McIlroy, Westwood hoping for Ryder Cup date change
Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood have both added their voices to the growing clamour to see the date of the Ryder Cup brought forward to earlier in the season.
McIlroy had been something of a Ryder Cup sceptic in the months and weeks before making his debut at the biennial tournament, but the young Irishman appears quite taken with the event following Europe's nail-biting victory against the USA on Monday.
The 21-year-old has admitted he believes the tournament should be brought forward a month or so in a bid to avoid the kind of bad weather that threatened to derail this year's event. Torrential rainfall in Wales delayed play at Celtic Manor to such a degree last week that the tournament ran long, the competition reaching completion after four days of play for the first time in its history.
Not that McIlroy believed the competition stretching to four days was necessarily a bad thing, suggesting making the tournament a four day event in the future could eliminate some of the timing issues that officials faced in Wales.
Meanwhile Lee Westwood, who this year rose to No. 2 in the world rankings and has the chance to take the No. 1 spot from Tiger Woods if he can finish as winner or runner up at this week's Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, voiced similar hopes for the tournament, asking for "common sense" to be used when it came to the "so prestigious" event.
Westwood has also thrown his support behind golf in his home continent, announcing earlier that in 2011, he would play exclusively on the European Tour, rather than play on the potentially more lucrative PGA Tour in the USA.
But while Westwood is staying put, Graeme McDowell has decided he will play on the PGA Tour next year. The Northern Irish star, who beat Hunter Mahan in a thrilling climax in Newport earlier this week to seal Europe's Ryder Cup win and had won the US Open earlier this summer has decided he will play on the PGA Tour next year.
"Yes, I am joining the U.S. Tour," the Northern Irishman revealed in a press conference. "I took out my card in 2006 and got injured at the start of the season and never really got a chance to experience it. So I want to give it a go next year, because it's a non Ryder Cup year and I would like to try the FedEx Cup playoffs."
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