Q. Rose Zhang is with us now at the 2025 KPMG Women's PGA Championship. Rose, even par for you today. How would you summarize your opening round?
ROSE ZHANG: I would say it's pretty solid in general. I feel like finally I'm kind of getting back into competitive golf again. Yeah, I played back-to-back majors, but I always thought that just getting myself prepared and play as best as possible was the game plan.
Missed couple putts out there, so we will be working on the putting green for a little bit.
Q. The toughest parts of this golf course for you you think, and what's going to be the struggle for the next three days?
ROSE ZHANG: Yeah, I think -- I'm not sure if they're going to cut the grass. I assume they probably wouldn't in terms of rough. And feel like today -- I mean, at least for this golf course you have to drive it with precision. If you are in the fairway then you're probably laying up or probably having to hit some miracle shot.
It's so hard to estimate what the ball is going out of the rough. Sometimes it doesn't even come out. So this week is going to play very difficult if you're not hitting fairways.
Then obviously on the putting greens you're going to have some lag putts. So making sure the putter is striking or it's pretty hot. That's probably the key for a lot of players out here.
Q. You have been focusing on your studies; you had the neck injury. Overall how difficult has it been for to you juggle your studies and golf and also not be able to practice just trying to get healthy?
ROSE ZHANG: Yeah, honestly, this year has been very unorthodox. I felt like I was in a good groove last year, also the year before, but this year kind of had its moments where obviously the neck injury kind of flared up.
I spent hours and hours doing work at school, and I feel like that all played a part in the stress and coming back and trying to put up performances.
Right now I'm trying to go back into a more process-oriented mindset of trying to get things one step at a time. Starting with being healthy and then working on the game back again.
But I have a very good team for that so I'm thankful.
Q. I know you didn't play how you wanted to at Erin Hills, but getting those rounds under your belt, how much did that help you coming into this week?
ROSE ZHANG: It's been -- yeah, I feel like that week was pretty important for me. Just because that second round kind of got me back into understanding how to play competitively. The first day I was there and I just didn't feel like I was in a place where I want to be in terms of my game.
I could barely get the ball off the ground, and I felt like that was probably more difficult mentally. So the fact that I could put up a decent score, I was just one player off from the cut, made me at least feel like, okay, we have a lot of good elements that we can move forward and work on.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports