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Top Scot Paul Lawrie sets sights on 2014 Ryder Cup after Medinah heroics

Winning team: Paul Lawrie celebrates Europe’s victory with wife Marian and caddie David Kenny

Scotland’s Ryder Cup hero Paul has revealed he won’t be adding his name to the list of candidates for European captaincy when golf’s greatest team competition visits Gleneagles in 2014 – because he has already set his sights on playing.

Speaking exclusively to bunkered, Lawrie, whose 5&3 victory over Brandt Snedeker at Medinah proved crucial to Europe’s remarkable fightback, indicated being part of the team for Scotland’s first Ryder Cup since Muirfield in 1973 would take precedence over any bid to lead the side.

Asked if he expected to be in the running for the skipper’s position on home soil Lawrie, who will be making a return to action in this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, said: “No, I want to play at Gleneagles, we have decided.

” I’m not saying that they are going to offer me, or that they were thinking about offering me the job but with the current run of form and the way that I feel, I think I can still be competitive in two years time.

“The only thought I have right now is to get into that team as a player.”

The prospect of again seeing Lawrie competing against the PGA Tour’s finest is bound to delight Scottish fans who watched the 43-year-old secure a crucial point against the FedEx champion Snedeker, which contributed to the momentum of the European recovery after trailing by such a large margin.

Despite maintaining belief all along that the win was still possible, Lawrie is well aware that what occurred at Medinah was nothing short of miraculous.

“It feels awesome. I hadn’t played in 13 years and to be 10-6 behind on American soil and come back and win is fairytale stuff.

“I don’t think my margin of victory made too much difference but it was important the first four or five guys got off to winning starts. If we lost any points in the first five, I thought it would have been really, really tough so there was a huge amount of pressure on those boys to put points on the board, which they did.”

Like Jose Maria Olazabal, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Darren Clarke, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, all of whom suffered the previously unprecedented defeat at American hands at Brookline, for Lawrie this victory is all the sweeter.

Indeed, it was while trailing by the very same 10-6 score at the outset of the Sunday singles that the USA mounted an almost identical comeback.

On that occasion Lawrie experienced his first taste of the boisterous American crowd, which now similarly, 13 year later, is the focus of much annoyance from the British media and golfing public.

Despite the growing concerns that the demeanour of our American cousins from the other side of the ropes is now bordering on indecent, Lawrie doesn’t see any action being taken. From his perspective, exhibiting the mental mettle to deal with such issues is all part of being a Ryder Cup player.

“It’s a hard week as the crowd is pretty tough. You know that it’s going to be like that and you get told and I’ve experienced it before; Brookline was the same. It’s just how it is. You have just got to get on with it. There is nothing you can do.

“The mistake that you can make is to react to it. You have just got to let it go over the top of your head and let them think they’re not getting to you.

“It’s always been like that, you get the odd idiot that’s going to spoil it for the decent golf fans that are out there. There are plenty of Americans out there that are nice but there are plenty that are not and that is always going to be the case.”

Famously, it was Olazabal who suffered the greatest ignominy in defeat in 1999. With this perhaps at the back of his mind, the 2012 skipper revealed the Medinah miracle would go down as the most treasured achievement in a distinguished career.

However, like world No.1 Rory McIlroy – who candidly admitted his major wins were sweeter than even this most incredible of turnarounds – Lawrie will still prize his Open victory most highly of all.

“It is probably just behind Carnoustie for me, second I would have said,” he told us. “It’s different as it’s a team thing whereas we play an individual sport, so individual success is going to come ahead.

“But it was huge. It was so important for the tour to compete and to win the Ryder Cup, financially, on a regular basis – all of the players know that.”

That fact, however, did little to dampen the celebrations of a remarkable occasion, the likes of which we are unlikely to see in the near future, if ever again.

“We had a good party in the team room, there were lots of people in there, it was busy. The head was a wee bit fuzzy on Monday morning, but it was all good.”

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Bryce Ritchie is the Editor of bunkered and, in addition to leading on content and strategy, oversees all aspects of the brand. The first full-time journalist employed by bunkered, he joined the company in 2001 and has been editor since 2009. A member of Balfron Golfing Society, he currently plays off nine and once got a lesson from Justin Thomas’ dad.

Editor of bunkered

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