AIG WOMEN'S OPEN

August 20, 2020

Marina Alex

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to Marina Alex. What a great round. This puts you atop the leaderboard. Can you talk about how you got momentum going after the 7th?

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, those first six -- well, the first seven holes played incredibly challenging. I hit really good shots all the way through and got to the par-5, 6th, and just got unlucky. I hit what was an okay drive and it ended up going about nowhere. Barely carried a cross bunker that was like 170 yards out, so I struggled on that hole, didn't hit a good lay-up, just played tough overall. Made a double, and I just -- my goal was to just kind of get that back to level par for the tournament, for the day, if I could. I knew the weather was going to be tough, and even in the back of my mind if I had just played level par at that stretch on and just the double happened, it would have been definitely a success. And I was able to take advantage of a couple breaks in the weather. I felt like it was super windy and raining but then there were lulls here and there. It just played so different, obviously, than the practice days and different than what we would have even expected it to play under I think like a normal prevailing wind.

So it's funny, the easy holes played very challenging and the holes that are mentally super difficult were short, so it's just kind of trying to manage that and taking advantage of the fact that the challenging holes were birdieable in some ways today.

Q. You must be very proud to be under par when everybody else has struggled today.

MARINA ALEX: Totally. It's awesome. I'm just going to try and keep it up tomorrow. I'm not sure what the weather forecast is. I'm assuming more of the same. So just keep plodding along the best that I can. I mean, you've got to expect you're going to make some bogeys out here along the way and just to not get upset or frustrated with that because everyone is making them. You get bad lies, tough breaks. It is part of it. Gusty winds, you just don't know. You can execute a good shot and the wind could pick up in the middle of the ball's flight, and next thing you know it's 20 yards short of the green and you're in a bunker. It's impossible to really have control over everything that's going on, so you've just got to let a lot of things go.

THE MODERATOR: You were saying before we came on that you are a fan of links golf.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, I love it. I do.

THE MODERATOR: How was it playing Troon? Your first time here.

MARINA ALEX: First time here, super exciting. I mean, I've been kind of looking forward to it for about a year. I think that was when we first found out last year. Just like a lot of -- I'm so excited that we're playing a lot of the venues that we watch the men play, and I think it's just awesome to see like different styles of golf on the same golf course, and that's the beauty of links. You don't need to hit it high or far. Like you can -- if you can work the ball and control your ball flight, whether you're a low or a high trajectory golfer, you can figure out how to get your way around the golf course, and I think that's the coolest part about playing here. I like it. I don't hit it super long, but I feel like that's not a disadvantage for me.

THE MODERATOR: You may have more energy than anyone who has come off the course --

MARINA ALEX: Really? I'm going to chill out for a bit.

Q. You mentioned playing the venues that the men have played. Several commentators have said, look, even as miserable as the conditions are, everybody seems to be smiling and coming off. Is there just a lot of appreciation for the fact that you're at these venues now?

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, I mean, there's been so many years where we've been trying to get on the same -- I would just say the same level as men's golf and it kind of starts with the golf courses in my opinion and just seeing what the women are capable of on the same venues I think just really helps bring the level of our sport up a notch, and it's important that we're playing here. The announcement that we had, I think it was yesterday or the day before, for the upcoming five years was so cool. I think it's just we're all kind of like reinvigorated about this whole championship, and I think it's going to be great moving forward.

Q. Could you give some specifics about some shots that you might have hit today that were very abnormal? Nelly came in earlier this morning and she said on 1 she flushed a driver that went 187.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, I hit a driver on the hole that I made double bogey. It went 175 yards, and then I hit a drive on the other hole that went 320, and those happened to both be the driving distance measuring holes.

THE MODERATOR: I think we should definitely have you talk through your birdie on the postage stamp. That was pretty special.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, we were trying to play for the front of the green. It was 106 or 107, I believe, and we had been into the wind literally up until that point so it's very difficult then to try and switch gears and try and figure out how far you're going to hit it downwind. We had like a 49-degree wedge and I was just like, okay, let's just play -- we talked about playing for the front section of this green all week. I hit it well. It was smooth, good contact but it flew a lot further than I thought it would. It flew like a yard past, but the greens were soft enough that it stopped and I had a nice little downhill right-to-left putt which was perfect but not necessarily what I intended on doing. We just didn't know how far the ball was really going to fly with some help, and then from there we had a better sense of that.

THE MODERATOR: And that was a hole you really looked forward to playing before you got here.

MARINA ALEX: Yes, scary, but yes, always looking forward to it. When we played the practice rounds it's an intimidating hole. It's not long, but it's very difficult.

THE MODERATOR: Looking forward to tomorrow, it's going to be possibly a bit wetter and still really windy.

MARINA ALEX: Cool.

THE MODERATOR: Obviously today the setup played very fair --

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, they did a great job. I don't know who was in charge. I'm assuming was the R&A was in charge of setting up today. They did a really good job. They moved the tees up -- the tees they moved up were really crucial, and they moved up 16, which I thought was an interesting play. It was kind of borderline for me to carry, so I didn't go for it, but I know a lot of girls would have, and I think that's helped coming down the stretch like having an opportunity to make -- I wouldn't consider it like an easy birdie, but it's a -- it becomes a reachable par-5, which we don't get a ton of, and the first two we played on the front nine were not even close to reachable, so it was a nice balance, and I think they did a nice job.

Keeping the green speeds as they did were really smart. I didn't really notice much out there today. There may have been a couple like times the ball oscillated, but for the wind speed, I think that it was very fair.