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CME GROUP TOUR CHAMPIONSHIPNovember 20, 2019Danielle KangNaples, Florida THE MODERATOR: All right, we're going to wrap up our pre-tournament press conferences with Danielle Kang, Rolex Rankings No. 8. Danielle won the Buick LPGA Shanghai and was a runner-up the next week at the BMW Ladies Championship. Welcome to Naples. We haven't seen you since that week since we were in Busan. Coming into that you were playing so well. Is this some of the best golf you've been playing in your career? You've been playing really well lately. DANIELLE KANG: I have been playing really well. This year sums it up pretty much. I've been (indiscernible) out of doors a lot, and my entire goal this year was to give myself the best opportunities or more opportunities in order to win. I think that's what it is, instead of relying on the result of whether how many wins you have. But, yeah, I'm really proud of how the year has been going. I'm, yeah, playing pretty good. THE MODERATOR: You talk about those opportunities and playing well. I know you talk a lot about your team. You work with Butch and everything you've been doing. You come here off a couple weeks off. I know you were back in Vegas. Have you been practicing? Working on anything particular getting ready for this week? DANIELLE KANG: All of the above. I've actually been -- I saw Butch of course of course whenever -- he actually joked around and said, You know the sun goes down at 5:00, because I wanted see him at 5:00. We joke and say, Your bay has lights. I don't even see where the ball goes but I just need him to look at my swing. He's very great with that and he gives me a lot of time and I appreciate that. Yeah, just been working a lot of short game, putting. I think rest and recovery is important to play well. I went to -- yeah, like I said, the rest and recovery is really important, so I'm at home getting a lot of sleep; jet lag was a little bit rough. But I came here on Saturday and been getting used to the grass and all that. THE MODERATOR: How does it look out there? You had your best finish here at Tiburon last year, tied for 13th. How is it looking out there as we get ready for what's going to be a pretty big week? DANIELLE KANG: I think the golf course in my opinion has been playing really tough. Maybe it's because I don't hit it as far. I'm not sure I have a lot of long irons in. The greens are firm. They're rolling beautifully though, so the co-says are impeccable. Definitely tour championship material. I'm excited to see what the scores will be like. Naples is beautiful, but you never know what's going to happen with the weather. Some days it's windy, some days it's not. I'm pretty sure it was in the 50s on Sunday and then all of a sudden in the 80s on Monday. You never know what you're going to get. So I'm excited for that. THE MODERATOR: It's called winter in Florida in quotation marks. We don't really have winter here. DANIELLE KANG: Yeah. I'm wearing a padded jacket and I think it's 76 today, so... THE MODERATOR: Whatever makes you comfortable. Open up for questions. Q. A lot of Americans came out of Solheim Cup playing really well when the tour went over to Asia. Was this a motivation for you? DANIELLE KANG: Yeah, I guess. I think -- I don't know. I think every week that we play we just want to play well. Maybe that just kind of -- we got a kick in the butt and that just kind of put us into gear, but I'm not really sure how to answer that. Q. Wasn't a kick in the butt. It was very close. DANIELLE KANG: Yeah, so I don't really know the answer to that. THE MODERATOR: Was it maybe you guys saw how well were playing and came right out and played well? Because you played well, Nelly was playing well, but the Europeans came out of that playing well. Carlota won the very next week. That week seemed to drive a lot of you. DANIELLE KANG: Yeah, I think we were definitely excited. It's huge for women's golf what happened there. We set a lot of records. I think we're just excited. I don't know, I'm always excited, so... Despite my tone right now. (Laughter.) I'm usually very excited. It's exciting to play each event, and I think everyone wants to do well at all times. Maybe, to be honest, I think towards the end of the year everyone wants to play the best they can and they kind of want to sum up their year and what happened. Q. How do you feel about the new format and the bigger paycheck this year? DANIELLE KANG: I think it's a great opportunity. I love that we're trending in the right direction. And the fact that this kind of opportunity has risen for us to be able to play for that kind of check is pretty incredible. I'm hoping that will maybe roll over and open up more opportunities later. But for now, I'm just really excited to play the CME Tour Championship. Yeah, huge check waiting for the winner. Be pretty exciting to see who takes it. Q. Butch talked about scaling back. You concerned at all that you might not be able to work with him as much? I have a follow-up Butch question. DANIELLE KANG: Scaling back on what? Q. He was scaling back with some players, working with players. DANIELLE KANG: Oh, he hasn't scaled back with me. We're good. Q. How important has that been to you to reach another level that you wanted to get to? DANIELLE KANG: It's very important I think for any athlete to be able to push through the barrier that -- you set a goal the beginning of the year, set a goal for your career, and I think being able to achieve little by little, I think everyone would be very inspired to themselves. It's just hard work pays off, and so far right now Butch has helped really in a positive way I would say results have shown. I think he knows what he's doing. (Laughter.) THE MODERATOR: He has a little bit of track record of success. DANIELLE KANG: Yeah. THE MODERATOR: Anything further for Danielle? I know we were chatting in the back. Wanted to ask you about your Birdies for UNICEF campaign. I know that's really important to you. You brought up specifically today is World Children's day. DANIELLE KANG: Yes. THE MODERATOR: Tell us about that campaign and why UNICEF? DANIELLE KANG: Well, to be honest UNICEF is just a part of who I am, something that I've wanted to work -- an organization that I've wanted to work with since I was young. There are a lot of follow-up stories behind that, but, yes, today is Children's Day. I wanted to work with UNICEF more for awareness. I want people to know that there are children that are still suffering from preventable causes out there. We're worried about a lot of little things in our lives, but some people can't find food, they don't have shelter, they don't have medical, they don't have shots, they don't have families. I just want people to be aware that those things do go on around the world, even today. No matter how well we live and no matter how -- we don't really realize how fortunate we are sometimes. And my birdie campaign, I've been really thankful for everybody that has been involved in it. Even my sponsor, adidas, was able to provide a lot of the giveaways for people that have been participating. We've gotten a lot of positive feedback. It's not necessarily the amount we're trying to raise. It's more so that people are aware, people are more excited. When I make birdies I think they can donate from honestly two cents to 25 cents, whatever they'd like. I just want them to be part of my golf game and part of my journey with me. I just hope there is more in the future for us. Yeah, something that I'm passionate about and hopefully grow bigger. Q. What made you want to work with UNICEF? DANIELLE KANG: When I was younger I used to go to Busan, Korea a lot. My dad was out there. Kind of a fun fact I think. I don't want to say it in a wrong way, but Busan from in the 1990s I think they were in a stage where they needed help from the world organizations to now donating. South Korea is donating over $100 million to UNICEF in order to help in other Asia countries. They've progressed in so many positive ways. When I was younger when I went there, my dad used to take me around to homeless people and kids and used to buy all these food and we used to give it out. I used to ask my dad, like, Why are we buying so much food? He said, Well you might in the think about it, but these people can't find food. So that moment kind of stuck with me because I didn't realize that people didn't have essentials kind of. It's not a -- you could ask somebody like, What's your right? Do we have a right to food? Do we have a right to have water? But I believe that a lot of the kids are -- they don't have a lot of power and they're vulnerable, but they're the ones that are going to shape our future. I feel if we can do anything to help one kid's life and they can make a better change in the future, that's just my goal. Q. How old were you? DANIELLE KANG: I was probably around six, seven. We did that every year. Six, seven, eight nine. We might have done it when I was younger, but my earliest memory was when I was around six. There were people, veterans as well that didn't have arms and legs and they didn't much jobs and things like that. My dad always used to say, You can't get anything done if you're hungry. He always used to go and buy food, boxes of food. I try to do that on my own, whether it was in California. There was a lot of homeless people in certain areas, whether it's the Bay Area. There is still a lot of -- there is hands-on food banks to help people. But for me, I think children just settled with me because I was a kid. Looking at other kids who were hungry was kind of shocking to me. I know they're a lot of different types of things we can help with them, whether it's clean water, food, shelter, all of that. So, yeah, that's kind of how I started it. Q. From, say, college on, what would you say is your most impactful moment? DANIELLE KANG: My most impactful moment? Q. What impacted you the most? DANIELLE KANG: Impacted me? Q. Yeah. DANIELLE KANG: Honestly, there has been a lot of different types of things that have impacted me. I went on a trip to Dominican Republic with UNICEF Next-Gen. It's a group. That was a pretty powerful trip that I've been on. I didn't realize that it's kind of ignorant of myself -- and I don't know how many others actually don't know -- but I didn't know that child marriages still exist. I've met multiple of them, 14 year olds that were married that were pregnant, things like that, and they didn't have a right. They didn't have -- they didn't know any better. Yeah, those are pretty shocking. I couldn't really put it into words. I'm still thinking over it. And going into hospitals that didn't have sanitation, clean water when you walk into a hospital. We walk into a hospital and we kind of already expect things to be clean and we expect to have water. We expect to have treatments. But there was very different. This one mother couldn't get a child to the hospital, and I remember getting there with a car. I was just at the service center and I said, How does she get there? They said, She walks. It's about a 1.4 kilometer walk with an infant one way and then back the other way. So things like that that we don't understand how much people go through in order to just get daily essentials is something that I want people to be aware about, that we can we can make an impact on somebody else's life. The world is just bigger than us. It's bigger than golf, bigger than anyone. So if someone looks at me and thinks about UNICEF and what I believe in, then that's just how I can be, that's who I am. Q. Would this be a bad time to ask you how it would feel to win $1.5 million this week? DANIELLE KANG: I know, right? Honestly there are a lot of ways to change the world, right? People talk about how UNICEF, they get a lot of donations and people talk about that as well, but 98% of the profits go -- I'm sorry, 89%. That was the wrong quotation. 89% of the profits goes towards helping children; 11% is administration. For me as well, money is irrelevant, right? If you donate, I don't know, $20 and you can feed so and so person for 20 days, but we're trying to prevent the causes at this point instead of let's just make an impact right now. I'm just trying to see what we can do later down in the future. Working with UNICEF has helped me to realize that, so I think that has been the most impactful thing. Even seeing a group of people working so hard out of their lives and these are all volunteers and they all have jobs. They're lawyers, they're software companies, and these people have taken weeks out of their lives to work on stuff that people need, whether it's working on hospitals and trying to make a difference. That has impacted me big, because for them it's not money, it's time. Somebody once said to me, Time is the most precious gift you can give. Hopefully the time I can give will be impactful. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Danielle? That's a great point to leave it on. Have a great week. DANIELLE KANG: Cool. Thank you guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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