ISPS HANDA WORLD INVITATIONAL

August 19, 2023

Alexa Pano

Galgorm Castle & Massereene Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. Okay, here with Alexa Pano after her third round. You had sort of a rough start to the week.

ALEXA PANO: Yeah.

Q. Can you take me through it?

ALEXA PANO: With you mean golf?

Q. No, just with your clubs.

ALEXA PANO: Oh, right. So I landed in London from Boston Logan and I checked my AirTags and my clothes were still in Boston Logan but my clubs and two other suitcases had made it to London.

So then I get to Belfast airport and none of my bags are there. That was kind of rough. The next morning my dad ended up being able to go and pick up my clubs, which was the main thing I needed, but for three days you may have seen me sporting the Galgorm pro shop clothes.

They got here in time for round one, which was the most important thing.

Q. How was dealing with that stress and how did it affect your preparation for the week?

ALEXA PANO: Honestly, it was kind of interesting because I think if it had been my clubs it would've been a lot more rough. The clothes I was able to manage. I was able to get enough rain gear to get through the practice rounds.

Yeah, at least my clubs were here.

Q. Having dealt with that, those issues early in the week, how happy are you to see your score, your name at the top of the leaderboard, yourself in contention?

ALEXA PANO: Yeah, after all that and then I kind of had a rough first day at Castlerock, it's really nice to have a good, solid second and third day. Looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully being able to go low.

Q. What is it about this course that maybe suits your game that you like?

ALEXA PANO: Yeah, I think they're both really nice courses, but this one you can kind of predict what the ball is going to do on the greens, which I really like. There are gettable par-5s, which is one of my favorite things about courses.

It's just been fun managing the course and deciding what to do off different tee boxes, going for it or laying up. It's been a really fun challenge. I've enjoyed it.

Q. One of your first times this season in contention. What are you expecting tomorrow? What's the strategy?

ALEXA PANO: Yeah, I think just staying calm the whole time and sticking to my game plan, just taking it shot by shot, controlling what I can control.

Q. Can you be aggressive on this course? Would you plan to be aggressive?

ALEXA PANO: Yeah, I think you can definitely be aggressive on some of the par-5s, which I've been doing so far this week.

So just kind of continuing that game plan of going for everything that I can and, yeah, like I said, just taking it shot by shot has been the main focus for me this week.