AMAZINGCRE PORTLAND CLASSIC

September 15, 2022

Nelly Korda

Columbia Edgewater Country Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Here with Nelly Korda after your first round at your first ever AmazingCre Portland Classic. How did you find the course? I know you had a great round. Like we said, colorful scorecard. First time here. Just tell me how it was in general.

NELLY KORDA: First time in Portland. Well, actually, no, second time to Portland, first time playing this event. I played the U.S. Women's Am here I think in 2015.

Q. Okay.

NELLY KORDA: Yeah, I mean, bogeyed the second hole. It was a very colorful front nine. Kind of up and down day, but ended on the good side.

Overall I played some solid golf. Maybe made a few stupid errors, but that's golf.

Q. Yeah, what was sort of the challenges or the errors as you said that led to those brighter colors on the card?

NELLY KORDA: Mainly my missed drives. It's so tree lined here. It's such a beautiful golf course. So many big, tall trees.

But they're very thick and they're very high. They also start very thick, like they're very low.

Q. Yeah.

NELLY KORDA: So when you miss a fairway it's hard to get through the trees. Unfortunately had a few -- the couple mistakes that I did have, I hit it out to the right into the trees and couldn't really get a good score. (Plane interference.)

Q. I know the greens speeds are a little fast here. Is that a challenge for you getting it close to the pin? What did you think of the greens speeds?

NELLY KORDA: Greens play completely different than they did Monday, Tuesday, and even Wednesday.

I don't know what they did to the golf course, but the greens were a lot firmer. They were really soft, spin-y the first couple days, and today like even my wedge shots were releasing.

So through the round that is something that we had to adjust to as well. Yeah.

Q. As you said, you got better I guess towards the end of the round.

NELLY KORDA: Uh-huh.

Q. How do you calm yourself down mentally and what did you change, if anything?

NELLY KORDA: I told myself it's just the first day. Can't win it, but you can definitely lose it. So I just tried to stay pretty confident in what I was working on with my coach, Jamie Mulligan the past week.

Q. What did you sort of learn, if anything, that you'll take into tomorrow?

NELLY KORDA: I don't know how it's going to play in the afternoon, just because it played so different today than it did the first three days that I was out here practicing. So just adjusting and seeing how the balls react, if they're releasing on the fairways.

The key out on the here is to hit fairways and hopefully have a good approach shot in.