Tag: Nick Taylor

With a ‘chase mentality,’ Nick Taylor gets a sniff of the lead and knows how to pour in putts

“Bad thoughts seem to go out of my brain,” he said.

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Former University of Washington men’s golf coach Matt Thurmond’s scouting report of Nick Taylor from the team’s 2009 media guide has aged well 15 years later.

“I’ve never coached anyone that can raise his game so much in difficult conditions and high-pressure situations,” Thurmond, now the coach at Arizona State, wrote all those years ago. “Nick can hit the best shot at the biggest moment.”

On Sunday, Taylor birdied five of his final six holes at TPC Scottsdale to defeat Charley Hoffman on the second hole of a sudden-death playoff to win the PGA Tour’s WM Phoenix Open.

“He’s tough when he gets the chance, it’s just getting him there,” said Mark McCann, Taylor’s swing coach since 2018. “Every time he gets a sniff, he’s going to win, it’s getting him to that sniff.”

Taylor notched his fourth career Tour title in the Valley of the Sun, the Canadian native’s adopted hometown. His first win came at the 2014 Sanderson Farms Championship but then he had to wait more than five years to get back to the winner’s circle. When he did so, at the 2020 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Taylor stared down Phil Mickelson in the final round. There was also the time in 2018 when Taylor shot a final-round 63 at the Wyndham Championship to keep his Tour card.

How does he do it when his back is against the wall or the tournament is on the line?

“Bad thoughts seem to go out of my brain,” he said.

Taylor’s third win proved that Pebble was no fluke, winning his national open to snap a 59-year drought for Canadians at the 2023 RBC Canadian Open. With the pressure of an entire country depending on him to end the winless spell, Taylor calmly stepped up and holed an unforgettable 72-foot eagle putt to clinch the title in a four-hole playoff over Tommy Fleetwood.

And then on Sunday, he trailed Hoffman by three strokes with four holes to go but never panicked, electing to lay up at the par-5 15th and rely on his stellar wedge game. Taylor credited work he’s done with his mental coach, Chris Bergstrom, in helping him find his sweet spot for being so mentally tough.

“The chase mentality seems to be my best mindset where I have to do things,” he said. “Sometimes that means I need to birdie two holes on the back nine to make the cut. We have tricks to try to get into that mindset. I had to get into that mindset trying to chase down Hoffman … Why the ball decides to go in the hole at the right time in the last two years, who knows?”

What he does know is that two years ago he fell into the trap of projecting ahead to what it would be like to qualify for the International Team for the Presidents Cup and he applied too much pressure to achieving his goal of his first international competition. This year, he’s poised to make the team and play for Canada’s Mike Weir in Montreal, and with his world ranking climbing to a career-best of 28th, he’s in line to represent Canada at The Olympics.

“Those are huge goals of mine but also golf will kind of take care of that. If I’m looking week after week of where I am, what I need to do, it’s only going to be hurtful,” he said.

The International Team can certainly use a player who can raise his game in the most pressure-packed situations like Taylor has been doing ever since Coach Thurmond first laid eyes on him.

Adam Hadwin drove to TPC Scottsdale to see buddy Nick Taylor win the WM Phoenix Open

Here’s the cool part that no one has talked about yet: Hadwin missed the cut on Saturday morning.

LOS ANGELES – Adam Hadwin learned his lesson. He wore his PGA Tour badge and didn’t go running on the green with a bottle of champagne to spray Nick Taylor when he holed the winning putt to win the WM Phoenix Open in a sudden-death playoff on Sunday.

Hadwin, you may recall, got tackled by a security guard at the RBC Canadian Open in June when he wasn’t recognized as a Tour pro.

On Sunday, Hadwin wore the same green hoodie and jeans he was wearing in Canada on that fateful day as Taylor battled it out with Charley Hoffman. Hadwin said he sported the same outfit that morning for good luck for Taylor, who shared the 54-hole lead. As one social media commentator noted, “It’s like he wants it to happen.”

This time, Hadwin watched the tying putt from a bridge between 18 green and the clubhouse at TPC Scottsdale along with fellow Canadian Corey Conners. Then he moved greenside with Conners, his wife, Taylor’s wife, Andie, and pro Kevin Streelman during the two-hole playoff.

“I wore my badge this time. At least this time they knew who I was,” he said.

Here’s the cool part that no one has talked about yet: Hadwin missed the cut on Saturday morning. He was part of the wrong end of the wave that shot about three strokes higher and he carded 75-71 and had Sunday off. He had no reason to be at TPC Scottsdale. It wasn’t as if he finished a few groups before and had time to kill. Most of the country was busy watching the first half of the Super Bowl. But Hadwin lives nearby and told Golfweek he was watching the golf on TV that afternoon rooting for his buddy.

“I live only like 12 minutes away,” he said downplaying the fact that he headed over to TPC Scottsdale on the chance that Taylor rallied from three strokes back of Hoffman with four holes to play. Still, as Dionne Warwick once sang, “That’s what friends are for.” We’re giving a golf clap to Hadwin for being there for his buddy’s win again – and we’re glad he didn’t get pummeled this time.

Winner’s Bag: Nick Taylor, 2024 WM Phoenix Open

Check out the clubs that got the job done at TPC Scottsdale.

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A complete list of the golf equipment Nick Taylor used to win the PGA Tour’s 2024 WM Phoenix Open:

DRIVER: Titleist TSi3 (10 degrees), with Fujikura Atmos Blue 6X shaft

FAIRWAY WOODS: Titleist TSi2 (15 degrees), with Fujikura Atmos Blue 7X shaft; TaylorMade SIM2 Max (18 degrees), with Mitsubishi Tensei AV 85 TX shaft

HYBRID: Titleist TSR2 (21 degrees), with Graphite Design Tour AD DI-Hybrid 95X shaft

IRONS: Titleist T200 (4), T100 (5-9), with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts

WEDGES: Titleist Vokey Design SM10 (46, 54, 58 degrees), with True Temper Dynamic Gold S400 shafts

PUTTER: TaylorMade Spider Tour Red

BALL: Titleist Pro V1x

GRIPS: Golf Pride Tour Velvet (full swing) / SuperStroke Pistol GT 1.0 (putter)

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Nick Taylor steals 2024 WM Phoenix Open title after playoff with Charley Hoffman

The win is Taylor’s fourth of his PGA Tour career.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Nick Taylor clawed his way back from a three-shot deficit with four holes to go using a claw grip with his putter that propelled him to victory at the WM Phoenix Open.

Taylor birdied five of his last six holes at TPC Scottsdale on Sunday in an incredible display of putting to shoot a bogey-free 6-under 65 and win a two-hole sudden-death playoff over Charley Hoffman.

Taylor dropped his putter and clenched his fists as he birdied 18 for the third consecutive time – once in regulation and twice in the playoff — the final time from 15 feet. It marked the fourth career PGA Tour title for Taylor, who finished runner-up here last year.

“The finish was pretty dream-like,” he said.

Thirteen months ago at the Sony Open, at the suggestion of his short-game coach Gareth Raflewski, the Canadian Taylor switched to putting with a claw grip in which the left hand holds the club firmly and the right hand rotates so the palm faces his thighs. The grip is pinched “clawlike” by the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and used to guide the stroke in a pendulum arc.

“My setup got much cleaner, my face rotation slowed down, so we’ve done the same drills for a year, just constantly repeating them over and over again,” he said. “I felt like growing up the claw was kind of a stigma. If you went to that, you probably struggled on the greens, but for me, once I committed to it, I haven’t turned back, and I’ve never putted better than the last year.”

2024 WM Phoenix Open
Nick Taylor celebrates after defeating Charley Hoffman in a playoff at the 2024 WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. (Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Pros trying to improve their putting is considered golf’s endless and seemingly most futile search, but for Taylor, who dubbed himself as a streaky putter, it has been a game-changer, turning the biggest weakness in his game into a strength. Taylor famously holed a 72-foot eagle putt to win the 2023 Canadian Open in a playoff and end a 69-year drought for Canadians in their national open.

Having already won in his native land, Taylor, 35, added his hometown event. He has been a local resident since he graduated from University of Washington in 2010, and practices at TPC Scottsdale frequently. And yet until last year, he had always struggled reading the greens at TPC Scottsdale. That wasn’t the case this year as he holed 184 feet, 6 inches of putts in the first round, a personal high watermark. He gained 7.2 strokes on the greens, the fifth-best 18-hole performance in the ShotLink era dating to 2004, en route to tying the course record with an 11-under 60.

“I putted out of my mind,” Taylor said.

He followed with rounds of 70-68 and shared the 54-hole lead, but he trailed Hoffman by three strokes with four holes to go before his putter turned deadly one more time. He sank a clutch 10-foot birdie at 18 to force a playoff, and drained birdie putts of 15 feet and 11 feet in extra holes. For the week, he made 459 feet, 9 inches of putts, the most in the field and the best in Taylor’s 260 career Tour starts.

On Saturday evening, after the third round of the Phoenix Open was suspended due to darkness, Hoffman was asked what it would take to win the title.

“The lowest score,” he said with a wry smile.

The 47-year-old in his 19th year on the PGA Tour went out and gave it all he had. He wrapped up the third round when play resumed on Sunday with five birdies in his final six holes to shoot 7-under 64 and then matched that figure again to be the first player in the clubhouse with a 72-hole total of 21-under 263. Hoffman, a WM ambassador since 2007, was seeking his first title since 2016 but had to settle for his first top-10 since the 2022 Rocket Mortgage Classic.

“I played my butt off,” Hoffman said. “I knew if I got to that 22 number it would be hard for (Taylor) to catch me, and left a putt short (at 18) in regulation. But I love the juices. I love competing. This builds a little fire in the belly. I definitely want to be back here.”

This time Taylor also managed to get the better of world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who was bidding to win the title for the third straight year. Scheffler charged with five birdies in a row on Sunday morning during the third round to trail by two heading into the final round. Then he reeled off four more birdies in a row starting at the second to take the lead at 17 under. Taylor’s reaction to seeing the world No. 1 charge? “Oh, boy,” he said.

But Scheffler’s putter let him down in crunch time as he lipped out for par from 6 feet at No. 7, missed for birdie from 8 feet at the ninth and most disappointing of all, failed to make a 3-foot birdie attempt at 13. A final-round 66 made for a valiant effort to defend the title – had he won they may have re-named the course TPC Scottie-Dale – but it came up short (T-3).

“I’d say I’m a bit frustrated. I didn’t really finish the way I wanted to, but I gave myself a good chance this week,” Scheffler said. “Just wasn’t able to close.”

2024 WM Phoenix Open
Nick Taylor Is awarded a check during the trophy ceremony after winning in a two-hole playoff during the final round of the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale on February 11, 2024 in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Photo by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)

Weather delays totaling nearly seven hours had been a big part of the tournament’s story and so it was only fitting that there would be more one more on Sunday, a 76-minute frost delay, and a sudden-death playoff.

After players completed the third round, they had 10 minutes before they were sent back out for the final round. Hoffman made an eagle and six birdies in his first 15 holes to reach 21 under and build a three-stroke lead. But Taylor seized the moment.

“To find my swing a bit the last nine or ten holes and make some birdies was incredible,” Taylor said.

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Scottie Scheffler seeking three-peat, Nick Taylor’s course record 60 and JT lurking among takeaways from the WM Phoenix Open

Here’s what you need to know from a long Friday at TPC Scottsdale.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Scottie Scheffler isn’t going to give up the WM Phoenix Open title without a fight.

The two-time defending champion fired a bogey-free 6-under 66 (with preferred lies in effect once again) in the second round at TPC Scottsdale on Friday to vault into contention, four shots off the pace set by Andrew Novak and Nick Taylor when was suspended due to darkness. (Eighteen players in the morning wave and the entire afternoon wave have yet to complete their round. The second round will resume at 7:30 a.m. MT.)

Asked whether he thinks he can win the title for a third straight time, something only Arnold Palmer has done in the tournament’s illustrious history, Scheffler said, “Yeah, I don’t see why not. Yeah, obviously I’d like to be a little bit closer to the lead, but still, four back out now is not a bad place to be.”

He added: “I probably was just a bit too far away from the hole to make too many birdies, but bogey-free is always good.”

Scheffler earned his first PGA Tour victory at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open in a playoff over Patrick Cantlay and repeated by holding off Taylor and Jon Rahm a year ago. Scheffler opened with 2-under 69 and heads into the weekend at 8-under 134. This marks the 16th time in Scheffler’s last 23 PGA Tour starts that he’s in the top-10 through 36 holes.

Phoenix Open: Fan suffers non-life threatening injuries after fall at 16th

“I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, plotting along and taking advantage of my opportunities,” he said. “The last two days I really haven’t played the back nine as well as I would like to. I haven’t really taken advantage of some of the scoring holes back there, so I’m looking to improve on that the next couple days.”

Here are four more things to know from the second round of the WM Phoenix Open.

Nick Taylor posts the fifth-ever 60 at the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale

Nick Taylor knows TPC Scottsdale like the back of his hand and it showed on Friday.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Nick Taylor knows TPC Scottsdale like the back of his hand and it showed on Friday.

The Canadian native, who lives not far from the course and practices here regularly, tied the course record with an 11-under 60 to take a five-stroke lead over four golfers after the first round of the WM Phoenix Open.

“I’ve probably never putted that well,” said Taylor, who made 184 feet, 1 inch of putts using a claw grip in the first round, gaining 7.145 strokes on the greens. “Yeah, saw the lines great, and it was a continuation of last night.”

It marked the second straight round on the PGA Tour over a span of two tournaments and six days that a player shot 60 with preferred lies being in effect due to weather conditions. (Wyndham Clark shot 12-under 60 at Pebble Beach on Saturday during the third round.) Taylor’s five-shot lead is the largest 18-hole lead in WM tournament history and the largest at any Tour event since Jim Gallagher Jr. shot 63 at Olympic Club to lead by five after the opening round of the 1993 Tour Championship.

Taylor, who is making his 10th career appearance at the WM Phoenix Open and started on the front nine Thursday, played just six holes as a result of a 3-hour, 30 minute delay due to rain, which was followed by the suspension of play due to darkness. Despite unseasonably chilly conditions that sent the temperature dipping into the 40s, he was off to a hot start, making three birdies in his first six holes. On Friday morning, there was a 103-minute frost delay but when Taylor started at the par-3 16th, the cold didn’t bother the Canadian.

“I’ve played enough in it where I kind of know what to expect,” said Taylor, who was runner-up to Scottie Scheffler at the WM Phoenix Open.

Taylor planted his tee shot 9 feet from the hole and sank the putt. Then he started a string of four birdies in a row beginning at 18, including draining a 21-foot birdie putt at No. 2 and wedging to a foot at the par-5 third. He cooled off with four pars in a row, but the last of them, at No. 7, felt like a birdie. After catching a little too much ball with his bunker shot, his putter bailed him out and rescued par with a 21-foot putt.

Asked if he had 59 in his mind, he said, “After a missed opportunity probably on 6 and sneaking away with par on 7, it was kind of done there. I wanted to keep the round going and finish it off.”

Taylor, who became a national hero last summer when he became the first Canadian to win the RBC Canadian Open in 69 years, tacked on birdies at the final two holes, canning putts of 15 feet and 9 feet to tie the course record and shoot a personal-best nine-hole score of 29 on his second nine. Taylor became the fourth different golfer to shoot 60 during the WM Phoenix Open, joining Grant Waite, the first to do so in the final round in 1996, Mark Calcavecchia, second round in 2001, and Phil Mickelson, who did it twice – second round in 2005 and first round in 2013. It marked the 55th 60 in Tour history and the third this season (Nick Dunlap in the third round of The American Express was the first).

“I essentially made every putt I looked at,” said Taylor, who took just 23 putts, hit 13 of 14 fairways and 16 of 18 greens. “It was a day that you don’t want it to end. Luckily I’m going to play another round here, so hopefully I can keep that going. But everything has worked really well.”

Taylor had a quick, 30-minute turnaround for his second-round tee time and proceeded to hit his opening drive into the native area and had to take a penalty stroke. He made his first bogey of the tournament but it still does little to tarnish the lowest round of his Tour career.

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10 of the best players at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am over the last 5 seasons

See their records here.

This week, a loaded 80-man field is on the Monterey Peninsula for the PGA Tour’s second signature event of the year, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

The Crosby Clambake will look a bit different this time around, with the celebrity amateurs playing in just the first two rounds. Monterey Peninsula Country Club has been removed from the rotation, so the field will play Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill over the first two days before just the pros take on Pebble over the weekend.

Thanks to its elevated status, this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am boasts its best-ever field that includes Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schaufelle, Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas.

Here are 10 of the best performers from the last five AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Ams.

Pebble Pro-Am: Odds, picks to win | Sleepers 

2023 Golfweek Awards: Tournaments of the Year

A handful of events ranging from the PGA Tour to the LPGA featured in the Tournament of the Year discussion.

As the month of December winds down and January approaches, it’s time to look back on 2023 and reward some of the best moments the game of golf provided fans over the last year.

The discussion among the Golfweek staff for “Tournament of the Year” was a rather lively one, so much so that our group of reporters and editors could not come to a consensus pick for the best week of the year.

This year in golf was a busy one off the course, but the players stepped up and provided some memorable events all season long. From major championships to team events to late comebacks and stellar pro debuts, here are Golfweek’s best Tournaments of the Year in 2023.

2023 Golfweek Awards: Shot of the Year, Nick Taylor’s winning eagle at RBC Canadian Open

Nick Taylor’s drought-ending eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole in Canada claimed our Shot of the Year.

Nick Taylor’s ball travelled more than a foot for every year Canadian golf fans had waited for one of their own to win the RBC Canadian Open.

North of the border they refer to it simply as “The Putt.” Amid a steady rain, the 72-foot eagle bomb at Toronto’s Oakdale Golf and Country Club by Abbotsford’s own Nick Taylor on the fourth hole of a sudden-death playoff ended a 69-year drought of a Canadian not winning its national open.

CBS’s Jim Nantz delivered the exclamation on the TV call: “Glorious and free,” he said.

Quite simply, it was Golfweek’s Shot of the Year for 2023.

“Do it, Do it, DO IT!,” shouted Adam Hadwin, kneeling greenside and holding a bottle of champagne, as the ball neared the hole.

It DID IT!

Canadian Mark Zecchino calling the action on Sirius/XM’s PGA Tour Network lost his mind as he went on repeat: “The drought is over, the drought is over…History! History!”

Taylor tossed his putter into the air and leaped into the arms of caddie Dave Markle, a former teammate on Canada’s amateur team, after the longest made putt of his PGA Tour career. Out of the corner of his eye, Taylor recalled seeing Hadwin, who grew up at the same course, Ledgeview Golf Club, get tackled by a security card as he attempted spraying Taylor with champagne in what became an even more viral moment than the winning putt.

Fellow Canadian players Mike Weir, who left the property and returned to witness history, and Corey Conners were among those who ran onto the green to congratulate Taylor. The partisan crowd was so loud – they had serenaded Taylor with a rendition of its “O Canada” national anthem during the day – that CBS’s Amanda Renner had to delay the post-round interview because she couldn’t hear.

“This is for all the guys that are here. This is for my family at home,” Taylor said with tears in his eyes. “This is the most incredible feeling.”

2023 RBC Canadian Open
Nick Taylor celebrates with his caddie after making an eagle putt on the 4th playoff hole to win the RBC Canadian Open at Oakdale Golf & Country Club on June 11, 2023 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

The last player from Canada to win the Canadian Open had been Pat Fletcher in 1954 at Point Grey in Vancouver. Technically, Fletcher was born in England; Carl Keffer had been the only Canadian-born champion, winning in 1909 and 1914. Weir had come close, losing a playoff to Vijay Singh in 2004. The 35-year-old Taylor, who was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, won for the third time on the PGA Tour. He did so despite shooting 75 in Thursday’s opening round.

“I was just hoping to make the cut,” Taylor said.

Wife Andie, who was back home tending to the couple’s second child, a daughter named Harper, who they had welcomed just five weeks earlier, gave him a much-needed pep talk via phone between rounds.

He rallied with a 67 on Friday to make the cut by just one shot. Taylor vaulted into contention by firing a course-record 9-under 63 on Saturday to move within three shots of the lead entering the final round. Five birdies over his first ten holes propelled Taylor to a three-shot lead at 16 under with eight holes to play, but there would be a couple hiccups coming home at Nos. 11 (offset by a bounce-back birdie at 12) and 16, which meant he needed to drain an 11-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to close in 6-under 66 and finish at 17-under 271, walking backwards with his fist raised as the ball disappeared into the hole.

Fleetwood could have played spoiler in regulation, but he missed his tee shot right at the par-5 18th, laid up into an awkward lie in the right rough and two-putted for par to force the playoff.

The players traded birdies on their first time playing No. 18 in the playoff, then both parred 18 on a second playing and the par-3 ninth before heading back to 18 for a third go at it.

Taylor’s tee shot found a divot in the fairway, but he ripped his second shot from 221 yards to the front of the green, while Fleetwood laid up after his drive found a fairway bunker. Fleetwood hit his third shot to 12 feet, but Taylor ended the playoff in dramatic fashion when his uphill eagle putt hit the flagstick and dropped.

“Ever since I’ve been on the PGA Tour this is one that we want to do as well as we can in, and the crowd support was the most unbelievable thing I will probably ever experience in my life,” Taylor said that Sunday. “To break that curse, if you want to call it, is, I’m pretty speechless.”

Following a seemingly endless array of media interviews that night, Taylor was the last player to leave the premises around 10:30 p.m. and his stomach was growling. Jason Logan of Score Golf recounted the scene of Taylor pulling into a McDonald’s just before the Highway 401 on-ramp to load up on Chicken McNuggets. But just as they were about to order, Taylor’s phone, connected to the car’s Bluetooth system, rang and the caller’s name flashed on the display panel was none other than hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.

“I don’t have him in my phone but his name pops up for whatever reason and I look at the guys and I’m like, ‘I should probably take this call,’” Taylor recalled to Score Golf.

As Logan pointed out, that personifies how Taylor authored one of those proud Canadian sporting moments akin to Sidney Crosby’s golden goal, Joe Carter’s World Series-winning home run and Donovan Bailey’s 100-meter Olympic gold medal. It’s such a memorable moment that the RBC Canadian Open changed its logo to reflect Taylor’s histrionics.

It’s why Taylor likely will never have to buy a Molson (or Labatt’s) at a 19th hole in Canada for the rest of his life, Adam Woodard wrote in his lede to the Golfweek game story on Taylor’s triumph.

Taylor told the “Subpar” Podcast, he hadn’t been to a bar much to test this out, but at the U.S. Open the following week in Los Angeles he grabbed drinks with an old college roommate and someone recognized him and bought his round.

“This is going to start happening,” he said. “It’s not so bad.”

Seventy-two feet to win your national open in a playoff? It doesn’t get much better than that and it was an unanimous choice for Golfweek’s Shot of the Year.

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What can male amateurs learn from watching the LPGA? PGA Tour players weigh in at Grant Thornton Invitational

“Other than everything? Their poise is incredible,” said Nick Taylor.

NAPLES, Fla. – There are new fans out at Tiburon Golf Club for this week’s Grant Thornton Invitational. In fact, tournament officials say ticket sales and concession sales at the same venue as the QBE Shootout have more than doubled since the format changed this year to a mixed-team event.

Hospitality for the 16-team event and Saturday’s concert on the Tiburon driving range sold out.

That was always the hope, of course, that putting the PGA Tour and LPGA together would draw more interest.

For many PGA Tour players, this marks the first time they’ve teed it up in competition with an elite LPGA player, and it’s been an eye-opening experience.

Those who follow the women’s game closely have long said that male amateur players can learn more from watching the LPGA than the PGA Tour because it’s a more relatable game.

Golfweek asked several PGA Tour players in the field what they think male amateur players can learn from the women and aside from “everything,” here’s what they said: