OLIVIA McMILLAN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be joined by the current PGA champion, Aaron Rai. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. You've come home to your home major, The Open, as a major champion. How does that feel?
AARON RAI: Firstly, thank you for having me. Yeah, incredible to play The Open at any point really. It's almost a dream come true just playing in this event and having the opportunity.
Yeah, first time being back in England the last two weeks since the PGA. So it's been great to experience the support from family, from friends, and from the fans.
Q. Congratulations, Aaron. I know you're an extremely shy and reserved person, but how are you coping with all the attention that's been showered on a major champion, and has it affected you in some way in terms of your game? You're now being called the nicest person in golf. Can you tell us how you're coping with it?
AARON RAI: It's definitely a learning experience as we're going for sure. I think trying to plan things as well as possible in terms of commitments, practice, also just time to myself as well. So I think that planning element has become more important over the last couple of months in scheduling.
In terms of the game, I feel like the game has still been pretty solid since then. I think making the adjustments back to playing golf in the UK versus America is quite different, so definitely still learning in how to adjust a little bit faster. It's something that I could have probably done a better job with even over the last couple of years. That's definitely something hopefully I can get better at moving forward.
Overall, I feel like it's been pretty close over the last couple of months.
Q. Quick follow-up. With your schedule having become so busy, does that mean Gaurika's career is now on hold for a while?
AARON RAI: I think it's definitely challenging managing both of our careers, but the good thing with Gaurika is she'll be able to play in India towards the back end of this year, when she goes back in September, October. It's definitely tricky to find that balance during this part of the season to spend time together but still manage her career as well. So that part has been difficult.
It still opens up a good window at the end of the year and hopefully the start of next year as well.
Q. You played well at the U.S. Open. Do you feel like a heightened sense of belief -- you probably always believed in yourself, but do you believe in yourself more now that you're a major winner?
AARON RAI: I think it provides a lot of validation for sure with the things that we do in terms of practice, the way of approaching tournaments, and the way of even holding yourself together during those four days of tournaments.
But I think every week is so different. Every major provides such a different test and a different style of golf that I think it's always a fine line between having confidence in what you're doing and having belief in what you're doing, but not thinking that anything should just be given because of what you've done or what you've achieved. So I think that's a really important balance to try to maintain really.
Q. You mentioned before it's been challenging balancing the new commitments, the attention, that sort of thing. How did you celebrate that night of the PGA victory, and how have you been able to kind of switch off and recuperate?
AARON RAI: We had some dinner at Aronimink on Sunday night kind of in between the aftermath of what follows the PGA in terms of media interviews, et cetera, and then we stayed in Philadelphia on the Monday just to soak in the area a little bit. So that was really nice.
Sorry, what was the second part of the question?
Q. How have you been able to switch off?
AARON RAI: I think the time of year it is in the middle of the season, I did take two weeks off straight after the PGA in terms of events but started practising a couple of days afterwards.
My dad and my sponsor came over a couple of days after the PGA to Florida, so it was nice to see them. But we didn't really go on vacation. Just spent some time at home and tried to get back into practice and played four events in a row after that. So it's still been pretty busy since.
Q. Your reputation speaks for itself; you're revered by your peers as a gentleman. But juxtaposing that with the fashion in which you won the PGA Championship, it sort of opened up on the Sunday, and you were ruthless. There was a killer instinct and you just took it away from everybody. I want to get a bit of insight into that competitor within you, that ruthless, killer instinct to seize the moment and just crush a lot of souls out there.
AARON RAI: That's a good question. I think those two aspects are two pretty different things. I think for me personally it's important that you try and conduct yourself in the best way you can and try and do as well as you can by yourself, by others as well. I think that's just the right thing to do as a human.
In terms of the golf, golf is a very challenging sport. There's so much that goes into it on a weekly basis at tournaments. There's so much that goes into it even away from tournaments and then the plans you have to make, which generally revolve around golf, even though you might be away from tournaments or outside of the season.
So I think when you get those opportunities, when you find yourself in those positions, I think being true to your journey, being true to what the game requires, I think brings out certainly a different side of myself, a different side, I guess, of the competitiveness.
For me it's being true to the game, being true to the process, being true to the challenge, and the journey that gets you to this point, which I guess kind of reflects in maybe what you mentioned there at the PGA.
Q. I saw something on social media the other day about a note that you left for someone by their locker. Has anyone ever done something like that for you, and has it ever been sort of impactful in picking you up in a down moment? Can you give an example of those sort of gestures coming your way?
AARON RAI: After the PGA I received a handwritten letter from Jack Nicklaus, which was kind of surreal when we opened the mail. Yeah, for someone like that to take the time to write to me after the PGA, it definitely shows the class of what Jack is about.
Then on a separate note of last week, again, it just felt like the right thing to do. It was Pablo Larrazábal. We've played quite a bit together in the past. It was the first that I'd heard he'd been struggling a little bit during the season, so it felt like just the right thing to do. So that's where it came from really.
Q. Where is the PGA Championship trophy, and are you planning for a big trophy room at home?
AARON RAI: It's in my dad's house. Yeah, not planning on having a trophy room at my house.
Q. It looks like you don't need to see it every day or anything like that?
AARON RAI: Not particularly. For me and my wife, it felt like it was fitting, and it was the right place for it to be at my dad's house, at the family house really.
Q. What do you enjoy the most about practice? Did you always enjoy practice like this, when you were 12, 14, as a young kid? Do you enjoy it the same way now?
AARON RAI: Yeah, I think the enjoyment comes from different places. I think, as you develop as a golfer, as your skill develops, I think as you get older as a person obviously the relationship changes, the challenges of it change. You appreciate different parts of the sport.
So I'd say I find enjoyment in different places compared to what I did when I was 12, 14 years old. But I still enjoy it the same amount and still -- yeah, just like the challenge of it, really, because that part never changes no matter what your level of golf is, no matter where you find yourself in your career. That's a real humbling part about the game.
Q. What did The Open mean to you growing up, and what were your sort of earliest memories of something happening at an Open that was impactful on you?
AARON RAI: Earliest memories, they used to show highlights on BBC in the evenings. We used to watch it from five, six years old. I remember David Duval winning. I used to support Tiger Woods a lot. It was great to see David win, but I was supporting Tiger. That's what sticks out, that Tiger didn't win that one. I can't remember what one it was, but that was probably my earliest memory of it.
Obviously I'm British, and this is a home Open, so very, very special tournament.
Q. You mentioned the idea of validation after the PGA. I'm just curious with how much time you've put into it, do you think you could have viewed your career at the same level of fulfillment and satisfaction had you not ended up achieving at the highest level as you did?
AARON RAI: I think that's maybe a question I could answer a little further into the future. It's hard for me to answer that as well as I can right now. I think for every golfer, winning a major championship is obviously a dream and what we aspire to.
To believe or feel that it's going to happen, I think that's something that no one ever quite knows because of how hard that it is, how many things that go into it, and also how many things have to fall your way during that week as well. There's a lot of things that are not in your control that go into it.
Yeah, it's a massive blessing to have accomplished that. I try not to view my success and failure, even in my career up until this point, by what I've won and what I haven't won. So I don't think that would have massively shifted my perception of what I've achieved, but yeah, it doesn't take anything away from how satisfied I am through winning the PGA this year.
Q. You and your father have both been mad keen on golf all your life. Have you got lots of cousins who don't know the first thing about golf who want to come this week?
AARON RAI: Yeah, we're not from a particularly sporting family growing up, but I think with kind of me having a profession in golf, definitely more of my family have got into following it. A few of them play it a little bit recreationally, but definitely more of my siblings, my extended family, my cousins follow the game a little bit more. Yeah, a few of them are coming today and tomorrow as well. So that's always nice.
Q. I'm from Shropshire and originally from Wolverhampton. Straight after the victory, it's amazing how much local pride there was and excitement in the victory. I was just wondering how much you've managed to pick up on that in the subsequent weeks?
AARON RAI: Probably not a huge amount. I spent the following six weeks in America. People sent me articles and got a feel of how it was received in England, which was great and a lot warmer than what I would have ever expected and more widespread than I would have thought, but in terms of purely the local area, I think because I was so far away with being in Florida and playing a lot of events, I didn't really get a sense of how that felt or the magnitude of it in that respect.
Q. One of the things that really struck me is it was many people who didn't know anything about golf and were suddenly quite engaged with the fact. Have you experienced any of that, that you'd expect golfers to have been impacted -- have you had people that you've previously never had an engagement with that have gotten in touch?
AARON RAI: From the Midlands area?
Q. From anywhere actually, yeah.
AARON RAI: I think the biggest symbol of that immediately after the PGA was a tweet from the royal family. That's huge. And an impact that is way bigger than golf. So I think that was maybe put into perspective that maybe this has reached an audience that was wider than just the game. I couldn't quite believe that when I saw it.
Q. There's obviously been a lot of conversation recently about the golf ball rollback and the changes that are likely to come. One potential solution that is being bandied around, certainly Sir Nick Faldo talked about it, was a reduction in tee height, going down to potentially a one-inch tee. Just wanted to get your take on what the effect might be for the best players of doing something like that?
AARON RAI: I think, as you said, there are a lot of things that are very much up in the air at the moment, and no one quite knows which way it's going to go. I think whatever changes are made, it's going to be a big adjustment, whether it's golf ball, whether it's tee heights.
I think in particular with tee heights, that's probably not something that many golfers have really practised over a period of time. So I think to impose that and also to govern that might be quite challenging. I'm not sure how good that may be in the grand scheme of things.
But obviously something will be done. We're not sure what that looks like. I'm sure as time goes on it will be for the betterment of the game over a period of time.
Q. Did you ever attend The Open as a spectator?
AARON RAI: Me and my dad came once, which was in 2013 at Muirfield. I think we came for one of the practice rounds on maybe Tuesday or something.
Q. No Englishman has won The Open at home for quite a long time. What sort of pressure do you feel to perform this week in England?
AARON RAI: Firstly, there's always pressure every single week no matter what tournament it is. I think most of that is self-imposed. Some of it is where you're playing and what event that it is. Obviously this is a major championship. It's a huge event in its own right. So there's always that element of pressure that is there.
Yeah, I try not to view it too differently to most weeks. Obviously the challenges of what it presents are different to a lot of weeks, and that has to be prepared for. Yeah, I don't feel a huge amount more pressured than what I used to.
Q. Is this the major you've dreamed of winning as a kid?
AARON RAI: Obviously it's a huge event. I think even as a child, I tried not to engulf myself in trying to win this or trying to win that. I think even as a kid I knew these things would be amazing to achieve in the future, but they're such a long way away. I think even as a kid I just tried to focus on what I need to do in the short period to try to get better and see where that puts me.
In that respect, my perspective hasn't changed a huge amount, even as I've gotten older.
Q. You said you hadn't even seen this course until a couple of weeks ago. I wonder what your impressions are of the course now? Is it an Aaron Rai course?
AARON RAI: I think it's a brilliant golf course. It's definitely changed quite a bit in the last two weeks. It was quite green. It was quite lush when I came here and relatively soft as well, fairways and greens. So it was quite a surprise playing a few holes on Sunday, seeing it as brown as what it was in the space of, I think, ten days.
I think it plays phenomenally. It's a great layout. Obviously a huge amount of history at Birkdale. It's a real iconic Open venue. Yeah, I think it will be a true test of golf. I'm looking forward to getting started this week.
Q. Does it suit your game?
AARON RAI: I think we'll have to see. Sometimes there are courses that I don't think fit quite as well, and you turn out and perform pretty well, or a course that you think I could see myself playing quite well and doesn't quite work out that way. I think your performances truly show that no matter what you think it's going to be before, whether it's going to suit you, whether it doesn't, it's really all about what you do when the tournament starts.
Q. You wouldn't have enjoyed missing the cut last week, but have the extra two days been useful?
AARON RAI: Yeah, it was good to get here early for sure. Obviously not the best thing to miss a cut no matter what tournament that it is. The Scottish Open means a lot to me. So it was a little frustrating to miss the cut.
Yeah, it was a great opportunity to get here on the Saturday night and then have a good day on Sunday before the tournament starts.
Q. You're obviously coached by Andy and Piers, two of the biggest YouTube golf coaches. If you're struggling with your game but unable to catch up with them in person, do you ever watch any of their old videos or any of the things on YouTube to help you out with things you've been struggling with?
AARON RAI: I've done that a couple of times in the past actually. They've got a lot of content across a lot of different areas. I've watched quite a few short game videos they've done with some players in the past. But for the most part, generally I try to reach out to them, send across a few videos, share my thoughts.
I think the relationship that we've had, it's been almost 20 years now, and I think that continuity and that understanding of my game, of tendencies, of common areas that I struggle with, when I send a video along with a voice note of my thoughts, it usually leaves enough for them to give me great feedback on what is needed. So the relationship works really well even when we're not one-to-one, in person.
Q. You obviously won the PGA Championship with a TaylorMade driver, an M6 that launched in 2019. What is it you love so much about that driver? Is it in the bag this week? And what will you do if and when it potentially might break in the future? Have you got any others as backup maybe?
AARON RAI: Yeah, we've still got a few heads as backup. Over time they get a little hot, so naturally there will come a point where I have to change into the backup heads.
The biggest thing for me is the consistency. There was a period of driver where it had a nice balance between distance, but it definitely had a little bit of forgiveness.
I think since 2021 TaylorMade have gone into the carbon faces, which have felt a little bit difficult for me to adjust to. When I've tried other brands and they have the same titanium face as the M6, they don't have the Twist Face technology, which then changes my misses and what I expect to happen with the ball.
I really like the driver, but it's almost like a necessity to stick with it just with where equipment has gone over the past few years. Yeah, hopefully I can stick with it until something I feel more comfortable comes along.
Q. What for you personally have been the best and worst side effects, for want of a better word, after winning the PGA?
AARON RAI: The best side effects, obviously feeling extremely proud of the achievement. It's a huge accomplishment. I think internally seeing my relationship to the game over the past couple of months, even after achieving something as big as what that is, that I still have the same enjoyment and passion and application to the game, which is something that I think is hard to really know it's going to be there until you experience certain things and experience certain achievements of what are you actually doing all of this for. So that's been very satisfying as well.
Maybe the most challenging, just time commitments really and kind of scheduling my time, still getting my practice in, doing all the things that I need to do in terms of golf, but also making space for myself and my family. That's been a little trickier since then, but that's also part of the learning curve and part of what comes with the next step of that. Yeah, it's been great overall, though.
Q. Aaron, we just spoke about some of your closer relatives or cousins, et cetera, getting engaged with golf. I know your wife and your brother-in-law are pretty accomplished professional golfers. Have you had any idea of the kind of impact it's had back in India? We appropriate you; we haven't got a top 10 golfer or a major winner, so we call Aaron as Indian, as we do with Sahith and Akshay too. Do you have any idea what kind of impact you've had or may have had in India right now?
AARON RAI: It's really hard to say. I think, again, it's only been two months since the PGA, and a lot of that time has been spent in the States. The last couple of weeks have been spent in England. So it's difficult for me to say, really. I think with my wife Gaurika and my brother-in-law Sunhit, I think they're careful with what they tell me and don't tell me because so much goes into every week, so much goes into trying to be competitive at these events, I think keeping that focus is so crucial.
So I think I haven't really appreciated the wider impacts that much. I've seen snippets of it, but it's really hard for me to appreciate whatever impact it has had.
Q. Are you going to be on the bag again for Gaurika this year?
AARON RAI: No, not this year. Unfortunately not.
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