Michaux On Ryder Cup Points Race

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The Augusta Chronicle's Scott Michaux with a different take on the Ryder Cup points standings as well as the likely Captain's picks:

For all of the criticism that has been levied against the revamped American Ryder Cup points system, it should be given credit for helping to uncover new blood that might never have been given the slightest consideration in the past. The Ryder Cup has been a closed shop for too long, and the Americans have been paying for it on the course against European squads that have been far more successful at finding fresh talent.

Consider this. There are only 28 active PGA Tour players under the age of 50 who have ever competed in a Ryder Cup. And that definition of "active" is very generous to include the likes of Ken Green, Steve Pate, Jim Gallagher Jr. and Hal Sutton.

Just how closed shop is it? Four-time PGA Tour winner Tim Herron (currently 16th in points) has never played in a Ryder or Presidents Cup. Neither has six-time winner and 1988 PGA Champion Jeff Sluman (23rd). Or double major winner John Daly.

The U.S. has a bad habit of putting too much stock in "experience." When most of that recent experience in Ryder Cups has been bad, maybe the old school thinking has to change.

Which is why the worst thing Lehman could do on the Monday after the PGA Championship is step up to the podium and introduce Davis Love III or Fred Couples as his captain's picks - leaning on their veteran leadership as the crutch for making a ridiculous decision that would in no way be in the best interests of American golf.

If that sounds too harsh, please check the 2006 records - which is what the new Ryder Cup points system is designed to accentuate. Other than fine performances (which ultimately displayed serious flaws) on his two favorite courses - Riviera and Augusta National Golf Course - Couples hasn't finished better than 24th in any event since October. And Love hasn't registered anything notable since his runner-up finish in the WGC Match Play in February.

Love and Couples, however, rank 14th and 15th on the current Ryder Cup points list, which masks their ineffectiveness this year and makes it tempting for a captain to play it safe with their 12 and nine prior at-bats in international team play.

Lehman, however, doesn't sound like a captain who will be prone to playing it safe.

"I think at the end of the day, I'm really looking for guys who are going the right direction with their game," Lehman said Tuesday. "If they were 25th three months ago, and they were 20th two months ago and now they are 15th or they end up 12th where they are improving and improving and getting better and better."

The only veterans with international team experience who fit that description are Jerry Kelly (12th), Stewart Cink (19th) and Scott Verplank (22nd). And if the team already includes five rookies, any of those three would be fine choices.

Writer's Ryder Picks

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An AP story reporting votes by some of our most esteemed scribblers suggesting who they see making the U.S. Ryder Cup squad (with their vote tally included):

Tiger Woods 18
Phil Mickelson 18
Jim Furyk 18
David Toms 18
Chris DiMarco 18
Chad Campbell 16
Scott Verplank 16
Stewart Cink 13
Zach Johnson 13
Fred Couples 12
Davis Love III 10
Lucas Glover 9
Arron Oberholser 9

Also receiving votes: Jerry Kelly 5, Vaughn Taylor 4, Tim Herron 3, Kenny Perry 2, Ben Crane 2, J.J. Henry 2, Fred Funk 2, Justin Leonard 2, J.B. Holmes 1, Brett Wetterich 1, David Duval 1, John Daly 1, Brad Faxon 1, Jay Haas 1.

Not much faith shown in J.J. Henry, John Rollins and Brent Wetterich. 

Campbell On Cup Points

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Not the FedEx Cup silly, the Cup that matters...

The Houston Chronicle's Steve Campbell writes:

The Ryder Cup standings are as crude as they are contrived, with players scoring only if they finish in the top 10. In the Ryder Cup race, the guy who finishes 11th gets treated the same as the guy who misses the cut.

And makes this point:

The world rankings, imperfect as they may be, are a much better gauge of a player's overall performance. By that measure, the first six players on the team would be the same. Lehman would have Love, Kenny Perry (No. 32), Verplank and Couples in the 7-10 slots.

Captain's Picks: How About the Assistants?

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2006rydercup.jpgMike Aitken tries to kindly point out that Tom Lehman's assistant's might actually make for attractive Captain's picks.
WHEN Tom Lehman, the US Ryder Cup captain, urged his men to win more tournaments in the run-up to the match against Europe at the K Club next month, it's safe to assume he didn't have either Loren Roberts or Corey Pavin in mind. On Sunday, however, it was Lehman's backroom assistants who showed the others the way with victories at Turnberry and Milwaukee.

While pleased for his friends, Lehman, privately, must be questioning the lack of experience in a side which is shaping up as stellar at the top of the order - the expected partnerships of Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson and Chris DiMarco will be crucial to US hopes of success - but something of an unproven quantity further down.

As things stand, the last four places on the US side will be filled by JJ Henry, Zach Johnson, Brett Wetterich and John Rollins, rookies who would add an element of the unknown to the American team for the first time in years. With an injury doubt over the involvement of David Toms and fitness and form question marks also lingering against possible wild card selections such as Davis Love III and Fred Couples, even the Yanks (whose qualifying race ends after the US PGA at Medinah on 20 August) accept Europe go into the 36th match as favourites.

Ryder Cup Points Race Watch Vol. 1

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2006rydercup.jpgA watch for us, agony for Tom Lehman? Hey, at least he doesn't have to worry about Chris Riley making it this time.

After Milwaukee, Jerry Kelly jumps to 12th place in the U.S. standings.

1.    WOODS, Tiger*    3,775.000    3,775.000 (1)    --
2.    MICKELSON, Phil*    2,474.375    2,474.375 (2)    --
3.    FURYK, Jim*    1,896.000    1,896.000 (3)    --
4.    CAMPBELL, Chad    1,129.602    1,129.602 (4)    --
5.    TOMS, David    1,072.250    1,072.250 (5)    --
6.    DiMARCO, Chris    830.000    830.000 (6)    --
7.    HENRY, J.J.     778.750    778.750 (7)    --
8.    JOHNSON, Zach    756.477    756.477 (8)    --
9.    WETTERICH, Brett    746.000    746.000 (9)    --
10.    ROLLINS, John    685.000    685.000 (10)    --
11.    TAYLOR, Vaughn    660.833    660.833 (11)    --
12.    KELLY, Jerry    653.750    473.750 (22)    180.000
13.    GLOVER, Lucas    641.376    641.376 (12)    --
14.    LOVE III, Davis    631.875    631.875 (13)    --
15.    COUPLES, Fred    627.727    627.727 (14)    --
16.    HERRON, Tim    621.667    621.667 (15)    --
17.    PERNICE, Tom    565.000    565.000 (16)    --
18.    OBERHOLSER, Arron    557.500    557.500 (17)    --
19.    CINK, Stewart    556.874    556.874 (18)    --
20.    MAYFAIR, Billy    489.166    489.166 (19)    --
21.    QUIGLEY, Brett    478.333    478.333 (20)    --
22.    VERPLANK, Scott    475.667    475.667 (21)    --
23.    SLUMAN, Jeff    471.250    311.250 (39)    160.000
T24.    CURTIS, Ben    445.000    445.000 (T23)    --
T24.    STRICKER, Steve    445.000    445.000 (T23)    --

The European team is shaping up, with the top 5 from each of these lists making the team. The guys with the dashes next to their numbers would be in if it were decided today.

-1     David HOWELL     207.27
-2     Colin MONTGOMERIE     205.90
-3     José Maria OLAZÁBAL     202.09
-4     Henrik STENSON     201.76
-5     Luke DONALD     192.25
6     Sergio GARCIA     187.96
7     Paul CASEY     165.33
8     Padraig HARRINGTON     154.46
9     Carl PETTERSSON     154.12
10     Robert KARLSSON     137.06

The Ryder Cup European Points List
Updated:   30 Jul 2006
After the The Deutsche Bank Players Championship of Europe
Position     Player Name     Points
1     Colin MONTGOMERIE     2413016.11
2     David HOWELL     2274635.98
3     Henrik STENSON     1782888.71
-4     Paul CASEY     1721833.85
-5     Robert KARLSSON     1692811.77
-6     Sergio GARCIA     1634091.27
-7     Padraig HARRINGTON     1514027.44
-8     Paul MCGINLEY     1455992.24
9     José Maria OLAZÁBAL     1381698.05
10     Paul BROADHURST     1336905.57

John Rollins, Ryder Cupper?

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From the AP's Doug Ferguson:

John Rollins earned more Ryder Cup points (375) for winning the watered-down B.C. Open than Chris DiMarco earned (360) for being runner-up at the British Open.

DiMarco nearly chased down Tiger Woods at his best, making four birdies and two clutch par saves on the back nine at Royal Liverpool to close with a 68 and finishing two shots behind.

Across the ocean at the B.C. Open, a tournament rife with Nationwide Tour players and those without full status in the big leagues, Rollins rolled in a 5-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a one-shot victory over Bob May.

PGA president Roger Warren knew there was potential for such a scenario, but offered no apologies.

"It has drawn a lot of attention because it actually occurred," Warren said Monday night from Kiawah Island, S.C. "The interpretation of that as good or bad, I'm not going to get into that. The system was designed to make sure we had those players who were playing well in this year receiving points higher than the first year, so as to reward good play. And we wanted to make sure we placed a value on winning."

Both got into the top 10 in the U.S. standings -- DiMarco went from 21st to sixth place, while Rollins went from 39th to 10th. Four tournaments remain before the team is announced.

Getting To K Club Sounds Fun

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Lawrence Donegan reporting from the K Club, site of this week's European Tour event and this fall's Ryder Cup:

As malapropisms go, the one uttered this week by Richard Hills was a little too close to the truth for comfort. "I fully expect roadworks to be in place," the Ryder Cup director announced when asked if work on the access routes into the K Club will be completed in time for the start of the big event in 10 weeks' time.

Less than a mile away the bulldozers were backed up on the road from Maynooth as the workmen sheltered from the rain. Work was over in the afternoon. Still, the media tent transcribers were busy. When Hills' words were finally regurgitated for public consumption they had been "tidied up" to read "We are confident that the roads will be ready."

He goes on to explain why most of us will be quite content to watch this one on television. 

 

Selcraig On K Club

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The Irish Times web site is for subscribers only, but reader Paddy sent this piece by American writer Bruce Selcraig on a recent Irish golf trip that included a visit to the Ryder Cup host site, K Club. I think it's fair to say he's not a fan.

Oh, and somewhere along the trip, we apparently were anaesthetised and flown George Bush-rendition-style back to Florida or Texas, where we played a thoroughly uninspiring, comically overpriced, Americanised resort course beside some gazillionaire's lovely, green, horsey estate.

They call it - oh, steel my loins - The K Club.

I think you're having a big tournament there in September.

I hate to sound rude to my many wonderful Irish golf friends in your long-overdue time of pride - and please know that I love Irish golf like a vital organ, perhaps a kidney - but the K Club and its major-domo, cardboard-box baron Mike Smurfit, and his regal hosting of the Ryder Cup as a jewel for his crown, symbolise nearly all that is rotten about modern golf. And worse, as many have said before me, the K Club Palmer Course is a relentlessly mundane track that has no business representing Irish golf.

And...

Bringing Ireland's first Ryder Cup to the charmless Palmer course is like having Keira Knightley invite you to her bedroom - to move furniture. It's like going to Rome for dinner and ordering fish and chips.

Yes, America has provided some pretty lacklustre venues for the Ryder Cup - Kentucky's Valhalla in 2008 is a snoozer, too - but American golf is not synonymous with the game's purest ancestral ground.

Dear Ireland, repeat after me: You now possess the finest collection of golf courses in the world. Period. There is no more competition with Scotland, where they're still talking about Old Tom Morris's niblick. You have Ballybunion, Portmarnock, Waterville, the European Club, Carne, Enniscrone, Lahinch and two-dozen more Ballywhotsits. And we'll throw in Royal Portrush and Royal County Down just to irritate the Brits.

In other words, you have Rembrandt, Cezanne, Gauguin and Michelangelo hanging in your kitchen, and in September you're inviting 800 million TV viewers to watch your Disney World home movies.

And...

Frank Hannigan, former director of the United States Golf Association and a spirited columnist, challenged readers to name any Arnold Palmer-designed course that was merely "good, not great". George Peper, formerly the editor of Golf magazine for 25 years, just surveyed the best courses in Scotland and Ireland and put the K Club on his "10 most overrated" list.

"To put it bluntly," Peper wrote, "this was the most disappointing course on my visit."

There are some constructed ponds and hillocks - and the required artificial fountain Yanks adore - but because there's so little natural elevation-change and no sweeping vistas - unlike Druid's Heath, unlike Killarney - your pulse never quickens. On my visit, among journalists everywhere, I rarely saw a camera pulled in delight. Just duty. Trust me - there are 14,000 golf courses in America, and 1,000 of them look like the K Club but cost 300 less to play.

And...

Everyone knows by now the selection of the Ryder Cup venue has nothing to do with quality golf and honouring the home country, and everything to do with maximising profits for the event's biennial owners - this year, the PGA European Tour, the British PGA and the national PGAs on the Continent. Sure, the venue has to be able to handle crowds, and you need good roads and plenty of hotel rooms, but if the golf lords thought they could put everyone in a Beijing car park and make more money we'd all be shopping for chopsticks.

Money dominates this event like few others in golf. Is it really true that the Irish Government contributed €16 million of your tax money just for marketing - 5 million of which went to the European PGA Tour - and that you'll not even be able to watch the thing on free-to-air television?

Even the compliant American masses might not swallow those worms. We may look the other way on torture and global warming, but tamper with our God-given right to fall asleep to golf on TV and you're headed for fist city.

"Let's be clear about this, we're talking commercialism, unashamedly as far as I'm concerned," explained the former European Tour executive director Ken Schofield to author Dermot Gilleece in his book Ryder Cup 2006.

Schofield reportedly said the K Club deal was sealed when Smurfit - oops, that's a mandatory Doctor Smurfit for all his "speak when spoken to" serfs- promised his company (once Jefferson-Smurfit, now absorbed by the US firm Madison Dearborn) would sponsor the European Open from 2005 to 2015. That decision, Gilleece writes, "nailed the widespread, cynical view, certainly among Irish observers, that success for Dr Smurfit was always a foregone conclusion."

They were right. To Smurfit, a Monaco tax-haven resident whose family fortune was recently estimated by the Sunday Times of London at 403 million, the Ryder Cup is just another bauble beside the Italian yacht, Gulfstream jet, helicopter commutes and far-flung mansions from Paris to Acapulco, including what the Independent of London reported in 2002 featured a 40,000 sq ft palace beside the Marbella Club on the Costa del Sol, estimated at $40 million, and an apartment below Donald Trump's in New York City's gauche Trump Towers.

"He is absolutely lost in his own importance," a K Club member told the Independent.

So, Mike Smurfit bought himself the Ryder Cup. Sad, but not a felony. If you had his loot - after giving most of it to Darfur refugees, of course - you'd have bought the Cup too. But that doesn't mean those of us who love Ireland and its incomparable links courses have to applaud the moneychangers as they take over the temple.

K Club Preparations

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Jodie Ginsberg of Reuters writes about Ryder Cup preparations at K Club, where Ian Woosnam has brought the Hootie Pine Fungus to the Irish course.

"We have been focusing over the last number of years on strengthening the golf course as a whole," Byrne said in an interview on a rainy day at his K Club office in County Kildare.

"Our emphasis has been on creating long, tight and interesting holes".

And...

Stretched by 300 yards, the par-72 layout will play to around 7,400 for the Ryder Cup, providing more of a challenge for big hitters such as Americans Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

Several of the changes made by Byrne's team of 22 permanent greenkeepers were prompted by suggestions from European Ryder Cup captain Ian Woosnam, who visited last year.

Among these were the addition of 13 new trees at key turning points on six of the holes and the introduction of tightly-mown swales, or collection areas, around eight of the greens.

The installation of tall, mature trees, most notably on 16 and 17, will prevent power drivers of the ball from cutting off the doglegs.

"Now, if a player wants to cut the corner on some of the holes, he's going to have to carry a certain amount of trouble," Byrne said. "You could call that 'Tiger-proof' if you wanted to."

The introduction of the collection areas replaces the deepish rough that existed at the K Club around the greens, rough which demanded the flop shot beloved by many of the leading American players.

With a faster runoff, the swales will provide players with the choice of "a pitch-and-run shot, using the putter or executing a flop shot from a very tight line", Byrne said.

And this is fun...

"Because many of the greens are raised, they're suitable for these runoffs which have actually given the course more of an Irish feel," he added.

"Because a very European-type shot will now often be required, it might be an advantage to European players.'

Oh and take your rain gear...

Byrne is preparing for a worst-case weather scenario in September: an inch of rain every day.

Greens and fairways would be cut with the lightest possible equipment and viewing areas drained and sandcapped to ensure that expected crowds of around 40,000 are able to get round the golf course with their feet relatively dry.

No More 2-Year Exemptions For Cup Team Players

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One of the silliest PGA Tour exemptions is about to run its course, according to Doug Ferguson.

Trevor Immelman came within a 10-foot putt of winning the Wachovia Championship, a tournament he might not have been able to play except for a Presidents Cup perk that no longer exists.

The PGA Tour began offering a two-year exemption in 2004 to anyone on the previous Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup teams, provided they had some degree of tour membership.

More times than not, anyone good enough to make either team had no trouble keeping his card, although there were exceptions. Paul Azinger was picked in 2001 to play in a Ryder Cup that was rescheduled to 2002, and he was able to play in 2004 on that exemption after finishing 169th on the money list.

But what really infuriated players was the case of Immelman.

He tied for 17th in the PGA Championship to earn just enough money for special temporary membership. Later that day, Gary Player made him as a captain's pick for the International team, even though Immelman was 22nd in the standings.

It smacked of preferential treatment, not only because Player and Immelman are South Africans, but because Immelman's father is commissioner of the Sunshine Tour in South Africa. And just like that, he was exempt for two years on the PGA Tour.

"I think it's more important to win a golf tournament for a two-year exemption than it is to make one of those teams to get the exemption, or even theoretically be a captain's pick," Jim Furyk said after his playoff victory at Quail Hollow.

Furyk wasn't alone in his complaints.

The criticism was so strong that the tour's policy board rescinded the exemption in May last year. Because it was in the middle of Presidents Cup qualifying, the perk wasn't taken off the books until this year. That means the exemption is effective this year for Ryder Cup players, and through 2007 for Presidents Cup players.

"We are a European team"

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Captain Woosnam on his wildcard picks:
"I have to be firm about it and say that people who play more in Europe will have a better chance of getting into the team."

He named Ireland's Padraig Harington and England's Lee Westwood among the men whose transatlantic form was causing him concern.

"They have to start making a move," he said. "We are a European team. There's a lot of money to make in America but they have to make the choice of trying to make it on world points or the European order of merit. If they are playing here, they are getting both."

Monty For 2010!

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This may not be the endorsement he's looking for, but Monty has Paul Casey on his side when it comes to the 2010 Ryder Cup captaincy. Count me in too. After all, wouldn't it be fun to have the European writers rooting for America every now and then! What better way to have Huggan and Donegan and Lawrenson rooting for the red, white and blue than a Monty captaincy!

"I think he'd be a wonderful captain," said Casey, who is hoping to be in the team for the showdown in September at the K Club outside Dublin.

"I know it is not the same level, but I played for Monty in the Seve Trophy last year and he has been a fabulous captain for that."