d probably get like — if you go down to a barbecue joint, you see a pig with the little outlines of all the cuts, like spare ribs and all that stuff, the ham and the shoulder, I’d probably get one of those because I love barbecue.

Golfweek: What's the reception been like out on PGA Tour Champions?

Cink: It’s been great. It’s a welcoming bunch. It’s tempting to just want to play out there all the time because it’s fun and you feel like you’re one of the top players. It’s really tempting but I still love playing out here against the best players and the grind and the cut. I like testing myself. I’m a die-hard pursuer of golf. I am borderline obsessive with practicing and trying to be as good as I can be every day, and excellence is my No. 1 goal. I still feel like I have what it takes to test myself out here for now, so I’m going to keep going.

Golfweek: What do you expect to play next year?

Cink: I’m going to play four or five PGA Tour events in the fall and one other. Next year I really have no idea. But I still expect to play more PGA Tour than PGA Tour Champions, at least for me.

Golfweek: You deservedly won the British. But have you ever thought about Tom Watson's perspective over the years? Do you recognize how wild it would have been if he had won that week?

Cink: I mean, that definitely occurred to me. That more so occurred to me in the moment than it has since. But in the moment it crystallized how important it was that I had a plan going into the playoff, being a vast underdog, sentimental underdog. I don’t think I was the statistical underdog, I think I was the sentimental underdog. Because of that, I actually felt like I had a plan for success, and as crazy as it sounds, I just wanted to get to the tee second. I wanted Tom to get to the tee first so I went and waited because I didn’t want to be standing on the tee and hear that thunderous applause when he got here. I wanted to hear some applause for me because I felt like that would be the only time I was going to hear anything for me. I felt like that was important.

Golfweek: Is that a strategy somebody had taught you or did you come up with by yourself?

Cink: Just while I was sitting there in the locker room watching the television. As soon as the ball (from Watson’s second shot) rolled over the back edge of the 18th green, I figured he was probably going to make bogey because that was a tough place to get up-and-down from, and I was like, I’ve got to have a plan for this playoff because the world is going to be against me for the next hour and a half. So that was my plan.

Story originally appeared on GolfWeek