No guarantee of ticket to Ryder for Euro stars
Golf fans were treated to a double dose of Nordic know-how this past weekend, as Sweden's Richard S Johnson took the honours on his home turf at the Nordea Scandinavian Masters, while fellow countryman Carl Pettersson won the RBC Canadian Open.
A European victory on the European Tour is hardly a mind-blowing development, of course. But interestingly, these days it's a fairly regular event on the PGA Tour too.
In fact, since the first week of June, European players have won five of the nine tournaments on the PGA Tour, with just three Americans winning over the same selection - South Africa's Louis Oosthuizen is the other victor, winning at the PGA Tour-affiliated Open.
It's a state of affairs that led to Europe's No. 1 Lee Westwood making a crack recently at the expense of PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem. Referring to the success of Steve Stricker at the John Deere Classic, Westwood commented "It must be nice to have an American win on your tour."
If that's not enough to convince you of Europe's growing influence on the US tour, consider the world rankings. True, of the top five players, four are Americans; Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk, with England's Lee Westwood the exception, at No. 3. But of the world's top 20 players, 10 of them are Europeans, with just six Americans in the same batch.
It's an unprecedented time of success for European golfers, and with a convincing performance at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational in a couple of weeks, Westwood is capable of claiming the hallowed world No. 1 spot from Woods. (Let's leave aside for the time being that the man is still yet to win a major - in fact, Westwood is the first man to finish in the top three in all four majors, without winning any of them).
It would be an obvious fillip for European golf were an Englishman to take the No. 1 spot in world golf (it's only happened once before in the 24-year history of the official rankings, when Nick Faldo was No. 1 between 1992 and '93). And with Tiger Woods' game seemingly in irreversible decline and current No. 2 Phil Mickelson performing well only in fits and starts, Westwood is surely capable of rising to the very top. In short, European golf would appear to be in the rudest of health.
All of which, improbably, leaves European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie with an unusual quandary. There are six weeks to go until Montgomerie names his 12-man team, and the nine automatic qualifying positions are currently occupied by Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell, Luke Donald, Ian Poulter, Martin Kaymer, Francesco Molinari, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Ross McGowan.
Monty, together with his vice captains Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley and Thomas Bjorn, must choose three wild card picks for his team; at this stage, the question is who to rule out? This week's two Swedish winners, for instance, are surely unlikely to get a look-in while players of the calibre of Justin Rose, Paul Casey, Padraig Harrington, and even Sergio Garcia lurk outside the automatic qualifying places.
Monty will be looking to make up for Europe's 2008 loss to the US at Valhalla, when then captain Nick Faldo's strategy of keeping his best players back until the final games backfired, the American team having done enough to win already by that stage. A US victory seems an unlikely outcome this time round, however.
Tiger Woods' game, never at its strongest in a team environment, seems wholly unreliable right now, and while Colin might be complaining of a selection headache, his US counterpart is unlikely to be crying a river for the man. While Monty is inundated with quality, no-brainer choices for captain Corey Pavin's wild card picks seem far from obvious.
With last year's Open win, does Stewart Cink deserve a call-up? Not, you'd have to say, on this year's performances. Could Rickie Fowler, currently 15th in the standing, be worth a leap of faith? The 21-year-old has two runner-up finishes this year already - but he's also shown an inability to finish well when the pressure's on.
Given the paucity of what Pavin has to choose from here, the American captain must be rolling his eyes at Monty's supposed plight. Forty years ago, Jack Nicklaus successfully lobbied the powers that be to reorganise the Ryder Cup, so that players from the English team could expand, adding players from Ireland and eventually from all over Europe in order to make the tournament a fairer, closer-fought enterprise.
With Monty feasibly capable of formulating a cup-winning team made up largely of English and Irish excellence, and with still more top class European players available to him, how Crazy Pavin must be wishing Jack had kept his big mouth shut.
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