AIG WOMEN'S OPEN

August 5, 2022

Ashleigh Buhai

Mixed Zone

Q. How are you feeling after that?

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: Super chuffed with how I played today. I stayed very patient. Stuck with my steps and my processes, which is my goal this week, just to do those well and hopefully the outcome takes care of itself. I've been doing that pretty well the last few weeks and you know, obviously disappointed to end with a bogey.

But yeah, I hit it in the fairway. It wasn't a divot. The divot was softer than I thought, so a little unlucky but I would have taken today's score at the beginning of the day for sure.

Q. How long on the eagle?

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: Probably a good 15 metres. I would say. It was a nice bomb to hole.

Q. Wonder if you know the story of the South Africans at Muirfield. How much have you talked to Ernie?

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: Obviously I know Ernie won here and even we were playing in our practise round, and I said to my caddie, let's see how Ernie hit the shot. I was YouTubing it while we were out there, his famous bunker shot.

I haven't spoken to Ernie recently but I'm now living full-time in Florida and I got to play a little bit with him and he's my hero growing up. It's pretty cool to be able to play well for the first two rounds here and try to follow in his footsteps.

Q. Did you get to talk to him a little bit about this?

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: No, I haven't spoken to him at all about this, about playing at Muirfield.

Q. I saw your last hole, you accept that sometimes it's going to go your way and sometimes it's not, and you don't need a perfect shot?

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: Totally. That's what links golf is about. You can hit poor shots and they turnout good, and you can hit good shots and they turnout poor. I didn't hit a very good shot on 16 today and I got lucky.

So you've got to take the bounces when you get them and I did. I took my par and ran. Yeah, I'm not disappointed with how I finished, and just got to take the positives into tomorrow.

Q. You led two years ago at halfway, three years ago.

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: At Woburn.

Q. Did you learn from what? What did you take from that?

ASHLEIGH BUHAI: Yeah, every time you're in this position you get a little bit more familiar with it. Obviously Woburn is very different, parkland as opposed to links. But I do love playing links golf. This is my favourite tournament of the year. I look forward to it, and I just -- I do love links golf and the creativity that you have to have.