Molinari to leave ‘home’
FRANCESCO Molinari has revealed he may not play in Europe before he defends his Open title at Portrush in late July.
The pull of the US PGA Tour and the rejigging of the golf calendar will leave the Londonbased Italian struggling to play on his home circuit next year.
The USPGA Championship’s move to May means he is not even sure he can take up an invitation from Ryder Cup partner Tommy Fleetwood to play in the British Masters, an event the Englishman is hosting at Hillside the week before.
“We need to negotiate how many nights in bed I get with him. We will see,” said Molinari, who was involved in a spoof bedtime video with his close friend after this year’s Ryder Cup win in Versailles.
“I would like to play the British Masters but it depends probably on the first couple of months of the season. If I learnt one thing this season, it is to be a bit flexible with the schedule playing two tours.
“With the changes, it is a bit different. Wentworth was always the first for me but now it has been moved to September, that might be the first regular European Tour event I play,” he added, referring to another title defence he plans at his home circuit’s PGA Championship.
It would be logical for Molinari to follow his Ryder Cup colleagues Rory McIlroy and Ian Poulter by upping sticks to live in Florida but the BBC’s World Sports Star of 2018 has no such thoughts.
“I first moved here for a few reasons,” said Molinari. “Denis Pugh, my coach, was based here and travelling from Turin was not the easiest because it is a small airport. My wife was here studying, she liked the city and we said, ‘Let’s try to live here for a couple of years’. Ten years later we are still here. It is a great city and it is a great base for me travelling wherever I need to go in the world.
“It feels like home. We considered a couple of years ago moving to the States but we both liked London more than the States.”
Becoming the first European to earn a maximum five points at a Ryder Cup means the streets of the capital are no longer quite so anonymous.
“There is definitely more attention than before,” said Molinari.
The fanfare will be louder too in the States now the Americans have found out to their cost what a player he is. The collective blind spot that afflicts golf’s financial heartland when it comes to their poorer cousins in Europe can often be frustrating, but in the Ryder Cup it came in handy. “They have a great generation of players but at the same time I think they underestimated our new generation coming through – Tommy, Jon Rahm, who is an incredible player, and Tyrrell Hatton and Thorbjorn Olesen,” said Molinari.
“As a European, it’s like until you prove yourself over there, you’re not worthy of their attention. But there are a lot of young European players here good enough to compete with the Americans. There are guys like Matt Wallace and Eddie Pepperell, who didn’t make the team but could easily have done the same job.” Molinari is suddenly the standard-bearer for those players and, after his heroics in 2018, he is expected to deliver again next season. “It will be the biggest challenge because this year I went under the radar. There were a lot of people not really expecting much from me,” he said.
“The challenge is to keep everyone else’s expectations outside my bubble.”