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THE RYDER CUP

September 28, 2010

Edoardo Molinari

NEWPORT, WALES

GORDON SIMPSON: Okay, everybody, well, it's big brother time now. Edoardo, nice to see you here. Another rookie, like Francesco, and it's your first experience of the team room last night and again today on the golf course. How have you felt the buzz start to grow in your first Ryder Cup?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: I think it's very exciting already. It was good to play together with Francesco with G-Mac and Rory because we are very good friends with them. It was a lot of fun on the course.
GORDON SIMPSON: Except you lost.
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Yes, but it's only Tuesday. But I'll take that other win in China and lose today.
It's nice, there was a lot of people out there already and it was exciting and looking forward to the next few days.
GORDON SIMPSON: And you fought so hard to get onto this team, now that you're here, do you feel it's well worth it, the energy and effort you put in?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Absolutely. I think it's going to be a great week. It's going to be a lot of fun and it's probably been one of most difficult teams in the history to make, and obviously you have to be very proud to be here, and we hope to be able to win The Ryder Cup back.

Q. How do you think the first tee Friday will compare to a normal first tee at a tournament, and what advice have Colin or other players given you as far as dealing with nerves and such?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: I guess I'll be more nervous than a normal tournament. We were talking about it last night in the team room, and they just told us, I mean, it's normal to be shaking, to be nervous or to just go out there and enjoy it as much as you can.

Q. Could you just talk to us about the dynamic between you and your brother on the course? Does he have to calm you down, or do you work with each other?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Well, we are usually, both of us, we are quite calm and cool under pressure, so there's not really much we do with each other or we say to each other. But obviously in case you get a little bit too tense or too nervous, you know that your brother is always there to try and help you.
So it's always a great help to be playing alongside him.

Q. Do you expect to be paired with somebody other than your brother, and if so, who do you have in mind or what type of partner would you like?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: I think, obviously Francesco and I would be an obvious partnership. But I think any of the other ten guys on the team will be a good partner. So obviously last night we talked about it a little bit, and I mean, there are some different ideas and we will see come Friday who I will be playing with.

Q. Who has been the loudest person in the team room so far?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Well, probably last night, Monty was the guy talking the most because it was the first night in the team room, and he's the captain and he was talking a lot and telling us different things.
So I think so are far Monty, and he's been a great captain so far. I think none of the players really stood out last night. I mean, some of us talked, some of us just listened. It was a mixture of both.

Q. Growing up, was there a lot of competition between you and your brother, or did you both get on very well?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: We get along very well with each other since we were starting to play golf when we were 10, 11 years old, but obviously there was a little bit of competition and rivalry between each other. But I think it's done very good for us, because when you see your brother playing better, you want to improve and you want to catch him. I think that's one of the reasons why we're here this week, both of us.
GORDON SIMPSON: You were saying in Crans, the effort you put in on a daily basis to catch up on Francesco is quite phenomenal, wasn't it.
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Yeah, obviously when you are behind and you want to catch up, you have to do something else then. That's what he did the next couple of years, and now I have to do something extra to stay in front of him. It's always nice and it's exciting and it's very -- how do you say, it's very -- I mean, it's something that you really want to be; you want to be better than your brother.

Q. Have you played foursomes with your brother? Would you see yourselves as a more likely foursomes partnership, because obviously of your close relationship and the way your games perhaps would gel together, or would you see yourself as fourball partners and have you played much as partners in match play before?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: I think we played a lot of foursomes as amateurs because we played a few times the St. Andrews Trophy and The European Team Championship, and you always play foursomes there. We played a lot of foursomes together, and I think our games are better suited for foursomes for fourball. So I think probably we are a better foursome than a fourball.
But still, our games are quite different, so I think also in fourball we can win points.

Q. What has the reaction been in Italy to the two of you getting on to The Ryder Cup team? You do see this as being especially relevant to the development of golf and the popularisation of golf in Italy? Has your house been besieged by reporters or something?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: The situation has changed dramatically since we won the World Cup last year, and this year, I played very well and Francesco played very well, as well, and Matteo Manassero coming through. I think the three of us can do a lot for golf in Italy, and hopefully we can change the situation.
But there's definitely more buzz and journalists asking you for interviews and even TV, and even normal TV, not only SKY Sports. It's hopefully changing quickly and the next few years it will be more and more. We get a few pages in the newspapers, as well, not only in the sport newspapers, also in the daily newspapers. It's definitely something that didn't happen a few years ago.
GORDON SIMPSON: We have had about a dozen papers credentialed from Italy since the two brothers made the team.

Q. When did you first become aware of The Ryder Cup?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: The first Ryder Cup that I remember quite well was the one in '95 when Nick Faldo got the up-and-down on the last to win The Ryder Cup, basically.
Obviously I remember the hole-in-one from Constantino in that year and '97, I remember quite a lot about that. I have a lot of memories, a lot of putts going in that I remember, a lot of chip-ins. So hopefully we can do something similar this week.

Q. I hear you like to play a few rounds of golf with the footballers; is that true, and would you care to comment on that?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Yeah, I played with Pavel Nedved last week who is a footballer and we went at night to watch the football game together, the stadium, and he's a nice friend of mine. He's a guy that -- not only is a great person, but a great athlete. He had a great work ethic and it's something that I always look up to and try to do the same.

Q. Big rivalry with your brother, Inter Milan and Inventus?
EDOARDO MOLINARI: Yeah, a lot of rivalry, especially as kids but now it's getting better.
GORDON SIMPSON: But we are all on the same side this time, thank you.

End of FastScripts

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