PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 17, 2025

Alex Noren

Quail Hollow Club

Flash Quotes

THE MODERATOR: Alex Noren is with us here at the 107th PGA Championship.

Q. Tell us about the feeling being at the top of the leaderboard on a Saturday at a major.

ALEX NOREN: It feels good. I got it together. I kind of struggled a little bit in the wind with the iron shots I thought and maybe overthought some of the shots but saved myself with some great bunker shots, and the putting was better today.

Then finally hit some really good ones, 17, 18, and paid off, yeah.

Q. A couple months ago, you were far away from the game, coaching your daughter's softball team. In that moment, did you think contending in a major or anything like this form was in your near future?

ALEX NOREN: The only thing, I said that probably to you too, it was a lot easier to have this break when I'm 42 than when I was younger. As soon as I kind of could play, I thought I was in sort of the same form I was in before I got injured. But I'm still extremely -- not surprised, but I'm fortunate to be in this position this early, yeah.

Q. Can you kind of take us through the injuries and what you've been battling?

ALEX NOREN: It was just one injury. PGA TOUR got it wrong just in the start. Everybody thought it was two injuries. It was just my tendon in my hamstring on the sit bone.

It's a bad injury but you can still live a quite normal life because you have two other tendons that support it. But I couldn't swing a club. I couldn't jump or run. I could walk kind of slowly and live a normal life. Like he just said, I could coach my kids. Spent a lot of time with the family. It's been quite nice.

Q. Why do you say bad; the injury was bad? Was it one particular -- did it happen in a moment?

ALEX NOREN: Well, the bad part of it is that it takes a long time to heal, and it was 90 percent torn. So I had that 10 percent left to make it heal back so I didn't have to have surgery. If it was actually torn, I would not play right now. That was lucky but also bad at the same time.

Q. Do you ultimately think that the time off, when you look back on these three rounds, do you feel like you're fresher in some ways mentally, physically? Do you think that's contributed to how well you've played?

ALEX NOREN: Yeah, maybe. I got some good perspective, like spending that much time kind of in the middle of a career, like hopefully I'll play a lot longer.

But to kind of have that time to see the family a lot, it's been nice. Otherwise, you know how it is. You guys travel a lot. It was really nice to have that because at first I had three months of kind of off-season, and then the four months involuntary.

So it gave some good perspective, and yeah, but then I obviously wish I would have played more golf leading up to this than I have, yeah.

Q. The finish here, you made two birdies down the stretch. Especially at 18, going into that stretch of holes, what was the mindset today and how do you feel about the execution?

ALEX NOREN: Yeah, like I said, I didn't have my best iron game and wedge game maybe leading up to those. I saved myself a lot with a good bunker game. But then on 17 and on 18, I hit two of the best shots this week, and that's what you need to get close to those holes. You just need to have the right sort of perfect landing spots, perfect kind of flight on the ball so you get that little bounce up. On 18, for example, if I would have carried that a little bit further in the flat, I would have been 30 feet past the hole. You've got to hit the right shot the right height.

I hit an 8-iron. It was 160 meters, so what is that, 178.