ARAMCO CHAMPIONSHIP

April 2, 2026

Lauren Coughlin

Shadow Creek

Quick Quotes

Q. Here with Lauren Coughlin after her first round at the Aramco Championship. Solid round from you today. Take us through it.

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, started off hitting a good drive on 10 and then played the slope really, really nicely on 10 and hit it to about five feet and made birdie, and then made birdie again on 2.

Really nice start. Yeah, I played really, really steady. Played -- I was hitting my numbers all day, and this course, if you're hitting your spots and numbers it will give you birdies. If you miss them it can be very, very difficult.

So I just did a really good job of hitting my numbers today and hitting my spots.

Q. Runner up last year when we played here at match play. I believe every single one of your matches went at least 18. How much did that maybe help you kind of as you've now had many, many rounds in the here or trips around Shadow Creek?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, I feel like I know this place really well. Been in a lot of the places that you don't want to be, so I feel like I've been able to just like I said, just know -- I just know the spots that I need to land it to a lot of the pins, where to miss if you have to.

Yeah, it was nice to not play seven rounds hopefully in five days like last year.

Q. We talked about it a little bit on the walk over, getting to play this course stroke play versus match play. What are the key differences?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, I played two years stroke play and it was blowing 30 and it was so hard. It was pretty light and variable out there today, so wasn't that crazy difficult. The greens were still very firm and pretty quick.

So, yeah, you just have to play it a lot differently. You can be super aggressive in match play, take on a lot more risk because you know it's only one hole; whereas in stroke play you got to be a lot more -- you have to be more pick and choose when you can attack and when to take it easy.

Q. Just the one unfortunate slip up on 9, but other than that how much confidence does that give you heading into the rest of the week knowing you can tame the beast of Shadow Creek?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, hopefully I just keep hitting my spots and take my medicine if I need to. I did hit it in the water on 4, the par-5, but I was able to get up and down for par.

So just played really, really solid even when I did kind of get a little bit out of position. Unfortunate on the last to kind of make bogey there, but overall it was really, really solid day.

Q. Anything specific in your iron game working really well?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: I changed iron shafts at the beginning of the year. I've been playing the same shafts for almost six years. Just didn't feel like -- my swing hasn't changed a ton, but I feel like I've gotten older and my swing has gotten more efficient I guess I would say.

I was testing out stuff trying to get a little bit more height, and I also changed my lie angles. I used to be super, super flat, like three and a half degrees flat, and I -- after messing around with some wedges earlier in January, I decided to go to two degrees flat and it's made a huge difference.

Q. Lauren, you've made three cuts in your first three starts to the year. How happy have you been with your form and what were your expectations coming into this week?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, I think finished like 27th at TOC and I didn't get to play Thailand or Singapore because I hurt my calf like Wednesday after TOC.

So I kind of got a nice little break, which was really nice both mentally and physically. So I feel like I was a little rusty because I haven't played very many tournaments in the last 12 weeks, pretty much since Grant Thornton, so didn't know what to expect given that I changed iron shafts and have done some other things that I was testing out.

I made the two cuts. Didn't play great on the weekend, but especially last week I felt like I was finally hitting the ball really, really well and just couldn't get it to go in the ball on the weekend. And out there at Whirlwind you have to make a lot of birdies, as Nelly and Hyo Joo showed.

I finished pretty far down the leaderboard, but I felt like there was a lot of positive things coming into this week and I just have such good memories of this golf course from playing here last year and then -- so I think it was just, yeah, I had only played nine holes on Tuesday. I'm a player director on the board so had my first big board meeting on Monday in person.

Yeah, just feel like I just really, really like this place and I started out really solid with birdieing the first two and able to keep it going.

Q. Final question: Given that this is not a major championship, it's not the CME, how special is it for you players to have such a high caliber stellar field this week?

LAUREN COUGHLIN: Yeah, it's great. And we have a really great golf course that tests every bit of your game, too. You have to drive it well and hit your irons well. If you do miss the green you better be able to chip pretty well, too.

It really penalizes getting in the wrong spot, which is kind of like how Sharon Heights was a couple week ago, too.

So having this strong of a field, it can get major vibes because of how difficult the golf course is. But luckily it wasn't too windy out today is made it a lot less stressful.