Here's a question I'd like to propose to the every member of the European tour. You can win five majors and be one of the best players in the world and lose every Ryder Cup for the next twenty years or you can have an average career and win every Ryder Cup for the next twenty years. I'm betting at least 90% will take the Ryder Cup wins. I bet the number is around 50% if you ask the American players the same question. Maybe even less than that.
A Ryder Cup win makes a European tour players career complete. A Ryder Cup win is a nice footnote for an American player. It's been the biggest tournament on the European tour schedule for thirty years. It's been about the tenth biggest tournament on the PGA Tour schedule for twenty years.
I also think that's part of the reason Monty didn't take Casey and Rose as picks. They play the U.S. tour and not the European tour. That makes qualifying for the Ryder Cup more difficult for those players and maybe that means it doesn't mean as much to them.
This tournament is the European tours Superbowl. It might be our NFC Wildcard game. It's hard to blame our players. There are so many big tournaments.
Maybe that's why we have success in the President's Cup. Those players on the international squad play the PGA Tour. They are exposed to the same conditions as the American players.
I guarantee you that the European papers will be talking about captaincy for 2012 in the next few weeks. That's something that won't cross the American minds for quite some time.
I hope this isn't true but I think it might be. This might be the last Ryder Cup that Seve Ballesteros sees. I keep reading that he is gravely ill. The man epitomizes European golf and the Ryder Cup. The event may not be what it is today without him and what he did in the 80's to fuel this event.
Two years until Medinah.
No comments:
Post a Comment