PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 18, 2022

Francesco Molinari

Southern Hills Country Club

Flash Quotes

JOHN DEVER: Good afternoon. We're back at the 2022 PGA Championship here at Southern Hills. We're joined by Francesco Molinari. Francesco, welcome back to the PGA Championship. This is your 12th PGA Championship if you can believe that.

When you go to pack your bags every year to come to a PGA, what in your mind as a player are you expecting every year?

FRANCESCO MOLINARI: Hot weather like we're experiencing now. Obviously, yeah, it's an exciting week to prepare for. In my experience, my 12 years I've played, most of the time I've played I'd call it kind of classical country club courses in the U.S., and yeah, this week seems to fit pretty well that profile.

Yeah, obviously like with any major, you're excited to get there, and then you try to get to know the course as well as you can in the three days before the competition starts.

JOHN DEVER: You're riding a little bit of a high here, a really nice performance over the weekend. Does that boost your confidence a bit?

FRANCESCO MOLINARI: Yeah, a little bit. Obviously I'm coming from a few months of not great golf, so it's nice to see some signs of improvement. I definitely feel like I'm moving, trending in the right direction. We'll see.

Sometimes these tournaments I think it's almost better to show up not with great expectations and just play and then see what happens day by day.

Q. What was it about your play this past week that gives you some encouragement? What facets of your game were improved?

FRANCESCO MOLINARI: Yeah, I think not only last week but the last probably month or so, despite the results not being great, my game tee to green has definitely been more solid, more consistent, which is what I've been lacking.

And then at the weekend, that combined with some good putting, obviously if you play well and you putt well, you're going to score on any kind of course.

Yeah, it was nice to see some form coming last week, and hopefully I can carry that over into this week.

Q. It looks like you understand this, but other people may not understand that you're playing well, performing well but the results are not there. How do you deal with that?

FRANCESCO MOLINARI: Yeah, it's not easy. I think that's a part of golf, especially when you go through some changes. It takes time to get the confidence back. So yeah, last week was probably the best ball-striking of the year for me, but obviously being the guy that hits the ball, you see it coming the weeks before, even if maybe the ball is not yet going exactly where you want to, you get different feels and you start to think that maybe things are turning.

But obviously it's only a couple of days. It's still early days. But hopefully it's a good sign for things to come, yeah.

Q. I think people don't completely understand also you've played 12 PGA Championships, not 13, and why you miss Harding Park. Talk a little bit about the journey of these last two years personally and with your golf and why you made that decision.

FRANCESCO MOLINARI: Yeah, I mean, it's been obviously a long, strange I would say, couple of years. If you asked me three years ago, obviously I would not have any clue about what was about to happen, but especially for me, I never thought I would move to the U.S. at that point.

Yeah, a lot of things changed in kind of early 2020. We moved in July to the U.S. with the family. We were actually in San Francisco, but I just wasn't ready to play, just to show up and embarrass myself or just not play great golf. I didn't really see the point.

But yeah, it wasn't easy. When you decide to skip one of the biggest tournaments of the year, obviously it's never an easy decision, but at the time I thought it was the right thing to do.

I'm still, I think, working my way through the changes. I'm now starting to feel more settled in the new life, in the new reality, and hopefully I can focus more on golf and get back to playing some good golf.

Q. We were asking Zach Johnson this morning about Italy, if he knows where things are, the food, all that. I think he has to learn a lot of things. Can you give him a lesson on the things he has to learn about Rome?

FRANCESCO MOLINARI: No. I mean, he can ask me more. He's asked me a couple times about the city and the golf course and where it is, and I'm sure he's going to have a couple of trips at least to get to know the course and the city.

Like I was saying, it's a great location for the Ryder Cup. It's close to the city center. There's going to be definitely a great atmosphere. I'm sure the U.S. Team will enjoy it as much as the Europeans.