THE RYDER CUP

September 27, 2023

Justin Rose

Marco Simone

Team Europe

Press Conference

STEVE TODD: Welcome back. I'm pleased to be joined by Justin Rose of Team Europe. You spoke about how much you were looking forward to being back in the Ryder Cup team environment. How has it been so far this week.

JUSTIN ROSE: It's been amazing. I think it started for us, I feel like the Ryder Cup as a team started a couple of weeks ago. We did come over for a practise trip the Monday of Wentworth. It was a worthwhile experience from a team bonding point of view and I think that made the whole week at Wentworth feel like a little bit of a soft continuation of that team spirit and team bonding.

I feel like coming into the early part of this week, there's been no heavy lifting around that side of things. It feels quite natural, and the team is coming together nicely.

Q. How do you like being one of the old men in the team?

JUSTIN ROSE: Listen, it is what is it. Wish I was ten years younger, as we all do.

No, I think the fact of being back here and playing is something that was a career goal for me and it was a push, and not making the last one is always that kick up the backside that you need and lights a fire. I think in terms of age, I mean, I don't feel necessarily that that's my age or that's a number.

I still feel like one of the boys and one of the team members. From an experience point of view, yeah, the youngsters do seem very self-assured, and that's part of what they bring to the team, and you don't want to kind of talk them out of that. They are experiencing everything for the first time, which I think is wonderful. They haven't labeled everything yet. So you don't want to get in there and impose your thoughts too much.

I think my job as one of the experienced players on the team is to have an open door policy. If I just make them feel comfortable enough that they want to ask a question, let's hear it and I'll do my best to give some type of perspective.

But I think until that point just let them roll, and I think that's what they bring to the team, and that's why they are a very important aspect to the team, and I think this team has a beautiful blend to it because of that.

Q. What is the best advice you've ever gotten throughout your Ryder Cup career and who did you get it from?

JUSTIN ROSE: Not sure I can single out an exact person/quote. There's been so much influential people in Europe. You might be reading a quote on a wall that resonates with you that particular week. There's not necessarily one piece of advice.

Each Ryder Cup feels so different, whether you play at home, whether you play away, whether you win, whether you lose, they are polar opposites in terms of how they feel. There's not a blanket piece of advice that carries through.

It all starts in the team room, just being sort of open enough and vulnerable enough for your team, just to sort of connect and bond is the beginning of every great week. And I think that that's sort of the common thread that I've sort of tried to experience in all of my Ryder Cups.

But just thinking off the top of my head, it's just trying to shed light on people that can kind of tell you how it's going to feel the next day, what to look out for possibly in the moment, in terms of, you play team golf for two days, four sessions, and then suddenly Sunday feels a million miles different. It's just sometimes knowing what to expect and listening to a voice of reason and hearing some wisdom at the right time.

So what I was saying earlier, you don't want to preempt too much, but when the time comes, it's nice to hear something from someone that's been there. For me, the shift into Sunday was something that was very helpful for me. And I did, I had a lot of success in my first couple singles matches due to kind of someone knowing what to expect.

Q. During these intense moments of Ryder Cup pressure, is there anything you go to, a mantra or something you tell yourself to help reset and refocus?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, I think slowing things down generally. Lights and music is an analogy I've always had. When the lights are bright and the music is loud, you tend to subconsciously do things faster. Just being aware of that psychological, natural reaction and just sort of suck in some air, walk a little slower and try to bring your pace down.

Just the basics, unfortunately. There's no easy way to get through it. It's just your training, do the basics well. And then, yeah, I think that's the beauty of a home crowd is that they keep you on the front foot. They keep your head up. They keep you moving forward. And I think that those are the advantages of playing at home. I think they do a lot of the heavy mental lifting for you from that point of view.

Q. We've known for some time on who was not going to be here based on the boys who went to LIV for both sides, but it seems like what Europe loses is a lot of winning culture in the back room from G-Mac and Poults and from Lee and what-have-you. Do you think it's important going forward to find a way, how this thing is going to work out, to find a way back into the Ryder Cup in whatever capacity, or does Europe pretty much need to go forward with what they have got?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, great question. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of winning culture still in the team, with the people in and around the team, the captain, the vice captains, Thomas, Luke. Luke has got an incredible Ryder Cup record. The most winning from a percentage point of view. So the winning culture in our team is as strong as ever.

I think that when you look at like in our team room, McGinley, Thomas Björn, like I say, José Maria, we had Monty in there, just people that are still connected to the European Team, and I would say invested in The European Team, there's still a lot of winning culture around what we do.

So obviously in life and in business and everything, there's obviously transition phases where you need to look to new leaders, and what would be great is if you can kind of slip through that period of transition unaffected, and you know, you start to look to the next generation obviously to come through and to start to kind of have that winning culture.

That could happen as early as this year. You start to get the rookies off to a good start this year at home, and suddenly you start to blood some of the future with positive experiences. Yeah, the transition starts, or maybe the transition has started last time around at Whistling Straits, and now we're coming through that already.

But yeah, there is a difference. Obviously Westy, Poults, I know exactly the guys you're talking about, and obviously as captains or vice captains or however they may or may not be involved in the future, they do have a lot to offer, of course, from experiences and that point of view.

But the more we can kind of blood the younger generation coming through, the quicker you're going to kind of skip through that transition phase.

Q. When you have an event with so much fan engagement, can it be as motivating for the home team or away team, and some would say it's maybe even more motivating if they are against you. How do you find it both ways and do you find one more motivating than the other?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, I would say if you do get on the front foot as an away team it is very satisfying to be able to silence the crowd, but I think it's harder to do. It's rewarding, but it's harder.

So I think that the record in the Ryder Cup suggests that, and it's obviously not -- Medinah was the one skewing -- that's the one Ryder Cup that has kind of gone against the home course for a while, and I think that was an incredibly satisfying feeling for Europe that day. The silence was golden; the good old saying.

That's the job of this side of the room, and the job on this side of the room is to sort of stay on the front foot and keep it noisy and make the putts and make the birdies. The golf will dictate the crowd. You can't hide from that either, you know what I mean. You have to go out and play good golf. The clubs do the talking at the end of the day. I think each team is going to be ready for that challenge.

Q. Were you able to catch much of the Solheim Cup?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, a little bit, I did, I was sort of packing on Sunday and packing with the TV on and strung out the packing because the golf got exciting. It was awesome to watch. A couple big turnaround matches at the end. Europe looked really good with about two hours to go. USA looked odds on with about 45 minutes to go, and obviously it ended up in a tie, which felt like a win. And obviously it was portrayed very much as a win, which is obviously an interesting aspect with the retaining the Cup versus actually winning it.

I think that's kind of an interesting debate in and of itself. And obviously a couple really clutch performances from Caroline Hedwall and Ciganda being the hometown hero; seems like it was written in the stars that it would finish that way.

Q. If you guys get 14 points, you don't win --

JUSTIN ROSE: History is history. History is so important, I think. It's quite nice to wrestle it back fair and square. You have to win it to get the Cup back.

I think the Ashes in cricket, retaining the Ashes is a big thing. In cricket, you can have rain that can interrupt and cause draws and things. But retaining it, not letting the other team have the trophy I think can be a win, so therefore, sometimes the tie is still relevant in my mind.

I do know what you mean. It's like, oh, I was so close to an epic result one way or another. I guess basically I'm saying, I just keep loyal to the history of it.

Q. What are the specific emotions that come with missing a team, and then what are the specific emotions that come with then being back on the team? Is there a different appreciation that comes with being here this week?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, I think the emotions are when you do miss a team, it's an opportunity to look inward and go, okay, well, clearly I wasn't valued enough or I wasn't playing well enough, and I don't like that feeling, so I need to do something about that. You know, not looking at I should have been picked or they did me wrong. It's, okay, well, you've got to start right here, you know what I mean. Take things in my own hands.

That was very much my mindset coming into this one. Obviously I was picked in the end. First time I've actually been picked. But I feel like 6-6, it's like half the team has been picked. So it's like not really being picked anymore, I don't feel like. Where it used to be ten guys qualified and two guys got picked, and the picks very much felt like they were wildcard picks, whereas I feel like there's no element of that on the team now at all, which is a nice kind of change in my mind. It doesn't fragment the team in any way, shape or form.

Hard team to make, obviously, when there's only six guys playing, but that was very much the goal of mine to make this team. And then slightly from a 30,000-foot view, yeah, a little bit more gratitude to the fact of being back and a nod to the hard work that's been done.

But the job starts Friday. Job's not done by making the team.

Q. Bob was in here just before you and talking about the advantage that he thinks he has in that he plays a team sport in shinty. Would you address him and whether you see anything in him because of that background about him that makes him slightly more raconteur, if that's the right word. And secondly, would you address the issue of the difficulty, if it is a difficulty, of playing a team sport in an individual sport where almost all the rest of the time you're playing individually?

JUSTIN ROSE: Still not entirely sure what shinty is and what goes into it, but I can imagine what it is by looking at Bob as a golfer, he's determined, he's dogged, he's got a great short game. He gets himself out of tight situations regularly. He's hit some unbelievable golf shots. He plays creatively. He's got actually I think a really nice style for match play.

Obviously, any type of team sport or physical sport, you've got to be tough. There's that sort of toughness to it. Hopefully he will bring that from shinty, whatever shinty is, exactly (laughter).

The challenge for individual players playing team sports is clicking into it quick enough. It's an amazing feeling, but 18-hole matches are sprints in a sense and making sure that that team dynamic is there from the word go. I'm not sure there's a magic button that you can push to kind of create that, and I think maybe trying too hard to create it, you don't find it. It's a hard one to answer and probably one that the captains and vice captains are trying to figure out subconsciously for us all the time.

But at the end of the day, even four-ball and foursomes comes down to hitting good golf shots, and only one person can hit a golf shot at one time. If I boil it down to the 30 seconds that you can control, it can still come down to an individual mindset if you feel more comfortable with that.

Q. From your perspective, how has the way Rory has treated this week evolved from his first to now?

JUSTIN ROSE: Yeah, I think obviously it means a lot to him for sure. As he's evolved, he's become a leader of the team. From experience, he's played the most on our team. This is his seventh Ryder Cup. He's experienced a lot of lows but a lot of highs in the Ryder Cup as well.

He's been one of the players that's kept the momentum going that was started a generation or two before us and before him. And I think he has a really good appreciation of history and the history of the game of golf, and, you know, the guys that have come before him, and he does see himself very much as -- well, he's a legend of the game and will continue to be a legend of the game. It's hard to see yourself that way when you're playing, but I think that is his trajectory. I think that he will have a huge role in this team for the next decade plus.

STEVE TODD: Justin, thanks for joining us. Enjoy the week.