|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA NORTH TEXAS SHOOTOUT PRESENTED BY JTBCApril 29, 2015Paige MacKenzieIRVING, TEXAS Q.  This is comfortable but different at the same time, back at an LPGA event. It's been, what, since 2013; is that right? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yeah. Q. Run me through kind of the thought process of being back out here and what's going through your head this week. PAIGE MacKENZIE: You know, I've just enjoyed it so far. This feels like home to me, being inside the ropes. It's all I've known as an adult is playing professional golf and being out here on the LPGA Tour, so for me, yeah, it feels very, very comfortable. But I've never been this nervous before a tournament before. I can't say that I feel fully ready, but I don't know if there's ever a ready. If I've been out of competition for a year and a half, it never gets any easier to come back, but I'm just thankful I'm healthy, and I look forward to seeing what game does show up. Q. More nervous heading into this week or the first Morning Drive show that you did? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Both pretty equally, because people are watching on Morning Drive. You're five seconds away from a viral video on Morning Drive. I guess in golf, you can always hit a bad shot and recover, and on TV you don't really have that luxury. Maybe to some extent it was more nerve‑racking on Morning Drive than coming back. Q. What do you like about that gig? PAIGE MacKENZIE: I enjoy it because of the people that I work with. I don't think that the show would be nearly as fun if it weren't for the guys that I get to sit down with every day and talk about golf. It's just a really, really fun environment. I wake up every day and I look forward to going, and at 3:00 in the morning, that says a lot. Q. What's kind of your plans for the rest of the year? Have you thought about how much you'll play, how much you'll be on Morning Drive? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Well, my game plan from the beginning, I was supposed to be able to play in January. My body kind of let me down. But my original game plan from the beginning of the year was to play 10 events and to work Golf Channel around them, and now obviously I don't know if I'll get 10 in, but I'm going to play as many as I can that fit in my schedule. Probably once a month from here on out is really kind of the game plan, so whatever, five or six. Q. How have they been about you doing this? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Extremely supportive. Extremely supportive. I'm scheduled to work the week of the KPMG PGA Championship, and I called them, and I said, hey, I'm coming back to Dallas and there's a chance that I can qualify for this first major if I play well the next couple weeks, and they were thrilled. They were thrilled that I could have that opportunity. They've been doing but supportive at Golf Channel. Q. Is that pretty exciting to you to know that you have this thing that you can kind of look forward to when you're done playing, when you decide to not play anymore? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yeah, because the reality is I don't know how my body is going to handle coming back right now, and if for some reason I can't do more than one week in a row or if I can't practice as much as I want to be competitive out here, then I do have another option that I'm extremely passionate about and that I really enjoy doing. Q. How is the back? PAIGE MacKENZIE: It's a little bit sore today. I managed yesterday okay. We only played nine holes in that cold weather, and it was fine this morning. Today it's a bit sore after playing the nine. But I feel like it's manageable. I can get some treatment and I don't have any nerve issues right now, which was always the biggest concern of mine. Q. How much do you have to‑‑ how much do you get to practice when you're on Morning Drive? How much have you gotten to prepare for this? Seems like two full‑time jobs in a sense. PAIGE MacKENZIE: It is, but the good news is my hours there are pretty flexible because I work in the morning and I'm done and have most of the day to practice if I want to. But I've been easing myself into this, and I was practicing about four days a week when I decided to play in this event, which was about a couple weeks ago, and so I've not played much more than that, so I'm still working my way into the fitness side of the golf. Q. How do you think the TV is going so far? PAIGE MacKENZIE: You know, I learn something new every day, and it's exciting for me because I've played golf my entire life, and there is a diminishing law of returns between the amount of work that you put in and the amount of reward, I guess, that you get out, or improvement that you get out, and for me, television, I feel like I've come a long way in a year, and it's fun for me to see the improvement in my own delivery and execution on the TV side because it's been a while since I've seen that kind of improvement in my golf game. Q. What's the feedback been like coming back out here and seeing all the girls again? What's their thoughts on you being back out here and what have they said about you being on TV? PAIGE MacKENZIE: It's been so positive. I'm so blessed to have great friends that have been supportive of my work on Golf Channel, but more importantly, like they welcome me back inside the ropes, and I didn't know what that dynamic was going to feel like, and I'm really pleased that‑‑ as excited as I am to be back out here, a lot of people have expressed that they're excited to see me, too. Q. What are your goals for that week? Have you thought about that? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Finish. Q. Is it that simple? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yeah. I mean, at this point, I need a barometer of where I'm at, and I don't know where I'm at. I know the competition level has increased, and I haven't played tournament golf, so I really am walking away from this week hoping to find out where I'm at and see what I need to work on moving forward and just see how I stack up at this point. Q. What about the goals for the year? What are those? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Well, I know I'm playing a minimized schedule. I'd already planned on playing a reduced schedule, so for me, I need to do what I can to keep my card, so that's the biggest thing is take advantage of the events that I am playing in. And I don't mind taking a few weeks off and working because I used to do that all the time in college where you don't play back‑to‑back‑to‑back‑to‑back. You actually had time to prepare between events, so that's my mindset moving forward is I'm really treating it more like I did in college, where I had school plus golf plus time to prepare in between events, and that's kind of the dynamic that I have right now. Q. Run me through a typical day at Morning Drive, what time you wake up, what all you do to prepare, how long after the show you're there. PAIGE MacKENZIE: Sure. I'll run through a Thursday through Sunday where there's actual tournament golf going on because my day is a little bit different. I wake up at 3:00 a.m. I have to be at the studio at 4:00. I do hair and makeup until 5:00, and then we have a meeting at 5:00 for about 30 minutes, go back and finish hair and makeup, try to get out on set at 6:15, 6:20, and we go live at 7:00. We go 7:00 to 9:00, and I'm usually out of the building by 9:30, and I'm home, and I'll eat because that's my lunchtime, like 10:00 lunch, and then I'll try to decompress for a minute. I might take a nap, and then I'll have the afternoon available to practice if I need to practice, and then come 1:00 or 3:00, whenever golf coverage starts, I have to watch whatever PGA TOUR, LPGA Tour, European Tour stuff that we're covering, so I try to watch about three hours of golf, as well, to prepare for the following show, which we get emails around 6:00 in the evening to prepare for the following day's show. Q. So then you kind of think the whole night about what you're going to say? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Well, and we actually have to contribute to the email so we develop a lot of content, so if they need a demo, show an amateur how to hit a shot, Charlie and I develop that content, so when we watch golf, it's not passive.  We actually pull things out that we think could be teachable moments for our audience. Q. What do you think translates from being on TV to coming back out here? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yeah, absolutely. In both cases you have to have a relaxed control of your adrenaline. The moment you get uptight on the golf course, you hit a bad shot. The moment you get uptight on television, you lose your train of thought, or your mouth is moving faster than your brain and then you get in real trouble, so it's interesting because they both require that same type of relaxed‑‑ I don't know how else to describe it, relaxed adrenaline. Q. More adrenaline on the first tee or when the light comes on? PAIGE MacKENZIE: You know what, minus this week where it's my first event back, they're both about equal. It feels both about the same where you have that level of anticipation until the light goes on or until your name is called on the first tee, and then you're in it. There's no escaping it. The roller coaster is on the way downhill. Q. How have you been playing so far this week being out there? PAIGE MacKENZIE: It's a little bit rusty, not as sharp as I would like to see. I had moments where I hit fabulous shots, like wow, this game is like riding a bike, and then there's other mis‑hits that I don't know where they're coming from. A little bit‑‑ like I said, I don't know if I'm fully ready golf‑wise to come back, but the good moments are good, so that's what I'm going to take to tomorrow and the weekend, and hopefully I'll be good enough. Q. Going to put you on the spot. Guests that stand out over your tenure at Morning Drive. PAIGE MacKENZIE: Josh Elliott. He works for NBC Sports, formerly ESPN and Good Morning America, and I watched him so much on ESPN and watched his transition to Good Morning America, and I was just like the biggest fan of him, and he's a good friend of Matt Ginella who's on the show and he came in, and I worked a show with him, which was very surreal. We've had several‑‑ Tim Tebow, I think, was impressive, him in the simulator. I've never seen a guy hit the ball the way he hits it. He was like flying it 350, and just obviously a nice guy. Q. When are you back on? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Tuesday. Q. Quick transition, huh? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yeah, we're on‑site at THE PLAYERS Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm looking forward to that. It's fun to be on‑site. Q. Are there any guests that maybe stand out, something you really learned and you took away from them coming back into this game, any insight‑‑ PAIGE MacKENZIE: From like another player? Q. Yeah, like an LPGA player or a PGA TOUR player that was on and you had that conversation with them and you're like, wow, that really‑‑ anything? PAIGE MacKENZIE: I'm impressed it gives me an opportunity to listen to other touring pros talk about golf, and I'm impressed at how thoughtful so many players are about the game. I mean, you see it but you so rarely get a chance to hear from other players about it. We definitely talk on a player‑to‑player level, and I've been‑‑ it's been really fun for me to learn. I can't think of anything specific or any particular person, but every guest that we have in that's a golfer, I try to kind of pick their brain on certain things. Q. Have you heard from any of your co‑hosts this week? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yes. Well, I was on Morning Drive this morning. I called in, so I talked to Gary and Cara, and then Damon sent me a text message yesterday. Q. Biggest area of improvement for Paige on TV. PAIGE MacKENZIE: Interviewing. Obviously that's not really in my job description, but I get thrown in those situations, and I'm learning how to be better at it, but that was a big thing for me. In the last couple weeks I've been trying to work on that. Q. What do you like most about being on TV? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Great question. I mean, it's still the people I work with. I mean, I guess that doesn't really translate to why I like TV, but so much of why I like the show. I feel like we'd still do that if we were playing 18 holes and go to a bar. We'd still have the same conversations we have on the show. So that part of it's cool. And that show in particular is like so authentic. Everyone still has those same conversations when the cameras aren't on. Q. Did it make it easier having that to go to when you were injured? PAIGE MacKENZIE: Yes. Q. I would think it would drive you crazy otherwise. PAIGE MacKENZIE: Absolutely. Well, I've said it before on record, but I wouldn't be playing right now if it weren't for Golf Channel because I would have quit. I wouldn't have been able to afford to maybe be able to come back because there were moments even after surgery where I didn't think I was ever going to play golf again, so there's no way that I would have put myself through that financial stress of waiting to see, a year and a half later. I would have sought a different direction. It's more than a plan B for me. Like it really kind of saved my plan A. You know what I mean? FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|