FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sunday, July 22nd, 2018
NOTABLE QUOTES: GOLF CENTRAL LIVE FROM THE OPEN (SUNDAY)
Carnoustie Golf Links, Carnoustie, Scotland
Sunday, July 22
*Media also can access notable quotes via @GolfChannelPR on Twitter or by visiting www.nbcsportsgrouppressbox.com*
REPLAY – THE OPEN (FINAL ROUND)
The 147TH Open (Final) Leaderboard
1 Francesco Molinari -8
T-2 Justin Rose -6
T-2 Rory McIlroy -6
T-2 Kevin Kisner -6
T-2 Xander Schauffele -6
T-6 Tiger Woods -5
T-6 Kevin Chappell -5
On Francesco Molinari (8-under, winner)
Brandel Chamblee – “The fact that he did it bogey-free over the last 37 holes… It’s like he alone is working in this perfectionist vacuum. More than all of that, he is a middle-aged man who has completely remade himself in the world of golf. That does not happen. This is like Lee Westwood becoming a scrambler like Seve Ballesteros. This is like Brad Faxon becoming a ball striker like Ben Hogan. This does not happen. This is like Phil Mickelson hitting it as straight as Fred Funk. This is like changing your fingerprints. You just don’t see what we are seeing from Francesco Molinari. He’s not 22 and suddenly found something. He’s 35-years-old. He’s worked his entire career to become a great ball striker, and he had to be. He had such a glaring weakness, he had to get by, by the skin of his teeth. And now that he’s become so proficient around and on the greens… This guy scrambled his way to an Open Championship. It was his greatest weakness, and now it is his greatest strength.”
Frank Nobilo – “This is just a marvelous performance for a guy that has done it the hard way. This is old-fashioned golf. This is tee-to-green golf. I so wish we had Shotlink this week because the numbers don’t do justice to the style of golf that he played during the course of the week.”
Chamblee – “He was doing it in the company of Tiger Woods. That is the psychological equivalent of trying to scale Mount Everest.”
Nobilo – “This game is about trying to be error-free. When you’re that good, you really deserve to be called once of the best players in the world.”
Nobilo – “There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle. Not everybody is a Jordan Spieth or a Tiger Woods and a phenom in their teenage years… It’s sort of old school golf against a new school crowd. It’s kind of neat.”
On Tiger Woods (5-under, T-6th)
Chamblee – “He teased us didn’t he… But if you’ve been paying attention this year, you saw this coming. This is really nothing new. He’s one person for the first 63 holes. He’s a completely different person for the last nine. He has only been bogey-free on the back nine on Sunday once [in 2018]. That was at Valspar… He had hit five or six fairways on every single nine this week until the back nine [today].”
Nobilo – “He’s also trying to win the affection of the crowd back… We expect him to be a machine. He’s shown very human qualities in trying to restore his game, his own psyche. So this 2018 version of Tiger Woods is a different one deep down. It still wants to be ruthless in between the ropes… But if you listen to his answers now, we get far more insight. But he is ever so close now to winning.”
Chamblee – “I know that he’s trying to swing the golf club like he did in 2000. And he’s closer to doing that than I’ve ever seen him. But he’s not the person mentally that he was in 2000… When you look at his golf swing, it hits all the right lines. So it’s not technique. It will be more along the lines of the belief in that technique… And it is the final piece of the puzzle for Tiger Woods.”
On Jordan Spieth (4-under, T-9th)
Nobilo – “Part of it is not getting into contention. With the exception of Houston, he has not teed it up on Sunday within six shots of the lead. Today, even for someone who is that precocious and that good at his age with three majors already under the belt, it was a position he hadn’t been in for more than 12 months. You assumed he would feel it.”
Nobilo – “Jordan is getting a taste of what everybody else got from his a couple years ago. It’s a wake-up call, and he’s aware of it.”
On Rory McIlroy (6-under, T-2nd)
Chamblee – “He has been at times – since the Arnold Palmer Invitational – flat out brilliant… He’s not really trying to change so much of his game as he is trying to change his attitude. That tells you that he’s results oriented. He was playing this week with a new attitude, and it served him very well.”
-NBC Sports Group-
