THE CHEVRON CHAMPIONSHIP

April 21, 2024

Maja Stark

The Club at Carlton Woods

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Here with Maja Stark following her final round at the Chevron Championship. Just a really good performance this week in the first major of the year. How does that make you feel about the state of your game?

MAJA STARK: It makes me really happy because two months ago, it did not look like this. It was actually terrible. Nothing really was working for me, and then I feel like I really just analyzed everything and figured it out and got some great help from my coaches.

Q. What are some of those things that you say you figured out?

MAJA STARK: Well, it's a lot about technique. It was kind of a mess earlier this year, and then my putting -- I guess you've heard, like the putter was just all off in every angle, but then also that just made me trust my putter so much more. I'm using that, and then also mentally. I don't think I've hit a ball in the water this week, and there's so much water. I used to be a water -- like there was a magnet to the water for my ball before because I would just say, ooh, don't go there, and then I would mess up and go there.

Yeah, it's just a little bit of everything.

Q. You had a T3 finish just a couple weeks ago. How did that help with your confidence heading into this week?

MAJA STARK: So much. Obviously that was a very different course from this one. That was kind of a birdie-fest. This is not. But just knowing that I can switch it around and I can do it and also that I can be calm on the course for longer, I did kind of crack there a little bit at the end in Arizona, but here, I ended with two birdies, and I don't think that would have happened if it wasn't for the tie for third place.

Q. Take us through that last shot on 18. You left it just about an inch or so short.

MAJA STARK: Well, we had a long wait because we were waiting for a ruling. So I just tried to occupy myself and not take the club out of the bag, not think too much about the shot but kind of just take it as any other shot. I wasn't that nervous. My hand was shaking on the approach.

It was nice that it was in the first cut or the rough and not in the fairway because that makes it easier to not thin it and actually get it all the way up there. Yeah, it was also good to see my playing partner, she chipped it and it rolled out a lot, so I think I took a little bit off of it. Kind of annoying now that I came up a little bit short.

Q. I know this is a really tough golf course, has been throughout the week. You mentioned earlier this week you were trying not to cuss and stay patient with yourself. How did that work out for you this week? Did you keep it mentally calm?

MAJA STARK: I think so. Now that I know that it's working and now that -- if I hit a bad shot, I don't automatically go to, oh, shucks, why did that happen, blah, blah, blah, and talk about it. It feels like I move on so much quicker and I don't really put an emotion to what I just did, and I think that makes it go away so much quicker.

Q. You're known as sort of a young, fiery player. How much has that taken for you to train yourself to do that the last couple of weeks?

MAJA STARK: Well, I pretty much just worked on it. From PV, my mental coach gave me a couple of pointers and said, please don't do this. But then the swearing thing, that was all me this week.

I came up with it on Wednesday, and it worked.