Missed cut leaves Casey to fret over Ryder Cup place

Paul Casey’s hopes of qualifying automatically for next month’s Ryder Cup took a heavy blow yesterday as he missed the cut at the US PGA Championship in Missouri.

The Englishman shot a secondround 73 to crash out at eight over and now faces a nervous weekend to see if Thorbjorn Olesen and/or Ian Poulter can leapfrog him in the standings. There are fewer than six world points between the trio in eighth, ninth and 10th place, with

only the top eight qualifying on the Sept 2 cut-off point.

It means that Olesen would probably need only to finish in the top 25 to displace Casey and Poulter in the top 20. Olesen, the Dane who finished second at last week’s WGC Bridgestone-invitational, shot a 68 to finish on two under. Poulter was three under when he went out in the afternoon at Bellerive, St Louis.

Casey has only one more event before the end of the European qualifying race – the Northern Trust Open the week after next.

The world No15 will be desperate to leave behind this form. His two rounds featured nine bogeys and a double bogey and only three birdies.

Thomas Bjorn, the Europe captain, will very likely select him as a wild card anyway, but Casey knows from bitter experience that nothing can be taken for granted.

In 2010, he was famously overlooked by Colin Montgomerie despite being seventh in the world.

Casey could certainly do without the anxiety of a three-week wait until

Bjorn names his four picks. Bjorn will have been disappointed with Sergio Garcia’s performance. The Spaniard is one over after a 71 and declined to talk to the media afterwards. The 2017 Masters champion came in having missed his last four cuts in the majors and at 12th in the rankings was urged by Bjorn to make a statement this week.

Sweden’s Alex Noren, who is in seventh, struggled to a second successive 71 to be two over and could yet get dragged into the dogfight for the last few places.