Bernd Wiesberger will make his Ryder Cup debut while 48-year-old Lee Westwood has earned his 11th appearance. Others such as Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Shane Lowry and Justin Rose will have to rely on being in the good graces of European Captain Padraig Harrington.
With the completion of the BMW PGA Championship, the final qualifying event, nine players automatically qualified for Captain Padraig Harrington’s team and he’ll round out the group with three picks to be made at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.
Wiesberger, a 35-year-old Austrian with seven career victories on the European Tour, finished T-20 at the BMW PGA Championship, which was enough to bump Rory McIlroy for the final of four qualifying spots via the European points list.
“I’m relieved,” Wiesberger said. “It really was a difficult day. I had to grind.”
European points list
- Jon Rahm
- Tommy Fleetwood
- Tyrrell Hatton
- Bernd Wiesberger
Westwood, 48, closed with 77 and finished T-71 at the BMW PGA, but Lowry made a costly double bogey at 15 that dropped him to a final-round 71 and T-17 finish. That wasn’t enough to improve his position in World Points when McIlroy flipped from qualifying through the Euro points to the World points list.
Westwood has competed on 10 previous teams and will tie Nick Faldo’s appearance record when he makes his 11th start at Whistling Straits. He lost all three of his matches in 2016 as a captain’s pick and served as a vice captain in Paris in 2018. He has a lifetime record of 20-18-6. Only k Faldo (46) has bettered Westwood (44) in terms of matches played.
World Points
- Rory McIlroy
- Matthew Fitzpatrick
- Paul Casey
- Viktor Hovland
- Lee Westwood
Lowry, the 34-year-old Irishman and winner of the 2019 British Open, was the odd man out. Speaking on Saturday, he said, “I’d love to make the team and I’ve tried to make the team all year and I’m close, I’m very close. But Bernd is obviously having a great week and fair play to him. I was keeping an eye on his score, and he was having a good performance and he’s played some good golf. I feel I’ve got some good golf under my belt the past few months and hopefully I can make the team or be part of the team.”
The process, which began at the BMW PGA Championship in September 2019, was suspended after the conclusion of 2020 Commercial Bank Qatar Masters in March 2020 as a result of the global pandemic. Upon the Tour’s resumption in July 2020, and due to the fractured nature of the season, Ryder Cup point for the European Team were frozen for the remainder of the year.
To recognize the in-form European players around the world, the adjusted qualification process featured a new weighting as the season progressed as requested by Harrington and approved by the Tour’s tournament committee. All points earned between Jan. 1 and May 9 were multiplied by 1.5; all points thereafter were multiplied by two.
Source: Golfweek https://ift.tt/2V95qPJ