	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

SWINGING SKIRTS LPGA TAIWAN CHAMPIONSHIP

October 24, 2018

Lydia Ko

Taipei, Taiwan

Q. Back at a tournament you've won in the past before, and playing here in Taiwan. What's that like for you?
LYDIA KO: Yeah, a lot of good memories for me coming back to Taiwan, and I feel like I've got a pretty good relationship with the Swinging Skirts team and Chairman Wang has all been super supportive of me and to me. So yeah, I love coming here. The food's amazing.

And especially with quite a few of the Taiwanese girls playing great, starting with Yani and what she's done for golf in Taiwan, it's always nice to come and see how it's, I guess, progressed and grown from year-to-year. Probably we'll get decent crowds and I'm playing with Teresa tomorrow, so I'm sure that's going to attract a few people out here. Yeah, I'm super excited.

Q. Was Yani a role model for you?
LYDIA KO: I think it was my first Australian Open -- I don't know if it was my first, but I think it was, but it was the Commonwealth and I was leading Am that week and she won that event. I remember it was when they had the bad flooding in Australia and Yani give all her prize money for that cause.

I was like, man -- obviously I had heard of her. At that time she was pretty much kicking butt. I was like, man, it would be so cool to play alongside her and just learn from her. That was my first experience of Yani and I think I played with her a year later at Royal Canberra and she was so much fun.

I think she's a role model to a lot of us, and especially me having the Asian descent, it's always cool to see so many of these girls play awesome.

Q. When you won in Lake Merced, that was Swinging Skirts. So just being around the Swinging Skirts brand, what have you seen from them?
LYDIA KO: First of all, I don't think I've seen anyone that loves golf as much as they do. They travel all around the world for golf, and you know, what they have done to support girls in Taiwan and growing their games, it's quite inspiring and pretty amazing. They are a bunch of people that love what they are doing, love golf, and want to make golf bigger and better, and that's why they kind of started it.

It's such a cool bunch of people. No matter if you're playing good or not, they are always there to support you. They support a lot of us here, even if we're not necessarily from Taiwan.

They just always have that big smile on their faces and super excited, and they are involved not only with the Swinging Skirts and supporting their different events, too. They are getting bigger and bigger, and their love for golf is what's really doing this, which is a really cool thing, and how powerful golf is.

Q. You had a good result last week. How do you feel about your game right now and what are you hoping to accomplish the rest of the year?
LYDIA KO: I feel like I've been playing better the last few months. It was quite weird last week, I played well -- but then I just was so average, and on the third day, even though I shot under par, I felt like it was a round that should have been a lot lower.

That 66, I knew that if I brought all of them together, I would be able to shoot a score like that, and especially on a Sunday, I was obviously super excited to be up there in contention. It wasn't a good Sunday for me in Korea, so just to be able to finish up a tournament well was a really big thing.

For me, just having more competitive rounds under par I think builds the confidence. Sometimes I feel like it's the small things that kind of let me down, so I'm trying to be a bit more detailed and make sure that my focus levels are high and continuously high and not only just at the start of the round or the end of the round. Just trying to maintain the focus.

Q. What are your impressions of this golf course?
LYDIA KO: It's very different. It's probably one of the smallest greens I've played on. I think driving's going to be key, especially when the greens are so small, just to be on the fairways, they are obviously going to be a lot easier to hold them.

With the rain a couple days ago -- no, it was yesterday. The course is obviously a little softer than I guess everyone would have liked, but the golf course is really nice, and like by the trees area, it almost feels like you're in the jungle and that par 3, No. 5 or something, is so nice because it almost feels like the ball is going in the jungle because the green is there.

It's a beautiful golf course. Very different to Miramar, but my group was saying it's one of the top golf courses in Taiwan. I think one ranking system says it's the best golf course in Taiwan, so it's definitely really nice for us to be able to experience all these different type of golf courses and being some of the best golf courses in Taiwan.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297