KROGER QUEEN CITY CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY P&G

September 8, 2022

Aditi Ashok

Kenwood Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. All right, a bogey-free day for you. We've seen a couple bogey-free rounds. Got to be satisfying, new tournament, new course, to come out swinging.

ADITI ASHOK: Yes, definitely. I think last few weeks haven't played up to my expectations, and I think I just told myself, you just need to go out and play golf. Stop worrying too much about how you're hitting it and what your swing looks like.

I think I got a bit like that the last couple -- at least the last two, three weeks. So, yeah it was much better today to just focus on making a birdie every three holes or playing bogey-free. I think it helped me today.

Q. Your dad was saying you've been putting in a lot of work recently. To finally see some of the fruits of your labor come to the forefront, do you feel satisfied or were there a couple more birdie looks out there?

ADITI ASHOK: Yeah, there were a couple more. I actually hit the ball pretty good, more to what I want to do every single day.

So today was a good day, but it's my goal to hit it like this every day, so that even if I putt average I still make three or four birdies. So that's what I did today, and definitely working hard.

That's the thing about golf. You never know if you're doing is right or wrong until you play a tournament and you're like, okay, didn't work. Then you go back and then you work again and then you try and then it doesn't work again. Then you realize you miss a couple cuts.

So it's always a work in progress, but, yeah, I'm really happy with the way I played today and happy that I could hit some good approach shots.

Q. It's interesting, because Sei Young Kim, I was just speaking with her, kind of said a very similar thing as well about golf is golf and sometimes you got it and sometimes you don't.

ADITI ASHOK: Yes, exactly.

Q. Taking a look at your round specifically, just walk me through some of the birdie looks out there.

ADITI ASHOK: Yeah, actually the second hole was my first birdie of the day. I actually hit a pretty bad second shot so I had almost 180 to a green on a par-5, which is not really what you expect.

Yeah, I think everyone has 110, 120. Yeah, I had 180, but that's part of what I was working on, to just manage my expectations and just focus on that shot.

It doesn't matter sometimes why you have 180 on a Par-5 into the green. It's just about hitting that shot the best that I could. I hit it good to like 20 feet, which is pretty good for me from 180, and holed a 20-footer.

That gave me some momentum. I was like even if you're birdieing from 180, you know the rest of the day you're not going to have approaches from 180 every hole, so it gives you some confidence knowing if everything is shorter than this I'm going to be fine. Just keep hitting greens.

The next birdie I made was on I think No 5 or 6. That was a really good shot. I hit it to like -- oh, no, wait. Was it 5 or 6? I can't remember.

But No. 9 was a good one where I hit it to like two feet, which was great. I've never, at least the last couple weeks, haven't made two-footers for birdie, so that was good.

And then I birdied the par-5. I think it was 12 or whatever.

Q. Uh-huh.

ADITI ASHOK: That was another good like 10-, 12-footer.

And the next three holes actually I kept creating the same birdie putts. Like I had 15-footer on every hole, but I missed all three of them.

It's okay, because it's a lot less stressful. It's easy to play bogey-free when you're making 15-footers for birdie.

Q. I was going to say, yeah.

ADITI ASHOK: Yeah, so even though I was disappointed that I was missing birdies, it does a lot for your score because you're just making par and it's just effortless.

So, yeah, it was good. It got tough at the end though because 18 is playing super long so I couldn't hit the green in two. I had to make the up and down, which kind of made me earn my bogey-free round for the day.

But it was good. Yeah, I'm happy I made a 4 there.

Q. What do you hope to continue on to Friday after a round like this?

ADITI ASHOK: Yeah, just keep it going obviously. Every day -- I think with the course being this soft every day I'm assuming is going to be similar scoring.

Unless they -- something goes crazy with the weather, I think it's going to be soft and people are going to be making birdies. So I'm just going to try and do the same.