THE MODERATOR: Welcome, ladies, to the Media Center. Here with Paige Crawford and Madison Barnett, both playing at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational. Welcome here, ladies. We're happy to have you. Paige, we've seen you before. You are our JOHN SHIPPEN Invitational winner and JOHN SHIPPEN Cognizant Cup winner. How does it feel for your to be at another LPGA even, your third in a row, through the JOHN SHIPPEN program?
PAIGE CRAWFORD: Yes, I am just so happy to be here and to have Madison here, her first LPGA event. It's so exciting to see how excited she is. I'm so grateful, and I hope we're going to have a great week.
We're going to have so much fun. That's all I want to have is fun with her and just for her to experience this for the first time is so exciting.
THE MODERATOR: Madison, that was going to lead to my first question to you. This is your first LPGA event. I know you've played on the Epson Tour before. Tell me how excited you are for this experience and what your expectations are this week.
MADISON BARNETT: I'm super excited. I feel like it's just a lot of new things going on, and I'm just trying to take everything in.
Expectation-wise, I know I'm going to have a great time with Paige. I know we're going to have a lot of fun, a lot of laughs. I'm just excited to get the week started and see what happens, but it's super, super cool to be out here.
THE MODERATOR: Since we haven't seen you out here before. I know you are a former UNCC golfer. Tell us about your golf upbringing and why you love this game and play it.
MADISON BARNETT: My parents both don't play and golf kind of just randomly happened while trying a bunch of different sports, but my parents started introducing me to golf and stuff like that.
They definitely didn't think I would be here. They thought it would be a fun little pastime, but I love the game because I just feel like you can always get better. There's so many opportunities in the game, and I met so many cool people through it.
So I just love it for the opportunities and just constantly trying to improve and get better.
THE MODERATOR: Paige, once you won the JOHN SHIPPEN Invitational and you knew you would get into this event, what made you choose Madison as a partner? What did that conversation look like?
PAIGE CRAWFORD: Madison, we're actually friends. I see her the WAPT Tour. I met her on the East Coast Tour last year, so every event we see each other and we talk and stuff, and we talked after the SHIPPEN.
She's just such a nice person, and we gel well, so I was just, like, she's a good fit. Just so happy that we're here. It's nice to have a friend, someone you know, with you. We have good communication. I think that's going to be key this week. So that's how I picked her.
THE MODERATOR: Amazing. Madison, what was your reaction when Paige reached out about playing on the LPGA?
MADISON BARNETT: I was shocked. I honestly didn't have any words. I couldn't even thank her enough. Yeah, I was speechless.
I think when we talked, I couldn't even put words together. I was, like, are you serious?
But I'm just super grateful to Paige. She's always been someone I could talk to, bounce ideas off of is, and come to for any questions when I turned pro last year. So I just couldn't thank her enough for the opportunity.
THE MODERATOR: This is a question for both of you, but also with Paige. You've played in two LPGA events already before, and now you have sort of a partner to lean on. So how cool is it to be in an event where you have someone else to sort of maybe pick up dropped shots or just lean on throughout the event?
PAIGE CRAWFORD: I love this event. It's such a cool format. We don't get to play like this ever. And growing up I played basketball, so I was team captain in high school, so I love the team aspect of it. It's so different.
We don't get to do this often, so I'm really excited about it to have somebody I can lean on. It's just such a fun format.
THE MODERATOR: Madison, having never played in an LPGA event, you also have a partner to lean on. How much are you going to rely on her and like that experience out there?
MADISON BARNETT: I feel like I'm going to rely on her a lot. It definitely took a lot of the jitters away from me just her being here. Paige is super calm, as we can all probably see.
Just having her knowing that she's there, knowing that I can -- any type of questions I have or if I'm nervous, I can just kind of talk to somebody is huge. It's going to help me a lot this week for my first one.
THE MODERATOR: Having played two events already, what have you sort of been learning out here on the tour? What have you learned over the past two events that's really helped your confidence or anything?
PAIGE CRAWFORD: Playing with the girls on tour I've noticed just their short games. They're so good around the greens. The way they putt, so smooth. The way they chip around the greens, it's amazing to watch. I think that is really the big thing, and course management.
It's been fun. We played with Stacy on the back nine yesterday, so I was just trying to pick up as much as I could from her.
Yeah, it's just really playing these courses. They're tough courses. I don't get to play courses like this often. Just learning from it. Just trying to get better at course management is a big one.
THE MODERATOR: Madison, what are your thoughts on this course and playing with Stacy yesterday? That must have been cool.
PAIGE CRAWFORD: The golf course is super nice. I don't think I've been on a golf course this nice ever, so I'm super excited to play and just see where my game lines up with it.
But playing with Stacy was insane. I don't even have words for it. I was at the tee when I saw her, and I was just shocked. Like, what do I say? I'm nervous.
Like she said, her short game was amazing. The way she carried herself was amazing. I just learned a lot just being around her and just seeing how she practices and gets ready for an event.
THE MODERATOR: Amazing. Another question for the both of you. Being black women in golf, obviously you don't have all the representation that maybe you would want. What does it mean for you guys to represent the JOHN SHIPPEN, yourselves out here on the LPGA Tour, and just being an inspiration for other women of color coming up?
PAIGE CRAWFORD: Yeah, it's just really cool to be here. There's little kids out here that can be black and just they see us, and they're, like, that's really cool that they can be here on the LPGA in the future.
So this is a stepping stone, and there's also another black group, Bailey and Christina, who are here this week, so it's really fun for them to be here too. It's just an exciting environment, and more of us are going to be on tour in the future for sure.
THE MODERATOR: Same question for you.
PAIGE CRAWFORD: Yeah, I mean, I feel like the opportunity the SHIPPEN has given us is amazing. I feel like it has opened so many doors and just changed so many people's lives. I hope that somebody sees me on TV, and they think, oh, it's possible or, oh, I can't wait to be out there with Paige or be out there with Madison or Mariah or whoever else is out here playing.
I think it's just baby steps toward more girls and boys playing out on LPGA and PGA TOUR.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies. One more question. Either of you can answer. I would love to know your team name that you came up with this week if you have one?
PAIGE CRAWFORD: Well, we struggled with it a lot, but we ended up on Shippen Gals.
THE MODERATOR: I love that.
MADISON BARNETT: John Shippen. We put a little poll on Instagram, and that was the top one, so we're going to do a little --
PAIGE CRAWFORD: The reason why we're here, so exciting.
THE MODERATOR: Any thoughts on a walk-up song yet either? Have you chosen one?
MADISON BARNETT: Yes. I picked it's Burna Boy's "Sittin' on Top of the World."
PAIGE CRAWFORD: I'm not really -- I don't have that kind of knowledge of music really. I mean, I do, but I'm more of a, I don't know, Indy kind of person, like things that are not on the radio. So I was, like, you pick.
THE MODERATOR: I love that. Thank you so much, ladies. Have fun this week. We're happy to have you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports