With only a month to go until the nine automatic positions for the Ryder Cup are decided, competition is really hotting up.
To dispel any confusion over the way things are as far as European Team selection is concerned, here is a breakdown of the situation right now.
After the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles from August 26-29, the four top-ranked players in the World Points List and the leading five players from the European Points List (not already selected in the world list) will make up the nine.
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With the Old Lady dusting off her shoulders after another memorable tournament at St Andrews, we look at the winners and losers of the 150th anniversary Open Championship.
Louis Oosthuisen: A+
After Thursday’s opening round 65, everyone waited for the South African to drop away, assuming his first round fireworks were more fluke than flair. However, as stubborn as the Old Course itself, the South African refused to be downtrodden by his doubters, instead biting back with three sub-par rounds to leave his challengers in the shade. His Open record thus far might have comprised of three missed cuts, but this former Ernie Els Foundation player proved that when he does make it past halfway, he does so in style. This may have been the year of the World Cup in his homeland, but victory at the home of golf sees that and raises it one Claret Jug.
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Exactly a year after declaring she wanted to ‘do an Annika’ by becoming the longest-running ladies world No.1, Cristie Kerr took her most decisive step yet toward fulfilling her goal – and she did it in Sorenstam-esque record-breaking style.
A 12-stroke victory in the LPGA Championship at Locust Hill Country Club in New York with a record-breaking 19-under-par total earned Kerr the world No.1 spot she has craved since joining the LPGA in 1997.
And not only that, but she became the first American woman to do so – proving, perhaps, that the US aren’t quite ready to relinquish their tour to the invasion of Asian players with whom it has been bombarded with over the last five years.
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The dust is settling on the second major of 2010. What better time, then, to reflect those who shined and those who ‘must try harder’?
Graeme McDowell: A+
And to think everyone thought that Rory McIlroy was Northern Ireland’s best chance of a major winner. G-Mac played solid golf from start to finish at Pebble Beach and, whilst all around him were losing their heads in the final round, he just about kept his to emerge a deserved winner. With all the froth generated over the past few years by the likes of McIlroy, Lee Westood, Ian Poulter and Paul Casey, McDowell has flown on the edge of the British golf’s press radar. He’ll need to get used to that changing from here on in. Read more…
If a seventh consecutive American victory in the Curtis Cup isn’t an indication that something needs to change for Great Britain and Ireland, I don’t know what is.
While the away side took a slim lead into day two of the event at Essex Country Club in Massachusetts, the US girls turned up armed with a tin of white paint on Saturday to wash away any hopes the GB&I girls had of victory – with a 6-0 drubbing on day two.
Meanwhile, in those 14 years since GB&I’s last victory at Killarney Golf Club, stars of the European scene have passed through the amateur game with bundles of accolades, before bursting onto the professional stage with victories galore.
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Love, money, revenge and reward – just some of the biggest motivating factors in any victory.
But for Phil Mickelson it seems that when it comes to getting himself psyched up for run-of-the-mill PGA Tour events – none of the above can get his gearbox roaring.
Even the prospect of overtaking Tiger Woods at the top, finally reaching No.1 in the world – the best player in golf – was not enough to motivate Lefty to victory at a Tigerless Colonial.
So what does it for him? What does it take to inspire Mickelson to those jaw-dropping, fist pumping victories that see him pull off superman-style heroics from pine needles and drop eagles and birdies like there’s no tomorrow?
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Four years ago, when Donald Trump landed in Scotland to announce plans for a new golf development in Aberdeenshire, people dismissed his claim that it would be the “greatest course the world has ever seen” as the type of brash hyperbole that characterises somebody worth upwards of $1billion.
But there’s a reason people like Trump are billionaires – a proven track record of delivering on their word.
Having secured a world exclusive interview with the man himself (published in issue 98 of bunkered), I was privileged to be invited to Menie for a reception hosted by Trump, his son and business associates as they checked in on the progress being made to the course.
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His 87 years won’t stop Roberto de Vicenzo teeing it up in the Champions Challenge at this year’s Open Championship, while Seve Ballesteros has refused to allow multiple brain surgeries to scupper his chances of saying a fond farewell to his fans at St Andrews this year.
To describe Jack Nicklaus’ lack of commitment to the event scheduled for the eve of the 150th anniversary Open Championship as a disappointment is an understatement to say the least.
For a man who had his swansong at St Andrews in 2005, an all-singing, all-dancing affair with his face emblazoned on five pound notes and emotional scenes over the Swilken Bridge, not to take part in the commemorative tribute to both the Open and its champions is sad, but to claim he has ‘no real desire to go there’, as he did at the Masters in April, is downright disrespectful.
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World No.1 Tiger Woods’ cloak is on a shaky peg – and England’s Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Paul Casey plan to unscrew it for good.
The English trio believe Woods’ 258-week run at the top of the tree is fast-nearing its end. Begging the question – which one of the monkeys on his back will reach the top of that tree first? Three’s a crowd, after all.
On merits, it would appear that Westwood would be the favourite. The nearly-man of the Masters, pipped at the post at the Players, that big win is surely just around the corner for Westwood. And, as the current world No.3, he is the closest of the three to catching Tiger’s tail.
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Just a matter of hours after Ryo Ishikawa became the first player to shoot a 58 on any major professional golf tour, the Japanese teenager’s fellow prodigy Rory McIlroy shot a course record 62 to win his first PGA Tour title at the Quail Hollow Championship.
Cue excited conversations about how these achievements signal a changing of the guard in terms of golf’s dominating protagonists, fuelled further by Tiger Woods missed cut at Quail, only his sixth in his professional career and second in ten months.
Is such gossip justified or idle? A little bit of both, probably.
Ishikawa and McIlroy are hardly new to the golf stage and the limelight that goes with it. Read more…