FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

NOTABLE QUOTES: GOLF CENTRAL LIVE FROM THE OPEN (TUESDAY)

Golf Channel Notable Quotes
Golf Central Live From The Open
Tuesday, July 12, 2016 (11 a.m.-1 p.m. ET)
Royal Troon Golf Club, Troon, Scotland

**Golf Central Live From The Open airs at 7 p.m. ET tonight and continues at 8 a.m. ET Wednesday morning.**

On Rory McIlroy’s comment about not watching the Olympic golf competition
Chamblee – “Golf suffers from being too expensive, too exclusionary, too slow, too hard to understand the rules and from the criticism for many years that golf isn’t really a sport. Rory had a chance to go there along with his peers and stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest athletes in the world… Not only did he choose not to do that… But in effect today he said I’m not going, I’m not playing, I’m not watching because it doesn’t matter. And that is an insult to everybody who has spent time to further this game with its inclusion in the Olympics.”
David Duval – “Whether you agree it should be in or shouldn’t be as a sport, it is in. Nobody had the foresight to see who would be the top players when the Olympics came to fruition in 2016. So the players back then who said “yes,” now it’s a whole new crop of players who were only, 15, 16, 18 years old.”
Paul McGinley – “One thing that has become very clear. You need your top players if you are going to have golf in the Olympics. We needed to bring them along.”
Frank Nobilo – “It seems the closer we get to the start of the Open Championship, the further the marriage of golf and the Olympics gets away from each other.”
Chamblee – “This was maybe the most dramatic Tuesday – at least in my memory – ever at a major championship.”
Chamblee – “I thought Jordan handled himself beautifully, and then moments later Rory McIlroy came in and knocked all the dominoes down. A sad day for golf in a lot of ways.”

On Dustin Johnson
Duval – “It’s hard to see how he’s not going to be the favorite moving forward from now on.”
Chamblee – “As long as Dustin is, it’s important to find the fairways here. These pot bunkers are essentially a stroke penalty. Does he hit it miles? Yes. But this week he’s also going to have to hit it straight off the tee. So he can’t just crash away with the driver.”
Nobilo – “He has a chance to really do something crazy going out [on the front nine].”

On McIlroy’s comments about strengthening drug testing in golf
Duval – “I think if golf is going to do it, don’t put one foot in. Go all in and do the broad testing that has to be done through blood testing.”
Chamblee – “I do applaud Rory for his comments today about drug testing. I think that it is necessary that golf gets in step with every other sport and tests accordingly.”

On Sergio Garcia
Chamblee – “Hard to overlook. Hard to pick.”

Colin Montgomerie (member at Royal Troon, son of former Club Secretary at Royal Troon)
Colin Montgomerie – “The greens are particularly small, therefore you’ve got to have the ball in the fairway to control the iron shots from there on in. You look at the great drivers of the golf ball to do well here. Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Jason Day… to think who’s your winner, you’ve got to [factor] them in to have a good chance.”

Montgomerie – “[Scottish golf fans] they’re the most knowledgeable golf fans… It’s the only country in the world where we can actually say golf is our national game… These fans are golfers, they actually play the game and have a handicap. A lot of times you realize major championships you have fans that aren’t really golfers. These fans are.”

-NBC Sports Group-