BANK OF HOPE LPGA MATCH-PLAY MEDIA DAY

May 10, 2022

Lance Evans

Ally Ewing

Shadow Creek

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We appreciate you joining us, and this is great for us to get in front of you guys and create some more news around the tournament, the LPGA Bank of Hope Match-Play event presented by MGM Rewards coming up here in two weeks, so appreciate your time. Appreciate the support, as always, and I'd like to introduce you to Lance Evans. Lance is our senior vice president of sports for MGM Resorts. I'd also like to welcome back our defending champion Ally Ewing, who is actually out in New Jersey this week preparing for her next event this weekend.

Thank you, Lance, and thank you, Ally, for both joining us today.

Just to give you some background, I'm going to throw it over to Lance for a few words on behalf of MGM Resorts & Company and MGM Rewards and then have Ally talk for a few minutes about what it means to defend her title here back at Shadow Creek, and then we'll open it up to some Q & A.

Lance, I'll throw it over to you.

LANCE EVANS: Thank you, Scottie, and welcome, everybody. Good afternoon. I'll probably be pretty brief here because Ally is the star of this show. We were speaking before y'all joined, the last time I saw Ally, we were on a boat on the Bellagio fountains while she chose the song for the actual demonstration of the fountains while she enjoyed her celebratory dinner. What a fantastic experience, and I thank her for allowing us to share in that. Welcome, Ally, and congratulations again. Hopefully we can see that again.

We are incredibly excited for Shadow Creek and MGM Rewards with our partners at Bank of Hope for the second year of the Bank of Hope Match-Play Championships. It was an incredible first year. I have no doubt that year two will be just as spectacular.

Las Vegas has just been the epicenter of sports the last couple years. We just hosted the NFL Draft. We just announced F1 formula racing for November of 2023, Super Bowl in February of 2024, NCAA men's regional championships next year, so Las Vegas has truly become a sports capital.

Obviously the LPGA and the Bank of Hope Match-Play Championship is an important part of that.

Once again, we are incredibly excited to be here. We're excited to host. We're excited to see a great tournament, and we're excited -- and I'm excited to announce Ally to be here with us, as well.

Scottie?

THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Lance. Now we'll go to the star of the show here today, Ally Ewing, defending champion. I want to throw it over to you and maybe say a few words about what it means to return to Las Vegas to defend your title, what you're looking forward to most playing Shadow Creek again this year, and what you're doing to prepare.

Like I said, we all know you're at a tournament this week, but you'll be back here in a couple weeks. Feel free to give us a little insight.

ALLY EWING: Yeah, first of all, I'm just really excited to be able to get with y'all here on this Zoom and do like a media day, because it's such a great event. It'll actually be my first time to defend as a champion.

My first time was just a one-time deal at Lake Oconee, so I'm really excited to get back to Shadow Creek. Obviously great memories there from last year.

It's just a world-class event that was put on. The golf course was spectacular. Just the treatment overall through the week, what everyone did to just make us feel very special was definitely a great week on the golf course, but off the golf course we felt like we were in for a treat as soon as we got there.

Yeah, I'm really excited to be able to defend, to get back out at Shadow Creek and play such a great golf course, but also hopefully to defend the best that I can.

The competition is going to be high. Best players in the world there. It's going to take some great golf, but I'm really excited to come back and hopefully put on a show again.

Q. Last year most of you had never seen Shadow Creek before so you were just kind of playing on feel for a little bit. How do you think that's going to change this time around when you're familiar, especially someone like you who got to play it seven times last year?

ALLY EWING: Well, I know my feet felt all seven times that I went around that track. I think just obviously getting to play that golf course as many times as you can bodes well.

I think you see Danielle Kang being a member out there. Pretty sure she gets to play out there a lot. I definitely think it's advantageous to see that golf course as many times as you can.

I played it well, but I definitely think it's a golf course that requires you to be very precise tee to green. It's penalizing. The greens I remember were very firm, so it took a lot of accuracy to be able to pinpoint exactly where approach shots were pitching.

For me to get back out there in a couple of weeks, it's going to be big for my caddie and I to be able to step up to the golf course and really figure out how far balls are pitching and releasing, as well as figuring out how firm the fairways are.

We'll obviously have some great notes that we took from last year, but it'll be interesting to see comparatively speaking if the golf course is playing similar, if it's playing a little softer, if it's playing even firmer.

But as a whole, we're just really excited to get back and hopefully draw off some really positive takes, some really good memories, and put together a really good week again.

Q. Does the strategy change, especially in match play, now that you have some familiarity with the course?

ALLY EWING: I don't necessarily know if it changes completely. I think definitely in a match play environment, once you kind of see what your competition has done on a hole, it might tell you that you need to be more aggressive or you might need to play a little bit more conservatively, that you don't have to press for a par or something like that.

As a whole, when I'm preparing for the golf course, I'm going to prepare like it's a stroke-play tournament and just how I can play each hole respectively and just put together a great strategy for if I was going out in a stroke-play competition.

But obviously the match-play format will change hole to hole maybe in how I fit, maybe how I attack a pin or how I take it further down on a par-5 and go for it or something like that.

But in preparation it'll be just a normal week in preparing for the event, but match-play situations obviously gives you a different feel each match, each hole.

Q. Having had success there and had a year to think about it, who do you think the course favors? Is it a course for big hitters, or is it a course for strategists? Does match play kind of throw that all out the window?

ALLY EWING: I think it depends. I definitely feel like that golf course requires you to be smart. If you get overly aggressive, if you feel like you can just hit it where you want to, I think it can bite you. So I think it's a little bit of both.

I think we're seeing in the game of golf if you hit it a long way but you're pretty accurate, there aren't too many golf courses that can penalize you for being super accurate. So I think that along with really good strategy and just being able to take what the golf course gives you, that's kind of how I approach golf courses as it is.

But I think Shadow Creek in particular, it just really, really makes you think about, okay, well, I'm here; this is what the hole is giving me, so that's how I have to play it, rather than sometimes trying to take everything into your own hands and can penalize you for being too aggressive.

Q. Ally, take me through kind of the last match last year. It seemed like it was some up-and-down moments. It was a little crazy. It seemed like you'd pull away and then there would be a crazy shot. I think you hit one real close. What's the first thing that comes to your mind down the stretch last year?

ALLY EWING: Tired. I definitely remember I think Sophia and I on the front nine, we played better golf, and I think once we made the turn, we hit some good shots down the stretch, but I think both of us just got -- we were exhausted.

I remember mentally being in a place with my caddie Dan and just saying, just keep plugging, just try to find every ounce of energy that you have in the tank and expend it to get this match finished as soon as possible.

I think we both hit some less-than-stellar shots come down, but in the end I was just trying to execute one shot at a time, and the match ended up finishing on 17.

But I definitely think the word that came to mind was tired. But I definitely feel like I mentally sustained, because it was not only a physical battle, it was a mental battle of just trying to hang in there, and like I said, expend every ounce of energy that I had left.

I can tell you it was expended. I was ready to go to sleep once all the activities were finished for the night.

Q. Getting to the Vegas experience, obviously Lance mentioned the boat and the limo. I think it might have been a Rolls Royce from Shadow Creek to the Bellagio. What's the first thing that comes to your mind about how you got to celebrate that victory?

ALLY EWING: Luxurious. That's probably the best word. Just from the moment that I finished all of the interviews and everything like that, like you said, we hopped in a Rolls Royce that took us to the strip, got to select the song for the Bellagio fountain, hopped on a boat.

It was my husband and I's one-year anniversary, so I tried to pick like a little bit of a romantic song. So I remember that, and then once we finished with that, my husband, myself, and my caddie Dan went to a steakhouse and had just an unbelievable dinner.

I still have all the pictures from dinner as well as they brought out just this massive cake, which just goes to show you the luxurious part that I'm saying. From the time that we got there until literally I think it may have been 11:00 p.m. that night roughly, just the treatment that was given from the entire field and then the champion's gift that there was, and throw on top of that the private flight that we got to San Francisco the next morning because we played the U.S. Open the next week.

It was just thing after thing after thing that we just got treated with. It was a world-class experience there for all the activities post-win for sure.

Q. Lance, now with a couple Tour events and of course The Match kind of kicked things off for Shadow Creek, people say things a lot of times and they pay compliments, but just listening to the Tour pros, both PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour both basically gush about Shadow Creek and the overall hospitality, what has that meant to your team and MGM hearing those type of comments, and maybe what are one or two that have kind of stuck out to you?

LANCE EVANS: I think we were just excited to showcase that facility. We've always known how special it is here, and our best customers have gotten a chance to experience it over the years.

But it's been a bit of a secret, so it's that hidden gem in the desert that not everybody can play, and between the Bank of Hope Match-Play Championship, The Match with Tiger versus Phil, and the one year we did with the CJ Cup, I think it put the golf course in a new light.

I think people had an opportunity to see it and in some cases experience it, and I think it's really benefitted that facility. We keep it in tremendous condition year-round. Greg and Monte, the gentlemen that run that facility, are incredible at what they do.

So for us to be able to showcase the facility and showcase the work that they put into it to make that place special was a highlight for us.

Q. Ally, if you could talk about the state of your game so far. I know no top 10s for you, but talk about how you're progressing and whether stepping on a course where you've had success will bring out something extra in you.

ALLY EWING: Yeah, I think I've been trending. I haven't had all facets of my game kind of firing at the same time. I've been probably underperforming in terms of where I feel like I am as a ball striker, but I did some good -- I got some good work in with my coach this past off week, so I'm hoping to see a lot of the work that we did come to fruition this week and just continue to get better and better leading up to defending at the match play event.

I feel confident in where my game is trending. A lot of where I am is sometimes I feel like I get my expectations a little too high, and when I underperform I am really tough on myself. A lot of what I'm trying to tell myself mentally is if I do X, Y, Z in preparation, when I tee it up in a competitive environment it's just playing golf from there, which I know I've done well in years past.

I feel like I'm trending. I'm excited with my game. I feel like I'm in a place mentally and physically where I can put some good rounds together, and all facets of my game I know don't have to be perfect to yield great results. That's kind of where I am mentally and physically, so I think I'm in a good place.

Q. I know you said you've never defended on the LPGA before, but you've played courses in college and played courses on lesser tours where you've won before, I'm sure. What do you think it's going to be like to step on the grounds at Shadow Creek as a defending champion?

ALLY EWING: I think it's going to be really cool. I think we as golfers try to build off of positive momentum, and getting to -- I don't think when I get to Shadow Creek I'm going to try to put this expectation where, okay, if I don't win then I've let myself down.

It's just kind of step in there and having good memories and knowing that, okay, I played really good here, so I should just have a lot of positive thoughts.

For me, stepping on to Shadow Creek, it's going to be fun, but I definitely feel like mentally I'm preparing myself for knowing what it can be but that not being the expectation that I have to live up to, knowing that I have the capability to defend and win again, but that's not necessarily where my head needs to be to play great golf.

I think that's where I'll be when I get to Shadow Creek, but number one, I'm just going to be really excited to play that golf course again.

Q. Are you expecting to have more time commitments when you get here because you're the defending champion and you're going to see your face on the billboards on the strip and things like that? Is that going to take away from your focus on the game?

ALLY EWING: I hope it doesn't. I think there will be just a realization that that stuff is going to be there, but none of that is going to help me play better. None of that should help me play -- should make me play worse.

That's kind of just the expectation talk of approaching it with positivity but not letting that be just the expectation. That's where I obviously want to be at the end of the week, to have my face up on the billboards again and everything like that, but not viewing myself in light of if I'm not there, that's where -- my definition of how I did that week kind of lies in.

I think I'll have some things to overcome with maybe time commitments, like you said, but in terms of when I get there, letting that stuff distract me, I don't think I will allow that to creep in.

Q. I'm going to throw a little curve ball at you here. I was looking at the entry forms for who's expected to play, and Nelly Korda is on the list. I don't know if you're familiar with her situation, if she's ready to play or not, but if you could talk about what it would be like to have the No. 1 player back on Tour and what she means to the LPGA.

ALLY EWING: Yeah, obviously I think the tournament is looking for the best field as possible, but Nelly and the state of her game is completely up to Nelly. We've all certainly been wishing her the best in her recovery.

But as far as if she's in the field, that's great. I think it'll be great for the tournament. It'll be great to have her back.

But the state of whether or not she's actually physically ready, I have no idea. Like you said, the stronger the field, the better for the tournament, so that's exciting.

Q. We missed a few players last year, Nelly and Jessica and Lydia and Lexi, because they didn't want to play before the U.S. Open. That's the same situation this year; you're the week before the U.S. Open. Does that impact you at all or impact your decision about playing?

ALLY EWING: I don't think it does. Certainly I would have to say last year with the amount of stress and strain my body took on to win the golf tournament. I'd probably say I was a little bit more run down than I have been in previous years for the U.S. Open if I'm just being a hundred percent honest, but I did go on to make the cut and have a decent week at the U.S. Open.

But it is, it's a tough week, but you go in knowing that hey, if I keep advancing, I'm playing a lot of golf. For me, the better you play, the more golf you play, which means the better finish that you have.

It's an exciting week to get back to, and it does give you a lot of confidence if you play well for the U.S. Open.

THE MODERATOR: Brian, Greg, thank you both very much. Appreciate your availability today, and Ally, of course thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule and looking ahead to this week's tournament to talk about defending the title out here in Las Vegas.

We wish you the best of luck this week and look forward to seeing you here in two weeks.

ALLY EWING: Absolutely. Thank you guys.

Q. Can I just ask Ally a few more to finish up?

LANCE EVANS: Sure. As long as Ally is willing to do it.

ALLY EWING: Sure.

Q. A lot of the match play events you're going to see throughout the year, the Solheim Cup, the Curtis Cup, things like that, you're in a team. What's the difference mentally when you're going into a match-play event all on your own rather than playing in that team environment?

ALLY EWING: I probably wouldn't say it changes very much. Like in a Solheim environment you still have to take care of what you're doing individually to make the most impact positively for the team, so as far as saying that there's a difference. Obviously there's a bigger impact that you're having from a team standpoint for Solheim, but mentally I wouldn't approach any match differently.

I feel like the same as in college golf; you have to take care of yourself before you can even help the team. I'll go in with a really positive mindset and just trying to take care of preparing for the golf course like I would in a stroke-play event, just mapping out the course and how I need to play it to yield the best results.

My mentality won't change a whole lot when it comes to teeing it up for the match-play event versus Solheim.

Q. When the field comes out and you realize, hey, this is who I'm going to see this week, maybe the bracket, how much analysis do you do of who you're playing and what their game is like and how it matches up against yours?

ALLY EWING: None, because it's -- these are the best players in the world, so they're going to bring their best. For me it's mentally just telling myself that I'm one of those players, as well, and if I take care of what I need to take care of, that puts me in the best position to put together a good match against those players.

It's just really simplifying things, not getting carried away with, okay, this player is a really good putter or this player hits it a long way. It's just, hey, I've got control of my game. It's to get from point A to point B the best that I can.

Regardless of who I'm playing, it's going to take good golf. So that's kind of my mindset when I approach match play no matter who I'm playing.

Q. Your husband coaching Mississippi State; they could be in the NCAA championship that week right before the match play. If they get there, will you have any advice on what to do in those match-play matches?

ALLY EWING: I don't think I will, but I certainly hope. I've been keeping up with them at regionals this week. I know one thing, they're competitors, they're gritty, so if they make it to nationals, they make it to match play, watch out. That's all I have to say.

THE MODERATOR: Ally, thank you again. We'll see you in a couple weeks. You guys all have a great afternoon.