TOUR SCENE NEWS ROUND-UP:THE MANOEUVRINGS of Messrs Westwood, Donald and Kaymer in the now weekly battle for world number one supremacy – still retained by Lee Westwood, but only just – move to Wentworth this week for the BMW PGA Championship.
Europe’s Ryder Cup captain Jose Maria Olazabal has used the gathering of so many of the world’s elite at the European Tour’s flagship event to give a timely reminder to them of their responsibilities to golf on this side of the Atlantic
Olazabal, gently but firmly, has asked players to support the Seve Trophy which takes place in Paris on September 15th-18th out of respect for the recently deceased Seve Ballesteros. “I think it will be very important to be honest that, every two years, with the support of the big names, we make it really big,” remarked Olazabal, speaking at Wentworth yesterday.
It remains to be seen how much weight Olazabal’s words carry with those so-called “big names,” for the Seve Trophy – a team event introduced in 2000 and which pits teams from Britain and Ireland against continental Europe – is due to clash directly with the third of the US Tour’s play-off tournaments, the BMW Championship at Cog Hill outside Chicago.
The urging of Olazabal to players is two-fold. Firstly, and perhaps more pertinently, to ensure the best players compete in an event which, on occasions, has only got lukewarm support from some players who have missed out on playing on often spurious grounds; and, secondly, to enable him to see first-hand potential members of his 2012 Ryder Cup team in head-to-head combat.
At least Olazabal has put down an early marker of what he would like qualified players to do – with the teams coming off a combination of the European Tour money list and also from the world rankings – but he is likely to have to wait some time for firm committals from a number of players, particularly those (among them Luke Donald) who are based primarily on the US Tour.
Donald, the current leader of the Race to Dubai standings, continued his rich vein of form by reaching the final of the Volvo World Matchplay in Spain at the weekend. But his failure to defeat Ian Poulter in the final meant the additional failure of not overtaking Westwood in the world rankings: a miserly 0.05 points separates the two.
Five of the world’s top-six players are competing in Wentworth this week, which brings serious points to the table and the potential for a change at the top at a time when Tiger Woods has slipped down to 12th.
US Open champion Graeme McDowell, ranked fifth in the world, and Rory McIlroy, ranked sixth, head a strong Irish challenge in a championship which has tended to throw up some unlikely winners in recent years.
In all, there are 11 Irish players in the field – McDowell and McIlroy joined by Shane Lowry, Michael Hoey, Darren Clarke, David Higgins, David Mortimer, Peter Lawrie, Gareth Maybin, Damien McGrane and Paul McGinley – with an opportunity perhaps to produce a third Irish winner on tour in the last three weeks. Clarke won the Iberdrola Open in Majorca two weeks ago, while Hoey won the Madeira Islands Open on Sunday.
Hoey has experienced a quite dramatic turnaround in form and health compared to this time a year ago, when he withdrew from playing in the PGA at Wentworth in the first round to take a six-week break from the sport. “The difference a year a makes. I’ve had to be patient and worked hard on my game,” said Hoey, whose win in Madeira brings additional benefits in securing an exemption on tour for next season but which also gets him into late-season tournaments in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong for which he wasn’t previously exempt.
One man who won’t be at Wentworth for the actual championship is Pádraig Harrington, although he will be attending the tour dinner tonight. Harrington – down to 48th in the latest rankings – was forced to pull out of the tournament last week due to a hamstring injury and is unlikely to return to action until the St Jude Classic in Memphis in a fortnight, ahead of the US Open at Congressional.
“If I don’t take the rest now, I could end up carrying it all year or might have to take time off later on in the season, as in during the Majors . . . maybe I’m paying for not taking more time off during the winter. The season’s even longer this year and it is tough but, hopefully, I will come back out fresh for the three Majors and the remainder of the summer. If I win one of those, I won’t have to worry about the stop-start nature of my season,” said Harrington.
He added: “My season has been stop start. Getting disqualified in my first event (in Abu Dhabi); then losing in the first round of the (Accenture) Match Play. If I started off tournaments well, I didn’t finish them out well. When I got some momentum in the States and had some good finishes, I got injured at the Masters. While I like what I’ve seen in my game, it hasn’t been great in terms of results. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t be a great year yet.”
Meanwhile, Colm Moriarty’s top-10 finish in Madeira has a positive knock-on for the Athlone man in that he will get a place in next week’s Wales Open at Celtic Manor.
