Aramco Saudi Ladies International Presented by Public Investment Fund

Tuesday, 15 March, 2022

King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia

Royal Greens Golf & Country Club

Kylie Henry

Quick Quotes


Q. Heading into the tournament this week, how are you feeling? Heading into the Saudi Ladies International.

KYLIE HENRY: Good. It's great to be back here. I missed the tournament here in November. I fractured and cracked my elbow. So I've just been kind of recovering from that the last four months. Yeah, it's brilliant to be back, to be here.

Q. Tell us about your recovery process. Was that just lazing around really or what?

KYLIE HENRY: Yeah, it just -- it was a bit difficult just obviously having to really rest and just let it fully recover, and it was quite a long four months.

Q. I can imagine.

KYLIE HENRY: But I was fortunate it looks like I've only missed the last three tournaments of last year and just Kenya this year. I'm just buzzing to be back to be honest. I still really love what I'm doing. Definitely just really happy to be back out.

Q. I can imagine that. You're feeling good to go?

KYLIE HENRY: It's getting there. I don't really know where I am stroke-wise. I'm just going to do my best this week and see what I can imagine to do. It has been a long time off. I've had to be careful coming back to not overdo it. Yeah, it's just a case of let's see how it goes really.

Q. Just one last thing. It's going to be a record breaking year for the LET. I think prize money is up to $30 million this season. I think that's more than double what it was in 2019. How good a place has the Tour been, and how exciting does that make the season for you?

KYLIE HENRY: It's amazing. This is my 13th season on Tour. I've been through all the ups and downs with the Tour, and the improvements these last couple years have been huge, and it's just a really exciting time to be on Tour and having all these opportunities to be playing big, big events.

The standard is actually improving all the time as well, along with obviously it's great when the prize funds are going up and you get more opportunity to make good money and you're rewarded for it.

Q. I'm doing Comms for the tournament, so I kind of have to ask. Feel free if you want to avoid this one. The Saudi golf, how they're kind of backing that, can that help drive that?

KYLIE HENRY: Definitely. I think we're seeing with these Aramco tournaments and the Team Series, I guess it's over two years ago now, it's definitely propelled the Tour in a great direction, and other tournaments and other prize funds have increased because of it. There's only a few now that are minimum requirement.

It's great like when you do sign with such a big sponsor like this that's really committed to the Tour and to improving women's golf like globally, it does make a big difference to all of us, like we're massively benefitting from these Aramco tournaments.

Q. Just on that, one final thing, we do the PR for all these different events, one of the things the players do tend to say is these events -- maybe it's the structure. We don't get many people that come here in Saudi, but the ones abroad, the structure, the build, even stuff like that is really taking it to another level. It feels like a big event.

KYLIE HENRY: Absolutely. Obviously they spend a lot of money on the course, the hospital and the temporary structures. Obviously the course here is stunning as well. Yeah, the scale in which they deliver a tournament is very impressive, and I know obviously a lot of that is just having the money to do it, but it's very nice for us to be treated so well when we come to tournaments, like the lovely courtesy cars we get, plenty of space for all our crazy luggage and everything. Then even the food they're providing in the players lounge. We're actually fed very well.

For us, all of those things do make a big difference, like for the players to just be treated really well when we're at tournaments.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
117937-2-1001 2022-03-18 16:36:00 GMT

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