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CAMBIA PORTLAND CLASSICJune 28, 2016Austin ErnstPortland, Oregon Q. So this place two years ago? AUSTIN ERNST: Yep. Q. The site of your only LPGA victory. What do you remember from 2014? What sticks in your mind about that win? AUSTIN ERNST: You know, obviously the playoff, winning in the playoff, playing really well the last day. I made a lot of birdies the last day. I don't know. I can't remember exactly what I shot. I think I shot 67. But, you know, a lot of good things happened that week, and then, obviously, getting the win at the end of the week just made it even better. I remember that last round I was trailing by a couple going into the last round, and the year before I had shot 62 in the third round, so I knew I could make a lot of birdies out here. Last year I played well again. You know, there's a lot of good memories out here, so it's very easy to kind of draw back on those every time I go play. Q. Have you been in a playoff before in any other professional or competitive golf setting? AUSTIN ERNST: Not professional. I've been in playoffs in junior golf. I don't think I ever had one in college. But junior golf I'd been in a playoff before. So I hadn't ever had -- I don't think I'd had one for a few years. Q. But did you feel the same type of pressure? Was there a lot of pressure on you? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, obviously, all day I think I had basically the lead from five on. So I basically played with the lead the whole day. So there's obviously pressure anytime you're in contention, but that's what you want. You want to kind of feel those nerves coming down the stretch, and that's what I practiced for. I practiced because I want to be in those situations. I want to see kind of what I can do coming down the stretch, and I ended up winning. It was a lot of fun. Obviously, it was a lot easier. I hit two good shots and hit a good drive. I think IK hit it right of the green, and I hit it back middle part of the green where I needed to with how firm the greens were that year, and I almost made the birdie putt. Had a little tap-in par, and she missed that putt and luckily we didn't have to play anymore. So there's definitely some belief at the end of it just getting that win. Q. You mentioned you played well here. In the past I think your worst finish is T-9, maybe. What is it about the course that you like so much? AUSTIN ERNST: It sets up really well for my game. I normally hit the ball really well, and that's what you have to do out here. You've got a lot of tree-lined fairways. The greens typically are firm. Haven't played yet. I'm playing this afternoon. But the course just sets up well for me. Off the tee it sets up well for me, and then I've hit a lot of good shots in, and I've made a lot of putts. The greens are always perfect. They're perfect again this year. So they basically set it up if you hit good shots, you're going to be able to make a lot of birdies as scores have shown in the past. Q. There's been a lot of good stuff that comes out of winning. Can you talk about how that kind of took you into a different category on Tour? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, it definitely you win and you're in a little bit more of an elite group of winners out here. So it just gives you confidence. So I carried it on into the year. I was not having a good year coming in before I won here, and I ended up, I played four weeks in Asia and I had probably two more Top 10s the end of the year. Kind of carried it over into the following year. But you can always have that confidence to draw back on that, hey, I've won out here. I know last year when I was in contention in Prattville, I knew, hey, I've won before I can get it done. So you draw back on that experience. Last year, even though I didn't win in Prattville, Kris just basically beat me, because I don't think I made a bogey in the last 40 holes, but you just have that to draw back on. You know what it's like, and you know that you've done it before. So you know that you can compete and you can win against the best players in the world out here. Which, coming out of amateur golf, you know your game's ready, but you really don't know what it's like until you kind of get out here, and when you win against the fields out here, you know your game's good enough and you don't have to play perfect golf. Basically that's what I learned. I made mistakes that week, but I still won. I didn't play -- I didn't have to play perfect. I could still hit loose shots here and there, and it wasn't the end of the world. I still got it done at the end of the week. Q. How do you sum up 2016 for yourself? AUSTIN ERNST: Frustrating, in one word. Q. How so? AUSTIN ERNST: I've hit good shots, I've not done a good job of getting the ball in the hole. So I've had a lot of finishes where they've been -- I've made a lot of cuts, but I haven't played up to what I wanted to play up to. So it's been -- I've played a lot of weekends, but I haven't played as well as I've wanted to. It's basically I haven't gotten the ball in the hole and I haven't putted as well as I needed to. Q. But you've still hit a lot of greens. You're like top 20 or something? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, yeah. Q. So it's mostly putting? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, if you look at stats, it's been mostly all putting. So I feel like that's starting to come around and I feel like I'm working on the right things. So, obviously coming here, I feel good coming here and kind of have hopefully righting the ship and kind of getting back hopefully in the winners circle at the end of the week. Q. You're still putting sort of normal, traditional style, just working on what on the greens? AUSTIN ERNST: I'm actually working on basically being more athletic. I'm basically trying to feel like I can use my hands a little bit more, which how it sounds, that would sound kind of contradictory from what you think, but for me I'm basically trying to stroke it down the line. But I've gotten where I've gotten a little bit too tight, so I'm getting to where it's basically more free. Q. Were you putting like that two years ago when you were here? AUSTIN ERNST: I was putting the same way, yes. So I can't remember exactly what the key was back then, but I'm putting the exact same style. I'm putting conventional. It would have been very similar to what I'm working on right now. Q. You came on Tour after two years in college, LSU? AUSTIN ERNST: Yes. Q. And you got on Tour right away. You didn't have to go to Symetra or anything? AUSTIN ERNST: No, I went to Q-school. Made it straight out of Q-school. I think my rookie year was 2013. Q. Right, and then you won in your second year? AUSTIN ERNST: Yep. Q. How big a thing do you think is that to have that sort of success right away, and to not have to go through periods of struggle where you're worried about money? AUSTIN ERNST: I think it's big. Out here I've had friends that have played Symetra Tour and you hear how tough it is. It's tough on the wallet, tough on travel, tough on everything. So it's been nice for me personally to get that confidence early and just not really have to, like you said, not have to worry about it. I haven't been in the situation where I've had to worry about keeping my card, which has been nice. You kind of do that the first couple years and now that's never a thought for me. I'm trying to win tournaments. I'm not really thinking about if I have a couple bad weeks. I'm not concerned about that. Whereas, your first couple years that can creep into the back of your mind if you struggle early because you haven't been out here. So you don't know kind of -- you don't really have the swing of things. Now this is my fourth year and I kind of know how everything work. I know that golf is an up-and-down game especially out here. We're playing 32 weeks this year. Q. Yeah, 33? AUSTIN ERNST: We have 32, 33 weeks, but golf's if you have one good week and a season goes from being bad to good. You have one win and the rest of the year's kind of mediocre and at the end of the year you've had a good year because you won. Q. It's an odd year, right? Because you crammed a lot into June and July, and August with the Olympics it's kind of an off month, almost? AUSTIN ERNST: Yep. Q. Has it been tough making your schedule and trying to plan around that? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, I know everybody's had to make their schedule how it fits them. So basically a lot of it has been what are you playing in. Obviously I was definitely going to come back here. And I kind of looked at the courses I've played at well in the past in this long stretch. We've got an 11-week stretch here, so you kind of have to look there, where do you want to make sure you get back to. It worked out where I liked Grand Rapids, but I was going to come here and I was going to go to, I think, Atlantic City and I was going to go somewhere else. It basically worked out that that was the only week I could take off unless I wanted to play nine weeks in a row. So it's one of those things. I learned my rookie year, I learned how many I could play in a row. So basically four is what I figured out. So four and take a week off. So I played the first four in the stretch. Took a week off. I'll play the next four, take a week off and then play the British Open. So everybody's been different, and it's definitely tough for some events because they just got a bad draw. Where, you know, you've got the U.S. Open, you've got KPMG and the British Open. So everybody's trying to save themselves for those three weeks and it's just kind of how it sets up. Q. Do you have an a approach for majors? AUSTIN ERNST: I like to play the week before. I like to play the week leading up to majors. I feel like you can kind of know where your game's at a little bit more, so you can go into the week and say, all right, this is what I'm doing well. This is what I need to spend a little more time on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of next week. Q. I think when you were here, your brother was caddying? AUSTIN ERNST: He still is. Q. Wow. How's that relationship? AUSTIN ERNST: It's good. He's been caddying for three years, three full years. So it's been good. He played, so he knows the game. He played college golf. He played a year professionally. He's a good player, so I trust him, which is the biggest thing, and he knows my game better than anybody. So we get along well too, so that helps. Q. You're 24, right? AUSTIN ERNST: Yep. Q. Is it funny to you that, I forget what the average age of the winners are, it's like 21. AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, I'm old now, 24. Q. And it's only because Nordquist won, right? AUSTIN ERNST: She's the oldest by like four or five years, the oldest winner. Q. But you're 24, that's not old by any means? AUSTIN ERNST: No, it's just kind of how, obviously, Brooke won here last year. She was 17. Lydia's 19. So I mean, Lydia's won three times this year. And the game is just getting to where when you're younger, you can compete, and that's kind of where it is. I think it's good. You've got a lot of young talent out here to be competing for a long time. I mean, Lydia said she's going to retire at 30, but that's 11 years from now. So it's not one of those things where she's going to stop playing golf for five years. I think it's really good though. You get a lot of younger players. Lot of us played other sports growing up. A lot of us are relatively athletic for golfers at least. I think it's good. I think young players play a little more explosive game. Typically attack things more. If you watch Brooke play, she goes at a lot of pins. So more fearless golf, which I think is a lot of fun to watch. Q. What was your other sport growing up? AUSTIN ERNST: I played basketball and softball for the longest. But I was too slow and couldn't jump high enough to play basketball. My softball swing was really low to play golf. Q. Were you a shooter? You must have been a good shooter? AUSTIN ERNST: I was pretty good. I played until I was about 12. Q. I find golfers are really good three-point gunners because they have the hand-eye. In softball what were you? AUSTIN ERNST: I was a shortstop. Q. Can you just talk about the confidence from the git-go? You were worrying about keeping your card. AUSTIN ERNST: I actually never worried about keeping my card. That was never a thought to me. I've always been pretty confident. I was smart enough to know that you don't make a goal keeping a card because that's too low of a goal. So my first year I wanted to win. And first year -- Q. Winning a national championship? AUSTIN ERNST: And first year I wanted to win. I was one of the top amateurs when I came out of college. I played Kraft Nabisco the year before. I hadn't played that well and I finished like 45th. So I knew I could compete if I played well. I knew my game would stack up pretty well. Obviously, there are some things that I need to work on. Things your game's not quite as strong as you think it is sometimes, especially when you play five weeks in a row or whatever. That was the biggest difference. Then luckily I came out and made quite a few putts early, and just kind of got that confidence of, yeah, I am good enough to be out here. You get that first Top 10, got the Top 10 in Canada. That gives you some more confidence. You just kind of learned how to play every week, and you learn how to prepare is the biggest thing. But, yeah, having that confidence from the win, you can draw back on that forever. Q. When you were about to go to LSU, did you ever entertain turning pro? AUSTIN ERNST: Definitely not. I was not good enough to turn pro out of high school. There was no way I would turn pro right out of high school. Q. How about after you won the NCAA as a freshman? AUSTIN ERNST: My freshman year I won NCAAs and then I finished the semifinals of the Am, and then I won the first event of my sophomore year. The thought entered my mind at that point because I was playing -- well, I mean, before the fall season I remember they asked me at the Am what I was going to do and I said go back to LSU. But that thought can definitely creep into your mind. Obviously playing in the Kraft Nabisco and not playing well for basically 18 holes the first 9 and the last 9 and finishing like 48th, that definitely made that thought kind of jump out a little bit more to me. Just that if I cleaned a few things up, then I could definitely compete out here. Yet you don't really know how your game stacks up until you actually come out here and play and then you realize how good everyone is. I played a practice round with Karrie Webb and I remember seeing her hit some chip shots around the greens and she had probably the best hands of any woman I'd seen. Just around the greens, some of the shots that she was hitting, and obviously she was a seven-time major champion at that point. You kind of see that, and you see a little bit of a gap there. Then I knew what I needed to work on playing seven holes with her for a practice round. Q. Because you know there's going to be that adjustment where if you leave college, you don't have teammates or a coach telling you where to go, you have to do your own schedule and all that stuff. AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah. Yeah, that wasn't too big of an issue. The biggest difference between college golf, amateur golf in general would be playing week-in and week-out. College golf you're playing one week. You've got two weeks off, and then you're playing, so you play twice a month. Then you've always got a week off in between. So I think that was the biggest adjustment, kind of learning how to play every week, because you have to get your practice in. But you've got to do it in a way where you're not wearing yourself out for three, four weeks down the road. Q. How did you figure that out? AUSTIN ERNST: Trial and error. Q. When would you say you felt comfortable? AUSTIN ERNST: It basically took the majority of my rookie year. You play a lot when you're a rookie. Never see any of the golf courses, you're a little behind the eight ball as a rookie. Just as far as you've never seen anything and you feel like you need to go play. You feel like I need to go see this golf course because everybody else in the field has seen it five years or whatever. So I talked to Stacy about it. I played practice rounds with Stacy and ask her some questions and picked her brain. She gave me some good advice when I was a rookie. Basically not to spend all day out here, and kind of go get my work done and then go do something else. Q. She's kind of famous for that, right, helping young players? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, she was great with me. Any question I had, she answered for me. I wasn't afraid to ask questions, so I got to at the time she was the number one player in the world, so there was no better brain to pick. But, yeah, she was good. I played a practice round with her in Australia which was my first event, and I played one with her at it was still the Kraft then, and I don't know if she was the defending champion, but she had won it either the year before or two years before. So she gave me some tips on where to hit it and that kind of stuff out there. But, you kind of need somebody, which LPGA does a good job with the Big Sisters and PODS, and having people that are veterans out here that you can ask basic questions to. Where do I need to fly into? Little things like that. Where's a good place for dinner that's quick right around the course. Yeah, so. But it's little things that you don't think of. But traveling every week you kind of learn that you fly one airline, and you don't fly the cheapest airline every week so you actually get some miles and free bags eventually. Little stuff like that. It's little things on the Tour life, basically, that you just kind of need to get the hang of. You're kind of the new kid that doesn't know anything. Q. So you're at the age you can start paying it forward? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, actually I do. I have a POD. Q. Who is that? AUSTIN ERNST: I have Ashlan Ramsey, Grace Na, and I cannot pronounce the other girl's name, but it's Budsabakorn. She's one of the Thai girls. Q. She played well last week. AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah, so they're in my POD, so I get to do the same thing with them. Which I enjoy it. I had known Ashlan and Grace before. Obviously I didn't know Budsa, but, yeah. Q. Is that what you call her? AUSTIN ERNST: Yeah. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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