Hear from Angel Yin at her First Round Press Conference at the KPMG Women's PGA Championship.
Q. Angel Yin is with us now at the 2025 KPMG Women's PGA Championship. Angel, 1-under for you today. What do you do well out there?
ANGEL YIN: I did really good bouncebacks because I made a lot of bogeys. My entire last eight holes on the back nine, which is the front nine was just birdie, bogey, birdie, bogey, which is pretty frustrating. It means you played really good but was also a huge idiot most of the time. Half of the time.
Q. Toughest thing on this golf course? What do you think it is?
ANGEL YIN: The toughest thing?
Q. Yeah.
ANGEL YIN: Hitting fairways and greens because I think the course on most of the holes are designed to bounce in the front of the green and then go up, but then with it being a major and trying to challenge us, I think they grew the grass up.
With the bermuda it gets really sticky, and so you can't just roll it up on the greens; you have to carry it.
Obviously with the greens being firm and the weather being hot it just kind of rolls off. So I think greenside chipping is most important, but with the bermuda it's always pretty tough. You have to like just get it in the right perfect chip.
Q. We know you go through cycles. How happy are you on the golf course now and how do you show it?
ANGEL YIN: I mean, happier now because I thought I was like not close to the leaderboard, so it's always good to see that I'm close to the leaderboard, and obviously going into tomorrow after the first wave and then there is afternoon, too.
Q. I was going to ask you, you will be playing in more heat tomorrow. Is that going to be a challenge for golfers?
ANGEL YIN: Yeah. I definitely think it's going to be a challenge. It's going to be good golf-wise because the ball will fly further and make the course a little bit shorter. I like playing on faster greens so I'm going to like that.
And then, yeah, it's going to be a balancing of hydration and keeping focus.
Because this golf course is quite boring, so...
Q. What do you mean?
ANGEL YIN: That's what I mean. It's just kind of repetitive and there are challenges but it's very subtle. Stepping up on the tee, what did I start on, the back nine gets really repetitive on the tee.
Yeah, I mean, not something that's controversial. I was like shocked. Did I say saying that's going to drop the ball? Maybe Gil will give me a call. How dare you trash on my golf course.
Q. Boring is not bad?
ANGEL YIN: It's just the way it is. It's little challenges and I think that's also a challenging part.
Q. Also wanted to ask you about the pace of play. U.S. Opens you're used to longer rounds in the. What did you think of the pace of play today?
ANGEL YIN: We kept in front of the group in front of us so didn't really feel like we were being rushed. Just felt like a really normal round. Yeah, I think playing partners were also really good. I think everything was really smooth going. There was a little bit of time where we waited but there was a ruling so takes time for the rules officials to come in.
Just very normal.
Q. A little bit of a bigger picture question, not specific to the round. As you think about just the growth of the game, you've competed in a lot of major championships, the purse being what it is, how would you summarize the growth that you've seen in the women's game and what the purse means?
ANGEL YIN: I should stop starting with um. Yeah, it's crazy because when I first started was like nine years ago playing on the LPGA and ten years ago since I started playing professionally, because I played a year on the European Tour.
We play for million dollar tournaments, like winning prize fund for the winner. It's pretty wild because I think started out with majors being like 400,000. That was a lot. Because when you win a LET event it's 70k and you were like, that's a huge deal.
Obviously with society going, inflation, there is that aspect. We're playing with extraordinary amount of money and it's given me a lot of the freedom to do what I want. I don't really have that many sponsors. I do, but not as many as let's just say the other top 10 players in the world.
It's really given me the freedom to do a lot of things that I want and I don't have to be restricted to playing more tournaments or not being able to get an airbnb if I want to because it's more pricey. I can rent a car, hire my friends if I want to.
It's just given me so much freedom. It's not free even though it says it's free. I'm super appreciative because now you don't have to worry if you don't play all the events good.
