MOLINARI HAS AN EPIC TIGER BATTLE UP HIS SLEEVE

FRANCESCO MOLINARI, Open champion and European Ryder Cup hero, sheepishly rolls up his right sleeve.

All the way it goes until his shoulder is bared and a tattoo of a Chinese symbol is revealed.

Body ink is the last thing you would associate with this epitome of an understated golf gentleman but there it is in all its glory.

In elegant Wisley Golf Club in Woking, where the London-based Italian is putting the finishing touches to his preparations for the defence of The Open, it looks doubly out of place. “I had just turned 18 and it was a way of rebelling,” he explained. “I thought ‘I can do whatever I want now’ so I went for a tattoo. I went into this shop in Turin but I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to have. The guy was trying to get me to come back another time when I’d thought about what I wanted but I insisted and he showed me a catalogue of images. I chose the Chinese symbol of a tiger. I’ve regretted it ever since. I just wish I’d chosen something more meaningful.”

He may not care for it now but there is something very fitting about a tiger tattoo. The Tiger – Woods that is – is woven through the most dramatic moments of his story. It was Woods he stared down in the same Sunday group to win the Claret Jug at Carnoustie 12 months ago.

And it was the American who had his revenge at Augusta in April (right) when Molinari, leading the Masters, splashed down at the 12th to open the door to the American’s emotional victory. So the pair have history. Woods, though, remains unaware of the Molinari tattoo.

“I don’t think he would know what it means. And in any case I can’t be 100 per cent sure it is what the tattoo guy said it was. It might say fried dumplings,” said Molinari. When the Irish Open was staged at Portrush in 2012 Molinari was a shadow of the player he is now but he still managed a top-10 finish.

“I had an average week and thought I’d finished further back than I did but my memories are of a great course, a classic links, and rows and rows of people,” he said.

For all the fuss surrounding Rory McIlroy, it is Europe’s maximum man at last year’s Ryder Cup in Paris who perhaps offers the main threat to America’s continuing dominance of the Majors. Molinari is the only European to win any of the last 10.

Who knows what lies ahead this week but it is a fair bet Tiger Woods may have something to do with it.

“It’s a recurring theme,” said Molinari. “I’m sure both of us will try to be there on Sunday.”