JM EAGLE LA CHAMPIONSHIP

April 17, 2025

Lauren Coughlin

Quick Quotes

Q. All right, here and Lauren Coughlin after her first round here at JM Eagle LA Championship presented by Plastpro. Another great start to this week coming off a runner-up finish at Match Play. Is there anything in your game that's working and feeling really good?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: I feel like I putted really well at Shadow Creek up until the last kind of two days, and, you know, fatigue and everything finally caught up to me. My setup I think got a little off, so kind of worked on that, and I started rolling it really well out there today. I putted and hit it really well.

Really good start.

Q. We were talking on the way in. Walking all of Shadow Creek prepared you for walking this course. What have you made of El Cab so far?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, really great golf course. Greens have a lot of stuff going on on them. You really need to hit them -- on certain holes you really need to miss in the right spots or you can have some really funky putts.

Tee shots are kind of tricky, too, and a lot of them dogleg left and then there is bunkers if you bail out right and the fairways kind of all slope towards the bunkers.

You have to be really precise. So it's tricky, but I really like it.

Q. Can you give us a sense of maybe exhaustion level and how you recovered last week?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, I feel like adrenaline kept me through, especially Sunday afternoon, and then as soon as I chilled out and showered and got cleaned up and we were walking to go get some food, my legs were dead.

You know, we wanted to go to this pizza place in the Cosmo that's only like a ten-minute walk, not that far. I was like, I can't do it. (Laughter.)

But, yeah, mentally I was pretty exhausted. I had a sponsor's thing in Dallas I had to do last week, too, so didn't really touch the club much Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Kind of got back into it Saturday morning and then just enjoyed watching the Masters.

Q. Can you give us an idea how you mentally approached the season after having such a great breakthrough season last year, and how I think that might help set you up for the majors, especially coming off such a great performance at T-Mobile?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, I think obviously just reflecting on all that I did last year and the leaps that I made mentally and in my game, and then enjoying it but also moving on and being like, there is definitely still things I can work on, that I can get better on, and making bigger goals to try to reach those as well.

And then, yeah I didn't get much of an offseason. I think in the grand scheme of things that probably helped. Didn't get much time to take off so I didn't lose it too much. Was able to get back pretty quickly after I took some time.

But I think most of it was just enjoying it, but also knowing it's time to move on. If I want to do anything more I need to kind of forget about it a little bit.

Q. The Match Play is so different. Do you feel like there is any sense of carryover that you can carry momentum from that, or is it just so different?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: It's a lot different, but I think it's such a mental grind that you can take a lot of that I think into that. Like mentally I was able to stay in every single match and fight to the very end. I think there are certain things I can take from my game that I did so well moving forward.

At the same time it's just a slightly different strategy in terms of when to be aggressive and not to be aggressive; whereas out here, if you're kind of -- if you get out of trouble you're just trying to save par.

Out there on Match Play, depending on your opponent, you can be more aggressive or lay back on certain things if they're kind of -- so it can be a little bit different, but I think overall I can take a lot of positives from that week from my game and how I handled myself all week.

Q. Can you take us through the positives today, the bogey-free 66, some of the highlights from your round?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, I hit it very, very well all day. Drove it really well. Missed one fairway and it was like by two inches, and then one green, and it was more -- it's a hole -- I started on the back, so hole 15 I think. I'm still learning the holes.

The green, there is a huge false -- not a false front, but ten yards on the green there is a huge drop off so I kind of err short because it was in the front.

So I missed the green, but it was more because I knew that if I hit it good it would get on the green and get a good bounce. If not, it was going to be a very basic chip.

So that was the only green I missed all day.

Yeah, I didn't -- I hit it really close on 17; hit it to about six feet. That kind of started the -- I birdied four in a row after that.

Hit it to about five feet and made that.

Hit it to about 12 feet on 18; made that.

1 is a par-5. Hit it to about four feet; made that.

Then 2 I hit a really good drive. It's one of those fairways I was talking about that doglegs really hard left and there are bunkers, and I pulled my drive a little bit, but got lucky and I had about 142 yards to the pin and I made -- yesterday in the pro-am it was a similar pin and I hit it kind of in that false front. The greens are not Shadow Creek firm but they're -- you get some release.

And so yesterday I hit it in that false front even with a 6-iron and it came down. So I hit one more club knowing it was probably going to be about 30 feet long, but I knew if I didn't hit one less it was going to be in that false front or the bunker.

So I hit 7 to about 30 feet and made it.