LIV GOLF ORLANDO

April 1, 2023

Laurie Canter

Orange County National

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Welcome Laurie Canter from Cleeks GC. Welcome, Laurie. Lovely to see you up here. It's kind of unique that you're up here, you are an alternate playing this week in for Martin Kaymer who's out for injury and you are helping pull the Cleeks to the top of the team leaderboard, which is a first for you guys. Tell us a little bit about what this week has been like for you and what that means for the team.

LAURIE CANTER: I'm pretty comfortable in the team because it's pretty much the same guys I had last year with G-Mac and Blandy, but obviously came in -- he's also a European, and I know him pretty well. He's a good guy. We've all kind of picked up where we left off last year. Yeah, we've really struggled the first two weeks. I don't think anyone has really had their game. I think G-Mac had a good week in Mayakoba. But it's nice to see a couple of us putting some rounds together and showing what we can do a little bit.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your day today.

LAURIE CANTER: It was pretty sort of similar to yesterday. I hit a lot of really good shots. The greens are tricky. They're subtle. I missed a lot of putts high side yesterday, so tried to vary my line today, play a bit more direct, and I putted much better, which is good. I went bogey-free again, which is nice. Me and my caddie were laughing, we went the whole of last year without a bogey-free round and now we've done it the last two days. Yeah, it's been sort of fun to keep a bogey off the card so far.

Q. Is Martin doing anything from afar? I know he's injured, to support you guys and cheer you guys on?

LAURIE CANTER: Just a lot of texts, yeah. He likes a lot of emojis in his texts, so we had a lot of those last night. I think he's happy to see us sort of putting in a good performance, and hopefully we can do him proud tomorrow.

Q. What's the mindset as a reserve? Obviously you know that your opportunities are limited right now. Is it kind of like I've got to make the most of every time I'm out here type of thing? What's your mindset?

LAURIE CANTER: I haven't really thought about it. I mean, if you just took one of these events in isolation from a golfer's perspective, they're an amazing opportunity.

I kind of look at it like that, like if this is the last LIV event I ever play, then it's been awesome, and this is my 11th event.

I haven't tried to put too much pressure on myself in terms of got to take the opportunity because golf doesn't really work like that. Well, not for me anyway.

Just kind of enjoying it, soaking up, playing with all these players has been an amazing experience, and yeah, I'd obviously love to keep doing it, keep learning, but I think really just taking each event for what it is, seeing what it is is its own unique opportunity, it's kind of the best mindset for me.

Q. Did you find anything recently that kind of gave you an indication that you were going to have this kind of week?

LAURIE CANTER: The early season I was actually like carrying a bit of an injury and I couldn't get myself right at all, and the last event in Tucson my body felt better. I played a little better. I kind of finished in the middle of the pack, but I felt like, okay, I'm going in the right direction.

Then I put a new driver in play this week, which is kind of -- it was designed to help me a bit on the wind. My previous driver was good, straight, but a little bit spinny, whereas this driver is a bit flatter and we've had two windy days and it's got me in the fairway a little bit more and helped me.

So little changes, but nothing major really.

Q. What was the injury?

LAURIE CANTER: Just some back issues like standard golfer's back.

Q. This golf course today seemed to play a lot different than yesterday; what's your take on that? Was that the wind just making it a little harder and faster and drying the greens out? What made it so tough today because you seemed to play a different golf course than a lot of guys.

LAURIE CANTER: I think I've got not a lot of experience playing Bermuda, so whenever I come and play it, I always spend my practice rounds, I'm hitting my putts way too hard. The greens are deceptively quick. You've got to factor in grain. I get the feeling maybe the LIV staff, maybe the greenskeepers have got a small got that's going on this week and maybe just trying to help prep those 18 guys a little bit. I think the greens are quick, combined with a bit of wind, combined with letting them get firm. I think it needs that sort of protection because the golf course is not that challenging from the tee.

I think keeping the green complexes firm and quick and fast, yeah, is going to make sort of -- the round Sebastian shot on the first day was phenomenal, but I think anything sort of 4-, 5-under par is really going to move you along, which I think we'd all sort of want to play this kind of golf course.

Q. What's the plans for tonight to get you prepared for tomorrow?

LAURIE CANTER: Going to go pick up my baby because she's in creche and put her to sleep and have some room service and go to bed.

Q. When you were on the reserve list, how do you go about the procedure in between? How soon do you know ahead of time? Do you come out to the -- kind of like an alternate for a big event, you actually go to the site? How does that all work?

LAURIE CANTER: Yeah, I'm going to be a reserve for the year, so I found out because of Martin's injury the first two weeks, he gave me a little bit of a heads up. He really wanted to play this week. It's just down the road from him. It would have made a lot of sense. But he wasn't quite ready, so he let me know on Saturday, which he didn't need to. It was good to him. As far as I know there's going to be a little pool of reserves and we're going to travel and I guess chase the opportunity to come and play and hopefully have a great week.

Q. Has Martin given you any indication about whether he'll be ready for the next event after --

LAURIE CANTER: No. No.