THE MODERATOR: All right, joining USA heads of the 2026 Standard Portland Classic is Valentine Delon. Valentine, you won the British Amateur this year. Can you just take us through that experience and what winning that meant to you?
VALENTINE DELON: It was just amazing. Like I love to compete like in Europe, and being able to play at Muirfield, it's an amazing golf course. To win was just crazy. Like sometimes you dream about it, but to like live it for real and to have the trophy in your hand is different.
Q. Through winning that you were exempt into this tournament as well as majors next year and AIG this past year. Talk about how that has changed your life and how getting additional opportunities on the LPGA Tour is helping you to grow your game.
VALENTINE DELON: Honestly it's really nice. It's really different. Like it's the first time I played the AIG. Totally different atmosphere. First time playing on the LPGA. But it's just I'm so happy. I love to play golf, to compete with the best, and being able to do it, it's really nice, a really nice opportunity to see how my game is compared to the others.
So I'm just happy. And I love to play with the best, so it's always nice. I want to of course be like on the top of the leaderboard, so it help me to just practice harder and come here and do my best.
Q. You play golf at Virginia Tech.
VALENTINE DELON: Yeah.
Q. Talk about the experience of playing golf in the United States and then seeing some of the other successful amateurs out here and competing against them.
VALENTINE DELON: I think coming to Virginia Tech was one of the biggest choice of my life and one of the best one, because being in a university, playing golf, and also going school at the same time is just amazing.
Being in college you learn so much, and as you said, there is other college women coming here to play, Farah and Maria, and it's really nice to see that college people have opportunities to play on the LPGA.
It's also really nice to see like they, the LPGA, they play like this year sometimes they succeed really well, so it's nice to see that college player can succeed on the LPGA, and it make me want to, as I said, practice harder to be able to play here.
Q. And then you've seen the golf course this week. What is your first impressions of it, and what do you think will be important for you to succeed this week?
VALENTINE DELON: So it's really different because the last two month, I spend the last two month in Europe playing a lot of links course, and links course is more like in the wind, the grass is really hard, so it's completely different.
Honestly, it's really nice. The green are really fast, so I will say that's a lot like hitting my targets, trying to hit pretty straight with the good tempo, and try to have good speed on the green.
Q. Last one: As you are looking forward, how do you think opportunities like this exemption into this tournament for amateur champions continues to set you up and make you more comfortable on a stage like this?
VALENTINE DELON: I'm really grateful for this opportunity, and I think Farah and Maria are also really grateful to play. I hope we're going to have more opportunities like this because it help us to see our game and how it's like compared to the best player in the world, and also of course we play college golf but we want to turn professional at some point, so being able to do it and to practice with professional, it's really nice.
It's a really different world I will say, like amateur and professional, so I'm happy to see how it is.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Valentine.
VALENTINE DELON: Thank you.
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