TOTO JAPAN CLASSIC

November 3, 2024

Marina Alex

Taihelyo Club Minori Course

Quick Quotes

Q. Here with Marina after the TOTO Japan Classic. Just talk about this week of golf you've had.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, it's been amazing. Last week was great, too. I'm just playing some really nice golf, which is awesome to see. I worked hard to get to this point. It's been a little bit of an up and down year, but it's wonderful to see the hard work paying off.

I love Japan so much, so it's great to play well here in front of the amazing crowds. They're so lovely and respectful of the game. It's been a wonderful week.

Q. Veteran, but this was your first playoff experience.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, I know.

Q. How do you think just like your experience on Tour helped you with that?

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, absolutely. It's like a pressure situation, trying to like close out a tournament or, you know, pull a little bit from my Solheim memories.

Yeah, it's stressful, but at the same time, I almost think it's a little bit more freeing than trying to finish out the day in regulation, so you kind of go out there and you just fire away and do the best you can.

Q. A lot of things besides golf happening.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah.

Q. How do you stay in the zone? I saw you breathing a lot.

MARINA ALEX: Yeah, breathing. At some point I felt like I was a little fatigue so I was starting to get tired so I was trying to pump myself up actually. At the end of regulation maybe trying to calm myself down.

There is always those levels, peaks, valleys of trying to get into the right headspace. I'm really proud how I played. I wish any of those putts would have dropped. It was tricky there at the end. It's getting dark and the greens have a lot going on and it was just hard to get the ball to go in the hole.

Rio made a nice birdie on the last there.

Q. Talk about this last stretch. Looks like you'll probably be in CME now.

MARINA ALEX: Yes.

Q. How happy are you for that?

MARINA ALEX: Really excited. I added Hawai'i a few weeks ago in an effort to try and get into CME. I'm still excited to go there, but I think it kind of motivated me to get the job done.

And so it's nice to have these next couple weeks not worried about that as trying to get in and actually just keep building on my game and get geared up for CME.