MARATHON CLASSIC PRESENTED BY DANA

August 6, 2020

Ally McDonald

Quick Quotes

Q. Minus-5. You were in the same group as Jenny. How was it out there today for seven birdies?

ALLY MCDONALD: It was pretty solid. The course is dried out just a little bit from the rain that we got a few days ago, but overall I thought the pins were kind of gettable.

Unfortunately I had a couple bad drives that -- this is a golf course that if you get out of position it's a struggle to get back in position and give yourself opportunity for par.

So couple of unfortunate bogeys, but overall really happy with the solid round.

Q. After the first round what are you most looking forward to for tomorrow?

ALLY MCDONALD: A little bit of rest. And then just I probably made a couple bad swings that kept me from a really, really low score. I kind of found something in the last few holes. Made a couple of longer putts on 15 and 16, so that made me feel really good about my putting.

Just fine tuning a few swings, and I think I've got another good round in me.

Q. You played Drive On last week and now this. What's the mindset like for the rest of 2020 and your routine?

ALLY MCDONALD: Yeah, I think I'm approaching it just like any other year. I know our priority is going to carry over, status is going to carry over. It's a great opportunity to maybe work on a few things that I know has kept me from being my best every year.

Coming off a really great year last year, so I'm just trying to build momentum, just find a lot of good in my game and be really positive just during this time. It's difficult I know with everything going on, but just trying to stay in it mentally and be the best that I can be every single day, and hopefully produce some really good scores.

Q. Now we're back playing golf, but in the past five and six months of quarantine what did you do?

ALLY MCDONALD: Yeah, so I got married two months ago, May 30th. So got married and spent a lot of time with family. Did bit of fishing, and then some golf here and there.

Took a little bit of time off when we kind of were in the shut down phase, but probably two months ago really started working hard and getting prepped for the Drive On and getting the season back going.

Q. I have to ask about the wedding.

ALLY MCDONALD: Yeah.

Q. How did COVID impact it, and did you have a honeymoon planned that has been postponed?

ALLY MCDONALD: Yeah, so we had originally scheduled a July 31st wedding, which was going to be the Friday of the men's Olympics. And then with everything we kind of shuffled. We really struggled with what we wanted to do. With our season being pushed farther back we knew it was going to be really hard to fit something in, so we just moved it up. Had a smaller gathering and ended up being perfect.

We had originally a honeymoon planned for Vermont, which we didn't get to do, but we went to Tennessee for a few days and it was perfect. So, yeah.

Q. A lot of stress there with all those moving parts and not knowing what it was going to be like?

ALLY MCDONALD: I mean, for a little bit. We were just kind of struggling with like the laws and everything. We really wanted to abide by everything and get as many people as we possibly could.

So we waited for the numbers to get from 20 to 50 for an outside gathering and we kind of went for it. We were able to have a lot of people there that we really cared about.

Now that it happened the way it did, we couldn't imagine it being any better.

Q. My final question for you is you mentioned that you drove here from Mississippi.

ALLY MCDONALD: Uh-huh.

Q. About 11 hours.

ALLY MCDONALD: Uh-huh.

Q. How does it feel to get back into the routine of things, packing for tournaments and everything?

ALLY MCDONALD: It feels really good. I will have to say the odd part about it is being pretty much golf course to hotel, dining alone, not really dining out. That's going to be interesting to get used to.

I think I can speak for a lot of girls out here. We're a pretty tight night group, the LPGA family. We have a lot of the friends, and so trying to figure out how to manage and support each other.

So a lot of us rely heavily on our friendships, and it's just managing and doing the smart thing with social distancing, but find a park where we can socially distance, get takeout.

So that's the hard part. Driving from Mississippi wasn't bad. Turned up the music; sang a lot of songs. The drive back may be a little bit more difficult after two weeks, it'll be all good.