UNITED STATES TEAM ANNOUNCEMENT: STEVE STRICKER had Paul Azinger's number on call-forwarding, so when the telephone rang Monday night he knew who was phoning. What he didn't know was why.
"Uh, is this a good call or a bad call?" asked Stricker.
When the US captain assured him it was the former, the 41-year-old Stricker could finally breathe easier.
In his 19th year as a professional golfer, he had made his first Ryder Cup team.
Had the system been in place that had been operative since the 1989 Ryder Cup, Stricker would have automatically qualified for a berth three weeks earlier, but as a precondition of his captaincy, Azinger had insisted that he be allowed to personally select four rather than two wild-card additions, which left Stricker, who stood ninth on the points list, twisting in the wind for the better part of August.
Just two years ago Stricker was the reigning holder of the title no golfer aspires to win - the PGA "Comeback Player of the Year". In 2005 he had lost his Tour card, come up short in the ensuing Q- school, and spent the next 12 months calling in past favours by begging tournament directors for sponsors exemptions.
Almost exactly a year ago the Wisconsin veteran posted his first tournament victory on US soil when he won the Barclay's Championship. Earlier that summer, he had gone into the back nine tied for the lead in the US Open at Oakmont (he shot 42 on the back nine), and equalled the competitive course record with a 64 at Carnoustie in the 2007 British Open. (He also flirted with the leaderboard at Birkdale this year before dropping into a share of eighth).
Those results, if nothing else, suggest that the current model Stricker can be a golfer with a hot hand, satisfying one of the two principal criteria Azinger used in rounding out his squad for Valhalla yesterday.
"My desire was to find the four players who were playing the best, and who were the most confident," the American skipper explained at yesterday's announcement ceremony at the Hotel Martinique in midtown Manhattan.
Having insisted that "we needed to change the selection process", had Azinger simply gone to the ninth and 10th place names on the qualifying list it would have marked his revised system an unnecessary waste of time, so, having picked Stricker, it wasn't exactly a major surprise that he bypassed the next name on the list, which would have been Woody Austin, and rounded out the American team by selecting a pair of 26-year-olds, Hunter Mahan and JB Holmes, along with Chad Campbell, who will be playing in his third consecutive Ryder Cup.
Mahan had stood at number 12 on the US points list, Holmes number 17, and Campbell number 20, but Azinger insisted that he had good and compelling reasons for all four of his selections.
Stricker, he noted, not only has been one of America's more consistent golfers over the past two years, but has a proven match- play record, having won the World Accenture Championship in Australia.
Mahan, described by Azinger as "a young lion", and Holmes already own PGA tournament wins, the former at Hartford last year, while the latter's play-off win over Phil Mickelson in the FBR Open was his second victory in the Scottsdale event in the past three years.
The outspoken Mahan was thought to have imperilled his chances earlier this summer with a Golf magazine interview in which he likened Ryder Cup service to "slavery" and said "from what I've heard, the Ryder Cup just isn't fun. The fun is sucked right out of it".
Azinger appears to have been more impressed by Mahan's team spirit in last year's President's Cup matches - and an opening round 62 at last weekend's Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston probably didn't hurt his chances.
The big-hitting Holmes led this year's PGA Championship at Oakland Hills after the second and third rounds, before imploding with an 81 on Sunday to finish tied for 29th, 13 shots adrift of winner Pádraig Harrington. But Azinger termed that "a totally forgiven round".
Holmes was chosen not only for his Walker Cup experience, but because he is a native Kentuckian who played his college golf at the University of Kentucky and, said Azinger, "knows Valhalla like the back of his hand".
Campbell has missed eight cuts this year, but, Azinger noted, having selected three Ryder Cup rookies for a team that already had three other first-timers in Anthony Kim, Ben Curtis and Boo Weekley, it seemed important to use the final pick to shore up the squad with a player experienced in the event.
Campbell played in 2004 at Oakland Hills and two years ago at The K Club, where he halved two foursomes matches but lost, 2 and 1, to Luke Donald in singles.
