European Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley has regretfully seen the wind blowing towards the US Tour and switched to favour his players based there.
The skipper at Gleneagles has decided to have three wildcard picks the same number Colin Montgomerie had at Celtic Manor but one less than Jose Maria Olazabal used at Medinah last year and there will be five qualifiers from the world rankings points list and four from the European Tour points list.
In making the announcement at the European Tour’s high-profile flagship of the BMW PGA Championship with all the 12 heroes of Medinah present, it is a tacit admission that the best Europeans are now plying their trade in the US full-time.
“That is the criteria I feel is best coming to result in hopefully the strongest players in the European Ryder Cup next year,” said the first Irish Ryder Cup captain.
“It’s something that weighs heavily on me being a member of the European Tour’s Players Committee, it is important and we need the players to play here more often.
“But at the same time, my job is to identify the strongest 12 players to represent Europe. Like it or not, we have to acknowledge the fact that most of our players are now based in America, playing on the PGA Tour.”
The extra pick to Olazabal is to give McGinley “a little bit of wiggle room” and he won’t necessarily pick the next three off the two lists, he continued, as Gleneagles “is a very different examination to Medinah”.
“Guys who are not in the top 50 in the world who do show a lot of form on the European Tour, they are going to rank very highly with a possible opportunity of a pick, and I’m going to watch that very closely,” he said.
The fact that US skipper Tom Watson has reduced his wildcard picks to three was “just a coincidence”, he added.
“We’ve acknowledged the fact that most of our strong players in the top 50 in the world are based on the PGA Tour, and I want to get a combination of that and I want to get guys who are representing and playing well on The European Tour.
“I want them to have an opportunity to make the team, because if you’re not in the top 50 in the world, it’s virtually impossible to make the team.
“Edoardo Molinari in 2010 had an incredible year, yet didn’t make the points list and had to rely on a pick. I think that’s a case in point where a pick was the right decision to be made.
“Ideally, I would love to be able to say I’m standing here and want to say I want 12 players off the European Order of Merit; and I know that’s not practical or realistic, and I know I wouldn’t have a strong enough team to win the Ryder Cup.”
McGinley has been to Gleneagles twice and is conscious that the weather will play a role, saying: “End of September, beginning of October in Scotland, we don’t know what the weather is going to be like.
“Possibly there could be waterproofs, possibly there could be rain, possibly there could be sunshine.
“And I have to be mindful of all those aspects when I’m tailoring the team, and this is why I feel I need that little bit of wiggle room to make sure that I can kind of lean the team in that direction with people who will be comfortable playing in all of these elements should we come across them.”